EMOTIONAL HEALING IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

WHAT IS EMOTIONAL HEALING?

Since the days of the Greek philosopher Descartes, who divided ‘animal spirit’ and human emotions that he claimed were held in the pineal gland, we now have more than thirty theories defining emotions. Those theories represent all conceivable psychological approaches. All of them view emotions as primarily a response to environmental stimuli or as a motivational process.

Therefore, emotions are regarded by most psychotherapists as a system which affects or is affected by other systems. Also, it is assumed that emotions can be controlled.

The above refers to historical reviews from the days of Descartes to the more recent studies explored today. The latest research is looking at the brain functions related to emotions and neurological connections to the parts of brain that record emotional experiences. Here is one study:

“Five or ten years ago, everything was all about specific brain regions. And then in the past four or five years there’s been more focus on specific projections. And now, this study presents a window into the next era, when even specific projections are not specific enough. There’s still heterogeneity even when you subdivide at this level,” it is state: “We’ve still got a long way to go in terms of appreciating the full complexities of the brain.”

“Neuroscience is quickly moving beyond the classical idea of ‘one brain region equals one function,’” says Joshua Johansen, a team leader at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, who was not involved in the research. “This paper represents an important step in this process by showing that within the amygdala, the way distinct populations of cells process information is a critical determinant of how emotional responses arise.”

Yet, as studies upon studies reveal a wealth of information about emotions, we are still struggling with the actual healing of emotional trauma and other afflictions. One of the most overlooked aspects of emotional healing is the subconscious aspect. Since we are not aware (conscious) of many responses to feelings and emotions, we do not consider them as issues that can be treated consciously. However, subconscious processes inhibit healing at a deeper level and are the underlying causes of a wide range of illnesses and symptoms that are both mental and physical.

In 1995 Frank Wright wrote a book on “Emotional Healing for the New Millennium”. He is the principal director of the Centre for Analytical Hypnotherapy Research and Training in Australia. The Centre trains people to become certified “Subconscious Mind healing therapists.

See the web: http://www.psh.org.au/ehcover.htm.

This blog is an attempt at a summary of the book on Emotional Healing. The idea is to take a journey to explore ways and means to offer the reader interested in alternatives to psychotherapy and find new ways to work as a therapist. Most psychology training today is based mainly on cognitive and behavioural studies and require statistical evidence that an intervention does work. However, if we ask a practitioner what is his or her success rate in dealing with client’s recurrent emotional problems, the answers are rather vague or full of excuses as to why there is no real proof of positive outcomes.

In the book by Frank Right, the author calls his method PSH or Private Subconscious Healing. He outlines the method he uses in his practice that reaches the deep subconscious patterns in three basic steps:

 First, enable the client to achieve a deep, mentally relaxed trance-like state to determine if the client’s issue is in fact the core problem stored in the subconscious.

After the first session, the process of subconscious change begins. It takes a moment to guide the client into the negative (hidden) emotion and allowing the conscious (aware) mind to deal with the issue.

      In the third session, there is a check of the process of healing and sometimes it may require a repeat of the unconscious treatment and secure that all the negative emotions are finished.

Here is a suggestion: first go and review the blog post about “short term therapy” and then at the end of this post you will find the seven basic principles that deal with the subconscious mind as brief therapy.

To guide the reader into the world of Emotions, here is a short resume about what is currently written and the research material that has been produced so far:

Two neurons of the basolateral amygdala. MIT neuroscientists have found that these neurons play a key role in separating information about positive and negative experiences.

EMOTIONS

Emotion is any relatively brief conscious experience characterized by intense mental activity and a high degree of pleasure or displeasure. Scientific discourse has drifted to other meanings and there is no consensus on a definition. Emotion is often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. In some theories, cognition is an important aspect of emotion. Those acting primarily on the emotions may be only feeling and may seem as if they are not thinking, but mental processes are still essential, particularly in the interpretation of events. For example, the realization of our believing that we are in a dangerous situation and the subsequent arousal of our body's nervous system (rapid heartbeat and breathing, sweating, muscle tension) is integral to the experience of our feeling afraid. Other theories, however, claim that emotion is separate from and can precede cognition.

Emotions are complex. According to some theories, they are states of feeling that result in physical and psychological changes that influence our behaviour. The physiology of emotion is closely linked to arousal of the nervous system with various states and strengths of arousal relating, apparently, to emotions. Emotion is also linked to behavioural tendency. Extroverted people are more likely to be social and express their emotions, while introverted people are more likely to be more socially withdrawn and conceal their emotions. Emotion is often the driving force behind motivation, positive or negative. According to other theories, emotions are not causal forces but simply syndromes of components, which might include motivation, feeling, behaviour, and physiological changes, but no one of these components is the emotion. Nor is the emotion an entity that causes these components.

Research on emotion has increased significantly over the past two decades with many fields contributing including psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, medicine, history, sociology, and computer science. The numerous theories that attempt to explain the origin, neurobiology, experience, and function of emotions have only fostered more intense research on this topic. Current areas of research in the concept of emotion include the development of materials that stimulate and elicit emotion. In addition, PET scans and FMRI scans help study the affective processes in the brain.

The emotion wheel by Robert Plutchik.

CURRENT RESEARCH

Prefrontal cortex:

There is ample evidence that the left prefrontal cortex is activated by stimuli that cause positive responses. If attractive stimuli can selectively activate a region of the brain, then logically the converse should hold, that selective activation of that region of the brain should cause a stimulus to be judged more positively. This was demonstrated for moderately attractive visual stimuli and replicated and extended to include negative stimuli.

Two neurobiological models of emotion in the prefrontal cortex made opposing predictions. The Valence Model predicted that anger, a negative emotion, would activate the right prefrontal cortex. The Direction Model predicted that anger, an approach emotion, would activate the left prefrontal cortex. The second model was supported not the first.

Another neurological approach distinguishes two classes of emotion: "classical" emotions such as love, anger and fear that are evoked by environmental stimuli, and "primordial" or "homeostatic emotions" – attention-demanding feelings evoked by body states, such as pain, hunger and fatigue, that motivate behaviour (withdrawal, eating or resting in these examples) aimed at maintaining the body's internal milieu at its ideal state.

Having examined a brief story of studies about Emotions, we are alerted to the importance of seeking the subconscious roots of ‘hidden emotions’ and clearly see that the “talking therapies” (see earlier posts) are limited. Taking about a problem does help to the extent that we ventilate about our issues and seek advice from someone who has some experience in resolving the problem. It is quite a different thing when it comes to the subconscious. In this state, emotions are neither good nor bad, right nor wrong, sensible nor stupid, and so on and that has no effect on change.

For example, psychoanalysis is still recommending to clients 3 or 4 sessions a week for the duration of 3 to 5 years and so far, there is no real evidence that long and expensive therapy achieves any benefits outside the income to the psychoanalyst. 

The seven key principles to understand subconscious emotional healing:

1 .      Therapy must take you straight to the original (real) cause of the symptoms.

2 .       The cause is a feeling not a fact. Seeking explanations will not help.

3 .       Therapy must be done within the privacy of the inner (subconscious) mind.

4 .       The subconscious is the gentle (let it happen) mind.

5 .    Only the subconscious memory holds the relevant experiences and is the link to emotional release.

6.    Reaching the subconscious level of mind is guided by the therapist and insures that the emotional release is authentic.

7 .   The client will only release the subconscious emotion when he or she is ready to do so.

References:

[1] The Psychology of Emotions by K.T. Strongman, 1978.

[2] Anne Trafton | MIT News Office, 

March 31, 2016