تنها راه خروج از مسیر: پردازش عاطفی و بهبودی پس از رویداد زندگی افسرده

This two-part study addresses the question of whether emotional processing is a useful strategy for coping with dysphoria following a depressing life event. In Part I, after a covert, moderately distressing mood induction, subjects who were assigned to an emotional processing condition reported better mood in the long run than subjects who were assigned to either distraction or unemotional problem solving conditions. In Part II, content analysis of the essays written by the subjects supported a simple habituation model of the benefits of emotional processing. Weak support was also found for the hypothesis that low to moderate levels of emotional arousal potentiate positive cognitive restructuring. Taken together, the results suggest that the negative emotional arousal that accompanies activation of depressive schemata may be a component of natural recovery from depression.

What is the best way to cope with depressed mood? Should you try to “get your mind off your troubles?” Should you “roll up your sleeves and get to work” solving the underlying problem? Or should you simply “have a good cry?” While popular wisdom seems to suggest that all of these alternatives are viable coping strategies, the empirical literature on coping styles (e.g. Carver et al., 1989) has only recently begun to compare the relative effects of distraction, problem solving and emotional processing on depressed mood. There is ample evidence that emotional processing is an important part of coping with anxiety. For example, Rachman (1980)suggested that pathological distress is often the result of incomplete emotional processing. He identified a number of factors that promote successful emotional processing, including engaged exposures, rehearsals, talk, catharsis and vivid, long presentations. All of these strategies focus the person's attention on their distress and the causes of that distress. Furthermore, emotional processing has long been viewed as essential in the clinical literature on anxiety disorders (e.g. Foa and Kozac, 1986). It is now widely accepted that recovery from anxiety disorders is dependent on the person actively experiencing their anxiety while facing down their fears. The experience of anxiety is a crucial component of exposure therapy for phobias (Page, 1991), panic disorder (Salkovskis and Clark, 1991), obsessive–compulsive disorder (Kozac et al., 1988), and post-traumatic stress disorder (Foa and Riggs, 1995).