The daily interplay between sleep and emotional dysregulation in emerging adults with heavy alcohol use patterns

This study aimed to examine within-person, bidirectional associations between sleep disturbances and emotional dysregulation among emerging adults with high alcohol use patterns, with particular attention to within-day fluctuations in emotional dysregulation and the potential moderating role of anxiety symptoms.

Data are from a longitudinal study of heavy drinkers (N = 300, 65.4% women, Mage 24.57, range: 21-29) who completed a 14-day ecological momentary assessment burst, documenting sleep patterns and positive and negative emotional states, and completed a prior survey on anxiety symptoms. Multilevel modeling was used to explore within- and between-person associations between sleep (quality and duration) and next-day emotional dysregulation, as well as the effect of emotional dysregulation on same-night sleep. The moderating effect of anxiety was also examined.

Within-person analyses showed that participants exhibited better regulation of positive emotion and overall emotion on days following above-average sleep quality, and sleep duration within an optimal range. Between-person analyses revealed that individuals with higher overall sleep quality demonstrated better regulation of negative emotion. In contrast, daily emotional dysregulation did not predict subsequent sleep. Anxiety symptoms moderated the nonlinear (quadratic) association between sleep duration and emotional dysregulation: longer-than-optimal sleep was associated with greater emotional dysregulation, but only among individuals with higher anxiety.

These findings suggest a predominantly unidirectional influence of sleep on emotional dysregulation, emphasizing the importance of achieving optimal sleep duration-particularly for individuals with elevated anxiety-and improving sleep quality more broadly to reduce emotional dysregulation.