Mindfulness and Attachment Anxiety in Nepali Working Adults: The Mediating Role of Emotional Clarity

Abstract

Attachment anxiety is also becoming one of the vulnerability factors of distress in the workplace, especially in a collectivistic and high-stress society like Nepal. Mindfulness has been suggested as a protective resource, but there is no clear information concerning the mechanisms. This research study investigated whether emotional clarity, the capacity to recognize and comprehend their feelings, mediates the relationship between trait mindfulness and attachment anxiety in Nepali working adults. The survey was a cross-sectional survey involving 312 full-time employees (52.6 percent female; Mage = 32.4 years, SD = 6.8) in healthcare, education, banking, and IT companies in Kathmandu Valley from January to March 2025. The participants were given the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire-Short Form (FFMQ-SF), Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Anxiety subscale (ECR-R Anxiety), and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Clarity subscale (DERS-Clarity, reverse-scored). Holding age, gender, and work sector constant, structural equation modeling found that mindfulness had a negative relationship with attachment anxiety (β = -.38, p < .001) and a positive relationship with emotional clarity (β = .51, p < .001). Emotional clarity, on the other hand, forecasted less attachment anxiety (β = -.44, p < .001). Emotional clarity had an important indirect effect (β = -.22, 95% CI [-.29, -.16]), which explains 58 percent of the overall effect, which is partially mediated. Results are consistent with recent data that mindfulness lowers attachment insecurity by improving conscious awareness of automatic relational responses (Yang & Oka, 2022) and that emotional clarity deficits increase dysregulation related to attachment (Domic-Siede et al., 2024). Within the Nepali context, where 46.9% of healthcare workers indicated clinically significant anxiety during COVID-19 (Adhikari et al., 2021), the development of emotional clarity might be a consonant route. The implications of the mindfulness work programs are explained.