2 - (SYM 14) Does Emotion Regulation Variability Promote Wellbeing in Clinical Populations?

Emotion regulation is a transdiagnostic treatment target in many CBTs. In particular, the ability to flexibly use different regulation strategies in different situations is generally a protective factor for mental health. However, emotion regulation variability (ERV; use of a variety of emotion regulation strategies across time and contexts) alone does not necessarily reflect flexible or adaptive regulation. This is because high ERV could indicate random or frantic efforts to regulate, rather than context-sensitive strategy use. As such, ERV in clinical contexts where people may struggle with effective emotion regulation may not be adaptive.

Using ecological momentary assessment among community adults, half of whom were currently receiving psychological treatment, (N=345; 42 reports over 7 days), we examined whether characteristics linked to lower emotion regulation effectiveness (i.e., high trait emotion dysregulation, depression/anxiety diagnoses) moderated the momentary association between ERV and wellbeing or dysphoria symptoms in daily life. We hypothesised that momentary associations would be weakest for people with a current disorder or emotion dysregulation and we used multilevel structural equation modelling with cross-level interactions to test these models.

Consistent with hypotheses, higher trait emotion dysregulation and a diagnosis of depression attenuated the beneficial effects of ERV on wellbeing and its protective effects on dysphoria, with a similar pattern observed for anxiety disorders for wellbeing (but not dysphoria). When including all variables in a single model, anxiety no longer had a significant interaction, suggesting this effect may be due to comorbidity with depression.

Overall, these results suggest that high ERV is not inherently adaptive, particularly for people with depression or perceived poor emotion regulation. In clinical settings, it may be important to focus on learning when to use which strategy, rather than emphasising use of a particular single strategy or a large variety of strategies. Functional analysis can help understand why and how people select strategies to inform specific emotion regulation treatment targets.