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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 ...
Ironic process theory (IPT), also known as the Pink elephant paradox [1] or White bear phenomenon, suggests that when an individual intentionally tries to avoid thinking a certain thought or feeling a certain emotion, a paradoxical effect is produced: the attempted avoidance not only fails in its object but in fact causes the thought or emotion to occur more frequently and more intensely. [2]
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.
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]
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 change; Response modulation; The process model also divides these emotion regulation strategies into two categories: antecedent-focused and response-focused. Antecedent-focused strategies (i.e., situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, and cognitive change) occur before an emotional response is fully generated.
Ironic control theory, also known as "ironic process theory", states that thought suppression "leads to an increased occurrence of the suppressed content in waking states". [36] The irony lies in the fact that although people try not to think about a particular subject, there is a high probability that it will appear in one's dreams regardless.
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.