Abstract
Objectives
Due to various research pointing to the impact of intrusive imagery on behavioral disturbances—such as self-harm in borderline personality disorder (e.g. Schaitz et al., 2018)—emotion dysregulation, and motivation (e.g., Ji et al., 2019), the goal of the present study was to investigate the impact of disorder relevant, intrusive imagery on subjective and objective stress in BPD.
Methods
20 female participants with BPD and 20 female healthy controls (HC) who are currently in a romantic relationship participated in an imagery stress task about a recent couple conflict with their romantic partner (IST Condition). Furthermore, 12 female participants with BPD, and 12 female HC and their romantic partners participated in a standardized laboratory couple conflict task (CST Condition). Before and after the stress tasks participants provided saliva samples assessing cortisol and sAA levels, completed questionnaires to assess subjective levels of stress (STAI & PANAS).
Results
Participants with BPD had a significantly higher amount of subjective anxiety during both, the IST and CST condition when compared to both HC groups. BPD participants within the IST condition had a stronger decline of positive affect and a stronger incline of negative affect from pre to post-stressor compared to the BPD CST condition. The BPD groups did not differ regarding sAA or cortisol levels, however, HC participants in the CST condition had a stronger physiological reaction than the HC IST group.
Conclusions
The present findings indicate that within BPD females, imagining a relationship-stressor can have the same negative emotional and physiological effects as a real-world relationship-conflict.
/thumbnails/0.jpg)