(2017-07-11) Research Suggests A Cure For Neuroticism

Research Suggests a Cure for Neuroticism ..people high in neuroticism are not just chronically anxious, worried, and unhappy, but they can easily be pushed over the edge when things actually do go wrong in their lives. Because this is a chronic state of reactivity to challenging events, the Australian researchers believed that one intervention in particular could be of value in helping individuals high in this quality to cope with those challenges. Paradoxically, perhaps, they suggest that it is mindfulness, or thinking more intensely about one's experiences, that could help highly neurotic people

In mindfulness, you concentrate on and accept your thoughts, and feelings and consciously insert yourself into the moment

If you’re engaging in mindfulness, you look at an experience with acceptance and curiosity. Rather than fighting the feeling, you ask yourself where it’s coming from, and redefine the situation as one you can conquer.

Mindfulness is a quality, Drake et al. point out, that you can have as a stable personality characteristic or as an attribute that can change from situation to situation. Their research investigated mindfulness in its invariant form, but they noted that giving people practice in mindfulness exercises could eventually help even the least mindful learn to rely on it on a daily basis

The Australian researchers predicted that, as a stable quality, mindfulness would help offset the role of neuroticism in heightening people’s feelings of distress. In other words, even the most neurotic of us could manage to cope with challenging life situations by drawing on the coping strategies represented by mindfulness.

The findings of the Australian team supported the hypothesis that people high in neuroticism who were also high in the trait of mindfulness exhibited lower psychological distress than those individuals high in neuroticism alone. Conversely, those participants with low levels of mindfulness who were high in neuroticism showed the greatest distress of all.