The Effectiveness of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Training on Emotion Dysregulation and Symptoms of Fibromyalgia Patients

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: Fibromyalgia is a chronic and multifaceted disorder that may also play a role in emotion regulation. Therefore, the aim of this study was determine the effectiveness of cognitive emotion regulation training on emotion dysregulation and symptoms of fibromyalgia patients.

Methodology: This research was a quasi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The study population was female fibromyalgia patients referred to pain and rheumatology clinics of Tehran city in 2025 year. The sample of this study was 40 people who were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly replaced in two equal groups. The experimental group trained 8 sessions of 90 minute by group cognitive emotion regulation method, and the control group remained on the waiting list for training. Data were collected with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz and Roemer, 2004) and Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (Bennett et al., 2009) and analyzed by methods of chi-square, t test and multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS-29 software.

Findings: The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups of fibromyalgia patients in terms of age, disease duration, marital status, and education level (P>0.05). Also, cognitive emotion regulation training reduced emotion dysregulation and symptoms of fibromyalgia disease (P<0.001).

Conclusion: According to the aforementioned results, therapists can use cognitive regulation training method along with other educational methods to improve features such as emotion dysregulation and symptoms of fibromyalgia disease.