Emotion…what is it and why is it important?

Understanding Emotions: More Than Just Feelings

We all know what emotions are, right? We might describe them as our feelings, our responses to people and events in our lives. Some of these emotions are welcome for most people, joy, for example. Other emotions are not pleasant to experience, and in some instances can even feel dangerous or scary. This is a simplified way of looking and at and understanding emotion, and in many ways, underestimates the fundamental importance they play in how we function (or not function) in the world, both in our interactions with others, in how we understand ourselves, and in our behavioural responses.

The Importance of Emotional Balance

If life is lived in a way that denies emotions, experiences only a limited range of emotions, tries to suppress or avoid emotion, or in a constant state of feeling at risk of being overwhelmed by emotion, then this can be hugely problematic for an individual’s sense of wellbeing. In essence, emotional balance, which allows someone to access their emotions, regulate their emotions and use the emotion to acknowledge and articulate needs, is what therapies such an Emotionally Focused Therapy aims to achieve. 

How Our Early Experiences Shape Emotional Responses

As we are beginning to see, emotional responses are complex, and in many cases, our emotional responses to things are adaptive responses which we have learnt through our experiences, often through our childhoods and relationships with our early caregivers. This is the basis of attachment theory; secure attachment with a primary caregiver allows emotional responses to develop that mean that an individual is able to recognise and acknowledge their needs, send clear messages about their needs, reach out for and take in care, and give care to others.

Attachment and Emotional Adaptation

Sometimes emotional responses develop as an insecure attachment, due to the experiences and interactions we have with our early caregivers, other significant figures in our lives, or traumatic events that we experience. In these cases, when emotions are triggered, an adaptive response to these feelings may be avoidant; you withdraw, run away, minimize your needs, avoid connection with others. Alternatively, another adaptive response may be anxiety; you are on alert all the time and have high needs that you seek constantly to be met. Sometimes the response can be a combination of the two. The resulting experience of these adaptive responses, which worked well at the time when they developed, is a sense of isolation and ‘aloneness’ in the present when perhaps they aren’t working as effectively.   

When Emotional Responses Become Problematic

If any of this may be sounding familiar, then Emotionally Focused Therapy could be an effective model for you. So how would a therapist help with these adaptive responses to emotions that are causing you distress? First and foremost, it will be about creating a place of safety within the therapy room, and between you the client, and the therapist.

How Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Can Help

Together, you will work towards starting to understand how you experience emotion, the meaning you make of it and your responses to it. This can be scary. Some emotions feel ‘‘frightening, alien and unacceptable”. Your body doesn’t want you to feel these emotions because it has learnt in the past that there is a threat there if you do. This makes complete sense; it is an adaptive response to a very real, felt sense of threat and danger in early life.

That’s why the therapy is slow, follows your pace, and is collaborative; the therapist is with you in the experience. Gradually, the emotion and emotional response is broken down, processed, and experienced again in the present, but this time with a sense of safety, provided through the secure attachment with the therapist, or, as therapy progresses, with the reassuring presence of an older, wiser self. It is not about re-living a trauma, recovering traumatic memories, or re-writing history; it is about re-processing the emotional response so that your body can learn it can respond in a different way.  

The Power of Reprocessing Emotions in Therapy

The impact can be powerful, and once access to emotions is increased, and a client begins to be able to acknowledge their needs, they can start to reach out and ask for care, but also be able to receive it from others; the result is an escape from the isolation, the ‘aloneness’, which is often the experience of an individual who has developed an insecure attachment.  

Take the Next Step: Exploring EFT

If any of this resonates and you would like to talk further about how EFT may be able to help you then please contact me through the website.  

Reference 

Johnson, S and Campbell, L. 2022. A Primer for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFIT). New York and Oxon: Routledge