ArticleThe journal of pain2022
The Longitudinal Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Pain-Related Outcomes: Results From a Large, Online Prospective Study.
Article in The journal of pain, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The utility of coping through emotional approach: A meta-analysis.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2024Pooled it
- Online Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Emotion Dysregulation in People With Chronic Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2025Trial
- Temporal pathways between alexithymia, psychological distress, and pain: An autoregressive mediation analysis.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Article
- Perspectives Among Veterans with Chronic Pain and Co-Occurring Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Mixed-Method Findings from a Neuromodulation and Yoga Intervention.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Emotion regulation variability and chronic pain: An ecological momentary assessment study.Behaviour research and therapy · 2026Article
- Assessing alexithymia in chronic pain: psychometric properties of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 and Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire.Pain reports · 2025Article
- Increased risk of smoking and pain in individuals with intermittent explosive disorder in the All of Us dataset.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Anxiety and fear of cancer recurrence as predictors of subsequent pain interference in early cancer survivorship: Exploring the moderating roles of cognitive and emotional factors.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2024Article
- Profiles of Trauma Exposure Type and Its Associations With Pain-Related Outcomes Among Adults With Chronic Pain: A 2-Year Longitudinal Study.The journal of pain · 2024Article
- Examining the Direct and Mediated Associations Between Perceived Discrimination and Prescription Opioid Misuse Among Individuals with Chronic Pain.Stigma and health · 2024Article
- Trends in Physiotherapy of Chronic Low Back Pain Research: Knowledge Synthesis Based on Bibliometric Analysis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Pain interference among adult dual combustible and electronic tobacco users in terms of perceived barriers for quitting.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Medium- and Long-Term Effects of Insomnia Severity and Circadian Preference on Pain and Emotional Distress Among Individuals With Chronic Pain.The journal of pain · 2023Article
- Determining Profiles of Pain-Specific and General Emotion Regulation Skills and Their Relation to 12-Month Outcomes Among People With Chronic Pain.The journal of pain · 2023Article
- The combined effects of coping and pain interference on army readiness.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
People with chronic pain engage in various strategies, such as pain catastrophizing and pain acceptance, to regulate the difficult emotional aspects of living with pain. Engagement in these strategies is known to influence pain severity and pain interference. However, less research has examined the extent to which general emotion regulation, the ability to identify emotions and engage in strategies to alter emotions, relates to pain-related outcomes. The current study, a large (N = 1453) online prospective study of adults with chronic pain, employed theory-driven assessment of emotion regulation to determine the extent to which general difficulties with emotion regulation at baseline relate to pain severity and pain interference at three-month follow-up, above and beyond pain catastrophizing and pain acceptance. We conducted a series of path models, controlling for demographic covariates and baseline pain severity and pain interference. Pain catastrophizing and pain acceptance at baseline significantly predicted pain interference at three-month follow-up. However, when indices of general emotion regulation were entered into the model, the associations between pain catastrophizing and pain interference (B = .009, P = .153) were no longer statistically significant. Alexithymia emerged as a significant predictor of pain severity (B = .012, P = .032) and pain interference (B = .026, P < .001). These findings highlight the value of considering the role of general emotion regulation (particularly identifying and describing emotions), in addition to pain-specific experiences, in understanding risk for poor pain-related outcomes. PERSPECTIVE: In addition to pain catastrophizing and pain acceptance, difficulties regulating emotions in general (particularly elevated alexithymia) relates to pain outcomes three months later. These findings shed light on risk for poor pain outcomes and point to general emotion regulation as a potentially important target of chronic pain intervention.
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