Background: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is associated with emotion regulation difficulties. However, our understanding of these difficulties has been limited by the reliance of previous work on retrospective trait self-reports, which are unable to capture dynamic, ecologically-valid use of emotion regulation strategies.
Methods: To address this issue, this study used an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) design to understand the impact of PTSD on emotion regulation in daily life. We conducted an EMA study in a trauma exposed sample with varying levels of PTSD severity (N = 70; 7 days; 423 observations).
Results: We found that PTSD severity was linked to greater use of disengagement and perseverative-based strategies to manage negative emotions, regardless of emotional intensity.
Limitations: Study design did not allow investigation into the temporal use of emotion regulation strategies and small sample size.
Conclusions: This pattern of responding to emotions may interfere with engaging with the fear structure and thus impair emotion processing in current frontline treatments; clinical implications are discussed.
Keywords: Daily life; Ecological momentary assessment; Emotion regulation strategies; PTSD; Trauma.
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