2.4.2. A Self-Administered Exercise for
Exercise: Classifying Emotion Responses
The purpose of this exercise is to help you identify different kinds of emotion response. It is best to start when you are actually feeling upset about something. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down and try the following steps:
1. Listen to your body. When you feel a new sense of upset,
pay attention to the basic sensations in the trunk of your body, stomach,
chest, arms, throat and to your face.
Ask yourself what is it like inside, what am I feeling in my body?
2. Let yourself feel the emotion. Welcome the feeling. Do not negatively evaluate the
feeling. Accept it.
3. Name the feeling.
Put words to your feeling.
Find words that help articulate what it's like inside. Let the words come from the
feeling as much as possible.
4. Identify whether your emotional reaction is direct (primary)
or indirect (secondary or instrumental).
•Ask yourself:
•
Is this what I truly feel at rock bottom?
•
Is this my most core feeling?
•To test this ask:
•
Do I feel something else that comes even before this?
•
Do I feel something in addition to what I'm most aware of feeling?
•If you get a yes to either of these last two questions, your
feeling is probably a secondary emotion response rather than a
primary adaptive (“core”) feeling.
•Otherwise, ask yourself:
•Am
I trying to accomplish something with this feeling?
•Am
I trying make a point or tell someone else something with this feeling?
•If you get a yes to this question your feeling is probably an instrumental
emotion response
•If your reaction was secondary or instrument, listen again to
your body and go through steps 1 to 3 once more.
•Otherwise, continue on.
5. Establish if your primary emotional reaction is adaptive
(healthy) or maladaptive (unhealthy).
•Ask yourself:
•Is this feeling a response to other past experiences rather than
mainly a response to what's happening now?
•Is
there a pattern of recurrent bad feeling here?
•Is
this a familiar stuck feeling?
•If the answer to these is yes, then it's probably a maladaptive
emotion response (unhealthy core feeling).
•If the
answer to the above questions is no, this is an adaptive emotion response (a
fresh new healthy feeling in response to the present situation).
Note. Adapted from L. Greenberg (2002a).
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