Therapist Materials for Skills for Emotion Exposures

The session in this chapter introduces emotion exposures, which involve the planned introduction of a stimulus to provoke habitually avoided emotions in order to reduce avoidance and promote new learning. An emotion exposure can be designed to provoke any emotion, and can be situational or imaginal, in the therapy office or elsewhere. Clients in this treatment program plan emotion exposures for emotions associated with their eating disorder and other emotional issues that are involve patterns of emotional avoidance or suppression. In this session, clients begin filling out a personal emotion exposure hierarchy and learn to identify principles of planning an emotion exposure, as well as how to record before and after exposures.

Enhancing Dementia Caregivers’ Emotional Coping in an Intergenerational Expressive Arts Based Therapy Program

Dementia caregivers often experience elevated levels of stress and are at increased risk for psychological disorders. Recent research has implicated emotional avoidance, psychological inflexibility, and related processes in the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Addressing these processes is essential for improving caregiver mental health. This pilot study examined changes in emotional avoidance, psychological inflexibility, and anticipatory grief among familial caregivers of individuals with dementia enrolled in an intergenerational expressive arts program (Bringing Art to Life). Caregivers were an average age of 63.32 (11 NHW, 8 AA; 13 Women, 6 Men). On average, caregivers’ emotional avoidance and psychological inflexibility (M = 19.63, SE = 2.16) decreased significantly after participating in the program (M = 15.06, SE = 1.80). This difference, -4.57, BCa 95% CI [1.82, 7.13], was significant, t(15) = 3.81, p = .002, and represented a medium-sized effect, d = 0.70. Overall experience of anticipatory grief (M = 51.88, SE = 3.26) also decreased (M = 48.00, SE = 2.79). More specifically, caregivers’ reported sadness and loneliness (M = 17.63, SE = 1.37) decreased significantly (M = 14.5, SE = 0.95), BCa 95% CI [1.25, 5.00], t (15) = 3.21, p = 006, and represented a medium-sized effect, d = 0.64. These findings illuminate novel ways in which interventions might both target underpinnings of the caregiver stress process and improve the dyadic relationship. Specific intervention elements are explored and recommendations are made for future intervention development and implementation as well as measurement based outcome tracking.

Treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder and Secondary Effects on Somatization

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is often accompanied by other diagnoses. Some comorbidities have received a good deal of attention, but others, including somatization, have not. As effective treatments for BPD are identified, the secondary effects of these treatments on BPD comorbidities are of clinical relevance. Secondary data were used from a randomized clinical trial of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and community treatment by experts among 101 women with BPD in order to characterize change in somatization with treatment for BPD, and to examine emotional avoidance as a mediator. Somatization decreased significantly over time, which did not differ by treatment condition. DBT had an indirect effect on somatization through less emotional avoidance. These results suggest that the comorbid presence of significant somatization should be evaluated among those with BPD, especially in the context of emotional avoidance; treatments could be enhanced by addressing emotion regulation skills.

Effect of Emotional State of Nurses Working in Intensive Care on Their Attitudes Toward Death

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the emotional state of the nurses working in intensive care unit on their attitudes toward death. The study was conducted with the participation of 100 nurses working in intensive care units between July and December 2017. A positive statistically significant correlation was found between the nurses’ status of approaching emotions and subscales of Death Attitude Profile ( p < .05). It was observed that there was a positive significant correlation between the emotional avoidance scores and neutral acceptance and approach acceptance ( r = .281), escape acceptance ( r = .335), and fear of death and death avoidance ( r = .490) scores ( p < .05).