فهم المشاعر: الفصل 7

Chapter 7: Understanding, Continuity, Control, Guilt/Shame, and Acceptance

• This chapter explores the understanding, continuity, and control of emotions. It also discusses feelings of guilt and shame, and acceptance.
• The sessions focus on understanding specific emotions that cause distress.
• The specific beliefs and emotional regulation strategies are assessed.
• Cognitive biases are identified, and patients learn about the consequences of their beliefs about emotion.
• Strategies for exploring and modifying five aspects of emotional schemas are outlined.
• Patients learn about the perception of emotions, the duration of emotions, and how to control emotions.
• Various cognitive-behavioral techniques, such as the advantages and disadvantages of a belief, evidence for and against a belief, information gathering techniques, and dual criteria techniques, are used.
• Behavioral experiments and experiential exercises are employed both in the therapy room and outside of it.
• Emotional schema therapists use techniques such as mental imagery induction and its reconstruction.
• Techniques are applied to help modify these five types of problematic beliefs about emotions.
• These techniques increase patients' ability to tolerate emotional experience and utilize it. They help with disconnecting the link between emotional schema and problematic coping mechanisms.

Understanding Emotions

• The origin of emotions might be unclear for some people.
• The consequence of this belief is that the individual feels confused, helpless, and hopeless.
• If emotions seem unmanageable, individuals might fear emotions.
• They may think that they are losing control, their sanity is waning, or that they have no control over something they don't understand.
• Individuals who believe their emotions don't align with their rationality might ruminate, wondering why they feel a certain way or what happened to them.
• Understanding emotions is a key element in emotional schema therapy.
• Some patients have alexithymia; difficulty naming, distinguishing, and recalling events related to different emotions.
• Emotional schema therapists help patients focus on the starting point and experience of different emotions.
• Connection between emotions, thoughts, and events to provide context in which they occur is facilitated.

Additional Techniques

• The use of various tools including, mindfulness techniques (e.g., detached awareness, increasing psychological flexibility), positive psychology techniques (e.g., identifying harmful patterns, connecting painful emotions to higher values), and compassion-focused therapy techniques are utilized.
• These tools aim to help modify problematic beliefs about emotions, improve patients’ ability to tolerate emotions and use them as useful information. They also help patients break the connection between emotional schemas and problematic coping mechanisms.