Predicting the Social-Emotional Competence Based on Childhood Trauma, Internalized Shame, Disability/Shame Scheme, Cognitive Flexibility, Distress Tolerance and Alexithymia in an Iranian Sample Using Bayesian Regression

The purpose of this study was to predict Social Emotional Competence based on childhood trauma, internalized shame, disability/shame scheme, cognitive flexibility, distress tolerance, and alexithymia in an Iranian sample using Bayesian regression. The participants in this research were a sample of 326 (85.3% female and 14.7% male) people living in Tehran in 2021 who were selected by convenience sampling through online platforms. The survey assessments included demographic characteristics (age and gender), presence of childhood trauma, social-emotional competence, internalized shame, the Toronto Alexithymia scales, Young's measure of disability/shame together with measures of cognitive flexibility and distress tolerance. The results from Bayesian regression and Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) indicated that internalized shame, cognitive flexibility and distress tolerance can be predictive of Social Emotional Competence. These results suggested that Social Emotional Competence can be explained by some important personality factors.

The Impact of Past Trauma on Psychological Distress: The Roles of Defense Mechanisms and Alexithymia

Objectives

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms following past trauma could lead to psychological distress. Little is known, however, about the roles of defense mechanisms and alexithymia may play in the process. The current study aimed to examine the potential impact of alexithymia and defense mechanisms on the relationship between past trauma and distress among Chinese university students.

Method

455 university students completed a set of questionnaires: PTSD Checklists for DSM-5, Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Defense Style Questionnaire, and General Health Questionnaire-28.

Results

PTSD following past trauma was associated with increased psychological distress. Alexithymia and defenses (especially immature defense) mediated the path between PTSD and psychological co-morbidities.

Conclusion

Following past trauma, people developed PTSD and other psychological symptoms. The severity of these distress symptoms was influenced by the way they defended themselves psychologically, and their ability to identify, express, and process distressing emotions.

"Sparks that became a little light over time": A qualitative investigation of musicking as a means of coping in adults with PTSD

This article investigates the experience of musicking (the performance of musical activity) among people coping with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using qualitative research methods, we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 male participants in a music project for people coping with PTSD induced by war and terrorism. The project consists of individual music lessons once a week and a musical enrichment group that meets once a month. Group meetings include workshops and lectures by music professionals and artists, during which participants are exposed to diverse musical content. Following an interpretive phenomenological content analysis, we were able to identify two central themes arising from the interviews: musicking as an intra-subjective experience and musicking as mediator of inter-subjective relationships. A further analysis revealed three superordinate themes: musicking as a secure place, musicking as a dialectic experience, and musicking as a means for identity reconstruction (bridging between past, present, and future). From this we concluded that for our interviewees musicking is a secure place for their wounded self, which allows the reconstruction of a coherent personal narrative while conducting a dialectic encounter with the trauma and its symptoms via nonverbal language. Consequently, we recommend musicking as a therapeutic tool for people coping with war-induced PTSD from both intrapersonal and interpersonal perspectives.

The impact of past trauma on psychological distress among Chinese students: The roles of cognitive distortion and alexithymia

Past traumatic events are distressing experiences which can result in the emergence of posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and other psychological symptoms among university students. However, little is known as to whether or not cognitive distortion and alexithymia would influence the severity of these distress outcomes. This study examined a cognitive-emotional framework depicting potential roles that cognitive distortion and alexithymia could play in influencing the relationship between past trauma and psychiatric co-morbidities among university students in China. One thousand one hundred and eleven participants completed the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5, Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28). Results indicated that PTSD following past trauma was significantly associated with increased psychiatric co-morbidities after controlling for covariates. Both alexithymia and distorted cognition mediated the association between PTSD and psychiatric co-morbidities. To conclude, university students can develop PTSD from past trauma and other mental health problems. The severity of psychological distress can be influenced by their distorted perceptions of themselves, the world, and the future, as well as their ability to identify, describe, and express distressing emotions.

Metacognitive capacity predicts severity of trauma-related dysfunctional cognitions in adults with posttraumatic stress disorder

Deficits in metacognition have been proposed as a barrier to adaptive responding to trauma. However, little is known about how different aspects of metacognitive capacity relate to responses to trauma and whether their potential link to such responses is independent of the overall level of psychopathology. To explore both issues, negative trauma-related cognitions about the self, the world, and self-blame, as measured by the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI), were correlated with concurrent measures of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and two forms of metacognition; the Metacognitions questionnaire (MCQ-30), which focuses on specific thoughts, and the Metacognition Assessment Scale Abbreviated (MAS-A) which focuses on the degree to which persons can form complex representations of self and other. Participants were 51 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who had a PTSD diagnosis primarily involving a combat-related index trauma. Correlations revealed that being younger and more depressed were linked with greater levels of negative cognitions about self and the world. Lower levels of self-reflectivity on the MAS-A and higher levels of cognitive self-consciousness on the MCQ-30 were uniquely related to greater levels of self-blame even after controlling for age, level of depression, and PTSD. Implications for research and treatment are discussed.

Touching the Lived Body in Patients with Medically Unexplained Symptoms. How an Integration of Hands-on Bodywork and Body Awareness in Psychotherapy may Help People with Alexithymia

Medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) are a considerable presenting problem in general practice. Alexithymia and difficulties with mental elaboration of bodily arousal are hypothesized as a key mechanism in MUS. In turn, this inability influences the embodied being and participating of these patients in the world, which is coined as 'the lived body' and underlies what is mostly referred to as body awareness (BA). The present article explores a more innovative hypothesis how hands-on bodywork can influence BA and serve as a rationale for a body integrated psychotherapeutic approach of MUS. Research not only shows that BA is a bottom-up 'bodily' affair but is anchored in a interoceptive-insular pathway (IIP) which in turn is deeply connected with autonomic and emotional brain areas as well as verbal and non-verbal memory. Moreover, it is emphasized how skin and myofascial tissues should be seen as an interoceptive generator, if approached in the proper manual way. This article offers supportive evidence explaining why a 'haptic' touch activates this IIP, restores the myofascial armored body, helps patients rebalancing their window of tolerance and facilitates BA by contacting their bodily inner-world. From a trans-disciplinary angle this article reflects on how the integration of bodywork with non-directive verbal guidance can be deeply healing and resourcing for the lived body experience in MUS. In particular for alexithymic patients this approach can be of significance regarding their representational failure of bodily arousal.

Deficits in Metacognitive Capacity Are Related to Subjective Distress and Heightened Levels of Hyperarousal Symptoms in Adults With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Among persons with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the severity of symptoms and concurrent distress are not fully explained by trauma severity. Interest has consequently arisen in the psychological processes that cause distress and heighten PTSD symptoms. This study accordingly sought to examine whether differences in metacognitive capacity are related to levels of emotional distress, avoidance/numbing, and hyperarousal. Participants were 48 adults with a confirmed diagnosis of PTSD. Comparison groups included 51 adults with HIV and 183 with schizophrenia. Metacognition, emotion recognition, depression, and emotional distress and levels of avoidance/numbing and hyperarousal were assessed concurrently using the Metacognition Assessment Scale-Abbreviated, the Bell Lysaker Emotion Recognition Test, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. Results revealed that the PTSD group had better ratings of overall metacognitive capacity than the schizophrenia group and specifically poorer levels of metacognitive mastery, or the ability to use metacognitive knowledge to respond to challenges, than the HIV group. Within the PTSD group, poorer metacognitive mastery was linked with greater distress and higher hyperarousal when depression was controlled for statistically. Emotion recognition was not linked with distress or symptom severity. Results are consistent with models in which symptom severity in PTSD is related to the extent to which persons can use knowledge of themselves and others to find ways to respond to distress that match their own unique needs.

‘Girls are to be seen, not to be heard’: Understanding the Social Trauma of Kutchi Girls in Post-earthquake Gujarat

The focus on children in the context of everyday life under vulnerable conditions offers great promise for enriching our understanding of how disputations over culture and forms of belongingness are enacted repeatedly and undramatically: here culture takes a living form rather than a fixed one. The proposed paper is part of a larger project that examines psychological and social trauma of child survivors of the 2001–02 Gujarat earthquake and riots. Interactions with Kutchi girls from villages of Lodai, Khengarpur, Khavda and outskirts of Bhuj enabled the researcher to explore the diverse ways in which gender structures the notions of childhood, household work and domesticity defines their identity, ‘inhibition’, ‘absence’ and ‘invisibility’ of a certain kind were emblematic of their personalities. Keeping these thematics in mind, a critical commentary, Child Attachment Interviews (CAIs) narratives, with girl-survivors of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake is offered. Attachment ( anaclisis, in Greek, meaning dependence/leaning on; in Freudian oeuvre often linked with the problematic of need versus drives) is understood as a basic human survival need, embedded within a dialectical intra-psychic/inter-subjective matrix that pervades culture and socialisation. Girls’ impoverished responses during the interviews were marked by long pauses, absent glances, occasional smiles; with mainly monosyllables spoken about their own self though maintaining adultomorphic views of work, their duties and family’s expectations. Each interview was more or less a carbon copy of the other. At one level the interviews try to tap into the nature of ties between child and their families, on another level these act as testimonies where differentiating narrative modes of thought from narrative discourse (Bruner, 2004) allowing an exploration into the psychic vicissitudes of this language of absence and everyday existence marked by painful endurance. The paper develops these observations further to argue that trauma in the case of these girls is a continual disenfranchisement of their voices, needs and desires. Attachment trauma in these young girls is this inability and failure of their families to adequately nurture (psychological and social) capabilities (Robeyns, 2003; Sen, 1982) in the (girl) child and this ‘lack’/trauma has an intergenerational transmission and import (Grubich-Simitis, 1984; Felman & Laub, 1992). The paper illuminates the symptom these girls have become (being mute, stoic [multiple/ongoing] trauma survivors) and behind this symptom lies social depravities such as gender discrimination and child-rights violation where the mother (and remaining family) is not only implicated but caught in the same rigmarole—of patriarchal hubris.

The primacy of psychoanalytic intervention in recovery from the psychoses and schizophrenias

Functional capacities, such as attachment and affect regulation, object relations capacity, symbolic function and language development, now documented by neuroscientific research and epigenetics, are reviewed. Results from this research, together with other factors, are posited to have contributed to effective contemporary psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic treatments for the psychoses and schizophrenias. Etiological factors involving the schizophrenias and other psychoses are considered both in terms of an epigenetic model, and in terms of how etiology may, or may not, affect clinical treatment. The Lacanian 388 program is reviewed in some detail, as are several psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic clinical approaches used with this population over the last six decades. All treatments focus on the primacy of psychotherapeutic intervention, and use medications minimally, not at all, or only as informed by an over-arching psychodynamic model of treatment. The author argues that there is now substantial research and outcome data suggesting that the psychoses and schizophrenias are not chronic deteriorating conditions. Recovery is observed in many psychotic and schizophrenic patients treated with approaches that focus on the primacy of psychotherapeutic intervention.