AUTHOR=Vîslă Andreea , Zinbarg Richard , Hilpert Peter , Allemand Mathias , Flückiger Christoph 

TITLE=Worry and Positive Episodes in the Daily Lives of Individuals With Generalized Anxiety Disorder: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 12 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.722881

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2021.722881

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Worrying is a central feature of GAD that has been related to intense anxiety and maintained by beliefs that worry is uncontrollable. There is, however, scarce research on how worry episodes manifest in the daily life of individuals with GAD. Moreover, we have even less information about how positive episodes (i.e., episodes in which personal strengths such as positive experiences, thinking, and emotions are used) might impact individuals with GAD worry episodes. In the current study, 49 individuals with GAD (514 observations) registered their worry and positive episodes and reported on several variables during these episodes (i.e., anxiety and controllability of episodes, episode duration) using smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) for a week. Our preliminary findings show that anxiety and low worry controllability are not stable characteristics of individuals with GAD (as often assumed in retrospective self-reports and trait measures); they were found to fluctuate depending on their life contexts, i.e., much higher during worry episodes than during positive episodes. Moreover, the within-person time-lagged analyses show no influence of previous positive episodes on reactions to current worry episodes or of previous worry episodes on reactions to current positive episodes. Our results might indicate that although emotions in individuals with GAD may be highly sensitive to momentary situational context (i.e., vary depending on the nature of specific events or episodes they experience), it seems to not be a carry-over effect of positive episodes on worry episodes and vice versa. Moreover, worry controllability was higher when a current worry episode was preceded by another worry (versus positive) episode, findings that might support the assumptions of the Contrast Avoidance model of GAD (Newman & Llera, 2011), which sees worrying in GAD as a way of keeping a constant level of anxiety (and possibly a feeling of controllability over worry) by avoiding negative shifts or contrasts in emotions or experiences (i.e., shifts from positive to negative events or emotions). Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.