The Effect of Distress Tolerance Education on Emotional Regulation and Improvement of Alexithymia in Patients with Masturbation

Background and Purpose: Masturbation is a complement to sexual desire that does not require a sexual partner and increases suddenly due to hormonal changes in adolescence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of distress tolerance training on alexithymia, emotional regulation, and distress tolerance in 11-14 year-old subjects with masturbation. Method: In a case study of multiple baseline type, the 8-hour treatment process was performed on four subjects. Four outpatient with masturbation were evaluated by Toronto alexithymia scale (TAS-20) (Toronto, 2005), cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (Garnowski et al., 2001) and tolerance of emotional distress (Alawi, 2011) before, during, and after the therapy. The percent recovery was used to measure the recovery rate. Results: Results showed that distress tolerance training was effective in improving alexithymia and increasing emotional regulation and tolerance of distress. The rate of recovery was 44.48% for alexithymia, 29.50% for emotional regulation, and 39.38% for emotional distress. Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that distress tolerance training makes it possible for subjects with masturbation to identify their positive and negative emotions and thus decreases their emotional deficiency and increases their ability of emotional regulation and their level of stress tolerance.