Comparing the Effectiveness of Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) with Acceptance and Commitment-Based Therapy (ACT) on the Stability of Marital Interactions of Couples Referring to Divorce Counseling Centers

Background &

Gutman (1993) states that stability in marital interactions refers to the degree of stability in negative and positive emotions in relationships between couples. To have a stable marital relationship, there should be at least five times as many positive interactions as negative interactions. In some approaches, the stability of marital interactions is defined due to several processes including restrained conflict, collaborative decision-making, quality of communication, sexual and psychological intimacy, and valuing trust, respect, empathic understanding, and equality in the relationship between the two parties. In such relationships, two categories of active, conscious and strategic behaviors such as confidence, positivity, openness, as well as usual maintenance behaviors including shared tasks, joint activities and use of social networks are involved (7).
In this regard, studies show that there are various treatment methods to reduce the consequences of fear of intimacy and improve couples' interactions. Among these therapies is group therapy, in which exchanges between group members are considered as an effective means of creating this change and transformation and support (10). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is one of the new and effective treatments for solving psychological problems and disorders. Its underlying principles include accepting or willing to experience pain or other disturbing events without trying to control them and value-based action or commitment combined with the desire to act as meaningful personal goals before eliminating unwanted experiences (11). In therapy based on acceptance and commitment, the main goal is to create psychological flexibility; It means creating the ability to choose an action among different options that is more appropriate, rather than doing an action just to avoid disturbing thoughts, feelings, memories or desires or actually imposing it on a person (12). The fundamental processes of therapy based on acceptance and commitment are: acceptance, mindfulness, living in the present moment, cognitive dissonance, self-observation of values ​​and committed action (13).
However, many studies have been conducted and have examined the effect of compassion-based therapy and acceptance-based therapy in different groups and have focused more on the impact of compassion-based therapy on general health and psychological well-being, but in the context of the usefulness of each Of these treatment methods, no research has been done on improving married life in Iran. For this reason, the logical necessity of conducting a research that examines the role of these treatments in the lives of couples and improving their relationships is felt. Therefore, the question of the current research is whether there is a significant difference between the effectiveness of therapy focused on compassion and therapy based on acceptance and commitment on marriage regret, stability of marital interactions and fear of intimacy of couples referring to divorce counseling centers in Gonbad Kavus city?

In order to carry out the present semi-experimental and practical research method, which consisted of pre-test, post-test and follow-up with a control group, 45 of the couples who referred to the divorce counseling centers of Gonbad city in 1400 were 716 people using the available method and 45 were eligible to be selected. They were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. Also, this research followed the ethics code number IR.IAU.AK.REC.1395-2 from Islamic Azad University, Aliabad branch. In addition and in the pre-test stage, all the subjects completed Gutman's (1999) stability of marital interactions questionnaire Then both experimental groups were exposed to training for 8 sessions of 90 minutes and no intervention was done for the control group (third group). Then the post-test was performed for all three groups. Finally, descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and analysis of covariance tests and Bonferroni's post hoc test using SPSS-26 software were used for statistical analysis of the data.

The results show that the intra-group effects of pre-test and group interaction are significant at a level less than 0.01 (F=60.993, P=0.0001, Eta=0.51). This means that compassion group therapy had a significant effect on the stability of marital interactions. The inter-group effects also show that the group effect is significant at a level less than 0.01 (F=113.404, P=0.0001, Eta=0.66) and this means that the group treatment of compassion between the experimental group and control has a significant difference (Table 2). A look at the table of averages shows that the average stability of marital interactions has increased in the post-test and follow-up. Therefore, it can be said that compassion group therapy has increased the stability of marital interactions. The eta coefficient also shows that 66% of the changes in the post-test of the stability of marital interactions are due to compassion group therapy.
Table 3 shows that there is a difference of 6.74 units between the experimental and control groups and this difference is significant. In this way, it can be said that compassion group therapy has been effective on the stability of marital interactions and has increased it.

The results showed that CFT compassion-focused therapy is effective on the stability of marital interactions of couples referring to counseling centers in Gonbad Kavus city. In the explanation of this finding, it can be said that teaching self-compassion because it causes self-compassion, acceptance, kindness and non-judgment of the spouse, causes couples to be more intimate with each other in times of failure and incapacity, positive self-regulation of show themselves and instill high sincere attitudes. People learn to have a proper emotional release with compassion, to identify the way of thinking and behavior towards themselves, and this causes their knowledge, feelings and reactions to their emotional state and relationship with their spouse. self-improvement and by looking at the bright side of marital issues and interpersonal problems and more understanding of the spouse, establish a more intimate relationship with their spouse, and this type of training improves the perception of the spouse's behavior and higher understanding, the emergence of happiness and the reduction of conflicts in married life It has been effective. Therefore, self-compassion can be considered an emotion regulation strategy, in which the experience of annoying and unpleasant emotions is not prevented, but an effort is made to accept the emotions in a kind manner. Therefore, negative feelings change to positive feelings and a person finds a new solution to deal with it (17).
The results confirm the greater effect of the treatment based on acceptance and commitment on the stability of marital interactions in couples referring to divorce counseling centers, so it is recommended to use this treatment to reduce divorce and stabilize the family under the supervision of an expert.