Cognitive regulatory control therapies

Abstract

Cognitive regulatory control processes play an essential but typically unappreciated role in maintaining mental health. The purpose of the current paper is to identify this role and demonstrate how cognitive-behavioral and related techniques can compensate for impairments. Impaired cognitive regulation contributes to the overly intense emotional states present in anxiety disorders, depression, and personality disorders; progression of adaptive hypomania to mania; expression of psychosis in the conscious and awake state; dominance of immature defense mechanisms in borderline and other personality disorders. A wide variety of standard (monitoring, reappraisal, response inhibition, relaxation training) and more novel (suppression therapy, willful detachment, cost-benefit analysis, normalization, mature defense mechanism training) cognitive-behavioral and related techniques can be applied to compensate for cognitive regulatory control impairments, and their success probably aligns with this capacity.