Emotion-Focused Therapy (Theories of Psychotherapy) by Greenberg Leslie S

Author:Greenberg, Leslie S. [Greenberg, Leslie S.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781433808586
Publisher: American Psychological Association
Published: 2009-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

Basic Emotional Processing Steps in Transformation

A model for evoking, exploring, and transforming “bad feelings” has been proposed and tested; it is based on clinical theory and practice and involves moving from secondary emotions through primary maladaptive emotions to primary adaptive emotions (Greenberg & Paivio, 1997; Herrmann, Greenberg, & Auzra, 2007; Pascual-Leone & Greenberg, 2007). Transformation of distressed feelings begins with attending to the aroused feelings (e.g., “I feel bad”) followed by exploring the cognitive–affective sequences that generate the bad feelings (e.g., “I feel hopeless,” “What’s the use of trying?”). Eventually this leads to the activation of some core maladaptive emotion schematic self-organizations based on fear or shame (e.g., “I’m worthless,” “I can’t survive on my own”). At this point in the transformation process a new adaptive experience is accessed.

When clients in states of global distress begin to elaborate and differentiate their thoughts and feelings, they subsequently move in one of two directions: into a core maladaptive self-organization based on maladaptive emotion schemes of fear and shame or the sadness of lonely abandonment; or into some form of secondary expression, often of hopelessness or a type of rejecting anger (A. Pascual-Leone & Greenberg, 2007). The path to resolution invariably leads to the expression of adaptive grief or hurt and to empowering anger or self-soothing, and these facilitate a sense of self-acceptance and agency. More resourceful clients often move directly from secondary emotions directly to assertive anger or healthy sadness, but many of the more wounded clients need to work through their core maladaptive attachment-related fear and sadness or identity-related shame (Greenberg, 2002; Greenberg & Paivio, 1997; Greenberg & Watson, 2006).

Clients who begin in states of distress and who resolve their distress do so mainly by entering into feelings of maladaptive fear, abandonment, sadness, or shame. In these states they experience themselves as inadequate, empty, lonely, and unable. Transformation occurs when these maladaptive states are differentiated into adaptive needs, which act to refute the core negative evaluations about the self embedded in their core maladaptive schemes. The essence of this process is that core adaptive attachment and identity needs (i.e., to be connected and to be validated) embedded in maladaptive feelings of fear, shame, and sadness, when mobilized and validated, act to access more adaptive emotions and to refute negative self-messages of being unworthy of love, respect, and connection. The inherent opposition of these two experiences (“I am not worthy or lovable” and “I deserve to be loved or respected”) supported by adaptive anger or sadness, in response to the same evoking situation, overcomes the maladaptive state. This is done by accessing new self-experience and creating new meaning, which leads to the emergence of a new more positive evaluation of the self.

Within the context of a validating therapeutic relationship, the client then moves on to grieve, acknowledging the loss or injury suffered (recognizing “I don’t have what I need, and I miss what I deserved”), and to assert empowering anger or self-soothing. Depending on whether the newly owned need involves boundary setting or comfort, clients direct their adaptive emotion expression outwards to protect boundaries (i.

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