ABSTRACT
Almost four decades of research confirms that people with fewer social support resources are between 1.5 and 3.0 times more likely to die from all causes compared to people with more robust social networks, even when controlling for self-reported and physiological markers of health risk. A 2010 meta-analysis provided further evidence that supportive relationships in particular benefit health on par with smoking cessation and reduced alcohol consumption.3 Not only does quality support allow people to cope more effectively with difficult emotions, but it also contributes to a relationship’s emotional capital by allowing people to flourish in good and bad times.
This chapter presents theory and research on mindful supportive communication with an emphasis on enacted support, which encompasses the actual messages people exchange in supportive interactions. Because enacted support functions to ameliorate difficult emotions, supportive messages must fulfill two goals: (a) to respond effectively to a distressed person and (b) to facilitate the alleviation of negative emotions experienced by that person. The behavioral properties of enacted support that best fulfill these goals are captured with person-centered theory, which refers to “message behavior that reflects awareness of and adaptation to the affective, subjective and relational aspects of communication contexts.”
Viewing enacted support as person-centered message behavior provides the theoretical link to dispositional mindfulness, which consists of two metacognitive processes: present-centered attention and emotion acceptance. As a metacognitive capacity, mindfulness directly influences the ability to regulate, control, and manage cognitive-affective resources. Present-centered awareness and emotion acceptance thus directly influence support recipients’ emotion regulation (i.e., coping) abilities. But in what ways does mindfulness influence support providers who might experience pressures to respond effectively to the recipient? We discuss work suggesting that mindfulness indirectly influences the provider’s ability to produce high-quality support via prosocial emotional responses (i.e., compassion, empathy). Although there is preliminary empirical evidence that support these claims, many questions about the role of mindfulness in the support process have not yet been answered. We therefore end with a discussion of future research questions of mindful supportive communication.
