Comparing the effectiveness of solution-focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy on alexithymia in betrayed women

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of solution-focused therapy and emotion-focused therapy on alexithymia in women who had been cheated on. The research was a basic research and quasi-experimental research design with a pre-test, post-test, and follow-up with a control group. The statistical population of this study was women involved in the problem of marital infidelity of their spouse who referred to counseling centers in Qaemshahr in 1402. The sampling method was available and the sample size was 45 people using GPower software. The data collection tool in this study was the Toronto Alexithymia Questionnaire (1986). In this study, emotion-focused therapy was implemented based on the Greenberg et al. (1980) approach in 8 2-hour sessions, twice a week, and solution-focused therapy was implemented based on the Jafari et al. (2019) group therapy protocol in 8 90-minute sessions, and was implemented in a group setting, once a week. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (analysis of covariance and repeated measures) were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the reduction in alexithymia in the experimental group of emotion-focused therapy was greater than that of solution-focused therapy and had better effectiveness.