The Research
Most mindfulness research asks whether it works.
My research asks why — and specifically, what changes in the mind when it does.
Untangling Effects and Interactions of Mindfulness and Emotional Literacy: Metacognitive Beliefs as a Pathway of Reductions in Anxiety and Depression Through a Mindfulness-Based Intervention
University of the Sunshine Coast · Awarded 2025
PhD Thesis
Mindfulness, metacognitive beliefs and reduction of anxiety and depression
Dean's Award - Outstanding Thesis
The thesis investigated a specific mechanism — metacognitive beliefs — as a likely pathway through which mindfulness training reduces anxiety and depression. Metacognitive beliefs are beliefs we hold about our own thinking: that worry is uncontrollable, that intrusive thoughts are dangerous, that we need to suppress mental activity that makes us uncomfortable. These beliefs drive the patterns — rumination, mind wandering, worry — that sustain distress.
The research had two phases: an observational study with 178 participants, and a randomised controlled trial with 50 participants completing an eight-week abridged version of the Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) intervention.
Key findings
Higher mindfulness was consistently associated with lower metacognitive beliefs — and lower beliefs led to less rumination, less mind wandering, and less worry
Daily meditators scored significantly lower on anxiety and depression than those who meditated rarely — suggesting daily practice has a protective function irregular practice does not
Dereification — a shift in our relationship to thoughts so they lose their power to disturb — may be a more fundamental mechanism than metacognitive beliefs alone
Published Research
Mechanics of mindfulness: investigating metacognitive beliefs as a pathway of effect on anxiety and depression
Jackson, C. & Jones, C. M. · European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, 15(6), 109 · June 2025
This paper reports the observational phase of the PhD research — 178 participants measured on mindfulness, metacognitive beliefs, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. The paper found significant negative correlations between mindfulness and metacognitive beliefs across all five facets of mindfulness, and provides evidence that dereification may be a fundamental mechanism underlying mindfulness-based intervention effects.
Read the paper — DOI 10.3390/ejihpe15060109
Research in Progress
Mechanisms of Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Metacognition, Dereification, and Cognitive Engagement in a Pilot Study Bridging Buddhist Psychology and the S-REF Model
What This Means In Practice
Most mindfulness training focuses heavily on instruction: pay attention to the present moment, notice when your mind wanders, gently return. That's an essential part, but it's also incomplete. The research suggests that the reason mindfulness reduces anxiety and depression isn't simply that it calms you down. It's that it gradually changes what you believe about your own mental activity.
People who struggle with anxiety typically hold a set of beliefs about their thoughts that keep them stuck: that worry is useful and necessary, that intrusive thoughts are dangerous, and that mental chatter needs to be controlled or suppressed. These are called metacognitive beliefs, and they play a major role in sustaining distress. More so than the thoughts themselves.
The thoughts are just thoughts, it's the beliefs that give them their power.
What the research found is that a big part of effective mindfulness training works partly by weakening those beliefs.
Thoughts become less threatening.
Rumination becomes more visible and therefore more interruptible.
Researchers call this shift dereification. And it may be more fundamental to recovery from anxiety, depression, and even trauma than any calming or stress-reduction effect mindfulness is typically credited for.
This is why the programs built from this research are structured differently from most mindfulness courses. Rather than teaching techniques for relaxation or stress reduction, they train the specific attentional and metacognitive skills that change your relationship with difficult mental states — so they stop running the show.
FAQs
What is metacognition?
Metacognition refers to our beliefs and assumptions about our own thinking — the layer of mental activity that sits above ordinary thought. It's not just thinking; it's what we think about thinking. Common metacognitive beliefs include: "Worrying helps me prepare for what might go wrong," "thoughts can be dangerous" and "I need to control my mental activity or things will spiral."
These beliefs matter because they shape how we respond to our own minds. When we believe worry is useful, we engage in it more. When we believe a thought is dangerous, we fight it — and fighting it gives it more power, not less. The research investigated metacognitive beliefs as a key pathway through which mindfulness training changes anxiety and depression, and found consistent evidence that higher mindfulness is associated with less harmful metacognitive believing.
How does mindfulness help?
Mindfulness training reduces anxiety and depression through several mechanisms, and the research suggests one of the most important is its effect on metacognitive beliefs. As practice develops, the beliefs that sustain distress — that worry is necessary, that thoughts are dangerous, that the mind needs to be controlled — gradually lose their grip.
This isn't primarily a relaxation effect. It's a change in how you relate to your own mental activity. The technical term is dereification: thoughts are seen more clearly as mental events rather than facts or threats. They don't necessarily decrease in frequency. They simply stop being taken so seriously — and as a result, they stop generating the same level of distress.
What is dereification exactly?
Dereification is a shift in how we relate to our thoughts, memories, and emotions. Rather than experiencing mental content as facts about the world ("things are genuinely hopeless"), threats to be neutralised ("I need to stop this thought"), or instructions to be followed ("the worry is telling me something important"), a dereified mind encounters them as passing mental events — real as experiences, but not authoritative.
This shift is described across both Buddhist contemplative traditions and modern cognitive science, though in different language. In Buddhist terms, it's a move from taking thoughts as solid and real to seeing them as dependently arising events. In clinical psychology, it overlaps with what metacognitive therapy calls detached mindfulness. The research found evidence that dereification may be a more fundamental mechanism underlying mindfulness-based intervention effects than metacognitive belief change alone — meaning it may be the deeper layer of what training is actually training.
Who participated in the study?
178 people participated in the observational phase of the research. Participants were measured on mindfulness, metacognitive beliefs, and symptoms of anxiety and depression, with the aim of understanding the relationships between these variables in a general population sample. The study found significant negative correlations between mindfulness and metacognitive beliefs across all five facets of mindfulness — meaning that higher mindfulness was consistently associated with less harmful metacognitive believing, less rumination, less mind wandering, and less worry.
The second phase of the research was a randomised controlled trial with 50 participants completing an eight-week abridged version of the Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) intervention.
What about daily meditation?
One of the more striking findings in the observational study was a consistent difference between people who meditate daily and those who meditate irregularly. Daily meditators scored significantly lower on both anxiety and depression than irregular meditators, which suggests that frequency and consistency of practice matters, not just whether someone meditates at all.
This finding points to a protective function of regular practice that irregular practice doesn't replicate. It's consistent with what contemplative traditions have long maintained: that the benefits of meditation are cumulative and depend on sustained training rather than occasional application. One implication for program design is that building sustainable daily practice — not just teaching techniques — is a central part of what effective training should deliver.
When will the intervention study results be published?
The intervention phase of the research was a semi-randomised controlled trial of an eight-week abridged CEB program, and the study has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. The trial examined whether the metacognitive and dereification mechanisms identified in the observational phase are the active ingredients in mindfulness-based intervention effects on anxiety and depression.
The title of the forthcoming paper is: Mechanisms of Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Metacognition, Dereification, and Cognitive Engagement in a Pilot Study Bridging Buddhist Psychology and the S-REF Model.
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