2 - (SYM 2) How Emotional Numbness Relates to Lifetime History of and Daily Engagement in Non-suicidal Self Injury

Abstract Body
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a prominent transdiagnostic risk factor for adolescents and adults, yet
clarity on the mechanisms behind NSSI remain elusive. Prior work has suggested that one motivation for
engaging in NSSI may be to decrease feelings of dissociation, emptiness, or emotional numbness.
However, empirical work clearly linking emotional numbness with NSSI is lacking. In this talk, we
describe two studies to fill this gap. We first describe an individual differences study with college students
(n = 124) where we assessed lifetime history of NSSI and urges to engage in NSSI along with severity of
emotional numbness (e.g., frequency, duration, and intensity) and other aspects of emotional numbness
(e.g., attitudes of emotional numbness as good and bad, intentional seeking of emotional numbness), as
well as alexithymia and depression symptoms. We found that lifetime history of NSSI predicted the
severity of emotional numbness even when controlling for depression. In addition, we also found that
people with a lifetime history of NSSI and those with greater NSSI urges reported that emotional
numbness was a stronger problem for them, but they also endorsed intentionally trying to make
themselves numb more often. Then, we will describe our second study, an ecological momentary
assessment study of people with heightened symptoms of borderline personality disorder (n = 51). We
examined daily reports of emotional numbness (assessed 5x/day for two weeks) as predictive of actual
engagement in NSSI reported on the next day. We found that on days when people had more emotional
numbness than their typical levels, they had an increased likelihood of NSSI engagement. The same was
not true for positive or negative affect, suggesting the effect is specific to emotional numbness. Overall,
results suggest clear links between emotional numbness and non-suicidal self-injury, in daily engagement
and in individuals who have a lifetime NSSI engagement history. Further research is recommended to
investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship, as well as further exploring the attitudes and desires
for emotional numbness and its impact on NSSI engagement. Findings suggest the integration of emotion
regulation strategies aimed at emotional numbness for clinical cases where NSSI is a current risk.