Regulation of Emotions Under Stress

Abstract

Stressful life events (SLEs) are frequently associated with a range of deleterious mental and physical health outcomes. However, some individuals exhibit resilience, defined as maintained or even improved health in the wake of SLEs. How and why might this be the case? Given that SLEs give rise to negative emotions, which in turn contribute to mental and physical illness, promising answers to questions about resilience lie in research on people's ability to manage their emotions, or, emotion regulation. This essay focuses on emerging empirical evidence that suggests that two seemingly opposite emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and emotional acceptance, are particularly effective for managing negative emotions, which, in turn, may confer resilience. By integrating theory with extant empirical evidence, we offer a model that aims to reconcile how these two strategies—one that involves minimizing emotions (cognitive reappraisal) and the other that involves engaging with emotions (emotional acceptance)—are each associated with resilience. Specifically, we propose that these strategies are not contradictory, but rather complementary. We additionally discuss broader implications for the links among stress, emotion regulation, and health, as well as key issues for future research at the intersection of social and clinical psychology, medicine, and public health.

Barriers to Behavioral Treatment Adherence for Headache: An Examination of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Psychiatric Factors

“…As an example, combining problem-focused and adaptive emotional coping skills, such as pain acceptance may be potentially beneficial. 41 The inverse relationship between levels of pain acceptance and interference in daily activities 51,52 supports the importance of efforts to increase pain acceptance by implementing flexible behavioral responses to pain, rather than focusing on pain reduction.…”

“…40 While certain emotion-focused coping strategies such as problem avoidance, self-criticism, wishful thinking and social withdrawal are often associated with poorer outcomes, 41 other emotion-focused coping styles such as emotional acceptance can be complementary to problem-focused coping. 42 Overall, while a problem-focused coping style is compatible with a skills-based approach suggesting greater likelihood of nonpharmacological treatment adherence, emotion focused coping should be evaluated further.…”

Broadening Our Field of View: The Role of Emotion Polyregulation

“…Future research that systematically examines the outcomes of different blends of concurrent polyregulation and different sequences of sequential polyregulation will help us better understand which goals, strategies, and tactics are most likely to conflict versus synergize with each other. Building upon existing findings and theory, we highlight one possible synergistic polyregulation approach here, as an example: when facing a significant stressor, it may be useful to first implement an emotion regulation strategy that can give quick relief and then switch to a strategy that provides better longer term processing of the stressor (Shallcross, Troy, & Mauss, 2015;Sheppes & Gross, 2011). Specifically, attentional deployment that involves redirecting attention away from an emotional situation (distraction) is highly effective at reducing initial negative emotion (Webb et al, 2012).…”

Cognitive reappraisal and acceptance: Effects on emotion, physiology, and perceived cognitive costs.

“…At first glance, these two strategies may seem opposite in nature, with reappraisal explicitly focused on changing one’s emotional states, and acceptance focused on not changing one’s emotional states. Importantly, however, the existing literature on these two strategies suggests that, paradoxically, they both exert positive effects on psychological health (Shall-cross, Troy, & Mauss, 2015). Although both reappraisal and acceptance lead to beneficial long-term outcomes, by definition, both of these strategies involve very different short-term regulatory goals and different processes to achieve these goals.…”