Learning to be emotionally competent: Preliminary results of a pilot intervention program focusing on affect processing and emotion regulation

Abstract

Emotional experience and emotion regulation (ER) are associated with mental and physical health. Although different psychological interventions focusing directly or indirectly on ER have been developed in this domain, a manual-based intervention relying on an empirical emotional processing (EP) model that refers to an integration of cognitive, behavioral, and experiential approaches and techniques is still needed. This study aims to investigate the effects of an intervention working on several dimensions of EP based on the Openness to Emotions (OE) model, examined with 102 healthy participants assigned to treatment or control conditions. The participants in the treatment condition, compared with those in the control group (CG), significantly increased their abilities to cognitively represent and regulate their affective states and achieved greater functional equilibrium of the EP components. Furthermore, in a subgroup of 35 participants, those in the treatment condition learned to use the strategies “acceptation of the situation” and “mental relaxation” to regulate negative affect more frequently. They also perceived “mental relaxation” to be more effective compared to the waiting list’ participants. They also reported significantly less difficulty in controlling their impulses and accessing strategies to regulate emotional states. Further research is necessary to evaluate the efficacy of this intervention program in larger samples with diverse mental and physical health characteristics.