Open AccessNomothetic and idiographic patterns of responses to emotions in borderline personality disorder.
Author(s) -
Nicole D. Cardona,
Matthew W. Southward,
Kayla Furbish,
Alexandra Comeau,
Shan SauerZavala
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
personality disorders
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.864
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1949-2715
pISSN - 1949-2723
DOI - 10.1037/per0000465
Subject(s) - nomothetic and idiographic , borderline personality disorder , psychology , psycinfo , emotional dysregulation , population , interpersonal communication , clinical psychology , nomothetic , anxiety , developmental psychology , social psychology , psychiatry , medline , medicine , environmental health , political science , law
According to Linehan's (1993) biosocial theory, emotion dysregulation is a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Despite significant advances in our understanding of emotion dysregulation in BPD, the specific associations among prompting events, discrete emotions, and selected regulation strategies (adaptive and maladaptive) have not yet been detailed. We explored these relations in a daily diary study of 8 participants ( M age = 21.57, 63% female; 63% Asian) with BPD over 10-12 weeks. Participants reported prompting events of interpersonal conflict, emotional experiences of anxiety, and strategies of problem-solving and intentional avoidance most frequently. We found several unique relations between regulation strategies and both prompting events and discrete emotions, nomothetically (across all participants) and idiographically (within specific participants). These patterns contribute to an enriched understanding of the emotional experiences of people with BPD and demonstrate the value of collecting and considering both group-level and person-specific data on emotion regulation processes within this population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).