Nvestigation of the relationship between childhood traumas and emotion regulation difficulty with alexithymia and obssesive beliefs in adults

The aim of this study is to examine the variables of childhood traumas, alexithymia, obsessive beliefs, and difficulty in emotion regulation in terms of socio-demographic features, to determine the relationships between these variables and to reveal the factors that predict alexithymia and obsessive beliefs. 286 women (69.4%) and 126 men (30.6%) participated in this study. Demographic Information Form, Childhood Trauma Scale (CTQ-28), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Emotion Regulation Difficulty Scale-Short Form (DDQ-16), and Obsessive Beliefs Inventory (OBI-44) scales were used for data collection. Cronbach α value, descriptive analysis methods, independent samples t-test, Mann Whitney U test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Kruskall Wallis test, Pearson correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis were used to analyze data. Results show that alexithymia, and obsessive beliefs mean scores do not differ according to gender, but childhood traumas and emotion regulation difficulties mean scores change according to gender. Also childhood traumas differ according to the family structure, number of siblings and monthly income variables. Conversely, alexithymia differed according to family structure, sibling bear, caregiver, and monthly income variables. Obsessive beliefs vary according to education level. In the relations between the variables, it has been revealed that there is a positive linear relationship between all the variables. As a result of the regression analysis of the predictors of alexithymia, the model was found to be significant and it was determined that age, gender, childhood traumas and difficulty in emotion regulation explained 41,8% of the variance of alexithymia. Finally, while age, gender childhood traumas and difficulty in emotion regulation were found to be predictors of obsessive beliefs, it was observed that 33,2% of obsessive belief variance was explained by these variables. The findings obtained from the study were analyzed, interpreted within the scope of the relevant literature and suggestions were made for future studies, and practitioners. Keywords: Childhood Traumas, Alexithymia, Obsessive Beliefs, Emotion Regulation Difficulty.