WHEN AVOIDING UNPLEASANT EMOTIONS MIGHT NOT BE SUCH A BAD THING - VERBAL-AUTONOMIC RESPONSE DISSOCIATION AND MIDLIFE CONJUGAL BEREAVEMENT

It has been widely assumed that emotional avoidance during bereavement leads to either prolonged grief, delayed grief, or delayed somatic sy mptoms. To test this view, as well as a contrasting adaptive hypothesi s, emotional avoidance was measured 6 months after a conjugal loss as negative verbal-autonomic response dissociation (low self-rated negati ve emotion coupled with heightened cardiovascular activity) and compar ed with grief measured at 6 and 14 months. The negative dissociation s core evidenced reliability and validity but did not evidence the assum ed link to severe grief. Rather, consistent with the adaptive hypothes is, negative dissociation at 6 months was associated with minimal grie f symptoms across 14 months. Negative dissociation scores were also li nked to initially high levels of somatic symptoms, which dropped to a low level by 14 months. Possible explanations for the initial cost and long-term adaptive quality of emotional avoidance during bereavement, as well as implications and limitations of the findings, are discusse d.