Highlights
- •There are differences between general and pain-specific emotion regulation (ER).
- •Some people with chronic pain had skillful general and pain-specific ER.
- •Some people with chronic pain had general and pain-specific ER difficulties.
- •Most with chronic pain had difficulties with general ER.
- •Those with general and pain-specific ER difficulties had the worst outcomes.
Abstract
Difficulties with pain-specific emotion regulation (ER; eg, pain catastrophizing,
pain acceptance) are associated with poor pain outcomes. Less is known about how general
ER relates to pain outcomes, or the extent to which pain-specific and general ER interact.
In a sample (N = 1,453) of adults with chronic pain, the current study used latent
profile analysis to identify subgroups of people with distinct pain-specific and general
ER profiles, and determined how subgroup membership at baseline related to pain severity,
pain interference, depression and anxiety symptoms at 12-month follow-up. Four groups
were identified: 1) general ER difficulties only (29.6%); 2) pain-specific and general ER difficulties (26.3%); 3) skillful pain-specific and general ER (24.6%); 4) pain-specific ER difficulties only (19.4%). Controlling for
auto-correlation and demographic covariates, those with pain-specific and general ER difficulties had the worst outcomes in all domains. Membership to other
groups did not differentiate between pain severity or interference outcomes; those
skillful in pain-specific and general ER had the lowest depression and anxiety symptoms at 12 months. General ER
difficulties are common among adults with chronic pain and raise relative risk when
paired with pain-specific ER difficulties. Findings offer potential directions for
individualizing pain psychology treatment.
Perspective
This article shows that people with chronic pain have different sets of strengths
and difficulties when it comes to regulating emotions related and/or unrelated to
the experience of pain itself. Understanding an individual's unique constellation
of emotion regulation skills and difficulties might help personalize the psychological
treatment of pain.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 08, 2022
Accepted:
December 4,
2022
Received in revised form:
November 22,
2022
Received:
September 8,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Journal Pre-ProofFootnotes
Funding for this research was provided by the Johns Hopkins Clinician Scientist Award (R.V.A.), NIH K23HD104934 (R.V.A), NIH F32DA049393 (C.J.M.), NIH R01MD009063 (C.M.C.), and NIH T32HD007414 (for L.S.M.’s postdoctoral training).
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
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© 2022 by United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc.
