Can mindfulness meditation reduce social anxiety?

Mindfulness meditation helps to reduce negative emotions, and help focus your attention on things which you choose. This means it can also contribute to reducing social anxiety, as a study has shown now.

The interest to Far Eastern healing and relaxation methods continues to increase. Also meditation is increasingly integrated into clinical practice. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR, the Americans usually called “mindfulness meditation“) is a meditation method that is used by doctors to support healing processes.

Studies have shown that mindfulness meditation can have a positive effect on severe mental disorders. And recently, researchers were able to show that mindfulness exercises can also effectively reduce social anxiety.

Mindfulness changed negative reviews.

A typical feature of social anxiety is the tendency for a social experience. Object try to remember in detail what happened to relive in detail again this situation and go through mentally. Usually by prioritizing negative reviews of their own behavior in the foreground. In their study, the researchers wanted to find out how mindfulness meditation and exercises and cognitive restructuring helps to control own thoughts and affect on behavior.

It turned out that both mindfulness exercises and cognitive restructuring would significantly reduce the negative self-assessments and thus the social anxieties. The mindfulness meditations cause a reduction in the negative thoughts and accompanying emotional reactions such as tension and an increase in the ability to shift attention.

Approximately 12 percent of all adults suffer from social anxiety. Therefore the by depression and alcoholism are the most common psychiatric problem. Social anxiety often leads to complications such as addiction, depression or other anxiety disorders. Therefore prompt treatment is particular important.