Improving Emotional Awareness as a Potential Mechanism of Change in Psychotherapy for Personality Disorders: A New Perspective

An individual's awareness of their own and others' emotional experience is a key construct in several psychotherapy models, including for clients with personality disorders. Research into emotional awareness in personality disorders and their treatment has been scarce, yet it seems important to understand how these processes change in psychotherapy and how this change explains symptom reduction, in particular by conceptualizing situation-bound fluctuations of emotional awareness. In this current perspective article, we establish a theoretical consensus on models of emotional awareness and discuss current open research questions related to emotional awareness in clients with personality disorders. We conclude with the hypothesis that increased emotional awareness is a central mechanism of change in psychotherapies for personality disorders.