Trauma-related emotional patterns and their association with post-traumatic and somatic symptoms

Trauma-related emotional-experience patterns and their association with post-traumatic symptoms (PTS) and somatic symptoms were examined among 153 Palestinian political ex-prisoners. A multilevel measure was developed to depict cognitive appraisals, meta-evaluation, emotional action readiness and subjective feeling states. Cluster analysis revealed four major emotional patterns: two of them, 'Integrative' and 'Low intensity' turned out to be adaptive, and 'Ruminating alexithymic' and 'Depressive enactant' to be maladaptive, when their role in moderating between trauma and PTS was the criterion. The 'Depressive enacting' men showed generally more somatic symptoms, but the 'Ruminating alexithymic' men were the most vulnerable when exposed to a high level of trauma. The underlying mechanisms differentiating maladaptive emotional patterns from adaptive ones were the predominance of behavioral urges to act, the intensity of negative feelings and a low level of meta-evaluation.