3 ways in which meditation helps to handle stress

Emotions, stress and meditation

Yesterday I had to bring my 3-year-old to daycare and rush to work. A morning with a small child can be stressful enough if you have to be at work on time. But yesterday, on top of everything else, the car’s battery had died. We waited for help. Meanwhile, I had to make five phone calls and manage a small tantrum, because 3-year-olds don’t like sudden changes in their plans.

We all have different capacities to handle daily stressful moments like this, but we can increase our capacity even further with meditation practice. Many research studies have reported positive effects of meditation on emotions, such as decreased reactivity to unpleasant situations, and a faster return to emotional baseline.

I. Less shame and stress

A very recent study published in Psychoendocrinology investigated emotional recovery in long-term meditators compared to people with no meditation experience. All study participants went through a highly unpleasant stress test – a mock job interview with a critical and unfriendly panel. The results showed that the meditators experienced less shame and higher self-esteem, despite the social evaluation threat. 

II. Positive reappraisal 

After the test, the cortisol level in meditators went back to normal faster than in the controls. To recover from the stress the meditators used acceptance and positive reappraisal, i.e., the ability to recognise the negative emotion and reframe the situation in a positive way: “That was unpleasant but it was good practice for a job interview, and I learned something”.

III. Accepting state

Meditation practice helps us to overcome our habitual ways of reacting to stressful events. Brain studies show increased activation in the areas of the brain associated with cognitive control (the prefrontal cortex) following meditation. This activation is the greatest in meditation beginners. Expert meditators might not use prefrontal control so much. Rather, they might have automated an accepting stance towards their experience and thus no longer need to make a conscious effort to deal with difficult emotions. They have formed new habitual responses.

When I see my 3-year-old having a tantrum, I often think that this is just a very uncontrolled way of reacting to emotions, and that we as adults are generally doing an excellent job anyway. But we all recognize the moments when stress hits harder, and we cannot hold it together. Regular meditation practice can help us get through these moments and recover faster.