EMOTION-FOCUSED TRAINING FOR EMOTION COACHING - AN INTERVENTION TO REDUCE SELF-CRITICISM

Emotion-Focused Training for Emotion Coaching (EFT-EC) is based on Emotion-focused Therapy findings and was developed to help participants deepen their emotional skills. The goal was to examine the efficacy of a 12-week EFT-EC group program the level of emotion intelligence, self-compassion and self-criticism in a student population. A quasi-experiment with no control group was conducted with pre- and post-measurements using The Self-compassion scale (SCS), the Forms of Self-Criticising/Attacking & Self-Reassuring Scale (FSCRS), and the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire - short form (TEIQue-SF). The EFT-EC participants were128 students. The EFT-EC intervention had a significant effect on self-criticism and self-control latent scores as reported at post-measurement. The structural equation model with latent variables was not an adequate fit for the rest of the subscales. These results are promising and suggest that interventions intended to enhance emotion skills can also reduce self-criticism even when not directly addressing it.