Effectiveness of Training Self-Differentiation on the Aggression and Experiential Avoidance in the Adolescents Engaged In Divorce with Externalized Behavior

Divorce is a phenomenon which disturbs the mental and emotional health of the adolescents and it might lead to the emergence of externalized behaviors in them. therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of training self-differentiation on the aggression and experiential avoidance in the adolescents engaged in divorce with externalized behavior.

It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest, posttest, control group and two-month follow-up design. The statistical population of the present study included the students engaged in divorce with externalized behaviors who were studying in the first and second year high schools in academic year 2019-20 in the city of Shahrekord. 40 adolescents were selected through purposive sampling mehtod and they were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received ten ninety-minute intervention sessions of training self-differentiation during two-and-a-half months. After starting the intervention, 4 adolescents from the experimental and 3 from the control group quitted receiving the intervention. The applied questionnaires in this study included children and adolescents behavioral inventory, aggression questionnaire and acceptance and action questionnaire. The data from the study were analyzed through repeated measurement ANOVA by SPSS software version 23.

the resutls showed that training self-differentiation has significant effect on the aggression (0.59) and experiential avoidance (0.64) in the adolescents engaged in divorce with externalized behaviors (p<0.001).

The findings of the present study revealed that training self-differentiation can be used as an efficient method to decrease aggression and experiential avoidance in the adolescents engaged in divorce wiht externalized divorce through employing techniques such as differentiating rational from irrational beliefs, equipping the members with special communicative skills and shouldering the responsibility.