Emotion-Focused Therapy: Coaching Clients to Work through Their Feelings, Leslie Greenberg (2015)
Introduction
Primary, Secondary, and Instrument Emotions
Greenberg categorizes emotions into three groups: primary emotions, secondary emotions, and instrumental emotions.
Primary and Secondary Emotions
Primary emotions are the automatic emotional responses we have to a trigger. Primary emotions can be adaptive, meaning that, if listened to, they will help the person get his needs met. For example, if I’m feeling sad because I experienced a loss, this is a primary emotion because this emotion is moving me to reach out to be comforted, the very thing in need in this situation.
Primary emotions can also be maladaptive. A maladaptive primary emotion is not so much a response to a present situation as it is “a reflection of past unresolved issues.” Such responses “once represented an attempt at optimal adaptation to aversive circumstances, but as circumstances have changed, they are no longer adaptive.”
Primary emotions can also be maladaptive. A maladaptive primary emotion is not so much a response to a present situation as it is “a reflection of past unresolved issues.” Such responses “once represented an attempt at optimal adaptation to aversive circumstances, but as circumstances have changed, they are no longer adaptive.”
Secondary emotions are “defenses against a more primary feeling or thought. They are not associated with a primary need and are troublesome because they often obscure what people are feeling deep down.” A client, for example, might say that he is resentful (secondary emotion) when deep down he is hurt (primary emotion).
Basic and Complex Emotions
Both primary and secondary emotions can be either basic or complex. Early in our evolutionary history, basic emotions developed. When people “sensed danger or violation, the emotional parts of their brains led them to feel basic emotion, such as anger or fear, and they simply fought or fled.” As our cognitive abilities increased, “more complex feelings — such as guilt, remorse, resentment, and embarrassment — emerged, as well as subtle feelings of wonder, appreciation, compassion, and love.” Complex emotions “integrate a lot of information, blend emotions with each other and with cognition, and give people a very high-level sense of themselves and the world, but they do not have as clear an action tendency as the basic feelings do.” These emotions “are more a source of information than of action tendencies.”
Both primary and secondary emotions can be either basic or complex. Early in our evolutionary history, basic emotions developed. When people “sensed danger or violation, the emotional parts of their brains led them to feel basic emotion, such as anger or fear, and they simply fought or fled.” As our cognitive abilities increased, “more complex feelings — such as guilt, remorse, resentment, and embarrassment — emerged, as well as subtle feelings of wonder, appreciation, compassion, and love.” Complex emotions “integrate a lot of information, blend emotions with each other and with cognition, and give people a very high-level sense of themselves and the world, but they do not have as clear an action tendency as the basic feelings do.” These emotions “are more a source of information than of action tendencies.”
Instrumental Emotions
Instrumental emotions are “learned expressive behaviors” that are “used to influence or manipulate others.” An example would be someone shedding crocodile tears to get his way.
Emotional Coaching
Emotional coaching involves two phases. The arrival phase involves “helping people arrive at and accept their feelings.” At the leaving phase, people must decide whether to stay at the place they’ve arrived. “If the place seems as if it will enhance their well-being, then they can stay there and be guided by what is in the place. If, however, they decide that being in this place will not enhance them or their intimate bonds with others, then this is not the place to stay, and clients have to find the means of leaving.”
Arrival Phase
Step #1: Promote Awareness of Emotions. Here we help the client gain awareness of his emotions. We might initially do this by directing the client’s attention to the physiological manifestations of an emotion. We might next ask what thoughts are accompanying the particular emotion.
Step #2: Facilitate a Welcoming and Acceptance of Emotional Experience. Here we encourage the client to allow himself to feel his emotional experience. We might educate him about feelings, saying that the feelings are a source of information and that he doesn’t necessarily need to act on them.
Step #3: Putting Emotions into Words. “People do not always need words for their emotions, but this is helpful when their emotions are signaling difficulties that need attention or when they want to reflect on or communicate their feelings..” Metaphors can also be used.
Step #4: Identify the Client’s Primary Experience. We need to “explore whether the client’s emotional reactions are his or her core feelings.” For example, if a client is talking about being angry with a coworker, we need to explore whether there is another feeling behind his anger.
Leaving Phase
Step #1: Facilitate the Evaluation of Whether the Primary Feeling Is Adaptive or Maladaptive. If the emotion is adaptive, it should be used as a guide to action. If the emotion is maladaptive, it needs to be further processed.
Step #2: Identify the Maladaptive Beliefs Attached to the Maladaptive Emotion. Maladaptive feelings are usually accompanied by maladaptive beliefs, that is, beliefs that are hostile to the self or others. The client must articulate these maladaptive beliefs. He goes about changing these beliefs by “accessing alternative experiences.”
Step #3: Facilitate Reowning of the Need in the Core Painful Emotion. We must next help the client focus on his needs and wants. We might ask, “What do you need when you feel this?” Once the client is aware of his needs, we help him to assert his needs and use them to challenge his maladaptive beliefs. Simply “[f]ocusing people on needs, wants, or goals helps them mobilize themselves to change.”
Step #4: Facilitate Access to Alternate Adaptive Emotions. For example, “in response to feeling the core emotion of shame or fear of maltreatment that makes the client feel worthless,” I need to “guide the client toward his or her healthy anger at being treated badly.” Major “healthy emotions appear to be empowering anger, the sadness of grief, and self-compassion — all of with approach tendencies that activate the organisms to act to get what is needed.”
Step #4: Facilitate the Development of a New Narrative. Here I help the client develop “a new narrative to change their old stories and beliefs. People change the old stories by adding emotions to empty stories, storying unstoried emotions, and using new emotions to develop new stories.”
Empathic Interventions
Greenberg lists five different different types of empathy.
(1) Empathic Understandings. These are reflections that convey an understanding of the client’s experience and “a checking of understanding. These responses attempt to distill the essence of the client’s communication.”
(2) Empathic Affirmations. This is validating the client’s experience.
(3) Evocative Responses. These are “intended to evoke vivid, pictorial representations” of the client’s experience to help access his feelings. You use “imagistic and concrete sensory language to try to bring the client’s experience alive.”
(4) Empathic Exploration. These responses are attempts “to capture feelings and meanings that are just at the edge” of the client’s understanding.
(5) Empathic Conjectures. These involve “guesses or hunches about what the client is feeling or offers for the client to try it on.”
Comments
Post a Comment