ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Organ. Psychol.
Sec. Employee Well-being and Health
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/forgp.2025.1487283
This article is part of the Research TopicEmployee Well-being and Health in a Boundaryless WorkplaceView all 5 articles
Emotion-Focused Ego-State Coaching Reduces Communication Apprehension: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Eilert-Akademie, Berlin, Germany
- 2University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria
- 3Reutlingen University, Reutlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
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Communication apprehension (CA) is a widespread phenomenon that negatively impacts not only communication skills but also psychological well-being and social connectedness. The present randomized controlled study investigates whether an online emotion-focused ego-state coaching based on the emTrace framework can reduce CA. Two ego-state interventions were compared: Core Transformation (CT), which aims to activate a self-transcendent state, and Smart Part Lab (SPL), which works via a creative inner negotiation process. A total of 260 German-speaking participants with elevated levels of CA were randomly assigned to the two intervention groups. CA was assessed using the PRCA-24 and a bipolar scale of subjective feeling at three time points (pre, post, and two-week follow-up). Results demonstrated a significant and stable reduction of CA across both interventions. 80% of participants who initially reported high CA experienced only moderate or low CA levels at follow-up. While CT significantly activated a more self-transcendent state than SPL, this did not result in a stronger reduction in CA, suggesting that self-transcendence is not the primary mechanism of change. The findings underscore that a single 80-minute online coaching session using ego-state interventions within the emTrace framework can sustainably reduce trait-like CA across multiple communicative contexts. This effect is particularly notable given that CA is generally conceptualized as a stable personality trait rather than a state-specific response. The study thus highlights the potential of resource-oriented, emotion-focused coaching approaches as effective low-threshold interventions to foster communicative confidence, emotional resilience, and broader psychological health.
Keywords: ego-state coaching, emTrace, Communication apprehension, Online coaching, Selftranscendence, Emotion coaching, Emotion-focused intervention
Received: 01 Oct 2024; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Eilert, Mensah and Schmäh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dirk W. Eilert, Eilert-Akademie, Berlin, Germany
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