Self-Regulation in Dual Diagnosis: A Multi-Method Approach of Self-Awareness, Error-Monitoring and Emotional Distress

Introduction: Self-regulatory actions direct the achievement of life goals. Awareness of one's state is needed to adequately self-regulate one's life. Methods: The self-regulatory actions of (cognitive/emotional) self-awareness and (error-)monitoring were assessed in patients with Dual Diagnosis and healthy controls. A multi-method approach was applied. Results: Patients with Dual Diagnosis reported lower capacity to identify, verbalize and interpret emotions in a cognitive manner. Both groups reported experiencing arousal of emotions, but patients showed less cognitive elaboration on them and they reported more negatively labeled emotions. Patients with Dual Diagnosis signaled errors less adequately, but did not differ in the number of errors. Discussion: The abundance of negative emotions may overwhelm patients and trigger substance use to handle this negativity. Especially because they do in fact experience the arousal of emotions, but they find it harder to timely identify, interpret and verbalize these emotions. Training self-awareness and emotion regulation may be beneficial.