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Evaluation ViewAttendees 23

Invited Plenary

Program / Treatment Design

Plenary 1b - Intervening on the Emotional Moment with those in Distress

Friday, November 21, 2025
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM CST
Location: Celestin D&E, Level 3
Earn 0.5 Credit
Keywords: Anxiety, Depression , Treatment
Level of Familiarity: All
Recommended Readings: Szkutak, A., Anene, E., Mennin, D. S., & Fresco, D. M. Chapter 11. (in press). Emotion regulation therapy (ERT) I: History and theoretical frameworks. In W. Li, G. Griffith, S. Shapiro, Zhu, Z (Editors), The Palgrave Handbook of Third-Wave Psychotherapies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.,   Clayton, M., Hernandez, M., Mennin, D. S., & Fresco, D.M. Chapter 12. (in press). Emotion regulation therapy (ERT) II: Treatment Mechanisms and Components. In W. Li, G. Griffith, S. Shapiro, Zhu, Z (Editors), The Palgrave Handbook of Third-Wave Psychotherapies. . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.,   Spaeth, P., Renna, M., Skytte O’Toole, M., Mennin, D. S., & Fresco, D. M. Chapter 13. (in press). Emotion regulation therapy III: Foundations and frontiers in investigating efficacy and mechanism. In W. Li, G. Griffith, S. Shapiro, Zhu, Z (Editors), The Palgrave Handbook of Third-Wave Psychotherapies. . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.,   ,  
Distress from condition or circumstance can be understood from both context (e.g., society, community, group, inter-person, and intra-person) and time (i.e., mean traits, modal occurrences, and momentary instances) perspectives. Cultivating our ability to meet clients’ phenomenological experience within and outside of session may hold clues to improving refactory outcomes of those in distress from experience (e.g., physical disease, victim of discrimination) and conditions (e.g., ruminative depression, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD). One important consideration is understanding distress through the expanse of different timescales, particularly across momentary emotional cascades where difficulties occur from elevated emotions to dysregulatory processing to dysfunctional behavioral responses. Treatments honed to better target each components of this cascade may be able to improve outcomes for distress. Changes in the ways we conceptualize emotional awareness and regulatory specification may also contribute to improved outcomes. Importantly, variable and diminished treatment responses in individuals from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds challenge our therapeutic systems to be better specified and more contextually responsive. New developments in adapting interventions in session and in lived experience may help increase our precision through the simultaneous consideration of time and context elements within targeted moments. Research supporting a functional emotion regulation perspective and treatment approach will be reviewed with particular attention to developments in utilizing motivation and regulation conceptualizations in treatment as well as frontiers in “just-in-time” dynamic adaptations to improve personalization to varying clinical presentations.

Outline:
1. Distress in context and time
2. Means, Modes, Moments
3. Functional Emotion Regulation Model
4. Emotion Regulation Therapy
5. Awareness Processes
6. Regulation Processes
7. Behavioral Processes
8. Person/Time in Context
9. Future Directions in Person/Time in Context
10. Summary and Conclusions

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, the learner will be able to:
  1. Examine context and time perspectives of distress.
  2. Investigate findings on targeted intervention of a functional emotion regulation perspective and treatment.
  3. Explore approaches to improve personalization of treatment through consideration of time and context factors in lived moments
  4. Long-term Goal: To deepen understanding of a functional emotional regulation framework of treating distress.
  5. Long-term Goal: To explore how different forms of distress may be ameliorated by utilizing this framework with consideration of time by context elements in lived moments of difficulty.