I feel alcoholics have remarkably similar reactions to life and these centre on an inherent difficulty regulating stress and emotion. Some aspects of behaviour I have noticed in me and in others are, among others, distress based reactions such as perfectionism, distress intolerance and frustration intolerance, normally exemplified in […]
One of my pet hates in experimental study is researchers suggesting that one can generalise findings from a non-clinical group of participants in a particular study to a clinical group, not in the study. For example, most studies in Psychology and in Neuroscience are conducted on very well […]
In various blogs we have suggested that one of the main aspects of addictive behaviours is to act as the result of distress-based impulsivity or negative urgency. Here we explore in more details what we mean by that term negative urgency. Here we borrow from one article (1) […]
Alcohol dependence is thought of as a disorder with an overwhelming impulsive and compulsive “drive” towards alcohol consumption (Kamarajan et al. 2005), and an inability to “hit the brakes”, or inhibit alcohol consumption despite negative biological, psychological, legal, and social consequences (American Psychiatric Association 1994). Functional neuroimaging studies […]
We recently blogged on how alcoholics, and children of alcoholics, have difficulty with recognizing and differentiating external signs of emotions such as facial emotional expressions, now we will consider increasing evidence that alcoholics have difficulties with identifying and differentiating internal emotional states also. Both these areas of research point […]
There has been a lot of debate in the last thirty – forty years about genetic inheritance – with at least half of children of alcoholic families at risk for later alcoholism. What is less known is what exactly is inherited in our genes? What marks us out for later […]
Throughout our blogs thus far, we have attempted to highlight how emotional dysregulation appears to prevalent to all aspects of alcoholism and addiction from pre-morbid vulnerability to endpoint compulsive addictive behaviours. Here we highlight a few articles which have considered how prevalent is emotional dysregulation in alcoholism and […]
In this blog we are concerned in various ways with how emotional processing and regulation deficits appear at the heart of addictive behaviours such as distress based impulsivity and a decision making profile which seems to favour short term decision making over long term regardless of long term […]
Treating Addiction as an Emotional Regulation and Processing Disorder Translating accurate diagnosis into effective treatment Around this time last year and just weeks before The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (1), DSM-5, was due to appear, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), […]
Emotional dysregulation and altered reward sensitivity may underpin impulsive behavior and poor decision-making. Both of these tendencies can be seen in the “real-world” behavior of addicted individuals, but can also be studied using laboratory-based paradigms. Addiction is associated with a loss of control over drug use which continues in […]
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