ABSTRACT

With Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy (RFP-C) for externalizing behaviors, the focus of the treatment is not to promote cognitive change in the child, but to promote implicit awareness. With many dysregulated children participating in a course of RFP-C, success will result in symptomatic improvement as a result of the development of an increased tolerance of painful emotions. The therapeutic process facilitates development of an awareness that painful emotions do not have to be so vigorously warded off. The child reaches this implicit awareness within the relationship with the clinician that can then be expanded to his/her life situations in home and at school. In other words, painful emotions can be mastered more effectively and the child's use of aggression as his/her main coping device is diminished. As a result of Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy, the child can master painful emotions more effectively and has less need for the use of maladaptive protective devices such as fighting.