108 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
they share a considerable number of features. This overlap
has very important consequences. Namely, if there was a
way to target repetitive negative thinking, it could alleviate a
wide variety of anxious symptoms so that people wouldn’t
have to undergo specific treatments for each disorder. Well,
we are in luck! Recent years have witnessed many compel-
ling studies that corroborated techniques based on mindful-
ness and emotion regulation as effective strategies for
counteracting repetitive negative thinking. In the next
section, we will detail procedures and specific exercises that
have been scientifically proven to help people outsmart
repetitive negative thinking and anxiety.
A Nonjudgmental Approach to
Repetitive Negative Thinking
By now, it should come as no surprise that the very same
mindfulness- based approaches you learned in the last two
chapters can help you regulate your emotions effectively.
This proves especially true in the case of repetitive negative
thinking. As evidenced by its name, repetitive negative
thinking entails prolonged periods of negative, overly pessi-
mistic, and judgmental thinking. W hether you are reliving
past disasters or imagining future ones, repetitive negative
thinking can easily remove you from the present. Do you
remember times when you exhausted yourself worrying
about some impending situation that inspired dread and
uncertainty? For instance, it’s common to worry about a
very important exam that could have a big impact on your
future (such as the SAT or GR E). Or do you recall times
when you became especially concerned about some past