Dysfunctional Parental Care and Emotional Dysregulation: A Pilot Study on the Mediating Role of Attachment Styles and Alexithymia in a Sample of Young Women

Complex traumas within significant relationships, such as maltreatment or neglect, can compromise the development of emotional skills. This is particularly evident in the structure of alexithymic traits and difficulties in regulating internal states which are associated with different psychopathologic disorders. The aim of the present study was to examine the mediating role of attachment between parental styles and the development of emotional skills. Specifically, it was hypothesized that dysfunctional caregiving may be the basis of insecure attachment styles, which expose to the risk for developing alexithymic traits and deficits in emotion regulation skills. The study involved 464 young adults (age range 19–27 years) who were administered the following tests: MOPS (Picardi et al., Journal of Psychopathology 19:54–59, 2013) for measuring parenting styles; ECR (Picardi et al., Italian Journal of Psychopathology 8:282–294, 2002) for measuring attachment styles; TAS-20 (Bressi et al., Journal of Psychosomatic Research 41:551–559, 1996) for alexithymia and DERS (Sighinolfi et al., Psicoterapia Cognitiva e Comportamentale 16:141–170, 2010) for emotional dysregulation. The results highlighted that maternal and paternal indifference, abuse and overcontrol has a direct effect on emotional dysregulation. These parental behaviors revealed also an indirect effect, mediated by attachment anxiety, but not avoidance, on emotional dysregulation. Furthermore, the results showed a significant indirect effect for anxiety and avoidance via alexithymia on emotional dysregulation. The data seem to support the hypothesis regarding the mediating role of attachment and alexithymia between parental styles and emotional dysregulation, as well as the importance of the roles played by both mother and father.