ABSTRACT

Person-centered therapy conceptualizes anxiety as occurring when an individual perceives incongruence within themselves, so better understanding the self-concept of anxious individuals can help us understand this incongruence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three health anxious white British women which were then subjected to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This produced three master themes. The first, ‘living with health anxiety’, explored the experience of being health anxious: on the one hand identifying as a worrier and on the other hand having reason to be afraid. The second, ‘questioning health anxiety’, demonstrated an aspect of self that wished to transcend the confines of health anxiety by rejecting or interrogating it. The third, ‘anxiety among others’, drew attention to the interpersonal aspects of life with health anxiety. These results are applied to existing person-centered, focusing-oriented and emotion-focused therapy theories. Future research directions are suggested, and clinical implications are given.

摘要

以人为中心的治疗将焦虑概念化为当个体感知到自己的不一致时，因此更好地理解焦虑个体的自我概念可以帮助我们理解这种不一致。对三名健康焦虑的英国白人女性进行了半结构化访谈，然后对这些女性进行了解释性现象学分析。这产生了三个主要主题。第一个，“生活在健康焦虑中”，探讨了健康焦虑的经历：一方面确定自己是一个担忧者，另一方面有理由害怕。第二个，“质疑健康焦虑”，展示了自我的一个方面，它希望通过拒绝或质疑来超越健康焦虑的范围。第三，“其他人的焦虑”，提请注意健康焦虑的生活中的人际关系方面。这些结果适用于现有的以人为中心、以焦点为中心和以情绪为中心的治疗理论。提出了未来的研究方向，并给出了临床意义。