Interpersonal emotion dynamics within couples play a significant role in the maintenance and treatment of psychopathology.
The way individuals manage their own emotions (intrapersonal regulation) and react to their partners’ emotions (interpersonal regulation) creates an emotional context that can either support or hinder recovery.
When partners struggle to regulate their own emotions or respond to each other’s distress in maladaptive ways, such as becoming highly reactive or engaging in accommodating behaviors, it can perpetuate the cycle of psychopathology.
Consequently, addressing these interpersonal emotion dynamics should be an important consideration in the treatment of mental health disorders.
avoidant relationship
Key Points
Rationale
Previous research shows that how partners regulate their own and each other’s emotions during interactions can contribute to the maintenance of disorders like OCD (Fischer et al., 2017).
The researchers hypothesized that:
Method
Sample
Statistical Analysis
Results
Insight
Partners having good distress tolerance seems really important for patients to get better with couple-based exposure therapy. Patients did better when partners could stay calm and supportive through the anxious exposures.
A key insight is that compulsions, while temporarily regulating for patients, are dysregulating for partners – slowing their regulation and reducing reactivity.
Partners struggle to tolerate the ongoing distress of exposures if they have poorer regulatory capacities themselves. Faster regulation for partners may indicate escape or avoidance rather than truly effective regulation.
Assessing and addressing partners’ independent distress regulation abilities may improve accommodation and OCD treatment outcomes.
Strengths
Limitations
Implications
The findings from this study suggest that assessing and addressing partners’emotion regulation skillsand distress tolerance could significantly improve outcomes in couple-based treatment for OCD.
Specifically, clinical psychologists who implementexposure and response prevention techniqueswith couples should evaluate how well partners are able to regulate their own distress independently.
Partners who show quicker returns to emotional baseline or high reactivity to patients’ arousal may lack critical coping and tolerance abilities needed to supportOCD treatmentfully. These partners may be more likely to revert to symptom accommodation or drop out of therapy when exposures evoke intense anxiety in patients.
Therefore, clinical psychologists may want to provide additional coaching in foundational emotion regulation techniques – such asmindfulness, distraction, and self-soothing – to help equip partners to remain calm and present during difficult exposures.
Building partners’ distress tolerance and regulation capacities directly could strengthen their ability to refrain from accommodation, bolster motivation to progress through anxiety-provoking steps of exposure therapy, and reduce relapse risks after treatment termination.
Conducting further research on real-time interpersonal emotion dynamics using observational methodologies can inform how clinical psychologists can best assess emotional processes in couples with OCD and tailor interventions accordingly.
References
Primary reference
Fischer, M. S., Baucom, D. H., Abramowitz, J. S., & Baucom, B. R. W. (2023). Interpersonal emotion dynamics in obsessive–compulsive disorder: Associations with symptom severity, accommodation, and treatment outcome.Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 12(4), 278–286.https://doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000218
Other references
Boeding, S. E., Paprocki, C. M., Baucom, D. H., Abramowitz, J. S., Wheaton, M. G., Fabricant, L. E., & Fischer, M. S. (2013). Let me check that for you: Symptom accommodation in romantic partners of adults with obsessive–compulsive disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 51(6), 316-322. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2013.03.002
Keep Learning
Here are some potential Socratic discussion questions about this paper for a college class:
Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
