Effects of Focused Meditation on Difficulties in Emotion Regulation and Trait Anxiety

Meditation has been increasingly studied and applied as a form of mental training that seeks to foster healthier emotion regulation. This study investigated whether 6 weeks of training focused meditation (FM; n = 35) improves emotion regulation processes (i.e., general emotion dysregulation and difficulties in regulatory strategies) and emotion regulation outcomes (i.e., state and trait anxiety) in healthy college students compared with progressive relaxation (PR; n = 37) and a wait-list control (WLC) group (n = 27). Based on an intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis, only the FM group exhibited improvements in total emotion dysregulation, particularly 2 strategies (i.e., limited access to effective emotion regulation strategies and nonacceptance of emotional responses), and trait anxiety. The weekly frequency of practice correlated with lower limited access to effective emotion regulation strategies, impulse control difficulties, and lack of emotional clarity only among meditators. Additionally, reductions of emotion dysregulation correlated with reductions of trait anxiety. Conceptual considerations regarding the relationship between the type of meditation and emotion regulation processes are discussed. The present study provides evidence of the potential therapeutic efficacy of meditation.