Trauma severity and defensive emotion-regulation reactions as predictors of forgetting childhood trauma

Emotion Language in Trauma Narratives is Associated with Better Psychological Adjustment among Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

Traumatized individuals are often encouraged to confront their experiences by talking or writing about them. However, survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) might find it especially difficult to process abuse experiences, particularly when the abuse is more severe, which could put them at greater risk for mental health problems. The current study examined whether CSA survivors who use emotion language when describing their abuse experiences exhibit better mental health. We analyzed the trauma narratives of 55 adults who, as children, were part of a larger study of the long-term emotional effects of criminal prosecutions on CSA survivors. Abuse narratives were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. We examined whether positive and negative emotion language in participants' abuse narratives were associated with self- and caregiver-reported mental health symptoms and whether these associations differed according to the severity of the abuse. As hypothesized, participants who used more positive and negative emotion language had better psychological outcomes, especially when the abuse was severe. Our findings suggest that survivors of more severe abuse might benefit from including emotion language, whether positive or negative in valence, when describing the abuse.

"As Time Went On, I Just Forgot About It": Thematic Analysis of Spontaneous Disclosures of Recovered Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse

This study was a thematic analysis of transcripts of interviews of child sexual abuse survivors discussing their experiences of recovered memories. This study included 27 English-speaking participants from 3 major Canadian cities: Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa. Seven participants identified as male and 20 as female. Participants ranged in age from 31 to 69 with a mean age of 47. The educational background of participants ranged from 9th grade to doctoral levels. Out of the sample of 27, 21 participants reported some period of amnesia for their CSA experiences. Three primary global themes emerged in the transcripts of participants describing adult emergent recovered memories: flashbacks, triggers, and denial. Three global themes emerged in the transcripts of participants describing partially discontinuous memories: dreams/nightmares as the "how" of memory recovery, triggers, and active processes of forgetting.