Alexithymia and Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Mediation Roles of Self-Compassion and Deficits in Emotion Regulation

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a global mental health concern, with recent research focusing on psychological mechanisms that contribute to its development and maintenance. Alexithymia, characterised by difficulty identifying and expressing emotions, has been identified as a potential risk factor for PTSD. This study investigates a model of the relationship between alexithymia and PTSD symptoms, focusing on the potential mediating roles of self-compassion and emotional regulation deficits. Participants (N = 310), who were university students and members of the community, completed self-report measures of the key variables. As expected, alexithymia was a strong predictor of higher levels of PTSD symptoms. Two mediation pathways were also significant: one through emotion regulation difficulties for negative emotions, and the other a serial mediation involving self-compassion followed by negative emotion regulation difficulties. Contrary to expectation Self-compassion had no direct predictive relationship with PTSD symptoms. Although alexithymia and self-compassion predicted greater difficulty in regulating positive emotions the mediation pathway to PTSD symptoms was non-significant. The general pattern of results was found to extend to the specific PTSD symptom groupings of re-experiencing, negative affect, avoidance and hyperarousal symptoms although some differences were evident among the symptom groupings. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.