Dataset Information

Experiential Avoidance Mediates the Association between Emotion Regulation Abilities and Loneliness.

ABSTRACT: Experiential avoidance (EA) involves the unwillingness to remain in contact with aversive experiences such as painful feelings, thoughts, and emotions. EA is often associated with the development and maintenance of emotional problems. Since loneliness is characterized by negative emotions such as sadness and pessimism, which is often linked to emotional problems, this study aims to test the mediating effects of EA on the relationship between emotion regulation abilities (ERA) and loneliness in a sample of Chinese adults. Five hundred undergraduates completed questionnaires measuring EA (Acceptance and Action Questionnaire; AAQ-?), ERA (Failure-relate action orientation; Action Control Scale, ACS-90) and loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale). Structural equation modeling showed that EA fully-mediated the relationship between ERA and loneliness. The findings suggest EA is a key mechanism in explaining why people with high ERA are prone to feeling lower levels of loneliness. In particular, these findings have important implications for designing effective psychological interventions for loneliness.

SUBMITTER: Shi R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5193340 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Experiential Avoidance Mediates the Association between Emotion Regulation Abilities and Loneliness.

Shi Rui R Zhang Shilei S Zhang Qianwen Q Fu Shaoping S Wang Zhenhong Z

PloS one 20161228 12

Experiential avoidance (EA) involves the unwillingness to remain in contact with aversive experiences such as painful feelings, thoughts, and emotions. EA is often associated with the development and maintenance of emotional problems. Since loneliness is characterized by negative emotions such as sadness and pessimism, which is often linked to emotional problems, this study aims to test the mediating effects of EA on the relationship between emotion regulation abilities (ERA) and loneliness in a ...[more]

PMID: 28030586

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Project description:Emotional stress throughout the day is known to affect objective sleep physiology and subjective sleep quality. In the interplay between emotions and sleep, emotion regulation plays a critical role in the recovery from stressful, emotional events and subsequent sleep. While the effects of top-down emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal on sleep have been studied before, the impact of bottom-up emotion regulation strategies such as experiential emotion regulation is understudied. Cognitive reappraisal reflects the cognitive reinterpretation of the meaning of a stressful event, while experiential emotion regulation involves an active, non-intervening, accepting, open and welcoming approach of acknowledging awareness of raw sensory affective experiences or 'experiential awareness' in a first phase and expression in a second phase. The present study aims to investigate the effects of experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal on the recovery from pre-sleep emotional stress measured by (1) negative affect and (2) sleep structure. Sleep of forty-three healthy Dutch-speaking participants (22 females, 21 males) has been assessed using EEG polysomnography. Stress was triggered using a pre-sleep emotional failure induction, after which emotion regulation by experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal versus control was induced twice. The control condition consisted of the reallocation of attention towards the neutral aspects of the emotional event. The results indicated that recovery from negative affect of the failure experience after single or repeated deployment of experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal was not significantly different from the control condition. Moreover, after repeated deployment, sleep physiology did not significantly differ between experiential emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal, and the control condition in the impact of the regulation of the failure experience. The implications of the distinctive impact of experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal on both the pre-sleep emotional experience and follow-up sleep physiology are discussed.

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Project description:BackgroundPrevious studies revealed an association between traumatic childhood experiences and emotional dysregulation in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, possible mediating pathways are still not fully understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate the potential mediating role of body connection, describing the awareness of the relationship of bodily and mental states, for the association between a history of traumatic childhood experiences and BPD core symptomatology.MethodsOne-hundred-twelve adult female individuals with BPD and 96 healthy female controls (HC) were included. Impaired emotion regulation, traumatic childhood experiences, and BPD symptomatology were assessed with self-report questionnaires. The Scale of Body Connection was used to assess two dimensions of body connection, that is body awareness, describing attendance to bodily information in daily life and noticing bodily responses to emotions and/or environment and body dissociation, describing a sense of separation from one's own body, due to avoidance or emotional disconnection. Mann-Whitney U tests were employed to test for group differences (BPD vs. HC) on the two SBC subscales and associations with clinical symptoms were analyzed with Spearman correlations. We performed mediation analyses in the BPD group to test the assumption that body connection could act as a mediator between a history of traumatic childhood experiences and emotion dysregulation.ResultsIndividuals with BPD reported significantly lower levels of body awareness and significantly higher levels of body dissociation compared to HC. Body dissociation, traumatic childhood experiences, and emotion dysregulation were significantly positively associated. Further analyses revealed that body dissociation, but not body awareness, significantly and fully mediated the positive relationship between traumatic childhood experiences and impaired emotion regulation in the BPD sample. This mediation survived when trait dissociation, i.e., general dissociative experiences not necessarily related to the body, was statistically controlled for.ConclusionCertain dimensions of body connection seem to be disturbed in BPD patients, with body dissociation being an important feature linking a history of traumatic childhood experiences to current deficits in emotion regulation.

Dataset Information

Experiential Avoidance Mediates the Association between Emotion Regulation Abilities and Loneliness.

Publications

Experiential Avoidance Mediates the Association between Emotion Regulation Abilities and Loneliness.

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