The Effectiveness of Psychodynamic Affect Phobia Therapy on Emotion Regulation and Improvement of Symptoms in Patients with Panic Disorder

Panic disorder is one of the most common anxiety disorders that despite the high range of medical and psychotherapeutic treatments, we see ineffective treatment and high recurrence of the disease, as well as high social and economic costs. Emotional dysfunction and the use of inappropriate emotion regulation strategies have an effective role in the pathology and recurrence of this disease. McCullough et.al. Have identified fear of affect as the cause of anxiety patients' conflicts, and have proposed an integrated and experimental psychodaynamic approach to reduce conflicts and regulate their anxiety and emotions.

Due to the importance of individual therapy in the psychodaynamic approach, in this study, the experimental design of a single subject of multiple baseline was used and the subjects were purposefully selected from the statistical population of patients in Marvdasht in 2019-2020, which included 7 patients. Treatment consisted of 20 one-hour individual sessions and three follow-up sessions over six months.

Data were collected by lipotise and affect phobia questionnaires. Based on standard visual imaging methods, stable change index and recovery percentage, the results showed a stable change index of more than 1.96 and a recovery percentage score higher than 50 for most subjects, which indicates the effectiveness of treatment and its stability during the next six months. At the end of the treatment, it is in the field of improving the symptoms of the disease. Also, in the evaluation of the affect phobia questionnaire, the recovery percentage of six patients was more than 50 and the overall recovery percentage was 62, which explains the regulation of emotions.

By explaining affect phobia as one of the main causes of conflict in patients with anxiety and panic and with an active and supportive relationship with effective techniques of this treatment by neutralizing defense, access to underlying emotions, creating insight and emotion regulation, finally Growth and develop of the ego in relation to self and others lead to symptom improvement of the disease.