Working with Emotions and Values Chapter 13 Working with Emotions and Values By: Noah M.P. Spector and Shaofan Bu

Emotions and values Counseling is often a place to express and reflect upon strong feelings. These strong feelings or emotions are both “hardwired” and learned: people respond to the world under the influence of cultural norms.

Culture and emotion Just as the appreciation of music varies from culture to culture, so too does the expression of emotions. Clients express their emotions differently based on their circumstances. For example, the death of a loved one may bring up many kinds of emotions depending on the client’s previous relationship with that loved one.

Balancing universalist and relativist views of emotion Universalist view: Relativist view: Feelings are universal: Counselors always know what their clients are feeling. Feelings are idiosyncratic: Counselors can never know what exactly is going on for their clients. A helpful middle: Both/ And Relativist Universalist

Choosing alternate emotions Emotions are most often depicted as givens—something that happen to us rather than something we may choose. In addition to “going into’ or “being with” an emotion, it may sometimes be helpful to choose an alternate emotion.

Choosing alternate emotions Feeling something different: Look for exceptions to the experience of averse emotions and expand the account of the event. How did the client talk to themselves differently? What was different about the context in which this exception happened? Problem Exception What was different? Choice(s) available in current circumstance

Emotional Expression in Session: Strong Brew Emotional expression should be approached with caution. Safety considerations: Why feel this now? Do you and your client have a shared understanding of the purpose of delving into emotional territory? Are you both prepared? What sorts of emotions is the conversation you are having likely to elicit? Are these potentially painful feelings?

Emotional avoidance Conversation can only go where the counselor is willing to venture Emotional avoidance: Preoccupation with “information” only Incessant quest for positive spin “Rescuing” client from negative feelings “Flat” conversations

Immediacy Inviting attention to emotion in the here and now Locating feelings in the body Coaching attention to breath and presence to emotion Inviting an accommodative (vs. oppositional) relationship with the emotion

Dis-solving emotional knots through examination and reflection The practice of immediacy sometimes helps shed light on unspoken or unexpressed feelings. The point of examining these feelings is not to solve but rather to help the client learn to dissolve feelings which are difficult to tolerate.

Turning towards difficult emotion Invoke the client’s evaluation of current attempts to control the emotion: What would you say the outcome has been of your various attempts to control the anxiety? Speculate about altering the relationship with the emotion by turning toward it: I’m wondering if you’d be open to turning towards the anxiety…. Direct attention to the embodied emotion in the here and now: I wonder what you notice coming up in your body….

Turning towards difficult emotion Coach the use of breath: …also notice your breath as a backdrop to this awareness…. Recruit the senses to study the emotion without judgment: Take the time to be present…to observe it without judging it…. Direct attention to shifts in the relationship with the emotion: Notice what’s going on for you as you keep breathing, staying present…without trying to change…. Debrief: What did you notice about your experience of the anxiety when you met it this way?

Turning towards difficult emotion This intervention may take time and can result in the client feeling less of the aversive aspects of a particular emotion. Learning one can tolerate something is often enough.

Insights on Emotions Difficult emotions are part of the experience of living. We can’t control precisely what, when and where we will feel things. Feelings arise in response to internal and external events, often without conscious awareness. Breathing into a feeling or sensation supports us in remaining in its presence.

Insights on Emotions All feelings have a beginning, middle, and end; they come and they go. They are absent before their onset, and they crest before waning and departing. When we allow ourselves to be present to our emotions, breathing into them, meeting them with compassion rather than turning away from them, we discover they will not engulf us. They lose power over us as we come to see them as part of the ever-changing flow of mental events.

Insights on Emotions Progress is achieved not through pushing a difficult emotion away, but by being with it without judgment. This is not about “liking” the emotion, but merely accepting it as part of the field of experience, one character in the endless parade of mental activity. The result is a shift in relationship that makes it possible to be more fully present to one’s life.