The effectiveness of couples therapy based on acceptance and commitment and emotionally focused couples therapy on improvement of intimacy and reduction of Alexithymia among Couples

Subject Areas : Thoughts and Behavior in Clinical Psychology

Firoozeh Zanganeh Motlag ¹ , Shokoh-Sadat Bani- Jamali ² , Hassan Ahadi ³ , Hamid Reza Hatami ⁴

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Received: 2017-06-09 Accepted : 2017-06-09 Published : 2017-05-22

Keywords: Intimacy, Alexithymia, Acceptance and commitment, emotionally focused,

Abstract :

Family is the main core of every community and it is the focus of well-being and mental health, not just a place for providing emotional, physical, and spiritual development of its members, but it is also the origin of human emotions and the heart of the most intimate interpersonal relationships .The aim of this research was the study the effectiveness of couples therapy based on acceptance and commitment and emotional focused couples therapy on reducing alexithymia and improve marital intimacy in Arak City. For this purpose, during a quasi-experimental research in form of pretest-posttest and control group 90 couples who referred to Azad University counseling center with convenience method were selected and were assigned randomly divided into three experimental groups and the control group. Experimental group received couples therapy based on acceptance and commitment for ten sessions. Groups were tested before and after the completion and follow-up in terms of alexithymia and intimacy. The results showed that couples therapy based on acceptance and commitment and emotionally focused couple therapy have been significantly effective on alexithymia and intimacy. It seems that attention to couples therapy based on acceptance and commitment and emotionally focused couple therapy in counseling environment and family psychotherapy are of high importance.