Positive psychological states in the arc from mindfulness to self-transcendence: extensions of the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory and applications to addiction and chronic pain treatment
Section snippets
Extending the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory toward self-transcendence
The MMT specifies a recursive cycle of positive psychological processes, including decentering, attentional broadening, reappraisal, and savoring that kindles momentary states of meta-awareness infused with positive affect, such as the self-transcendent positive emotions of awe, compassion, elevation, gratitude, and love. This cycle, when repeatedly activated, is theorized to build an upward spiral (see Figure 3, innermost loop) that stimulates a gradient of self-transcendence (see Figure 3,
Clinical applications of the MMT to addiction and chronic pain
The MMT has been applied to biobehavioral models of psychological treatment for addiction and chronic pain [18]. Such forward-translation of the MMT suggests that evoking hedonic and eudaimonic well-being through the integration of mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring would attenuate (physical and emotional) pain and enhance natural reward processing, thereby decreasing the propensity to engage in addictive behaviors.
Evidence for these hypotheses has been generated by RCTs of
Funding
This work was supported by grant numbers R01DA042033 and R61AT009296 from the National Institutes of Health awarded to E.L.G. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Conflict of interest statement
Nothing declared.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge David Vago for providing consultation concerning the development of Figure 1, Figure 2 and Adam Hanley for his assistance in developing Figure 3 in this manuscript.
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