September 9, 2024
Dear colleagues,
The National Social Anxiety Center (NSAC) provides information about relevant and current research in service of disseminating and promoting evidence-based treatment. This month’s summary is written by Hsiao-ching Chu, PsyD, A-CBT, DBT-LBC, representing NSAC Avon, CT, and examines the 2018 article “Adult attachment and social anxiety: The mediating role of emotion regulation strategies”, by Read et al. (2018).
Early attachment research conceptualized distinct types of attachment orientation in adults (eg. secure, preoccupied, dismissing, fearful), but others have suggested that adult attachment needs to be measured dimensionally. They believed that adult attachment is a variable on which people vary in degree rather than in kind. Individual differences are variations along two dimensions: attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.
Anxiously attached individuals often adopt “hyper-activating strategies” characterized by hyperactive attempts to elicit support from others using coercive, clinging, and controlling behaviors. Attachment avoidant individuals view others as untrustworthy. They adopt “deactivating strategies” which are associated with the suppression of thoughts and memories that evoke feelings of vulnerability and distress, social withdrawal, interpersonal hostility, and a desire to maintain independence.
A sample of 253 adults (male n = 47, 18.6%; female n = 202, 79.8%) ranging in age from 18-74 years, completed an online questionnaire that consisted of the Experience in Close Relationships Questionnaire; the Inventory of Interpersonal Situations Discomfort Scale; and The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Hypotheses were evaluated with bivariate correlations and multiple regression.
The authors aimed to investigate whether the dimensions of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance are related to social anxiety, and whether maladaptive emotion regulation strategies mediate this relationship.
Two cognitive emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal and suppression) were also examined. Reappraisal is defined as “reframing a negative emotional event such that the new understanding renders the event less aversive.” It is considered an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. In contrast, suppression is considered a dysfunctional emotion regulation strategy, which involves the inhibition of an already activated emotional response by downregulating the outward expression of the emotion.
The results showed that social anxiety symptoms were positively associated with attachment anxiety (r=.323, r2 =10.4%, p<.001) and attachment avoidance (r=.248, r2 = 6.2%, p<.001) dimensions, suggesting that both attachment dimensions may be relevant to understanding social anxiety symptomology. Higher levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with a higher level of social anxiety. Reappraisal was found to partially mediate the relationship between attachment anxiety and social anxiety.
For clinicians: What are your thoughts regarding your style and strategies, both in and between sessions, that foster a therapeutic secure base for your clients (eg. a safe haven to which they can return when feeling dysregulated) while providing effective change strategies that can elicit intense emotions?
Read DL, Clark GI, Rock AJ, & Coventry WL (2018). Adult attachment and social anxiety: The mediating role of emotion regulation strategies. PLOS ONE, vol.13, no.12.
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Hsiao-ching Chu, PsyD, A-CBT, DBT-LBC
Representing NSAC Avon, CT