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A young girl looking worried. Worry is a category of perseverative cognition, i.e. a continuous thinking about negative events in the past or in the future. [3] As an emotion "worry" is experienced from anxiety or concern about a real or imagined issue, often personal issues such as health or finances, or external broader issues such as environmental pollution, social structure or ...
Distress is an inextricable part of life; therefore, avoidance is often only a temporary solution. Avoidance reinforces the notion that discomfort, distress and anxiety are bad, or dangerous. Sustaining avoidance often requires effort and energy. Avoidance limits one's focus at the expense of fully experiencing what is going on in the present.
The definition of perseverative cognition is: "the repeated or chronic activation of the cognitive representation of one or more psychological stressors". [ 2 ] [ 8 ] Worry , rumination and all other forms of thoughts ( cognition ), about stressful events that have happened or might happen, fall under the definition of perseverative cognition.
Avoidance coping is measured via a self-reported questionnaire. Initially, the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ) was used, which is a 62-item questionnaire that assesses experiential avoidance, and thus avoidance coping, by measuring how many avoidant behaviors a person exhibits and how strongly they agree with each statement on a scale of 1–6. [1]
Intellectualization is a transition to reason, where the person avoids uncomfortable emotions by focusing on facts and logic. The situation is treated as an interesting problem that engages the person on a rational basis, whilst the emotional aspects are completely ignored as being irrelevant.
Rumination appears closely related to worry. Rumination is the focused attention on the symptoms of one's mental distress. In 1998, Nolen-Hoeksema proposed the Response Styles Theory, [1] [2] which is the most widely used conceptualization model of rumination. However, other theories have proposed different definitions for rumination.
Cognitive load also plays a role in ironic control theory. Studies have shown that a greater cognitive load results in an increased possibility of dream rebound occurring. In other words, when one tries to retain a heavy load of information before going to sleep, there is a high chance of that information manifesting itself within the dream. [38]
Safety behaviors directly amplify fear and anxiety. [4]The use of safety behaviors promotes the monitoring of anxiety symptoms. For example, people with panic disorders tend to monitor themselves for symptoms of anxiety and respond to these symptoms with avoidant behaviors. [10]