The Effect of Distress Tolerance Education on Emotional Regulation and Improvement of Alexithymia in Patients with Masturbation

Masturbation is a complement to sexual desire that does not require a sexual partner and increases suddenly due to hormonal changes in adolescence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of distress tolerance education on alexithymia, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance in 11-14 year-old subjects with masturbation. In a case study of multiple baseline type, the 8-hour treatment process was performed on four subjects. Four outpatient with masturbation using Toronto alexithymia scale (TAS-20) (Toronto, 2005), cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (Garnowski et al., 2001) and tolerance of emotional distress (Alawi, 2011) before, during, and after therapy, were evaluated. The percent recovery rate was used to measure the recovery rate. The results of this study showed that distress tolerance education was effective in improving alexithymia, increasing emotional regulation, and tolerance of distress. The rate of recovery in alexithymia was 44.48%, in emotional regulation 29/50%, and in the tolerance of emotional distress, 39.38% Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that distress tolerance education makes it possible for subjects with masturbation to identify their positive and negative emotions and thus decrease their emotional deficiency and increases their ability to emotional regulation and the level of stress tolerance.