The study aimed to explore teaching cognitive emotion regulation strategies' effectiveness on cognitive processing and distress tolerance in female students with general anxiety. The research method used was a pre-test-post-test experiment with a control group. The research sample comprised all second-year secondary school students with general anxiety in Ardabil city during the academic year of 2023-2024. Employing purposive sampling, thirty students with general anxiety were randomly split into the experimental (15 individuals) and control (15 individuals) groups. The experimental group received eight 90-minute sessions of the cognitive emotion regulation strategies training program (Gross and Thompson, 2007), and the control group, which was on the waiting list, did not receive any training. In the data collection, Cruz's (1999) cognitive processing questionnaire and Simmons and Gaher's (2005) emotional distress tolerance scale were used. Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance. The results showed that after controlling the pre-test effects, there was a significant difference between the post-test average of the two groups in cognitive processing (P<0.001; F=27.50) and distress tolerance (P<0.001; F=17.51). Training in cognitive emotion regulation strategies proves effective in enhancing cognitive processing and distress tolerance among students with general anxiety. Based on the research findings, utilizing cognitive emotion regulation training can help alleviate issues in individuals with generalized anxiety.
