Stuck On Wide Open: Emotional Dysregulation - Stresshacker | Stresshacker

Stuck On Wide Open: Emotional Dysregulation - Stresshacker | Stresshacker
Excerpt:

Disorders of Emotional Dysregulation

PTSD, or posttraumatic stress disorder, is characterized by very significant emotional dysregulation. Its sufferers experience unwarranted arousal—often caused by stimuli processed outside of conscious awareness—and exhibit an exaggerated startle response, vivid intrusive thoughts, and flashbacks and nightmares related to past traumatic events. PTSD victims may frantically try to avoid physical or psychological reminders of their trauma, and may experience dissociative symptoms or emotional numbing. PTSD is a disorder of emotional dysregulation characterized by excessive fear, triggered by a severe and often life-threatening traumatic event.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by emotional dysregulation, the temporary but frequent inability to change or regulate emotional cues, experiences, actions, verbal responses, and nonverbal expressions. Individuals with BPD experience greater emotional sensitivity, greater emotional reactivity, and slower return to normal levels of arousal after intense stimulation.
Frontal lobe disorders, which have become rather common among combat survivors, are the product of traumatic brain injury and are characterized by emotional dysregulation, attention deficit, impulsivity, lack of inhibition,  poor insight, impaired judgment, and low motivation. These frontal-subcortical disorders can result not only from war zone trauma, but also from infection, cancer, stroke, and neurodegenerative disease. Explosive violence, often directed at family members, is a common occurrence, particularly in individuals in whom impulsivity, disinhibition, and emotional dysregulation are the most dominant features.
Finally, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by emotional as well as cognitive dysregulation, brought on by a disruption of both the “thinking” prefrontal and the “feeling” paralimbic networks.
In these and other disorders that feature emotional dysregulation, it is interesting to note that the anatomic structures that are affected have emotional as well as cognitive functions.