Emotion Regulation and the Anxiety Disorders: An Integrative Review

Abstract

The construct of emotion regulation has been increasingly investigated in the last decade, and this work has important implications for advancing anxiety disorder theory. This paper reviews research demonstrating that: 1) emotion (i.e., fear and anxiety) and emotion regulation are distinct, non-redundant, constructs that can be differentiated at the conceptual, behavioral, and neural levels of analysis; 2) emotion regulation can augment or diminish fear, depending on the emotion regulation strategy employed; and 3) measures of emotion regulation explain incremental variance in anxiety disorder symptoms above and beyond the variance explained by measures of emotional reactivity. The authors propose a model by which emotion regulation may function in the etiology of anxiety disorders. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.

The Assessment of Emotion Regulation: Improving Construct Validity in Research on Psychopathology in Youth—An Introduction to the Special Section

“…In addition, it appears that anxious children might feel less capable to regulate and seem to engage in the use of several strategies in search for something that would decrease their negative emotion. Consistent with the work described in Carthy et al's article and also in this special section, Cisler et al (2010, this The papers in this special section also advance assessment knowledge on the issue of "what facets compose emotion regulation versus other things" in a number of ways. For example, Sulik et al (2010, this issue) relied on state-of-the art modeling strategies to evaluate the construct validity of several assessment strategies linked to the broad emotion regulation net, specifically to "effortful control".…”

An examination of the self-referent executive processing model of test anxiety: control, emotional regulation, self-handicapping, and examination performance

“…Of these three, the most directly relevant to the level and intensity of anxiety is emotional regulation (Campbell-Sills and Barlow 2007;Cisler et al 2010. Emotional regulation refers to one's ability to access, monitor, and control (reduce or increase) emotional reactions (Gross and Thompson 2007;Thompson 1994).…”

Transition to Adulthood for High-Functioning Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Alexithymia may also significantly reduce empathy in both the ASD (Bird et al, 2010) and general (Grynberg et al, 2010) population. Poor emotion regulation abilities appear related to anxiety, possibly not only linking to emotional reactivity but also playing a role in the etiology of anxiety disorders (Cisler et al, 2010). While generalized anxiety relates more closely to poor emotion regulation strategies and intensity of emotions, social anxiety relates to poor emotional understanding (Mennin et al, 2009), all of which appear significant in ASD.…”