Perceived Sleep Quality and REM are Integral to Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation (ER) is critical to helping individuals cope with and respond to challenges and adapt to the environment, and its dysfunction can lead to many averse outcomes, including psychopathology. Sleep is one important process that seems to be associated with ER. Poor sleep quality and quantity can lead to deficits in ER, but little research so far has examined the contribution of rapid eye movement sleep (REM) and slow-wave sleep (SWS) to ER outside of laboratory paradigms. In the present study, we sought to investigate how total sleep time (TST), REM, SWS, and perceived sleep quality were associated with ER. Participants were 51 college students who used commercially available sleep tracking devices (e.g., Fitbit, Garmin Watch) for one week to monitor their sleep. For each day during the study period, participants were asked to upload their sleep data in the morning and complete a sleep diary and measures of difficulties in emotion regulation, irritability, and impulsivity. Hierarchical linear models were used to assess the relationship between sleep variables and emotion regulation. Poor perceived sleep quality was significantly associated with increased reports of irritability, impulsivity, and difficulties in ER. Decreased TST was significantly associated with increased irritability and impulsivity. Baseline depressive symptom severity was associated with all measures of ER. These findings confirm the association between decreased sleep quality and impaired ER and extend the findings to REM sleep. These findings also confirm the impact of poor sleep perception on impaired ER and support the importance of reframing maladaptive cognitions surrounding sleep to enhance well-being.
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