A narrative study on the strategies and resources for emotion regulation in old age

Most older adults deal with difficulties in physical, cognitive, and social domains of functioning. Such difficulties may lead to distress, that potentially influence their overall state of health. Despite dealing with these challenges, some older adults also report higher well-being and emotional stability, and this was credited to their ability for emotion regulation (ER). The strategies and resources for regulating emotions were explored through individual interviews. Older adults narrated life experiences that were considered as emotion-provoking and were told to identify strategies and resources they used to regulate their emotions. Twenty-one community-dwelling older adults aged 60 to 80 participated in individual interviews assessing their emotion regulation capacities (i.e., response modulation, relying on higher power, attention deployment, cognitive change, and situation selection). In the current study, social support, spiritual belief, employment, personal attributes, financial stability, conviction, lessons from previous experience, resilience, community activities, and presence of grandchildren served as resources for older adults. This may provide knowledge on the possible contribution of resources to the use of different strategies when regulating emotions. Contributions to selection, optimization, compensation in emotion regulation framework (SOC-ER) by showing possible relationships between strategies and resources were also discussed