Abstract :
Childhood sexual abuse is one of the most terrible traumatic experiences which have a long-term psychological effect, such as dissociative symptoms in adulthood. One protective factor that has been put forward as having a potential of buffering the psychological effect of trauma is emotional regulation. The current research investigated the impact of emotional regulation on the relationship that exists between sexual abuse and dissociative experiences in the context of adults in Pakistan. The cross-sectional correlational design was used and a sample population of 260 young adults (19-39 years old) was used in order to collect data by relying on convenience sampling. The respondents were asked to fill in Sexual abuse subscale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF), the Dissociative Experiences Scale-II (DES-II), and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ). Psychometric tests showed that there was satisfactory to excellent internal consistency among measures. The correlational analysis indicated that the relationship between sexual abuse and dissociative experiences had a significant, positive relationship (r = .36, p =.01), indicating that the more the abuse was reported, the more the symptoms of dissociation. Nevertheless, there was no significant correlation of emotional regulation with sexual abuse or dissociation. There was also a moderation evidence that emotional regulation did not significantly moderate the connection between sexual abuse and dissociative experiences in dissociation subtypes (amnesia, depersonalization, and absorption). These results confirm the strong correlation between sexual abuse and dissociation but not a protective moderating effect of emotional regulation in this sample. The findings underscore the multifaceted nature of psychological outcomes of trauma and deal a blow to the necessity to investigate other protective and situational issues within the cultural-based trauma research.