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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u03a0\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae: Psychotherapy Networker<\/a><\/p>\n

How to Harness this Great Motivator<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Susan Johnson<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Neuroscientists have recently established that emotion is the prime organizing force shaping how we cope with challenges. Now psychotherapists are learning how to work with emotion, rather than trying to control it.<\/em><\/p>\n

God guard me from those thoughts men think in the mind alone. He that sings a lasting song, thinks in a marrow-bone.\u2014W. B. Yeats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mike leans forward, and in a low, intense voice, says, \u201cLook. It wasn\u2019t my idea to see a couples therapist. And I hear that this therapy you do is all about emotions. Well, that about counts me out. First, I don\u2019t have them the way she does.\u201d He points to his wife, Emma, who\u2019s staring angrily at the floor. \u201cSecond, I don\u2019t want to have them or talk about them. I work through problems by just staying cool. I hold on tight and use my little gray cells.\u201d He taps his head and sets his jaw. \u201cJust tell me what\u2019s wrong with us\u2014why she\u2019s so upset all the time\u2014and I\u2019ll fix the problem. Just tell me what to say, and I\u2019ll say it. We were just fine until we started to have kids and she started complaining all the time. All this spewing of \u2018feelings\u2019 just makes things worse. It\u2019s stupid.\u201d He turns away from me, and the silence is filled with the sound of his wife\u2019s weeping.<\/p>\n

The irony of this type of drama never fails to intrigue me. In one of the most emotional scenarios ever\u2014a couple trying to talk about their distressed relationship\u2014here\u2019s a partner insisting that the solution to distress is to ignore the emotion! Worse still, I\u2019m getting emotional! This client is upsetting me. I breathe in and get my balance. After all, I remind myself, what he\u2019s saying is so normal.<\/p>\n

Mental health professionals would agree with him. In fact, I agree with him, to some extent. Venting strong, negative emotion\u2014usually called catharsis\u2014is nearly always a dead end. More than that, most of us are wary of strong emotions. Emotions have traditionally been seen, by philosophers like Ren\u00e9 Descartes, for example, as part of our primitive animal nature and, therefore, not to be trusted. Reason, by contrast, has long been thought to reflect our higher spiritual self. In neuroscientific terms, the implication is that we\u2019re at our best when we live out of our prefrontal cortex and leave our limbic brain behind. More specifically, emotion is often associated with disorganization and loss of control. As Latin author Publilius Syrus, known for his maxims, wrote in the first century B.C., \u201cThe sage will rule his feelings; the fool will be their slave.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this is now changing. We\u2019re in the midst of a revolution, as far as emotion is concerned. Antonio Damasio, one of the great scholars in the emotion field, notes that this revolution began in the 1990s, when the inherent \u201cirrationality\u201d of emotion began to be questioned. We\u2019re now at the point where emotion\u2014the apparently crazy, irresponsible sleazebag of the psyche\u2014has been identified as an inherently organizing force, essential to survival and the foundation of key elements of civilized society, such as moral judgment and empathy. Emotion shapes and organizes our experience and our connection to others. It readies us for specific actions; it\u2019s the great motivator. As the Latin root of emotion, movere (to move) suggests, strong feelings literally move us to approach, to avoid, to act.<\/p>\n

Way before this emotion revolution, many therapists accepted that there was more to emotion than simply learning to control it\u2014that directly working with emotion was somehow central to the task of therapy. We recognized that old Publilius was wrong: it\u2019s not always good to control your emotions rigidly, and it\u2019s not always foolish to listen to them! The idea that some kind of \u201ccorrective emotional experience\u201d was necessary for any kind of effective psychotherapy was repeated endlessly, at least in the more dynamic psychotherapies. But exactly what the key elements of this experience are and how we get there with our clients remains difficult to define.<\/p>\n

Even with this more emotion-friendly attitude, it seems to me that, as a field, we still tend to err on the side of bypassing or containing emotion, rather than actively using it for change. For many years, this seemed to be particularly true in couples and family therapies. It makes sense, in that emotions are especially intense in difficult interactions with loved ones. Therapists have to deal with powerful attachment dramas, which unleash rivers of emotion in their clients, and their own emotional issues can be triggered as they watch these dramas unfold. Such therapists had better know their rivers, and how to swim! Otherwise, it\u2019s safer to sit on the bank, hold on to the traditional distrust of emotion, and try to create change through purely cognitive or behavioral means. But these interventions may not be sufficient, given that emotion and emotional signals are the central organizing forces in intimate relationships and that changes in emotional responses, such as increased love and tenderness, are hard to generate if we don\u2019t work with emotion directly.<\/p>\n

For many of us, formal training doesn\u2019t help much here. How many professional training programs\u2014even now, when we know so much more about the significance of emotion\u2014systematically teach how to understand emotion or to engage and use it to create transformation in clients? In clinical psychology programs, young therapists mostly seem to learn how to teach clients techniques for moderating out-of-control emotions. Even if we look at a master therapist who explicitly values emotion, such as the great Carl Rogers, we see less direct focus on emotion than we might expect. So it makes sense that many of us remain a little intimidated or off-balance in the face of the compelling experience of emotion. It\u2019s difficult for us to embrace it as a positive force and use it as a powerful tool for shaping growth in our clients.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s self-evident that emotion is captivating. If we can tune in to and address clients\u2019 deeper emotions, the therapy process is at once tangibly relevant, and they engage. Research tells us that when therapists help clients deepen emotion, clients attain better outcomes in therapy. When we shape powerful emotional interactions in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), we see seismic shifts in the core interactions that define lifetime relationships. Emotion takes us to the heart of the matter. New emotional mosaics create new perceptions and meanings. Even more important, they move us\u2014psychologically and physiologically\u2014into new response modes. If we can become comfortable with the power of emotion, it becomes the therapist\u2019s greatest ally, rather than a disruptive force to be contained.<\/p>\n

Even if we view emotions as essentially problematic, damping them down or circumventing them is no small task. Therapists often try to defuse negative emotion with such techniques as structured skill-building exercises, but the emotion usually seeps through and takes over anyway. We\u2019ve all seen empathy or positive communication exercises miss the mark when they\u2019re done with flat facial expressions or hostile tones. Physiologically, the attempt to suppress emotion is hard work, often resulting in increasing arousal. James Gross, a key researcher in affect regulation, finds that interactional partners pick up on this increased arousal and become more agitated themselves. We can all relate to the argument that goes: \u201cYou\u2019re mad,\u201d \u201cNo, I\u2019m not\u201d (said with clenched teeth), \u201cYes, you are; I don\u2019t even want to talk to you.\u201d But perhaps even more important than the effort required to regulate emotion is the fact that new, positive ideas and actions that emerge in session remain peripheral, unless we feel their force and connect with them on an emotional level.<\/p>\n

What do therapists need to know to harness the power of emotion in therapy sessions? I remember when I was an idealistic young therapist starting to work with couples and suddenly coming face-to-face with such tsunami-like emotion that, to be able to stay with and focus on the wave, I needed to see the order, the patterned structure of this experience. As I came to understand emotion better, I gained understanding about the way in which key emotions were constructed and processed. I became less intimidated and learned to embrace and ride the wave, using its force to create change. By learning about emotion, I was able to help clients order these experiences and use them positively in their lives.<\/p>\n

I could do all of this because I\u2019d been given a great map: I had Attachment Theory\u2014a systematic framework for personality and relationship development\u2014as a guide. This theory of self in relation to others places emotion and its regulation front and center. John Bowlby, its father, saw emotion as the great communicator. It gives us a \u201cfelt sense\u201d of our own physiology\u2014our \u201cgut wisdom.\u201d It connects us with our preferences and longings. It links us to others with lightning speed. For Bowlby, the dance of connection and disconnection with loved ones plays a pivotal role in defining who we are; emotion is the music that organizes this dance and gives it rhythm and shape.<\/p>\n

In the case of Mike and Emma, I feel more grounded and calm when I can track exactly how Mike regulates his emotions: he dismisses and denies them. This affects how he frames his signals to his partner\u2014a process that elicits particular negative emotional responses from her. These responses then confirm his need to \u201chold on tight\u201d and deny his emotions. Emotions aren\u2019t just inner sensations and impulses; they\u2019re social scripts. Self and system are molded in an ongoing feedback loop, which neither Mike nor his partner are aware of. The attachment framework sets out the deep logic of seemingly unpredictable emotions and tells me how and why Mike and Emma deal with them the way they do. There are only so many ways to deal with emotional starvation and the universal experiences of rejection and abandonment. When I know the territory, I feel confident enough to explore the terrain.<\/p>\n

What Is Emotion, Anyway?<\/span><\/p>\n

Science suggests that emotion is anything but primitive and unpredictable. It\u2019s a complex, exquisitely efficient information-processing system, designed to organize behavior rapidly in the interests of survival. It\u2019s an internal signaling system, telling us about what matters in the flood of stimuli that bombard us and tuning us in to our own inner needs. Research with brain-damaged subjects shows that without emotion to guide us, we can\u2019t make even the most elementary of decisions; we\u2019re bereft of preferences and have nothing to move us toward one option rather than another.<\/p>\n

Emotional signals, especially nonverbal, such as facial expression and tone of voice, communicate our intentions to others. Our brain takes just 100 milliseconds to detect and process the smallest change in a human face and just 300 milliseconds to mirror this change in our own body, so we literally \u201cfeel\u201d another\u2019s emotion. The fact that we can rapidly read intentions and coordinate actions has offered our species a huge evolutionary advantage. The ability to read six basic emotional expressions and assign the same meaning to these expressions is universal.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a consensus among experts that these basic emotions are anger, sadness, joy, surprise, shame, and fear. In anger, for example, the stare becomes fixed, eyes widen, and the brows contract; the lips compress and the body tenses. The impulse is to mobilize and move toward the object of the emotional response, so as to take control or eliminate the obstacle. When a client sits in front of me and tells me she has no idea how she feels, it helps me immeasurably to know that, in all probability, she\u2019s feeling her own version of one of these six core emotions.<\/p>\n

We have evidence that just naming emotions\u2014literally putting feelings into words\u2014seems to calm down amygdala activity in the brains of subjects viewing negative emotional images or faces. So it may help us \u201ctrust\u201d emotion and see it as a positive tool in psychotherapy if we can keep in mind the elements that make up an emotional experience. First, there\u2019s a cue from the environment. This is followed by an initial general perception (such as \u201cbad\u201d) and orientation to this cue and physical arousal. The meaning of cues and sensations is further evaluated in a more reflective cognitive appraisal. All these things prime a \u201cmove\u201d\u2014a compelling action tendency. These reactions all happen inside the skin, but they don\u2019t stay there. Emotion isn\u2019t silent or hidden.<\/p>\n

The signals that accompany this process create what psychologist and author Daniel Goleman calls a \u201cneural duet\u201d with others. Much of the time, this process is implicit and instantaneous. Mike turns away when Emma asks him about his day; Emma picks up this cue and her brain frames it as \u201cbad\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d; Emma\u2019s heart rate speeds up, and her body tenses; she scans for what this means and hits on \u201cI\u2019m losing him, he doesn\u2019t want me\u201d; she moves closer to Mike and, in an intense voice, says, \u201cYou never want to talk to me, anyhow\u201d; Mike hears anger, so he closes down and shuts her out.<\/p>\n

Once the cue has occurred, all these elements are shaped by Emma. Part of my job as an experiential therapist is to tune in to just how she does this. In this distressed relationship, she constantly monitors Mike\u2019s responses and is exquisitely sensitive to any potential rejection from him. At the first sign of rejection, her mammalian brain lights up in alarm. Neuroscience researcher Jaak Panksepp calls this alarm \u201cprimal panic.\u201d The neural circuit used here is the accelerated pathway through the thalamus to the amygdala; information about the responsiveness of an attachment figure has enormous survival significance, so the slower route through the reflective prefrontal cortex is bypassed. The meaning Emma makes here\u2014that she\u2019s unloved and Mike is cold and mean\u2014reflects experiences that remind her how dangerous it can be to reach for others. She moves close to lessen her sense of threat and pushes for a different response from her husband. He sees her as intrusive. When he moves away, he confirms her deeper fears, and so helps to shape her ongoing experience.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s missing from this version of Emma\u2019s emotional drama is that she tries to regulate her emotion. Regulation isn\u2019t something we do to emotion; it\u2019s just part of the process. As Dutch psychologist Nico Frijda puts it, we\u2019re continually shifting the balance between letting go and restraint. We have reactions to our initial sense of what\u2019s going on, and we try to cope with them as they\u2019re happening. This translates into different levels of emotional experience.<\/p>\n

At the end of this drama, which takes six seconds at most, Emma explodes in reactive anger. If we were to stop the frame at her first visceral response, we\u2019d call her emotion fear. Her overt anger is a response to her sense of threat. An emotionally focused therapist would see her anger as secondary and the fear as her primary emotion. If she could slow down and pay attention to her fear, her action tendency might be different; for example, she might ask for reassurance. She could also, conceivably, have reacted to her own fear by moving into numbing, especially if she\u2019d accessed thoughts of hopelessness and helplessness as part of her search for meaning. But she doesn\u2019t register her fear. When she talks about this drama in my office, she looks angry and blames her husband for his coldness.<\/p>\n

Not only do we have different levels of emotion, we have reflexive emotions\u2014emotions about our emotions. Clients often have deep anxiety about the catastrophe that awaits if they stay with their primary softer emotions, like sadness or fear. The general list of negative expectations can be framed as responses to the open-ended sentence, \u201cIf I become open and vulnerable, I\u2019ll find that I\u2019m. . . .\u201d The answers\u2014which can be summarized as the 4 D\u2019s\u2014are: defective, disintegrating, drowning, or dismissed. This list seems to cut across gender, class, and culture.<\/p>\n

Clients express these fears as follows: \u201cIf I feel my softer, deeper emotions, this means that I\u2019m weak or inadequate; others will see me this way and reject me\u201d; \u201cIf I feel this, I\u2019ll become more and more distressed; I\u2019ll lose myself\u201d; \u201cIf I feel this, the emotion will never go away\u2014it\u2019ll go on forever, and I\u2019ll drown in it\u201d; \u201cIf I feel this, no one will respond or be there to save me.\u201d<\/p>\n

I used to see clients\u2019 expression of this kind of pain as a metaphor, but it\u2019s more than this. Emotions \u201care of the flesh, and they sear the flesh,\u201d said Frijda. Until recently, the parallels between emotional pain, such as rejection, and physical pain, like burning your arm, were thought to be purely because of shared psychological distress. Now it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s a neural overlap in the way we process and experience social and physical pain. Tylenol can reduce hurt feelings, and social support can lessen physical pain. As predicted by Attachment Theory, emotional isolation and the helplessness associated with it seem to be key features of this emotional pain. Our need for connection with others has shaped our neural makeup and the structure of our emotional life.<\/p>\n

Once we can name implicit core emotions, track them through our clients\u2019 nonverbal communication, and thus create an integrated emotional experience by identifying all the elements and placing them in an attachment context, it isn\u2019t difficult to work with clients who are usually inexpressive or unaware of their feelings. When clients can touch their core emotions, implicit cognitions about the self, others, and the nature of life emerge and become available for review. For example, withdrawn partners often share deeply held negative beliefs about the inadequacy of the self. So we can understand the nature of emotion, its key elements, its different levels, and how it connects to action, cognition, and interaction, but sometimes being around strong emotions feels just plain dangerous.<\/p>\n

When Does Emotion Go Wrong?<\/span><\/p>\n

When we can access, regulate, and integrate our emotions, they provide an essential guide to living. But emotions, like everything, can go wrong. They\u2019re like \u201cbest guesses\u201d as to what we should do in a situation, not \u201csurefire winning solutions,\u201d says Stanford psychologist James Gross, who\u2019s done extensive research on emotional regulation. Demystifying the problems that occur with emotion can again increase confidence that emotion shouldn\u2019t be feared by clients or therapists.<\/p>\n

For better and for worse, strong emotion tends to restrict our range of attention. A negative emotion, like fear, can elicit irrational beliefs. It can flood us so that we can\u2019t think straight or only think in constricted, black-and-white terms. One metaphor that\u2019s now taking hold among my neuroscience colleagues is that the brain is a ruthless capitalist, which budgets its resources. Being afraid and trying to calm yourself is expensive in terms of resources like blood and glucose; areas specializing in cognitive tasks, like the prefrontal cortex, get starved.<\/p>\n

In simple terms, therapists and clients describe problems in terms of too much emotion, too little emotion, or conflicting emotions. Emotions can be overwhelming and create feelings of disorganization or chaos. Some clients can connect with different elements of their emotional experience, but can\u2019t order them into an integrated coherent whole; they use words like fragmented and confused to describe their inner life. Traumatized clients speak of being hijacked by all-encompassing emotional experiences in traumatic flashbacks. Other clients report feeling flat or cut off from any clear sense of their experience; their inability to formulate or name emotions leaves them aimless, without a compass to steer toward what they want or need. Many clients express conflicting emotions. In couples therapy, they speak of longing to be close and fearing to be close. In individual therapy, they may deny the fear laid out in a previous session, shame at vulnerability now blocking the recognition of this emotion. Specific strategies for regulating emotion can be problematic as well, especially if they become habitual and applied across new contexts. Therapists working with trauma survivors need to validate that, at certain times, it\u2019s functional and necessary to compartmentalize or even dismiss emotion. Alan, an Iraq War veteran, tells me, for example, \u201cWhen you\u2019re landing a helicopter under fire, you just focus on the IAI [Immediate Action Item], coping. Get the chopper down. Never mind your fear. Just step past it and focus on the task.\u201d This saves Alan\u2019s life on deployment. But if suppressing emotion becomes a general strategy, it turns into a trap. Numbing is the most significant predictor of negative outcome in the treatment of PTSD. It also sends Alan\u2019s marriage into a spiral of distress that further isolates and overwhelms him.<\/p>\n

A clear model of emotional health helps therapists find their way when these emotional processing problems occur. As a Rogerian and an attachment-oriented therapist, I have five goals for my clients. I want to help them: tune in to their deeper emotions and listen to them; order their emotional experience and make it into a coherent whole; keep their emotional balance so they can trust their experience and follow their inner sense of what they need; send clear, congruent emotional signals to others about these needs; and reciprocally respond to the needs of others. Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield speaks to these goals in his book The Wise Heart, where he suggests, \u201cWe can let ourselves be carried by the river of feeling\u2014because we know how to swim.\u201d<\/p>\n

We all encounter negative experiences and emotions; that\u2019s simply how life is. But humans have an invaluable survival adaptation: when we\u2019re emotionally stressed and our prefrontal cortex is \u201cfaint\u201d from hunger, we share burdens and turn to others for emotional and cognitive sustenance. When we can learn\u2014often with the help of another who\u2019s a \u201csafe haven\u201d for us and can offer an extra prefrontal cortex\u2014that negative emotions are workable, that we can understand them and find meaningful ways to cope with and embrace them, they lose much of their toxicity. They can become, in fact, a source of aliveness.<\/p>\n

Countless studies on infant and adult attachment suggest that our close encounters with loved ones are where most of us attain and learn to hold on to our emotional balance. This echoes ancient Buddhist wisdom encouraging practitioners to meditate on the faces of loved ones or on the experience of being held as a way of finding their balance in an emotional storm. Secure connection with an attachment figure, or a surrogate attachment figure\u2014a therapist, for example\u2014is the natural place to learn to regulate our emotional responses. It\u2019s when we can\u2019t reach for others or access inner models of supportive others in our minds that we resort to more problematic regulation strategies, such as numbing out, blowing up, or rigidly trying to control our inner world and loved ones. The attachment perspective allows a therapist to see past these secondary strategies to discern deeper, more primary emotions\u2014the desperate loneliness and longing for contact behind apparently hostile or dismissing responses, or the sense of rejection and helplessness underlying a withdrawn person\u2019s apparent apathy. The attachment perspective asserts what neuroscientists like James Coan are discovering in their MRIs: regulating emotions with others is a baseline survival strategy for humans. Effective self-regulation, behavioral psychology\u2019s mantra for years, appears to be dependent on and emerge from positive social connection.<\/p>\n

Emotion in the Consulting Room<\/span><\/p>\n

So what are the main messages of this new revolution in emotion for therapists? The first message is that emotion matters. When it\u2019s dismissed or sidelined, we\u2019ll often fail to engage our clients optimally or make the tasks of therapy personally relevant, and thus limit positive outcomes. The second message is that if we know the structure and function of emotion, as well as how it\u2019s shaped in human relationships, we can use its power to create lasting change in a deliberate, effective manner. This is true in individual and couples therapy, and for each, I suggest that the old adage that significant change requires a \u201ccorrective emotional experience\u201d applies. But specifically what have experiential therapists learned from the science of emotion about dealing with emotion and creating such corrective experiences?<\/p>\n

Nearly all therapy models now agree on the necessity of creating safety in session, if for no other reason than to facilitate our clients\u2019 open exploration of their problems. This safety is particularly essential if a client is to engage with and explore difficult emotions. For an attachment-oriented therapist, it has a specific meaning: in the session, therapists have to be not just kind or empathic, but truly emotionally present and responsive. This creates a holding environment, where clients can risk engaging in what Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, called the \u201csafe adventure\u201d of therapy. Part of a therapeutic presence relates to transparency, the therapist\u2019s willingness to be seen as a person who can be unsure or confused at times, rather than an all-knowing expert. If I\u2019m emotionally engaged, my mirror neurons will help me check into my own feelings to understand those of a client.<\/p>\n

In the treatment of problems such as depression, across different models, \u201ccollaborative,\u201d emotionally oriented interventions have been found to predict positive outcome better than more expert-oriented, \u201ccoaching\u201d interventions. Collaborative means that therapists join clients wherever they are\u2014in their reactive rage or numb indifference\u2014and find a way to validate these responses before exploring any unopened doors or alternative angles. Rogers told us long ago that the more we accept ourselves and feel accepted, the more we\u2019re open to change. Often, this means that therapists need to resist the pressure to fix problems instantly, and find the inherent logic in how their client is feeling and acting in the moment.<\/p>\n

Attachment and neuroscience emphasize the impact of gesture, gaze, facial expression, and tone of voice on the emotional reality of someone who\u2019s anxious and in pain, and who\u2019s sought the counsel of someone presumably \u201cwiser.\u201d The use of a soft, soothing voice on the part of the therapist makes sense here. Emotion is fast, so it makes sense to slow down if we want to help clients process emotion in new ways. Repeating simple, emotional terms that clients have found for themselves seems to foster the exploration of \u201chot\u201d experiences. This can be summarized, for those who like acronyms, as using the 3 S\u2019s\u2014slow, soft, simple\u2014to create a fourth S\u2014emotional safety. If a client is overwhelmed, for example, in a traumatic flashback, this kind of presence and empathic reflection grounds him and helps him keep a \u201cworking distance\u201d from his emotion. Focused empathic reflection soothes clients; they feel seen and heard. In EFT couples research, the initial level of a couples\u2019 distress doesn\u2019t significantly predict outcome, but the level of engagement in the treatment process does. The kind of alliance described above fosters this engagement with the therapist and the tasks he or she presents.<\/p>\n

In the case of Mike and Emma, I might say to Mike softly and slowly, \u201cI hear how much you want to fix this problem, Mike. It must be so hard to be turning on those gray cells and not to be able to fix this. It\u2019s hard to keep your balance. So you just try to hold on really tight when Emma gets upset with you, to keep some control here, yes?\u201d After a while, I begin to ask questions about just exactly how he \u201cholds on tight\u201d and what this feels like. This image offers me an emotional handle, a way into Mike\u2019s experience of himself and his relationship.<\/p>\n

An Emotional Focus<\/span><\/p>\n

Experiential therapists learn to use emotion as a touchstone\u2014to stay with, focus on, and return to emotional experience, constantly tracking emotional responses and developing them further. Creating a corrective emotional experience begins with this process. To stay here, rather than to move on to focus on modifying behaviors, creating insight, or offering advice requires a willingness to be relentless in guiding clients past tangential issues. This is infinitely easier if you have a basic knowledge of the science discussed above and a systematic way of working that\u2019s been empirically validated with different kinds of clients. All this offers a secure base for intervention, but it still isn\u2019t easy to keep reflecting and repeating the themes that show up in each client\u2019s emotional responses until the ordered patterns in experiencing and interacting emerge and their consequences become clear. Empathic reflection is the primary tool here, though its versatility is often missed. In one stroke, a tuned-in reflection can calm clients and build safety, focus the therapy process, and slow down the flow of experience and interaction so that grasping key elements is possible. It helps order and distill emotion into something explicit and workable. As this process is repeated and tentative fresh meanings emerge, often in the form of evocative images, a new, coherent picture of inner and interpersonal realities is formed. Fragmented and unformulated elements are integrated into a new whole, which opens up new possibilities for action.<\/p>\n

So with Mike and Emma, the therapist might say, \u201cCan you help me, Mike? You\u2019re saying that you want some magic words that would stop Emma from being upset? And you\u2019re worried that if we talk about emotions, it\u2019ll be just like the arguments you have at home?\u201d Mike nods emphatically. \u201cYou\u2019re going to hear Emma complaining about you, saying she\u2019s disappointed with the relationship, while you don\u2019t even understand what\u2019s really wrong here? Talking about this is almost like a danger zone you don\u2019t know the way out of. So you get frustrated and just want all this fixed. And when you can\u2019t fix it . . . ?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI leave,\u201d Mike says. \u201cI go for a walk. What\u2019s the point of standing there arguing? I just shut the door on her and go for a walk. There\u2019s nothing else to do.\u201d Understanding emotions in the context of attachment, it\u2019s easy to anticipate that Emma experiences Mike\u2019s withdrawal as a sign of abandonment and then protests his distance by further complaining and criticizing. Indeed, she now adds, \u201cRight, and I\u2019m all alone in the house upset. You just walk away like I don\u2019t matter. I hate feeling so hurt all the time. I spew. I can\u2019t let you just walk away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The therapist might reflect the whole emotional drama by saying, \u201cAnd the more you turn away, Mike, to try to stop the upset, the more you feel alone, Emma? You end up spewing words to get him to turn around and not leave you? This loop has kind of taken over. It\u2019s painful for both of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experiential therapists would be careful to validate and normalize Emma\u2019s hurt so that she\u2019ll continue to explore and own it. Hurt feelings have been identified as a combination of reactive anger, sadness over loss, and fear of abandonment and rejection. Attachment theory predicts that Emma\u2019s critical pursuit is fueled by anxiety and a sense of lost connection with her partner. This knowledge guides the therapist as he or she reads Emma\u2019s emotional cues. As Emma opens up to her emotions, she moves past her rigid, angry stance into deeper emotions of sadness and bewilderment, and begins to tell Mike about her loneliness. The expression of new emotions then evokes new responses. Mike sees her sadness and feels relief and compassion\u2014as it\u2019s happening, in the present<\/p>\n

Therapies that privilege emotion, such as EFT and Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy, state that the most powerful way to work with emotion is in the present moment, as it\u2019s happening and being encoded in the neurons and synapses. Working with emotion from the bottom up, as it\u2019s being shaped, makes for a vivid encounter with key emotional responses. Clients usually start a session by giving a cognitive account of their feelings or going over past emotional stories. But to access the true power of working with emotion, the therapist must bring pivotal emotional moments and responses into the session. This creates an intense spotlight on process, the specific way emotion is created, shaped, and regulated.<\/p>\n

Mostly, we act as if emotions simply happen to us; we don\u2019t see how we shape our own experience and induce negative responses from others. Viewing experience as an active construction is empowering. Clients are then able to face the ironic fact that their habitual ways of dealing with difficult emotion\u2014ways that may have gotten them through many dark nights of the soul\u2014now trap them and create their ongoing pain.<\/p>\n

So I ask Mike questions that help him tune in to his own emotional processing. \u201cMike, right here, right now, Emma is telling you that she\u2019s angry and that the moment that really triggers her is when you turn and walk away. What\u2019s happening for you as you hear this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s just what she did yesterday,\u201d he replies, and offers a theory that all women get angry for very little reason.<\/p>\n

I try again: \u201cRight now, how do you feel when she says, \u2018You just walk away,\u2019 in an angry voice?\u201d Mike just shakes his head. He begins, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u2014don\u2019t know which way is up here\u2014lost my balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

I lean in and ask, \u201cCan you feel that sense of being off-balance right now?\u201d He nods again. \u201cWhat does it feel like?\u201d<\/p>\n

He slumps back in his chair and says, \u201cLike I\u2019m lost in space. My world is falling apart and I don\u2019t know what to do.\u201d He gives a long sigh.<\/p>\n

Many therapists who are comfortable going to the leading edge of a client\u2019s emotions will go one small step further and make small additions or interpretations, such as, \u201cFalling, losing direction, no balance\u2014that sounds very hard, scary even.\u201d If Mike accepts the inference and allows himself to touch his fear, he might reply, \u201cYes. I\u2019m scared. We\u2019re falling apart. So I run away. What else is there to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

By staying focused on Mike\u2019s experience and continually piecing it together in vivid and specific language, the therapist helps him create a felt sense of his experience and expand it. Continual validation of his experience and reflective summaries allow him to stay engaged with, but not be overwhelmed by, his emotions. He can begin to pay attention to Emma\u2019s messages about how his distancing affects her, and both partners can see how they generate the demand\u2013withdraw dance, which triggers their distress. Once difficult emotions become clear and workable, clients can better hear and empathize with the other partner. They begin to own their problematic emotions, move past surface responses into deeper concerns, and take a metaperspective on inner processing and interpersonal responses. But this is only the first stage in personal and relationship change.<\/p>\n

New Emotions, New Signals, New Steps<\/span><\/p>\n

Emotionally focused therapists have to help clients create positive patterns of effective emotional regulation and response. These patterns build a sense of efficacy and foster positive cycles of emotional responsiveness, which shape secure bonds with others. These, in turn, reinforce the effective regulation of emotion. Moving into deeply felt vulnerabilities and congruently sharing them with a trusted therapist or loved one leads naturally to a new awareness of heartfelt emotional needs. This is the first crucial step to meeting these needs in a positive manner.<\/p>\n

In couples therapy, the open, congruent expression of such needs tends to touch and move the other partner, evoking empathy and increased responsiveness. To deepen emotion, therapists can reflect back on and repeat the emotional images and phrases a client has used all through therapy, carefully eliciting the deeply felt elements of an emotion to create a cognitively coherent yet bodily experienced reality. When this core emotion is owned and integrated, it changes a client\u2019s sense of self and engagement with others. After about a dozen sessions of couples therapy, Mike is able to reach for his wife with a new openness and clarity.<\/p>\n

He begins, \u201cI know I\u2019ve shut you out. But it\u2019s all I knew how to do. When we get into our fights, I feel so lost [initial perception]. I get all spacey and confused [body response]. I\u2019d tell myself that you\u2019d never loved me\u2014me with my grade-12 education. I just wasn\u2019t good enough for you [catastrophic meaning]. So I\u2019d run [action tendency]. Now, I don\u2019t want to hold on for dear life every time you\u2019re angry, but I want you to stop pushing so hard. Give me a break. I don\u2019t want you to feel alone. I want to learn to be with you. I need you close to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike\u2019s longings and needs are now clear, and he reaches for Emma in a way that triggers a reciprocal openness. These fully felt emotional moments and interactions release a torrent of positive feelings and new ways of seeing. A new music of positive emotions\u2014surprise and joy\u2014begins to play. New vistas of safe connection to one\u2019s own experience and to others open up. More coherent emotions lead to more coherent messages to others and more organized, effective action. As the proponents of Positive Psychology suggest, positive emotion has a broadening and building effect on the human psyche.<\/p>\n

A Corrective Emotional Experience<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as we can now unpack the elements of emotional experience, maybe we can unpack this age-old phrase and try to capture the essence of change. \u201cCorrective,\u201d emotion researchers remind us, doesn\u2019t mean that older experience is erased or suppressed. The emotional system doesn\u2019t allow data to be removed or placed to one side easily because nature favors false positives over false negatives where matters of survival are at stake. But old neural networks can be added to or even overwritten. So there\u2019s no need to \u201cget rid of\u201d negative emotions; rather, we should try to expand them. When reactive anger is validated and placed in context, the threat that\u2019s a vital part of that anger comes to the forefront, and this awareness changes how the anger is experienced and expressed. This sense of threat, or any primary emotion, is most easily discovered, distilled, and made into an integrated whole within an emotionally congruent, accepting therapeutic relationship. This sense of safety is necessary for a corrective experience, but it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n

For a corrective experience to occur, we must engage with and attend to our emotions in new ways and on deeper levels. I remember telling my therapist that, in spite of flying constantly, I was still somewhat afraid. We explored this, going moment by moment through my experience of flying and ordering the elements so that the structure of this experience became clear. Suddenly, we both realized that I was using so many techniques to \u201cdeal with\u201d being on the plane that I was never actually present enough to experience anything new! My extensive coping mechanisms had become the problem. Imagine my surprise when I actually sat on a plane, heard my therapist\u2019s voice in my head telling me to just be present, and found that I liked roaring into the air and floating off to new places! Part of correction is also the creation of new meanings. Flying became a way to explore my universe, rather than a near-death experience to be survived.<\/p>\n

Corrective experience redefines the experiencer. I became someone who could get used to flying and felt able to fly. With a new sense of mastery comes new emotions; in this case, exhilaration. New action tendencies follow. I joyfully signed up for a trip that included many flights on small planes through foreign lands!<\/p>\n

Corrective also implies that the emotional messages I send to others, as well as their impact, will evolve and change as they\u2019re received and reciprocated. As Emma becomes more empathic, her acceptance acts as an antidote to Mike\u2019s acknowledged sense of failure, especially when he directly shares these feelings and takes in her tender acceptance. As Mike feels less lost and overwhelmed in his interactions with his wife, he can tolerate her expressions of disappointment and tune in to her hurt. She accesses her longing and asks for comfort. As he responds, they create powerful bonding interactions. Their new safe-haven connection will continue to reshape not only their old habits of defensive withdrawal and reactive criticism, but also their vigilance for potential threat.<\/p>\n

An emotionally corrective experience changes more than how emotions are dealt with (for example, whether they\u2019re suppressed or reframed): it changes how emotional stimuli are perceived. More-secure lovers not only cope more effectively with hurt and anxiety, but perceive cues as less hurtful, in their relationship and in the world. Jim Coan, who uses fMRI scans to study the impact of attachment in the brain, has shown that holding the hand of a loved and dependable partner is a safety cue that changes how the brain perceives and encodes threats, like the threat of electric shock, even lessening the amount of pain such a shock induces.<\/p>\n

A corrective emotional experience has been formulated as resulting from new insights, but cognitive insight is only one part of change. Novelist Arnold Bennett\u2019s comment is pertinent here: \u201cThere can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.\u201d Pivotal, small changes in a living system, such as a person or a relationship, can engender radical qualitative shifts, as when ice suddenly hits 32 degrees Fahrenheit and becomes water. A significant shift in a leading or organizing element in a system\u2014and primary emotion is such an element\u2014can reorganize the whole system relatively abruptly.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the midst of a revolution in our relationship to emotion. The idea that emotion isn\u2019t the poor cousin to reason but a \u201chigher order of intelligence\u201d has been around for decades, but now the evidence for this assertion is clear. As a result of this change of perspective and the new understanding of the nature of emotion, therapists can more deliberately use these powerful, bone-deep responses to transform their clients\u2019 lives and relationships. It\u2019s time to see emotion for what it is: not a nebulous force to be minimized and mistrusted, but the therapist\u2019s greatest ally in the creation of lasting change.<\/p>\n

Susan Johnson, Ed.D., professor of clinical psychology, is one of the developers of Emotionally Focused Therapy, one of the most empirically validated approaches to couples work. She\u2019s the director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute and the International Center for Excellence in EFT<\/a>. Her latest book is Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u03a0\u03b7\u03b3\u03ae: Psychotherapy Networker How to Harness this Great Motivator By Susan Johnson Neuroscientists have recently established that emotion is the prime organizing force shaping how we cope with challenges. Now psychotherapists are learning how to work with emotion, rather than trying to control it. God guard me from those thoughts men think in the mind […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8","category-16","category-8-id","category-16-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p12hmI-SE","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3394,"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3388\/revisions\/3394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/processworkhub.gr\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}