Chapter 4. Thinking from my emotionality (PEME in Spanish)

Completing the academic stage in Psychology requires future professionals to be well-prepared to identify and appropriately manage their own emotions, as well as those of their clients. The project Pensando desde mi Emocionalidad (Thinking from My Emotionality), known by its acronym in Spanish PEME, aims to provide interns with a new perspective on their emotions, focusing on identifying and managing them effectively through tools like narrative and self-referencing. The project seeks to help psychology interns recognize the tools they have developed for emotional management through lived crisis and to assess, through their narratives, whether their emotional challenges have been overcome.

This process is framed within a group dynamic of emotional containment, ensuring privacy and adherence to established guidelines. This framework encourages interns to recognize the need for therapeutic processes.  The project employed a qualitative study with an exploratory sequential design, engaging students from the Professional Practice courses scenarios 1 and 2 at the José Acevedo y Gómez campus of the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia (UNAD). The study was conducted between the second half of 2020 and mid-2023, involving 119 interns aged 19 to 50, with the majority being women.

A semi-structured interview was conducted at the end of their internships, yielding categories such as emotional regulation, acquired competencies, professional development, soft skills, and areas for improvement. After participating in the project, students showed significant growth across all categories. The study concluded that PEME is a project that fosters learning in individuals in recognition of their shortcomings and the need to deconstruct from learning and rebuild within themselves (in their own process), the evolution of their entire personal structure through empowerment as a future professional exercising an ethical and social role and strengthening the role of the psychologist in the community.