Background: Mood and anxiety disorders are common during the perinatal period, impacting both parental health and infant development. Understanding the core symptoms and processes that underlie these conditions is essential for improving screening and intervention. Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a key transdiagnostic factor, yet research has largely relied on questionnaires and physiological measures of ED that offer limited insight into individuals’ lived experiences. This study aimed to qualitatively explore how individuals with heightened ED understand, experience, and regulate their emotions during pregnancy and the postpartum, and how these experiences differ from pre-pregnancy. Methods: Perinatal participants (N = 16) were recruited within the Women’s Health Concerns Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, Hamilton. Participants who endorsed experiencing ED were invited to complete a semi-structured qualitative interview related to their experience with ED. Interview data was analysed using a directed content analysis. Themes: Participants described heightened emotion reactivity during the perinatal period, characterized by rapid mood changes and heightened intensity of anger, shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, and joy. Participants described feeling unprepared to manage the increased intensity of negative emotions, particularly anger, compounded by reduced access to activities that had previously supported emotion regulation (e.g., self-care or social activities). Factors that contributed to vulnerability included life stressors, sleep disruption, and unmet expectations of both others (e.g., support) and oneself (e.g., coping ability). Conclusions: These findings enrich our understanding of perinatal-specific ED and highlight processes that may inform tailored interventions, that could be preventative in nature, for this vulnerable and understudied population.
