یک تحقیق تجربی از واکنش عاطفی و بازیابی احساسی با تاخیر در اختلال شخصیت مرزی: نقش شرم

Despite the emphasis on emotional reactivity and delayed emotional recovery in prominent theoretical accounts of borderline personality disorder (BPD), research in this area remains limited. This study sought to extend extant research by examining emotional reactivity (and recovery following emotional arousal) to 2 laboratory stressors (one general, and the other involving negative evaluation) and exploring the impact of these stressors on subjective responding across the specific emotions of anxiety, irritability, hostility, and shame. We hypothesized that outpatients with BPD (compared to outpatients without a personality disorder; non-PD) would demonstrate heightened subjective emotional reactivity to both stressors, as well as a delayed return to baseline levels of emotional arousal. Results provide evidence for context- and emotion-specific reactivity in BPD. Specifically, BPD participants (compared to non-PD participants) evidenced heightened reactivity to the negative evaluation but not the general stressor. Furthermore, results provide support for shame-specific reactivity in BPD, with BPD participants (vs non-PD participants) evidencing a significantly different pattern of change in shame (but not in reported anxiety, irritability, or hostility) across the course of the study. Specifically, not only did BPD participants report higher levels of shame in response to the negative evaluation, their levels of shame remained elevated following this stressor (through the post-recovery period at the end of the study). Findings suggest the importance of continuing to examine emotional reactivity in BPD within specific contexts and across distinct emotions, rather than at the general trait level.

Problems with the experience and expression of emotions are considered to be central to borderline personality disorder (BPD) [1] and [2], with the higher-order trait of emotional dysfunction identified by many BPD researchers as a “core” personality trait underlying the disorder. Although several different lower-order emotion-related traits have been linked at a theoretical and empirical level to BPD, including affective instability [2], anxiousness [3], affect intensity [1], and anxiety sensitivity [4], 2 lower-order traits considered to be particularly relevant to BPD are emotional reactivity (ie, the tendency to have strong emotional reactions to stimuli) and delayed recovery (ie, slow return to baseline levels of emotional arousal following the activation of an emotion) [1]. In fact, even the characteristic of affective instability (see references [2], [5] and [6]) was defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) to emphasize emotional reactivity (see reference [7]). Yet, despite the emphasis on emotional reactivity and delayed recovery in prominent theoretical accounts of BPD [1], research in this area remains relatively limited and no studies have examined emotional reactivity and delayed recovery in regard to specific emotional states and contexts. Thus, the goal of the current study was to extend extant research by examining emotional reactivity (and recovery following emotional arousal) to 2 laboratory stressors and exploring the impact of different stressors on specific subjective emotional states.