1 - (SYM 55) an Affect Regulation Framework for Studying Psychological Resilience

Exposure to severe or chronic stressors often leads to disruptions in psychological functioning, including stressor-related disorders. However, people vary greatly in their responses to stressors. Some people experience severe long-term disruptions to psychological functioning, whereas others demonstrate a resilient response characterized by minimal disruptions to functioning or a quick recovery. In this talk, Dr. Emily Willroth will share a novel framework for defining psychological resilience. This framework is intended to reduce conceptual ambiguity and to aid researchers in clearly defining and studying psychological resilience, including features of the stressors (e.g., intensity, timing, controllability, life domain), and features of individuals’ psychological responses to those stressors (e.g., domains and levels of functioning, trajectories of functioning, duration of disruptions to functioning or maintenance of resilience). The talk will focus on how this framework can be applied to research on the prevention and treatment of stressor-related disorders, including depressive, anxiety, and trauma-related disorders. In the second half of the talk, Dr. Willroth will describe how this framework can be used to understand the role of affect regulation in psychological resilience. Specifically, she will describe how the framework unites two complementary but surprisingly isolated approaches—the emotion and emotion regulation approach and the stress and coping approach—to better understand potential prevention and treatment targets for increasing psychological resilience.