Unpacking Clients’ Beliefs About Emotion Regulation in Therapy
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Psychiatric, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 September 2026 | Viewed by 1298
Special Issue Editors
Interests: emotion regulation; emotion granularity; emotion perception; embodied learning and therapy; embodied cognition
Interests: embodied cognition; cognitive development; clinical assessment; learning sciences
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue will feature carefully curated articles that explore contemporary advances in how patients’ and individuals’ beliefs about emotion regulation (ER) contribute to the advancement of theory, assessment, and/or treatment across various clinical phenomena. Building upon Gross’s (2015) extended process model of ER—encompassing identification, selection, implementation, and monitoring—we aim to provide a more holistic understanding of therapeutic interventions. While many current psychotherapies emphasize specific stages, particularly the selection of ER strategies by targeting beliefs about emotion generation (as seen in CBT’s promotion of reappraisal), this Issue delves into how a patient’s or individual’s underlying beliefs at each stage of the ER process significantly influence their self-monitoring capacities and overall emotional well-being. For example, a belief in one’s limited agency over emotions might hinder the initial identification of an emotion as regulable. By illuminating the impact of these beliefs across the entire extended process model, we intend to identify novel and more impactful clinical interventions that address the full spectrum of emotion regulation challenges. This deeper understanding of the role of beliefs in the complete ER process has the potential to yield more targeted and effective clinical interventions.
Eligible review articles can be in a range of formats (e.g., systematic reviews, meta-analyses, narrative reviews, theoretical perspectives) and should be formatted in line with the 7th Edition of the Publication Manual of APA, as per the standard author guidelines of Behavioral Sciences.
Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The role of patient and individual beliefs in emotion regulation, as they might relate to different types of mental health disorders;
- The efficacy of treatment programs (or the assessment of techniques) that focus on emotion regulation based on patient and individual beliefs;
- The utility and validity of clinical treatment techniques or psychotherapeutic interventions that outline the relationship between emotion regulation and self-monitoring of the process.
Kind regards,
Dr. Jennifer Marie Binzak Fugate
Prof. Dr. Sheila Macrine
Dr. Jason Malousek
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- emotion regulation
- beliefs
- self-monitoring
- therapeutic interventions
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