An examination of the incremental contribution of emotion regulation difficulties to health anxiety beyond specific emotion regulation strategies

• Examined associations among emotion dysregulation (ED) and health anxiety (HA).
• Dispositional ED predicted HA beyond effects of specific emotion regulation strategies.
• Subjective appraisal of ability to regulate emotions appears particularly important to HA.

Given the potential transdiagnostic importance of emotion dysregulation, as well as a lack of research examining emotion dysregulation in relation to health anxiety, the present study sought to examine associations among specific emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), emotion regulation difficulties, and health anxiety in a physically healthy sample of adults (N = 482). As hypothesized, results of a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that emotion regulation difficulties provided a significant incremental contribution, beyond the specific emotion regulation strategies, in predicting each of the three health anxiety variables. Among the six dimensions of emotion regulation difficulties, the dimension representing perceived access to effective emotion regulation strategies was the only emotion regulation difficulty dimension that predicted all three health anxiety variables beyond the effects of the specific emotion regulation strategies. Results indicate that emotion regulation difficulties, and particularly one's subjective appraisal of his/her ability to effectively regulate emotions, may be of importance to health anxiety. Clinical implications are discussed.