PTSD and Self-regulation: Coping, Emotional Regulation and Cognitive Control and Their Relationships to Symptom Management

Non-pathological stress has an adaptive value, allowing a person to prepare for the demands of everyday life and increasing chances of survival in the face of danger. To "cope", the individual responds with behavioural, emotional and cognitive strategies (coping strategies). Coping aims to modify the problem causing the stress (problem-focused coping) or to regulate the emotional responses associated with the problem (emotion-focused coping), or it can be focused on avoidance (psychologically and/or physically avoiding the source of the stress). Coping is therefore not positive or negative per se and the strategies used by an individual can be positively or negatively associated with resilience. Thus, the mechanisms by which coping strategies, whether dispositional or situational, induce resilience or, conversely, the development of symptoms linked to stress and PTSD remain poorly understood. To detect and characterize some of these mechanisms, the present research focuses on high-level capacities closely linked to coping and resilience and involved in stress and psychotrauma, namely cognitive control (notably attentional and executive processes that allow for adaptive control of cognition and behaviour) and emotional regulation (processes allowing the triggering, inhibition, maintenance or modulation of emotions). The global research program includes different studies aimed at analyzing and screening for factors, or complexes of factors, that may be involved in the modulation of PTSD symptomatology in adults, based on a dimensional process-oriented and integrative approach. The present study will examine the relationship between the severity and nature of the symptoms of PTSD (e.g. avoidance) and the different processes considered. The primary objective is to examine the impact of the preferential use of habitual coping strategies (emotion-focused, problem-focused or avoidance-focused coping) on the severity of PTSD symptoms. Another objective is to explore the in