Emotion Dysregulation, Mindfulness, Self-Compassion, and Values Engagement in U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan-Era Veterans

Emotion dysregulation is a crucial transdiagnostic treatment target. Evidence-based psychoeducational interventions teach skills including mindfulness, self-compassion, and values engagement to improve emotion regulation.

We analyzed a sample of 351 United States post-9/11 veterans to examine the relationships between these skills and emotion dysregulation over time. We explored how mindfulness, self-compassion, and values engagement related to emotion dysregulation over two years in concurrent and lagged linear mixed models.

Concurrent analyses indicated that within-person and between-person effects of mindfulness (within: standardized point estimate [Mdn] = -0.13, between: Mdn = -0.30), self-compassion (within: Mdn = -0.10, between: Mdn = -0.33), and values engagement (within: Mdn = -0.03) were significantly negatively associated with emotion dysregulation when examined in separate models. When skills were examined simultaneously, within-person effects of mindfulness (Mdn = -0.10) and self-compassion (Mdn = -0.07) and the between-person effect of self-compassion (Mdn = -0.30) were significantly negatively associated with emotion dysregulation. In lagged analyses, between-person effects of mindfulness (Mdn = -0.22) and self-compassion (Mdn = -0.23) significantly negatively predicted emotion dysregulation when examined in separate models. There was no evidence of significant effects of skills on emotion dysregulation when examined in a lagged analysis with other skills. There was no evidence for between-person effects of values engagement on emotion dysregulation.

Mindfulness and self-compassion are associated with better emotion regulation in veterans. As such, individual differences in state or trait-level standings of these skills could be assessed in veterans for tailoring treatment planning to enhance emotion regulation.