Beliefs about Emotions as a Metacognitive Construct: Initial Development of a Self‐Report Questionnaire Measure and Preliminary Investigation in Relation to Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Metacognitive theory, amongst other theories, gives an important role to beliefs about mental states, including beliefs about emotions, in the maintenance of distress. Mentalization theory as well as the dialectical behaviour therapy and emotion‐focused therapy literature specifies particular beliefs thought to be related to emotion dysregulation and therefore to a label of borderline personality disorder. The current study aimed to develop a questionnaire to measure the beliefs about emotions as specified by this literature and to test the relationship of this new measure to various aspects of emotion regulation in a non‐clinical sample of 289 participants. A factor analysis extracted six factors, which described beliefs about emotions as (a) overwhelming and uncontrollable; (b) shameful and irrational; (c) invalid and meaningless; (d) useless; (e) damaging; and (f) contagious. The final measure showed some promising psychometric properties. All of the questionnaire subscales were related to aspects of emotion dysregulation including distress, borderline personality disorder symptoms and behaviours associated with dysregulation of emotion, suggesting that beliefs about emotions could be an important metacognitive construct involved in the ability to regulate emotions. Beliefs about emotions may be a useful direct or indirect target for treatment of difficulties regulating emotions, and this could be achieved through the use of various therapeutic modalities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message This article provides information relevant to difficulties with emotion regulation. Such difficulties may underlie or be important in many clinically presenting difficulties notably a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Beliefs about emotions develop the metacognitive therapy literature as well as being relevant to mentalization‐based treatment, dialectical behaviour therapy and emotion‐focused therapy. The new questionnaire discussed may, in the future, be a useful tool in assessment and formulation, as well as evaluation of outcome in therapy. Beliefs about emotions may be a direct or indirect target for therapeutic work, and the themes described in this article may be a useful guide as to some of the problematic beliefs that clients may hold.

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