2.2.1. Outline: A
Concise Outline of General Process-Experiential Theory
I. Theory of Human Functioning
A. Emotion is fundamentally adaptive:
1. The way we construct reality is highly emotionally based.
2. Emotion tells us what is personally important (source of
information)
3. Emotion helps us to survive by providing an efficient,
automatic way of responding rapidly to important situations.
4. Emotion prepares us for action: emotions generate wishes/needs,
which generate action; in other words, every feeling has a need; and every need
has a direction for action.
B. Emotion schemes are complex, integrative structures of
experiencing:
1. Emotion schemes integrate experiencing by giving it meaning,
value, and direction.
2. Emotion schemes include various of forms of experiencing,
including the following:
•situations/memories
•bodily
sensations/expressions
•symbolic
representations (words, images; labels, metaphors)
•wishes/action
tendencies
•emotions
and integrative feelings (“felt sense”)
3. Different forms of experiencing (such as thought and feeling)
are interwoven and linked to each other.
4. Emotional experiencing evolves from moment to moment; emotion
schemes are continually constructed and reconstructed.
5. Emotion is multilayered: emotions can generate other emotions;
emotions can be secondary to other emotions.
6. Emotion schemes are idiosyncratic (content, expression and
organization are unique to each person)
C. Emotion Self-regulation
1. There is an optimal level of emotional arousal, which varies
the situation/task; too little and
too much emotional arousal are both dysfunctional.
2. The ability to regulate one’s emotions and level of emotional
arousal is necessary for adaptive functioning.
3. The ability to self-regulate emotion derives from early
attachment experiences with caregivers.
4. Effective emotional self-regulation requires both the
ability to access, heighten or tolerate emotion; and the ability to contain or
distance emotion.
5. Adaptive strategies for accessing emotion include
•attending
to emotion-related bodily sensations
•remembering
previous emotion episodes
•presenting
oneself with vivid emotional cues (words, images)`
•enacting
emotion expression and action tendencies
•monitoring
level of arousal in order to maintain safety
6. Adaptive strategies for containing emotion include:
•self-soothing
(relaxing, self-comforting, self-supporting, self-caring)
•seeking
support and understanding from others
•using
containing or distancing language or imagery
•temporarily
distracting oneself with other activities
•naming and understanding emotions
•controlling
expression of emotion (letting out a little at a time)
D. Dialectical Constructivism:
1. People are meaning-creating beings who are motivated to
symbolize experience in awareness.
2. When we come to know something about others or ourselves, both
the state of our knowledge and the thing itself are changed; what we call a
"fact" is actually a joint construction of the "things
themselves" and our knowing process.
3. The Self can be viewed as constructed of multiple aspects or
voices that exist in varying relationships with one another.
4. Self-aspects or voices often form conflicting pairs, such as
Critic and Experiencer.
II. Theory of Dysfunction
1. Inability to access and make use of all elements of emotion
scheme system leads to impulsive or maladaptive action.
2. Based on experience earlier in their lives, people sometimes
experience emotions that no longer fit their current situation (=maladaptive
primary emotion responses).
3. Secondary reactive emotional responses are later responses that
replace the person’s initial emotional responses with a less useful emotional
response.
4. In instrumental emotion responses, the person reacts to the
situation by strategically planning to enact an emotion.
5. Over-arousal or excessive accessing of emotion occurs when one
is flooded or overwhelmed by painful emotion; these lead to disorganization and
emotional avoidance.
6. Under-arousal or excessive emotional containment includes
trying to suppress or avoid emotion entirely and leads to emotional
dysregulation (numbing, emotional rebound effects, and impulsive actions).
7. Disaffiliative opposition among aspects of the self causes
emotional pain, blocks primary emotional responses, and leads to stuckness or
impulsive actions. Both active
self-attack and more passive self-abandonment, isolation, and
compartmentalization lead to problems.
III. Theory of Change
A. Dialectical constructivism
1. The client is an active change agent in a self-change process
aimed at continuing personal growth and development.
2. The client’s experiencing evolves from moment to moment.
3. Interaction between different aspects of the self (especially
between dominant and implicit/silenced self-aspects) generates newness/change.
4. Tolerant, friendly contact between different self-aspects
fosters adaptive action and a sense of integration or wholeness.
B. Emotional learning
1. Change requires access to and exploration of emotion.
2. PE Therapy is training in emotional intelligence, helping
clients learn how to use their emotions and developing strategies for adaptive
self-regulating of emotion.
3. With regard to emotional learning, the general goals of
PE therapy include the following:
a. Helping clients learn how to use their emotions as
information to guide them toward adaptive action. This includes the following:
•accessing,
exploring/enacting and symbolizing/appreciating the full range of emotion
schemes and emotion scheme elements (including affective, perceptual, bodily,
symbolic and action aspects)
•reflecting on their
emotions rather than acting on them impulsively
•restructuring
emotion schemes which no longer lead to adaptive action
b. Helping clients learn how to self-regulate their emotions,
including both
•accessing/heightening (through self-cuing
and internal attention focus)
•containing emotions
(through self-soothing, seeking support, symbolizing, using
containment/distancing strategies, and controlling expression)
C. Relationship Context of Change
1. Relationships that foster change function by providing safety
and support, encouraging the exploration/enactment, symbolization/appreciation,
and restructuring of experiencing.
2. Relational safety and support fosters client self-soothing and
self-support.
Materials designed to
accompany the book Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: The
Process-Experiential Approach to Change from APA Books.
©2003 Robert Elliott, Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, and Leslie Greenberg
http://www.process-experiential.org/learning