effectiveness of emotion focused therapy on experiential avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation in Patients with chronic pain and alexithymia

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of emotion focused therapy on experiential avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation in Patients with chronic pain and alexithymia.

This research was a experiential study with pre, post-test and follow-up with control group. The statistical population included all patients with chronic pain in Isfahan city in 1400. Sampling was done by available and voluntary sampling method and in two stages. In this way, 24 patients with chronic pain who scored above 60 in the Tronto alexithymia questionnaire (1994) were selected and randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (n = 12). The experimental group received online emotion-focused group therapy for 12 weekly sessions. Instruments were Karnfeskesʼs Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire(2001) and  Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (2011) which were completed in three stages of the research. data were analyzed using repeated measure analysis.

The results of data analysis showed that there is a significant difference between the adjusted averages of experiential avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation in the two groups (P<0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that emotion focused therapy is effective on experiential avoidance and cognitive emotion regulation in Patients with chronic pain and alexithymia (P<0.05).

Considering the effect of emotion focused therapy on research variables, this treatment method can be used to improve Patients with chronic pain and alexithymia.