Changing Emotion with Emotion: a Practitioner's Guide: A Practitioner's Guide

"This book presents principles and methods for working with emotion in psychotherapy to address the core maladaptive processes that cause anxiety, depression, and other common mental health disorders. Mental health providers confront emotional suffering every day, yet working with emotion is rarely explicitly taught in most clinical graduate programs. There is evidence that emotional experience in therapy relates to therapy outcome, across multiple diagnoses. This research has given rise to strategies that address the core maladaptive processes that cause distress and dysfunction, rather than specific diagnoses. Methods described in this book can help clients with all types of disorders to "arrive at," or fully experience, their painful maladaptive emotions, and then "leave" these emotions by accessing new, adaptive emotions. These methods include helping clients sit with painful feelings, access bodily felt experience, identify unmet needs, and articulate the meaning of an emotion. Excerpts from moment-to-moment clinical dialogues help demonstrate techniques such as memory reconsolidation, providing corrective emotional experiences, chair work, and imaginal re-entry to past situations"-- Provided by publisher "This book presents principles and methods for working with emotion in psychotherapy to address the core maladaptive processes that cause anxiety, depression, and other common mental health disorders. Mental health providers confront emotional suffering every day, yet working with emotion is rarely explicitly taught in most clinical graduate programs. There is evidence that emotional experience in therapy relates to therapy outcome, across multiple diagnoses. This research has given rise to strategies that address the core maladaptive processes that cause distress and dysfunction, rather than specific diagnoses. Methods described in this book can help clients with all types of disorders to "arrive at," or fully experience, their painful maladaptive emotions, and then "leave" these emotions by accessing new, adaptive emotions. These methods include helping clients sit with painful feelings, access bodily felt experience, identify unmet needs, and articulate the meaning of an emotion. Excerpts from moment-to-moment clinical dialogues help demonstrate techniques such as memory reconsolidation, providing corrective emotional experiences, chair work, and imaginal re-entry to past situations"-- Site de l'éditeur Mental health providers confront emotional suffering every day, yet working with emotion is rarely explicitly taught in clinical graduate programs. There is evidence that emotional experience in therapy relates to therapy outcome across multiple diagnoses. This research has given rise to strategies that address the core maladaptive processes that cause distress and dysfunction, rather than specific diagnoses. This book presents principles and methods for working with emotion in psychotherapy to target the internal mechanisms that underlie anxiety, depression, and other common clinical disorders. Chapters in this volume focus on methods that help clients with all types of disorders to “arrive at,” or fully experience, their painful maladaptive emotions, and then “leave” these emotions by accessing new, adaptive emotions. These methods include helping clients sit with painful feelings, access bodily felt experience, identify unmet needs, and articulate the meaning of an emotion. Excerpts of moment-to-moment clinical dialogue demonstrate techniques such as memory reconsolidation, providing corrective emotional experiences, chair work, and imaginal reentry to past situations. Contents 5 Introduction: Working With Emotion in Psychotherapy 9 I. UNDERSTANDING THE FUNDAMENTALS 21 1. Emotion Theory 23 2. Research on Emotional Change 45 3. Changing Emotion With Emotion 65 4. Essential Therapist Skills for Practicing Emotion-Based Approaches 97 II. ARRIVING AT EMOTION 119 5. Empathic Attunement to Affect 121 6. Focusing on Bodily Feelings: When Words Are Not Enough 149 7. Blocks to Emotion 167 8. Unblocking Emotion 193 III. LEAVING EMOTION 223 9. Working With Needs 225 10. Reexperiencing the Past in the Present 249 11. Emotion Regulation 285 12. Narrative and Emotion 315 Looking Ahead: A Unified Approach to Psychotherapy 329 References 335 Index 359 About the Author 379