{"id":1201,"date":"2026-04-02T16:59:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2026-04-07T15:19:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:19:45","slug":"buffering-burnout-how-mindfulness-changes-your-emotion-regulation-to-deal-with-everyday-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/2026\/04\/02\/buffering-burnout-how-mindfulness-changes-your-emotion-regulation-to-deal-with-everyday-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffering Burnout: How Mindfulness Changes your Emotion Regulation to Deal with Everyday Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Science is, at its most fundamental, an attempt at accurately describing <strong>how<\/strong> the world is. Planets move in elliptical orbits, for example. But some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries come from going one step further; from attempts at accurately describing why the world is how it is. Newton\u2019s law of gravitation, for example, explains <strong>why<\/strong> planets prefer the funkier circle. <\/p>\n<p>Psychological science is no different. Accurately describing the world between our ears is already a substantial challenge\u2013but it gets really interesting (and useful for interventions) when we start questioning <strong>why it is that way<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>Several reviews have established that mindfulness leads to reduced burnout symptomology (Li et al., 2019; Luken &amp; Sammons, 2016; Madigan et al., 2023). However, at its core, this is a description of <strong>how<\/strong> the world is: If someone is more mindful, they have less burnout. The more interesting question, I thought, is <strong>why<\/strong>? How would one\u2019s ability to focus attention on the breath at the tip of your nose prevent the inevitable stressors of your work from sending you into burnout?<\/p>\n<p>Well, this was the research question for a paper I recently published in JEPS, and today we\u2019ll look at the results and how they fit into burnout theory.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Burnout<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To understand what could protect a person from burnout, <strong>we need to understand how it arises in the first place<\/strong>. Stress is natural and inevitable in most domains of life, yet not everyone burns out.<strong> Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model<\/strong> (Bakker et al., 2014) provides the framework here. It proposes that <strong>burnout is more than physical fatigue<\/strong> &#8211; it&#8217;s also characterised by emotional exhaustion, expressed as a sense of <strong>disengagement<\/strong> and <strong>cynicism<\/strong> about work. So, how does someone burn out? <\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1202\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1202\" style=\"width: 451px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"451\" height=\"222\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1202\" srcset=\"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-1.png 451w, https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-1-300x148.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 451px) 100vw, 451px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1202\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1 &#8211; A very simplified JD-R Model, based on Bakker et al. (2014)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>The model contains three main ideas:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. <strong>Job Demands<\/strong> &#8211; any work aspect that puts an <strong>ongoing strain<\/strong> on you &#8211; think deadlines, navigating change, annoying boss, having to smile at customers when you&#8217;re dying inside, &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>2. <strong>Resources<\/strong> &#8211; anything that helps you achieve work-related goals<\/p>\n<p>\to <strong>Job Resources<\/strong> are work aspects that help you out &#8211; think great coworkers, autonomy, feedback, &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\to <strong>Personal Resources<\/strong> are individual characteristics affecting your stress management &#8211; think social support, the relationship with your dog, or maybe mindfulness?<\/p>\n<p>3. <strong>Stress<\/strong> &#8211; the felt bodily and emotional sense of strain. But I guess we all know what stress feels like.<\/p>\n<p><strong>These ideas are related like this:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>1. <strong>Job Demands directly lead to stress.<\/strong> If the stress is more than you can manage for a while (i.e., is chronic), we get to <strong>burnout<\/strong>: Neverending fatigue, a cynical attitude, and aloofness.<\/p>\n<p>2. <strong>Resources negatively moderate this relationship.<\/strong> Now in English: <strong>they buffer the effects<\/strong> of Job Demands.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The key idea<\/strong> is that the same level of <strong>stressor<\/strong> doesn&#8217;t necessarily lead to the same level of <strong>stress<\/strong>: Two people may face similar stressors, yet experience different levels of stress, all depending on their resources (job and personal). The issue is not the presence of <strong>stressors<\/strong>, but of <strong>chronic unmanaged stress<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>In this way, <strong>Burnout can be understood as a protective mechanism<\/strong>: Inevitable stressors have an emotional impact, and when that impact becomes too much to handle, we seek <strong>emotional distance<\/strong> from it &#8211; we disengage and become cynical about our work. It&#8217;s no coincidence that Burnout emerged as a concept in research around nurses &#8211; people who literally <em>care<\/em> as a job. <\/p>\n<p><strong>So, what can we do?<\/strong> The model provides three modifiable factors to potentially reduce the level of unmanaged stress: job demands, job resources, and personal resources. For employees, reducing job demands or increasing job resources is rarely in their control. What&#8217;s left: <strong>Personal resources.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Often, we find ourselves in a situation where <strong>stressors are inevitable, and their emotional effects are too<\/strong>. Therefore, how we manage those emotions plays a massive role in how we&#8217;re impacted by the underlying stressors. This is the domain of emotion regulation. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Emotion Regulation<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1203\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1203\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-2-1024x503.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"472\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1203\" srcset=\"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-2-1024x503.png 1024w, https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-2-300x147.png 300w, https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-2-768x377.png 768w, https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-2-1140x560.png 1140w, https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/files\/2026\/04\/jeps-pic-2.png 1379w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1203\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 2: Gross\u2019s Process Model of Emotion Regulation, adapted from McRae &amp; Gross (2020)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Meet <strong>Gross&#8217;s Process Model of Emotion Regulation<\/strong>. It describes how emotions generally arise (Emotion Genesis), and how different techniques can intervene at each stage (Emotion Regulation). The process goes like this: <\/p>\n<p>\t1. <strong>Situation<\/strong>: You find yourself in a situation that&#8217;s emotionally relevant to you.<\/p>\n<p>\t2. <strong>Attention<\/strong>: You become consciously aware of the situation.<\/p>\n<p>\t3. <strong>Appraisal<\/strong>: You evaluate the situation &#8211; good, bad, dangerous, catastrophic?<\/p>\n<p>\t4.<strong>Reaction<\/strong>: Based on your evaluation of the attended situation, an emotion arises.<\/p>\n<p>Now, different people have differing tendencies in how they engage with their emotions. Based on how we grew up, what worked for us in the past, what we were taught is right and wrong, we usually have an ecology of <em>habitual emotion regulation<\/em> \u2013 various strategies that we tend to use more often. Scientifically, we can sort these strategies along two dimensions. <\/p>\n<p>First, strategies are sorted based on where they aim to make a change. For example, avoidance is a <em>Situation Selection<\/em> strategy because it targets an emotionally-charged situation before it begins. Suppression is a <em>Response-Focused<\/em> strategy because it targets the emotional response after it arises.<\/p>\n<p>Second, strategies are also sorted based on adaptivity \u2013 how healthy they are over time. Of course, everything remains context-dependent to a degree: Avoidance might be an adaptive (<em>great and healthy<\/em>) strategy when you skilfully decide not to go back into a toxic relationship. It&#8217;s adaptive here because the short- and long-term effects are positive. However, avoidance is often used for short-term relief at long-term cost. For example, someone feels scared of social interactions, so they avoid going out. Short-term, this warrants success: The fear is gone, and emotions are regulated. Long-term, however, reduced interactions make going out even scarier, leaving them even more isolated, while reinforcing the cycle, making the strategy maladaptive<\/p>\n<p>To distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive strategies, we examine what happens over time when people habitually employ a strategy. For example, if there&#8217;s a strong link between habitually employing avoidance and social anxiety, this is likely a maladaptive strategy. <\/p>\n<p>Now, we have an idea of <strong>how burnout arises<\/strong> from unmanaged stress and that people differ in their <strong>habitual use of adaptive &amp; maladaptive regulation strategies<\/strong>, which impacts their mental health outcomes. We ask the question; how does mindfulness fit into all this? <\/p>\n<p><strong>Mindfulness<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mindfulness is interesting because it describes <strong>both a state and a trait<\/strong> (Truong et al., 2020). <em>State<\/em> mindfulness describes a way of being in any moment: attentive, non-judgemental, present &#8211; what people experience when they meditate. State mindfulness is <strong>situation-specific<\/strong>: How mindful are you right now, in this situation? <em>Trait<\/em> mindfulness is simply someone&#8217;s tendency to be in that mindful state at any point in time &#8211; it is <strong>cross-situational<\/strong>: How mindful are you on any given day? Regular meditators experience state mindfulness regularly, which heightens their trait mindfulness over time. <\/p>\n<p>It is exactly this trait mindfulness that is commonly linked to lower burnout, and so we return to our original question: <strong>Why<\/strong>? To answer this, we ran a parallel mediation model that examined how mindfulness changes emotion regulation and how that impacts burnout. So, what did we find? <\/p>\n<p>First, more mindfulness was linked to less burnout. As expected, <em>more mindfulness<\/em> was linked to <em>more adaptive emotion regulation strategies<\/em> and <em>fewer maladaptive emotion regulation strategies<\/em>. But it wasn&#8217;t that broader shift in habits that made up the mechanism. There were <strong>only two strategies<\/strong> that <em>significantly mediated<\/em> (= explained) the effect of mindfulness on burnout: More <strong>acceptance<\/strong> and less <strong>rumination<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Acceptance<\/strong>, measured by questions like &#8220;<em>When I could not change something, I accepted the situation as it was<\/em>&#8220;, is above all a <strong>wise conservation of energy<\/strong>. Humans have a marvellous tendency to reluctantly tense against the inevitable and waste a whole lotta life force doing so. Within the confines of context-dependency (<em>&#8220;Acceptance&#8221; of something you can actually change isn&#8217;t Acceptance in the scientific sense &#8211; that&#8217;s resignation<\/em>), <strong>releasing the mental knot that had you tied up in something entirely out of your control<\/strong> can only free up more mental energy for the things in your control. It&#8217;s no surprise that this would buffer the impact of all the inevitable vicissitudes of being in the world. It&#8217;s also no surprise that mindfulness would be hugely conducive to this strategy &#8211; sitting with what is, as it is, without judgment, is the entire idea of the meditative practice.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, there&#8217;s <strong>Rumination<\/strong>. It often masquerades as problem-solving, when in reality it&#8217;s the exact opposite. Rumination is the tendency to think repetitively about the things that bother you. Going in circles and never getting anywhere, this tendency loves to masquerade as &#8220;paying attention to something worth paying attention to&#8221; &#8211; but that&#8217;s exactly all it is. As an attention-focused strategy (in the process model), it never arrives at the point of situation modification (which is where problem-solving lives). Instead, it just goes around in circles, keeping attention on the situation that causes you stress, but nothing more. It&#8217;s no wonder that this tendency is considered a maintenance factor for depression &#8211; and it&#8217;s <strong>no wonder that it only amplifies the effects of a workplace stressor<\/strong>, instead of buffering against it. After all, if your boss is rude to you on a Friday, and you spend the entirety of Saturday and Sunday brooding on his rudeness, how recharged will you return on Monday? Again, it&#8217;s congruent that mindfulness would reduce this tendency. In a meditative practice, you learn to observe the mind and its patterns, to interrupt where necessary &#8211; and <strong>on that dizzying roundabout of rumination, you may indeed benefit from taking an exit<\/strong> &#8211; maybe the problem-solving one (if that\u2019s possible), or the acceptance one (if it isn&#8217;t).<\/p>\n<p>Together, what the data showed is captured in the Buddhist <em>metaphor of the two arrows.<\/em> The <strong>first arrow<\/strong> describes the inevitable pain and strain of living a human life &#8211; stressful deadlines on the job or feeling hurt when your boss is rude to you. It&#8217;s unavoidable &amp; it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. The <strong>second arrow<\/strong> is all that add-on suffering that a human mind likes to gift on top &#8211; sleepless rumination spirals, blaming yourself when your boss was rude, replaying painful moments in your head over and over again. <strong>The second arrow is optional<\/strong>, and put very simply, mindfulness is about shooting yourself with the second arrow a little less.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In terms of the JD-R Model, <strong>job demands are unavoidable, but with enough personal resources, burnout isn&#8217;t<\/strong>. Importantly, this is by no means an attempt to blame ridiculously overworked healthcare workers for their Burnout &#8211; working on Job Demands &amp; Job Resources should be a priority for those in the positions to change them. Conversely, research like this is simply an attempt to bring some relief to those who aren&#8217;t in a position to change them and learn something about the way the human mind works along the way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., &amp; Sanz-Vergel, A. I. (2014). Burnout and Work Engagement: The JD-R Approach. <em>Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1,<\/em> 389\u2013411. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1146\/ANNUREV-ORGPSYCH-031413-091235\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1146\/ANNUREV-ORGPSYCH-031413-091235<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Li, C., Zhu, Y., Zhang, M., Gustafsson, H., &amp; Chen, T. (2019). Mindfulness and Athlete Burnout: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. <em>International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16<\/em>(3), 449. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/ijerph16030449\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/ijerph16030449<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Luken, M., &amp; Sammons, A. (2016). Systematic Review of Mindfulness Practice for Reducing Job Burnout. <em>The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 70<\/em>(2), 7002250020p1-7002250020p10. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5014\/ajot.2016.016956\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5014\/ajot.2016.016956<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Madigan, D. J., Kim, L. E., &amp; Glandorf, H. L. (2023). Interventions to reduce burnout in students: A systematic review and meta-analysis. <em>European Journal of Psychology of Education.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10212-023-00731-3\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10212-023-00731-3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>McRae, K., &amp; Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion Regulation. <em>Emotion, 20<\/em>(1), 1\u20139.<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/emo0000703\"> https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/emo0000703<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Truong, Q. C., Kr\u00e4geloh, C. U., Siegert, R. J., Landon, J., &amp; Medvedev, O. N. (2020). Applying Generalizability Theory to Differentiate Between Trait and State in the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). <em>Mindfulness, 11<\/em>, 953\u2013963. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s12671-020-01324-7\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s12671-020-01324-7<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Johannes Gronimus is a provisional psychologist and postgraduate psychology student based on Australia\u2019s Sunshine Coast completing his undergraduate studies in Germany and a postgraduate course in London. Sparked by his research for this paper, he started experimenting with meditation himself and has since sat several 10-day silent retreats while keeping a daily practice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Science is, at its most fundamental, an attempt at accurately describing how the world is. Planets move in elliptical orbits, for example. But some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries come from going one step further; from attempts at accurately describing why the world is how it is. Newton\u2019s law of gravitation, for example, explains why planets prefer the funkier circle. Psychological science is no different. Accurately describing the world between our ears is already a substantial challenge\u2013but it gets really interesting (and useful for interventions) when we start questioning why it is that way. Several reviews have established that mindfulness leads to reduced burnout symptomology (Li et al., 2019; Luken &amp; Sammons, 2016; Madigan et al., 2023). However, at its core, this is a description of how the world is: If someone is more mindful, they have less burnout. The more interesting question, I thought, is why? How would one\u2019s ability to focus attention on the breath at the tip of your nose prevent the inevitable stressors of your work from sending you into burnout? Well, this was the research question for a paper I recently published in JEPS, and today we\u2019ll look at the results and how they fit into burnout theory. Burnout To understand what could protect a person from burnout, we need to understand how it arises in the first place. Stress is natural and inevitable in most domains of life, yet not everyone burns out. Why? The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model (Bakker et al., 2014) provides the framework here. It proposes that burnout is more than physical fatigue &#8211; it&#8217;s also characterised by emotional exhaustion, expressed as a sense of disengagement and cynicism about work. So, how does someone burn out? The model contains three main ideas: 1. Job Demands &#8211; any work aspect that puts an ongoing strain on you &#8211; think deadlines, navigating change, annoying boss, having to smile at customers when you&#8217;re dying inside, &#8230; 2. Resources &#8211; anything that helps you achieve work-related goals o Job Resources are work aspects that help you out &#8211; think great coworkers, autonomy, feedback, &#8230; o Personal Resources are individual characteristics affecting your stress management &#8211; think social support, the relationship with your dog, or maybe mindfulness? 3. Stress &#8211; the felt bodily and emotional sense of strain. But I guess we all know what stress feels like. These ideas are related like this: 1. Job Demands directly lead to stress. If the stress is more than you can manage for a while (i.e., is chronic), we get to burnout: Neverending fatigue, a cynical attitude, and aloofness. 2. Resources negatively moderate this relationship. Now in English: they buffer the effects of Job Demands. The key idea is that the same level of stressor doesn&#8217;t necessarily lead to the same level of stress: Two people may face similar stressors, yet experience different levels of stress, all depending on their resources (job and personal). The issue is not the presence of stressors, but of chronic unmanaged stress. In this way, Burnout can be understood as a protective mechanism: Inevitable stressors have an emotional impact, and when that impact becomes too much to handle, we seek emotional distance from it &#8211; we disengage and become cynical about our work. It&#8217;s no coincidence that Burnout emerged as a concept in research around nurses &#8211; people who literally care as a job. So, what can we do? The model provides three modifiable factors to potentially reduce the level of unmanaged stress: job demands, job resources, and personal resources. For employees, reducing job demands or increasing job resources is rarely in their control. What&#8217;s left: Personal resources. Often, we find ourselves in a situation where stressors are inevitable, and their emotional effects are too. Therefore, how we manage those emotions plays a massive role in how we&#8217;re impacted by the underlying stressors. This is the domain of emotion regulation. Emotion Regulation Meet Gross&#8217;s Process Model of Emotion Regulation. It describes how emotions generally arise (Emotion Genesis), and how different techniques can intervene at each stage (Emotion Regulation). The process goes like this: 1. Situation: You find yourself in a situation that&#8217;s emotionally relevant to you. 2. Attention: You become consciously aware of the situation. 3. Appraisal: You evaluate the situation &#8211; good, bad, dangerous, catastrophic? 4.Reaction: Based on your evaluation of the attended situation, an emotion arises. Now, different people have differing tendencies in how they engage with their emotions. Based on how we grew up, what worked for us in the past, what we were taught is right and wrong, we usually have an ecology of habitual emotion regulation \u2013 various strategies that we tend to use more often. Scientifically, we can sort these strategies along two dimensions. First, strategies are sorted based on where they aim to make a change. For example, avoidance is a Situation Selection strategy because it targets an emotionally-charged situation before it begins. Suppression is a Response-Focused strategy because it targets the emotional response after it arises. Second, strategies are also sorted based on adaptivity \u2013 how healthy they are over time. Of course, everything remains context-dependent to a degree: Avoidance might be an adaptive (great and healthy) strategy when you skilfully decide not to go back into a toxic relationship. It&#8217;s adaptive here because the short- and long-term effects are positive. However, avoidance is often used for short-term relief at long-term cost. For example, someone feels scared of social interactions, so they avoid going out. Short-term, this warrants success: The fear is gone, and emotions are regulated. Long-term, however, reduced interactions make going out even scarier, leaving them even more isolated, while reinforcing the cycle, making the strategy maladaptive To distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive strategies, we examine what happens over time when people habitually employ a strategy. For example, if there&#8217;s a strong link between habitually employing avoidance and social anxiety, this is likely a maladaptive strategy. Now, we have an idea of how burnout arises from unmanaged stress and that people differ in their habitual use of adaptive &amp; maladaptive regulation strategies, which impacts their mental health outcomes. We ask the question; how does mindfulness fit into all this? Mindfulness Mindfulness is interesting because it describes both a state and a trait (Truong et al., 2020). State mindfulness describes a way of being in any moment: attentive, non-judgemental, present &#8211; what people experience when they meditate. State mindfulness is situation-specific: How mindful are you right now, in this situation? Trait mindfulness is simply someone&#8217;s tendency to be in that mindful state at any point in time &#8211; it is cross-situational: How mindful are you on any given day? Regular meditators experience state mindfulness regularly, which heightens their trait mindfulness over time. It is exactly this trait mindfulness that is commonly linked to lower burnout, and so we return to our original question: Why? To answer this, we ran a parallel mediation model that examined how mindfulness changes emotion regulation and how that impacts burnout. So, what did we find? First, more mindfulness was linked to less burnout. As expected, more mindfulness was linked to more adaptive emotion regulation strategies and fewer maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. But it wasn&#8217;t that broader shift in habits that made up the mechanism. There were only two strategies that significantly mediated (= explained) the effect of mindfulness on burnout: More acceptance and less rumination. Acceptance, measured by questions like &#8220;When I could not change something, I accepted the situation as it was&#8220;, is above all a wise conservation of energy. Humans have a marvellous tendency to reluctantly tense against the inevitable and waste a whole lotta life force doing so. Within the confines of context-dependency (&#8220;Acceptance&#8221; of something you can actually change isn&#8217;t Acceptance in the scientific sense &#8211; that&#8217;s resignation), releasing the mental knot that had you tied up in something entirely out of your control can only free up more mental energy for the things in your control. It&#8217;s no surprise that this would buffer the impact of all the inevitable vicissitudes of being in the world. It&#8217;s also no surprise that mindfulness would be hugely conducive to this strategy &#8211; sitting with what is, as it is, without judgment, is the entire idea of the meditative practice. On the other hand, there&#8217;s Rumination. It often masquerades as problem-solving, when in reality it&#8217;s the exact opposite. Rumination is the tendency to think repetitively about the things that bother you. Going in circles and never getting anywhere, this tendency loves to masquerade as &#8220;paying attention to something worth paying attention to&#8221; &#8211; but that&#8217;s exactly all it is. As an attention-focused strategy (in the process model), it never arrives at the point of situation modification (which is where problem-solving lives). Instead, it just goes around in circles, keeping attention on the situation that causes you stress, but nothing more. It&#8217;s no wonder that this tendency is considered a maintenance factor for depression &#8211; and it&#8217;s no wonder that it only amplifies the effects of a workplace stressor, instead of buffering against it. After all, if your boss is rude to you on a Friday, and you spend the entirety of Saturday and Sunday brooding on his rudeness, how recharged will you return on Monday? Again, it&#8217;s congruent that mindfulness would reduce this tendency. In a meditative practice, you learn to observe the mind and its patterns, to interrupt where necessary &#8211; and on that dizzying roundabout of rumination, you may indeed benefit from taking an exit &#8211; maybe the problem-solving one (if that\u2019s possible), or the acceptance one (if it isn&#8217;t). Together, what the data showed is captured in the Buddhist metaphor of the two arrows. The first arrow describes the inevitable pain and strain of living a human life &#8211; stressful deadlines on the job or feeling hurt when your boss is rude to you. It&#8217;s unavoidable &amp; it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. The second arrow is all that add-on suffering that a human mind likes to gift on top &#8211; sleepless rumination spirals, blaming yourself when your boss was rude, replaying painful moments in your head over and over again. The second arrow is optional, and put very simply, mindfulness is about shooting yourself with the second arrow a little less. Conclusion In terms of the JD-R Model, job demands are unavoidable, but with enough personal resources, burnout isn&#8217;t. Importantly, this is by no means an attempt to blame ridiculously overworked healthcare workers for their Burnout &#8211; working on Job Demands &amp; Job Resources should be a priority for those in the positions to change them. Conversely, research like this is simply an attempt to bring some relief to those who aren&#8217;t in a position to change them and learn something about the way the human mind works along the way. References Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., &amp; Sanz-Vergel, A. I. (2014). Burnout and Work Engagement: The JD-R Approach. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 389\u2013411. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1146\/ANNUREV-ORGPSYCH-031413-091235 Li, C., Zhu, Y., Zhang, M., Gustafsson, H., &amp; Chen, T. (2019). Mindfulness and Athlete Burnout: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(3), 449. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/ijerph16030449 Luken, M., &amp; Sammons, A. (2016). Systematic Review of Mindfulness Practice for Reducing Job Burnout. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 70(2), 7002250020p1-7002250020p10. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5014\/ajot.2016.016956 Madigan, D. J., Kim, L. E., &amp; Glandorf, H. L. (2023). Interventions to reduce burnout in students: A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Journal of Psychology of Education. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10212-023-00731-3 McRae, K., &amp; Gross, J. J. (2020). Emotion Regulation. Emotion, 20(1), 1\u20139. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/emo0000703 Truong, Q. C., Kr\u00e4geloh, C. U., Siegert, R. J., Landon, J., &amp; Medvedev, O. N. (2020). Applying Generalizability Theory to Differentiate Between Trait and State in the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Mindfulness, 11, 953\u2013963. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s12671-020-01324-7 About the Author Johannes Gronimus is a provisional psychologist and postgraduate psychology student based on Australia\u2019s Sunshine Coast completing his undergraduate studies in Germany and a postgraduate course in London. Sparked by his research for this&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11730,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[84],"tags":[92,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11730"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1206,"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions\/1206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/more.efpsa.org\/rpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}