Untangling the link between experiential avoidance and non-suicidal self-injury: a multidimensional approach

Experiential avoidance, an individual's unwillingness to experience uncomfortable internal feelings/emotions, has been found to be associated with history of self-injury. This association is mainly found in studies that use global measures of experiential avoidance. However, experiential avoidance is purported to be a multidimensional construct. This study aims to test both unidimensional and multidimensional measures of experiential avoidance and their associations with self-injury.

University students (n = 632, M = 25.01, SD = 7.13, 78.8% female, 70.9% with lived experience of self-injury) completed well-validated self-report measures of self-injury, experiential avoidance (The Brief and the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire).

As expected, all sub-scales of multidimensional measure of experiential avoidance were highly correlated with the global score for experiential avoidance. The global measure of experiential avoidance differentiated individuals with no history, with past history, and recent history of self-injury. When assessed using the multidimensional measure, only the sub-factors behavioural avoidance and repression and denial differentiated those with no history of self-injury from those with recent history and those with recent history from those with past history of self-injury.

Findings raise the possibility that associations between experiential avoidance and self-injury may be down to two specific aspects of experiential avoidance, namely 1) behavioural avoidance and 2) repression/denial. If true, this will have important theoretical, clinical, and measurement implications for research into self-injury.