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The Mechanism of Body Awareness on Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation
Yu Yue
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2026.04.012
Shinawatra University, Pathum Thani, Thailand
Amid the shift in emotion research from a cognition-centered paradigm to an integrative mind-body perspective, body awareness, as a crucial mechanism linking physiological signals to emotional experience, has gradually emerged as a new pathway for explaining anxiety. Existing studies have primarily explained anxiety from the perspectives of external stressors or cognitive appraisal biases, paying insufficient attention to the somatic basis of emotional experience. Based on this, this paper systematically reviews the multidimensional sources of anxiety, integrates theories of body awareness with models of the emotion regulation process, and constructs a mediating mechanism framework of “body awareness → emotion regulation → anxiety”. The study indicates that body awareness, as a prerequisite variable for emotion recognition, indirectly affects anxiety levels by enhancing individuals’ sensitivity to internal physiological signals, promoting the use of adaptive regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, and reducing the use of maladaptive strategies like expressive suppression. Furthermore, the mechanism is elaborated from three levels: signal identification, strategy selection, and feedback regulation, proposing a “cyclical reinforcement mechanism” that reveals anxiety as the result of the dynamic interaction between somatic perception and emotion regulation. Theoretically, this paper expands the explanatory dimensions of anxiety research. Methodologically, it proposes testable empirical pathways. Practically, it provides a basis for shifting psychological interventions from a “cognition-oriented” to a “mind-body integrated” approach.
body awareness, emotion regulation, anxiety, mediating mechanism, mind-body integration
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