Predicting Adolescent Girls' Anxiety in the First Secondary Level Based on the Early Maladaptive Schemas and Self-Differentiation

 The physical and psychological changes occurring during puberty are regarded as fundamental developmental crises. Since adolescents experience various events while socializing with their peers, friends, school, and home, they may feel countless emotions, including anxiety. Fulfilling the emotional and physical needs of the children in the family and through sufficient manifestations of the children's attachment leads to the formation of adaptive schemas about themselves and others. The family environment nurtures the differentiation of individuals during this developmental period, later affecting all aspects of their lives. In this context, the schemas and lack of differentiation prevent the development of emotional regulation abilities. In this situation, a teenager may experience much anxiety. The current research aims to predict adolescent girls' anxiety studying at the first secondary level based on the primary maladaptive schemas and self–differentiation components.

 The cross–sectional research has a descriptive–analytical correlational type. The statistical population included all adolescent girls studying in the first level of secondary school in Fardis City, Alborz Province, Iran, in the first semester of the 2019–2020 academic year. A total of 300 students were selected by convenience sampling method. The inclusion criteria were as follows: living with their mothers since childhood, staying in Fardis City, having a mother's education higher than a diploma, lacking physical disabilities or chronic diseases, not taking medicine due to one's physical and mental condition, not being hospitalized during the last year due to physical and mental illness, not receiving psychotherapy at the same time and during the previous year, and having GPA (Grade Point Average) greater than 16 in the academic record in the last two semesters. The exclusion criterion was incomplete answers to the questionnaires. The study tools included the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck et al., 1988), Differentiation of Self Inventory (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003), and Young Schema Questionnaire (Young & Brown, 1994). The Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression method were used for data analysis using SPSS version 24 at a significance level of 0.05.

 The results showed that the disconnection and rejection maladaptive schemas (p<0.001, β=0.225) and components of emotional reactivity (p<0.001, β=0.308), including I–position (p<0.001, β=0.144), and emotional cut–off (p=0.045, β=0.102) predicted anxiety in adolescent girls. Also, 88% of the variance of adolescent girls' anxiety was explained by initial maladaptive schemas and self–differentiation components.

 According to the findings, adolescent girls' anxiety is predicted by the disconnection and rejection of early maladaptive schemas and the components of self–differentiation: emotional reactivity, I–position, and emotional cut–off.