Trauma, Emotions, and the Avoidance of It All

This review discusses the findings of various types of studies from the research literature that have investigated the quality and patterns of emotion regulation across trauma-exposed individuals, to make better sense of the relationship between trauma, emotion regulation, and post-traumatic stress. The integrated results of the reviewed cross-sectional studies suggest that those with greater post-traumatic stress symptoms tend to experience greater emotion dysregulation, whereas those of longitudinal studies suggest emotion dysregulation following trauma predicts post-traumatic stress symptoms, however, post-traumatic stress symptoms fail to predict emotion dysregulation following trauma in return. Essentially, emotion dysregulation may serve as a risk factor for the onset of post-traumatic stress symptoms, and the possible mediators, types of traumas, and aspects of emotion regulation implicated in the link between trauma, emotion regulation, and post-traumatic stress symptoms, as well as an avoidance-based account of this relationship and its implications on treatment are discussed.