Lu Q, et al. - A scrutiny was pursued of the link between ambivalence over emotional expression (AEE; defined as the conflict between the desire to express feelings and the fear of its consequences) and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), and proposed intrusive thoughts as mediators in such correlation. Higher PTSS was reported in those who were highly ambivalent about emotional expression. This could partly be attributed to the lack of opportunities to discuss emotional events, thereby raising the repetitive cancer-related negative thoughts. Intervention for PTSS ought to be taken into account to aid the cancer patients for formulating adaptive emotional regulation strategies. This would reduce the detrimental effects of cancer-related intrusive thoughts.

Methods

• The recruited candidates were 118 Chinese-speaking breast cancer survivors in the USA, who were diagnosed with breast cancer of stages 0-III within the past 5 years.
• They completed questionnaires estimating their levels of AEE, PTSS, and intrusive thoughts.

Results

• A positive link was reported between AEE with intrusive thoughts (r = 0.43, p < 01), which were positively related to the arousal and avoidance subscales of PTSS (r = 0.68 and r = 0.62, respectively, p < .01).
• Support was yielded by a path analysis, to a partial mediation model with an indirect effect from AEE to the latent variable of PTSS (with both arousal and avoidance as indicators) through the intrusive thoughts (β = 0.29; 95% CI= 0.18, 0.42) and the direct effect from AEE to the latent variable of PTSS (β = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.07, 0.35), all p < .001.