40 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
anxiety symptoms develop and the severity of their manifes-
tation. Fear and anxiety are distinct emotions that require
people to purposefully exert some control over them, espe-
cially when the fear or anxiety is excessive or causing dys-
function in everyday life. Clinical research demonstrates
that emotion regulation can either augment or diminish fear
and anxiety, depending on the type of emotion regulation
strategy a person employs.
Mindfulness is a key component of helping you regulate
your emotions, especially when you are anxious. Mindfulness
entails “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in
the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat- Zinn
1994, 4). According to research, an important benefit of
mindfulness is the ability to shift or transform your perspec-
tive by distancing yourself from your emotional experiences
(Herbert and Forman 2011). In other words, mindfulness
entails, at least in part, learning to observe your emotions—
rather than identifying with them— without criticism or
judgment and with compassion. In practice, when an
emotion arises, mindfulness allows you to notice it with
curiosity rather than immediately and ref lexively react to it.
The same is true when several emotions occur all at once or
in waves. With mindfulness, your emotions will become
more predictable, manageable, and adaptive.
W hat Does Mindfulness Entail?
In addition to the definitions of mindfulness mentioned
above, empirically informed theories of mindfulness have
been developed. The one we focus on here is derived, in part,
from our own recent research (Curtiss and Klemanski