Review articleChallenging assumptions from emotion dysregulation psychological treatments

•We examine a behavioral task for emotion regulation.•We included a transdiagnostic anxious and depressed sample.•Participants were selected to have above average difficulties in emotion regulation.•Participants successfully downregulated distress without being told what to do.•The majority of participants used effective regulation strategies.

AbsractBackgroundContemporary treatments assume that the inability to downregulate negative emotional arousal is a key problem in the development and maintenance of psychopathology and that lack of effective regulation efforts and a preference to use maladaptive regulation strategies is a primary mechanism. Though ubiquitous, there is limited empirical evidence to support this assumption. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to examine whether self-reported emotion dysregulation equated to difficulties reducing emotional arousal during a behavioral task and to primary use of maladaptive strategies to manage negative emotions.Methods44 anxious and depressed adults with high emotion dysregulation induced negative distress using autobiographic memory recall. After induction, participants were instructed to downregulate but were not provided any specific instructions in strategies to use. Self-reported emotional arousal was assessed before and after induction and after regulation. Qualitative descriptions of regulation efforts were collected and codedinto effective and maladaptive strategies.ResultsThe task was successful in inducing emotional arousal and participants were successful in their efforts to down regulate negative emotions. Additionally, effective regulation strategies were used more frequently than maladaptive strategies.LimitationsData collected was exclusively self-report and the sample size was small.ConclusionAdults who report high emotion dysregulation may still have effective emotion regulation strategies in their behavioral repertoire and are more likely to engage in these effective strategies when given an unspecific prompt to regulate negative emotional arousal. Despite reporting problems with emotion regulation, adults with anxiety and depression can successfully downregulate distress when prompted to do so.