No Words For Feelings, No Adaptative Emotional Regulation Strategies ?

Overview & Synopsis

Alexithymia is a multi-faceted personality trait described by difficulties identifying (DIF), describing (DDF), and attending (EOT) to one's feelings. The underlying processes that may explain alexithymia's vulnerability to affective disorders are not systematically understood (Luminet & Nielson, 2024) but may involve emotional regulation (ER). Although we use a variety of ER strategies daily, only a minimal number of studies have explored other ER strategies in the context of alexithymia (Preece et al., 2023). The objective of our study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and ER strategies by adopting a facet-level dimensional approach allowing to investigate alexithymia for positive and negative emotions. Participants (N=122) aged 18 to 57 were administered the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) to measure alexithymia; the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) to measure the use of ER strategies, and the PANAS to measure affectivity. Multiple regressions were performed with positive and negative affectivity as covariates. The results show that alexithymia was predictive of an overall greater use of expressive suppression (all ps <.01) and a lower use of cognitive reappraisal strategies (cognitive reappraisal, centration on action; acceptance; rumination; self-blame, all ps <.05). However, the use of ER strategies was differentially predicted by specific alexithymia facets. While the facet difficulties describing negative feelings (N-DDF) was associated with more expressive suppression (b=.6, p=<.001), the facet difficulties identifying negative feelings (N-DIF) was associated with less expressive suppression (b=-.45, p=<.001) and the facet difficulties describing positive feelings (P-DDF) with more cognitive reappraisal (b=.34, p=.032). Moreover, difficulties identifying positive feelings (P-DIF) was associated with a lower use of acceptance (b=-0.46, p=0.004), which was not the case for difficulties identifying negative feelings. Our results confirm that alexithymia is associated with ER particularities, as observed in previous studies, and illustrate the value of adopting a facet-level approach while studying alexithymia. The ER strategy selection seems to be conditioned by an emotional avoidance mechanism, marked by a lower use of strategies involving an internal focus on emotions (such as cognitive reappraisal strategies). Future studies should confirm these findings by incorporating measures of emotional regulation that include other strategies (e.g., behavioral strategies as measured by the Behavioural Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). Our study also calls for further investigation of alexithymia for specific emotional valences as measured by the differences in ER observed in association with difficulties appraising positive and negative feelings.