The effectiveness of empathy training on feelings of shame and guilt and fear of intimacy women with insecure attachment

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of empathy training on feelings of shame guilt and fear of intimacy in women with insecure attachment. The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group. The statistical population included all married female clients of family care centers (Talia and Irani) related to the welfare of Tehran city in 1401-1402. The sample size of the research included 40 women who were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly assigned to two groups (20 people in each group). The research tool included the guilt and shame proneness scale (GASP) of Cohen et al. (2011) and the fear of intimacy (FIS) Descatner and Thelan (1991). The control group did not receive any intervention, but the research experimental group received empathy intervention during 8 sessions of 120 minutes in 8 weeks Multivariate covariance analysis was used to analyze the data. The findings showed that with pre-test control, there was a significant difference between the post-test average of feelings of shame and guilt and fear of intimacy in the two experimental and control groups at the level of 0.01. The results showed empathy training is probably an effective treatment for feelings of shame guilt and fear of intimacy in women with insecure attachment.