Effectiveness of Procedural Emotion Regulation Training in Self-compassion and Difficulties in Emotion Regulation among Addicts

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of procedural emotion regulation training on self-compassion and difficulties in emotion regulation among addicts. The present study employed a quasi-experimental design with pre-test/post-test design with control group and follow-up stage. The statistical population of this study consisted of 129 men who had presented to Islamshahr Rehabilitation Center for addiction treatment during from July to August 2017. According to the exit and entry criteria of the research, 30 men were selected and randomly assigned to two groups, i.e. experimental group (n = 15 males) and control group (n = 15 males). The experimental group received procedural emotion regulation training based on Grass model during eight 90-minute sessions while the control group did not receive any training. The participants were evaluated through Self-Compassion Scale and Difficulties of Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) in three stages, i.e., before the intervention, the final session, and 75 days after the training. The results of this study showed that procedural emotion regulation training has a significant effect on self-compassion and difficulties in emotional regulation in the post-test phase and this effect remains stable during the follow-up phase. It can be argued that procedural emotion regulation training reduces the degree of difficulties in emotion regulation in addition to increasing self-compassion. Therefore, it is suggested that psychiatric and counseling centers and addiction treatment centers benefit from this method in order to increase self-compassion and emotion regulation towards stable treatment of addiction.