The effectiveness of Emotional Focused Therapy on Emotional Information Processing and Interpersonal Cognitive Distortions among women with Somatic Symptoms of Isfahan

Somatic symptoms make a significant part of admittances to health centers. Since clinical observations have linked these symptoms with emotions and cognitive distortions in relationships, the purpose of this study was to investigate The effectiveness of emotional focused therapy on emotional information processing and interpersonal cognitive distortions among women with somatic symptoms of Isfahan.

Methods and Materials:

The method of this research was a semi-experimental design with pre-test-posttest with control group. In this research, judgmental and voluntary sampling method was used. For this purpose, from the statistical population and based on inclusion and exclusion criteria of the study, 30 individuals were selected and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The instruments used in this study were somatic symptom questionnaires (PHQ_15) for finding kinds of symptoms and (SSD_12) for diagnosis A, B criteria of somatic symptoms, and emotional information processing questionnaires (1) and interpersonal cognitive distortions questionnaires (2). After the pre-test, participants in the experimental group received 8 sessions of 90 minutes emotional focused therapy (EFT) training. Finally, after performing the posttest, the data were analyzed using covariance analysis by SPSS software version 23.

The results of the data analysis showed that emotional focused therapy reduced the level of negative emotional information processing and it's subscale, interpersonal cognitive distortions and it's subscale and symptoms of somatic symptoms in women with somatic symptoms. The experimental group in the post-test stage and these changes were statistically significant (P < 0.01).

According to the results, this method can be used as an interventional and therapeutic method to reduce the level of negative emotional information processing, interpersonal cognitive distortions and symptoms of somatic symptoms in women with somatic symptoms.