Mind the Gap? Emotion Regulation Ability and Achievement in Psychological Health Disorders

Why do so many people fail to manage their emotions successfully even though they have the ability to do so? This gap between ability and achievement is even more surprising in individuals with emotional disorders, many of whom appear to be able to effectively regulate emotions when cued. Recently, clinical science has begun to take stock of this puzzling gap between intact emotion regulation ability and problematic emotion regulatory achievement. We refer to this as the ‘emotion regulation ability-achievement’ gap, and discuss clinical implications, including alternative approaches to closing this gap.