The Effectiveness of Positive Mindfulness on Feelings of Internalized Shame, Experiential Avoidance, and Emotion Dysregulation in Violent Women

The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of positive mindfulness on internalized shame, experiential avoidance, and emotion dysregulation in women who experienced violence. The current research was applied in terms of its purpose and in terms of its nature, it was a semi-experimental design with a pre-test and post-test with a control group and a three-month follow-up phase. The statistical population of the present study consists of all women victims of domestic violence who were members of safe houses in Shiraz in 2018-2019, 30 people were selected in a targeted way and were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Measurement tools included Garnevsky et al.'s Emotion Dysregulation Questionnaire (CERQ, 2001), Bavand et al.'s Experiential Avoidance (AAQ-II, 2011), and Cook's Internalized Shame Questionnaire (ISS, 1987). The experimental group received Hoffman et al.'s (2014) positive mindfulness intervention in 8 sessions of 90 minutes twice a week, and the control group did not receive any intervention. To analyze the data, analysis of variance with repeated measurements was done with SPSS 26 software. The results of the one-way analysis of variance showed that there is a significant difference between the post-test score and follow-up of internalized shame, experiential avoidance, and emotion dysregulation in the control and experimental groups (p<0.01). 44% of internalized shame, 75% of experiential avoidance, and 36% of emotional dysregulation are explained by positive mindfulness therapy. As a result, it seems that positive mindfulness treatment is effective on internalized shame, experiential avoidance, and emotion dysregulation.