chapter 2
O vercom i ng
Attention Biases
D
uring most of your daily activities, various emotions
and feelings grab or compete for your attention. For
instance, as you prepare to go to work in the morning, you
might focus on the stress involved in being on time, or you
might worry about being ready to deal with upcoming tasks.
Attending a social gathering might elicit feelings of anxiety
and fear about how others perceive you.
W henever strong emotions emerge, it’s natural to want
to pay attention to them. Paying attention to your emotions
seems like a good idea. It gives you an opportunity to
analyze, understand, and identify your thoughts and feel-
ings. However, the consequences of a close inspection of
your emotions depend on how you attend to them. Some
forms of attention can be quite harmful, leading to more
anxiety and an inability to “get out of your head.” Paying
attention to your emotions in a nonjudgmental and nonreac-
tive manner, on the other hand, enables you to achieve a crit-
ical distance from negative thoughts. This is the basis of
mindfulness, which refers to paying attention to the present