Individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) present difficulties in the integration of meaning when recalling self-defining memories (SDMs), which plays a crucial role in identity development. They tend to integrate negative event more easily than positive ones, as these events disrupt identity and require to reflect on them, much like traumatic experiences often encountered by AUD patients. The impact of these events largely depends on the valence of meaning attributed to the traumatic experience. This study assesses whether AUD patients integrate trauma-related SDM, considering the valence of integration (positive vs. negative), and explores the mediating role of emotional regulation in this process and its influence on abstinence. The study includes 62 AUD patients and 54 controls. Findings reveal that patients integrated trauma-related SDMs more negatively and less positively than controls. Partial Least Squares modeling suggests that maladaptive emotional regulation, hinders positive integration of these memories, impeding the maintenance of abstinence.

Intrusive memories are a core symptom of PTSD and occur transdiagnostically, even at subthreshold levels, making them critical targets for intervention. Innovations can bridge mechanistic lab research with clinical practice. I will present a study testing a novel game-based intervention in young adults aimed at disrupting visual imagery in trauma memories and its effects on intrusive versus voluntary retrieval following a trauma film. Memory was assessed using methods controlling key variables (e.g., cues, load, delays), allowing differences to be attributed to involuntary versus voluntary memory. The intervention reduced the frequency of intrusive memories without impairing voluntary recognition, challenging basic memory models but aligning with clinical theories. This intervention appears effective without unintended side effects, such as erasing trauma memories needed in legal contexts. I will also share piloting of this approach with young people affected by sexual harm, who are distressed by intrusive memories but need voluntary memory for testimony.

Rumination involves repetitive negative thinking about one's self, feelings, personal concerns and upsetting experiences (Watkins, 2008). When an individual experiences dissonance between their interpretations of an upsetting experience (situational meaning) and their goals, beliefs and expectations about the world (global meaning), this activates rumination as a search for meaning (Park, 2010). We adapted the Lost Possible Selves and Best Possible Selves (King & Hicks, 2007) expressive writing tasks to develop a novel six-week intervention designed to facilitate elaborative processing of difficult past experiences and subsequent goal re-engagement. 90 adults experiencing high levels of depressive rumination about a difficult past experience were randomised to either the life goals intervention, a matched intervention that instructed participants to write about their difficult experience in a concrete manner (see Watkins, 2011), or a wait-list control. Depressive rumination, search for meaning, presence of meaning, and goal appraisals were measured before and after the intervention period.

In the DSM-5, four types of trauma exposure can lead to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): firsthand experience, witnessing, job-related exposure, or learning about a loved one’s trauma. Although previous research has primarily focused on firsthand, witnessed, and job-related events, we recently found that learning about a loved one’s trauma is the most common exposure type, and that it can lead to PTS-symptoms like intrusive memories. Thus, perhaps participants’ reactions to their worst learned events are comparable to their reactions to worst firsthand events. We tested this possibility here, predicting PTSD symptom severity, involuntary memory frequency and characteristics (e.g., distress), emotions (e.g., helplessness), and maladaptive belief ratings (i.e., the world is unsafe) for worst learned events would be comparable to worst firsthand events. Researching how reactions differ—or align—across trauma exposure types has implications for recognising and treating symptoms in people experiencing PTSD symptoms for a trauma that isn’t theirs.