Effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy on feelings of rejection, marital adjustment and emotional regulation in women affected by domestic violence

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of emotion-focused therapy on feelings of rejection, increasing marital adjustment and emotional regulation in women affected by domestic violence.

In order to conduct this study, 24 women who were victims of domestic violence and referred to psychology and counseling clinics and forensic medicine centers in Mashhad who volunteered to participate in this study were selected and randomly divided into two experimental and control groups and answered the questionnaires of rejection perception, marital adjustment and emotional regulation in pre-test and post-test. The experimental group underwent emotion-focused therapy for ten sessions and the control group remained on the waiting list.

Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to analyze the relationship between variables. The results showed that emotion-focused therapy was effective in reducing the feeling of rejection and increasing marital adjustment and improving emotional regulation in the participants of the experimental group (P <0.01).

It can be said that teaching the components of emotion-focused approach to women affected by domestic violence can improve their performance in relation to family relationships and thus improve their quality of life.