The effectiveness of group self-regulation triple strategies training on reducing adverse physical and emotional consequences of stress

 The experience of stress disrupts the balance of human mental organization, as a result the individual experiences unpleasant emotions so that low capacity to regulate these emotions leads to psychological and physical symptoms. But whether could be help them to reduce the level of anxiety  and enhance psychological capacity, which is assumed to be nurtured through self-regulation to better cope with their difficult experiences to have better function.

This study aimed  to investigate the effectiveness of  group self-regulation triple strategies training including integrative self-knowledge, self-control, and self-compassion(Ghorbani and  colleague , 2012., Neff, 2009) on adverse physical and emotional consequences resulted from stress including  physical symptoms, unpleasant emotions, and self-destructiveness.

This research was a quasi-experiment study with pretest-posttest design with control group. The statistical population included mothers with children suffering from cancer refering to Imam Reza hospital and Namazi hospital in the city of Shiraz in 2017. Among 245 mothers who completed  the perceived stress scale (Cohen et al., 1983),  the physical symptoms checklist  (Bartone, 1995), the unpleasant emotions scale (Leary et al., 2007), and the chronic self-destructiveness scale (Kelley et al., 1985), 30 mothers were selected through convenience sampling and placed into three paired groups including experimental group, control group, and waiting list group. Data were analyzed at two levels of descriptive and inferential (multivariate analysis of covariance).

The results of MANCOVA showed that group self-regulation triple strategies training significantly reduced the mean scores of physical symptoms, unpleasant emotions, and self-destructiveness of experimental group in post-test compared to the control group and waiting list after controlling for pre-test scores.

Based on the results, group self-regulation triple strategies training including integrative self-knowledge, self-control, and self-compassion could increase individuals’ mental capacity engaged in chronic stress to adaptive cope with stress and thereby reduce the devastating consequences of stress in these individuals.