Emotion regulation strategy use and daily levels of affective arousal, affective valence and dissociation in a clinical sample

Clinical models and cross-sectional research suggest that habitual use of disengagement-oriented emotion regulation strategies is associated with high levels of affective arousal, negative valence, and dissociation, whereas engagement-oriented strategies show the opposite effect. However, intensive longitudinal evidence remains scarce. This study examined whether habitual use of 10 emotion regulation strategies, assessed using the Process Model of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (PMERQ), predicts affective arousal and valence, and dissociation in daily life.

We analysed ecological momentary assessment data from 88 individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and dissociative disorders. Baseline PMERQ scores did not robustly predict daily levels of affective arousal and valence, and dissociation. The overall null findings of our study could reflect either a true absence of meaningful effects, insufficient sample size, or a mismatch between trait-level emotion regulation measures and momentary affect/dissociation.

Future studies should prioritise momentary assessments of emotion regulation to disentangle state and trait effects. Difficulties with emotion regulation characterise many mental disorders1. Emotion regulation refers to both intentional and automatic strategies that influence the intensity, duration, and expression of emotion2,3 The use of different emotion regulation strategies has been shown to contribute to or protect from psychopathology in various ways (see1 for a review).

Two transdiagnostic manifestations of psychopathology are elevated levels of negative affect and dissociation1,4,5. Affect is often mapped across the two dimensions of arousal (i.e., feeling tense vs. calm) and valence (i.e., feeling good vs. bad;6. Dissociation is broadly characterised as a disruption in the integration of consciousness, perception, memory, emotion, identity, motor control, body representation, and behaviour 7,8.

Two common forms of dissociation are derealisation, which involves altered perceptions of the external world, and gaps in awareness, limiting the ability to access information and mental control functions7,8. Previous studies from daily life found that increased affective arousal and negative valence co-occurred with high levels of dissociation in the same moment9,10,11. However, to our knowledge, no study has yet investigated the role of emotion regulation difficulties predicting daily dynamics of affective arousal and valence, and dissociation.

This study addresses this gap. We begin by introducing a widely used emotion regulation framework, followed by brief overviews of affect and dissociation, and then review studies linking emotion regulation to these phenomena. A widely adopted framework for systematically understanding emotion regulation is the Process Model of Emotion Regulation (see Figure S1 in the Supplementary Material for an illustration)3,12.