clinical application of emotion in therapy Flashcards
what is the difference between a primary response and a secondary response
Primary Emotions: The first “gut-level” emotional response to a scenario or emotionally intense situation.
Ex. A student fails a test and first gets angry with the professor or class
Secondary Emotions: are responses secondary to other more primary internal processes and are often defensive.
Ex. The same student who failed is, underneath their primary experience of anger, feeling ashamed of their grade and anxious about their future in the class
what are the five principles of using emotion in therapy
increasing awareness of emotion, expressing emotion, enhancing emotion regulation, reflecting on emotion, transforming emotion
what is increasing awareness of emotion
Emotion Awareness can include:
Labeling Emotions: The therapist can assist by using check-ins “How are you feeling? How did it make you feel to talk about x” etc.
Empirical models of emotion awareness.(Developed by Lane and Schwartz)
- Identify through 5 different levels
-Physical sensations
-Action Tendencies
-Single emotions
-Blends of Emotions (Two separate emotions felt jointly, for example bittersweet)
-Blends of Blends (Your emotions and the impact of other people’s emotions on yours)
what is expressing emotion
Emotional engagement and emotional arousal and expression are building blocks of how emotion is engaged with and involve the interpersonal communication and personal promotion of feelings.
enhancing emotion regulation
How do we decide in treatment what emotions are to be regulated and how we should teach clients to regulate them?
-Empathy is an important factor for teaching clients how to self-soothe.
what is reflecting on emotion
Reflecting on emotion helps people make sense of the emotional experience and incorporate the experience into their self-narrative.
-How we understand our emotional experiences make us who we are. Emotional experiences provide information, symbolic significance, and reflecting on it can create new meaning.
what is transforming emotion
Emotion Transformation is the most important step of emotion focused work, it emphasizes the transformation of maladaptive emotional states towards adaptive emotional expressions.
-Emotions cannot be changed with logic, rather, they must be changed through the expression and experience of competing emotions or feelings.
what is emotion coaching
- Helps people attend to their emotions
- Encourages people to welcome their emotional experience and allow it
- Helps people describe their feelings in words.
4. Guides people to become aware of whether their emotional reactions are primary feelings
