This is an updated post from another a year ago. Here a highly intellectually focused researcher who surprises herself and begins a process of transformation from valuing strength in stoicism to embracing vulnerability as the core of strength. The first video was recorded in 2010. The second was released early this month.
Shame is an unspoken epidemic, the secret behind many forms of broken behavior. Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on. Her own humor, humanity and vulnerability shine through every word.
Brené Brown studies vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. Full bio »
How we integrate or make sense of our experiences have a lot to do with how they affect us. That's just common sense. However, the drive within psychology towards a research and evidence based practice standards has led to a move away from seeking the consensus of practicing professionals in the field on the formation of theory. A theory informed practice has been the standard for many years. Experts construct a theory based on their professional knowledge, including research. The theory is then tested based on the defined concrete references of the theory, called operational definitions. This is a very common approach to theory construction. For example, testing the theory that the planets orbit the sun, one mathematically works out where each planet should be at some set time in the future based on the theory. When they are found there, that provides one study supporting the criterian validity of the theory that the the planets orbit the sun.
The problem is that psychological constructs are notoriously defined differently by different researchers, and there is little consensus on a grand theory that attempts to explain human behavior. Instead there are a number of theories that have been developed that accounts for behavior based on the thoughts that occur before the behaviors. Research has shown that behavior can change when thoughts about that behavior change. This has been replicated many times. Cognitive behavior therapy is the model in the psychology that enjoys the largest following. But this theory does not explain all or even most behavior, nor does in fit with some of the more common beliefs and assumptions about human behavior.
If changing one's thinking were all that was necessary to change behavior, then more people would be successful with New Year's resolutions. Most people will tell you of their dismal success breaking old habits in the New Year. Throughout 2007, one study tracked over 3000 people attempting to achieve a range of resolutions, including losing weight, visiting the gym, quitting smoking, and drinking less. At the start of the study, 52% of participants were confident of success. One year later, only 12% actually achieved their goal.
Another problem with Cognitive Behavior Theory (CBT) is that it assumes that emotions are just an another form of behavior caused by thoughts. In some cases this may be true. In generally healthy people, emotional issues may well respond to changes in thoughts. But it's clear that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is largely an emotional disorder, where manifestations have incomplete connections to thoughts. CBT is not the treatment of choice. Some form of exposure therapy is widely used to essentially break the pattern of emotionally driven habitual behavior or extinguish the conditioned emotional responses to thoughts, feelings and external stimulation associated with the trauma. If you experience that memory and it's emotions in a safe setting and recognize that your fears were not realized, then the memory is changed with the addition of this new information. This sort of change is incremental. Such learning may need to be repeated several times the intensity of the emotion subsides to acceptable levels.
Other clinicians see a more profound version of PTSD in combat veterans.
Throughout history, warriors have been confronted with moral and ethical challenges and modern unconventional and guerilla wars amplify these challenges. Potentially morally injurious events, such as perpetrating, failing to prevent, or bearing witness to acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations may be deleterious in the long-term, emotionally,
psychologically, behaviorally, spiritually, and socially (what we label as moral injury). Although there has been some research on the consequences of unnecessary acts of violence in war zones, the lasting impact of morally injurious experience in war remains chiefly unaddressed. To stimulate a critical examination of moral injury, we review the available literature, define terms, and offer a working conceptual framework and a set of intervention strategies designed to repair moral injury. (Litz et al., 2009)
Georgetown University ethics professor Nancy Sherman heard stories of moral trauma when she interviewed veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and World War II for her 2010 book, The Untold War. "It might be where you felt you should have been able to do more for your buddies, but you couldn't, or because you simply survived," she says.
"Regret," she writes, "doesn't begin to capture what the soldiers I talked with feel. It doesn't capture the despair or depth of the feeling -- the awful weight of self-indictment and the need to make moral repair in order to be allowed back into the community in which he feels he has somehow jeopardized his standing." (Silver, 2011)
This is not a new idea, but rather repackaging of a well documented feature of all trauma, and not just trauma related to combat. Themes of shame and guilt pervade the PTSD literature, often referred to as complicating factors.
Studies suggest that those who interpret a traumatic experience as intensely negative are more at risk for posttraumatic distress and disorder than those who view the event as less traumatic. Specifically, a woman's reaction at the time of her victimization is likely to be an important predictor of her later psychological state. (Briere & Jordan, 2004)
Certainly conceiving of a victim's behavior during a traumatic event as transgressions of deeply held moral beliefs and expectations would qualify as a particularly negative interpretation of the event and thus predict a more difficult recovery. She is also more likely to develop a shame-based view of herself based on the conclusion that she has demonstrated a moral defect reflected in her behavior. In my clinical work, I've seen this phenomena in traumatization caused by crime victimization, particularly rape, in natural disasters, such as hurricaine Katrina and the Northridge earthquake in Oakland, Ca, as well as combat trauma from Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. The complicating factor of shameful beliefs about personal responsibility when others are injured is a prominent feature in people struggling with a difficult recovery.
This new conceptualization of moral injury may come in a useful form, one that is easily understood by the client and destigmatizing in the sense that a "mental health" problem is consistent with cultural norms. In addition, the authors further the theory of PTSD and its notorious resistance to treatment. The shame of a moral injury leads the sufferer to withdraw from social contact even with close confidants, under the assumption that if she doesn't hide their shameful behavior, others will know and find her disgusting and worthy of rejection. This prevents the natural healing process of sharing and reexperiencing the trauma with the support of a loved one. The expression of love and acceptance despite their shameful behavior becomes part of the emotional memory and gradually attenuates the shame as well as the intrusive memories, nightmares and flashbacks. The authors note that self esteem has been found to mediate between belief that the world is just and in the willingness to self forgive Therefore, self-esteem may be an protective factor from moral injury. The authors also note that PTSD as well as moral injury involve healthy feelings. The affliction of a moral injury is in part a believe that the sufferer is not worthy of self-forgiveness. (Litz et al., 2009)
Litz et al., (2009) outlines a model they call a "modified CBT" approach. They describe eight components: 1. A strong working alliance. 2. Educating about the concept of moral injury and preparing a plan for change. 3. a "hot-cognitive" exposure based processing or emotion focused self-disclosure. 4. A thorough examination of the implications of this experience on the sufferers concept of self and other cognitive schemas. 5. An imaginal dialogue with a benevolent moral authority (such as a grandparent or pastor) about the target behavior and implications for the future. 6. Fostering self-forgiveness and reconnection to the community. 7. An assessment of goals and values moving forward.
I've found it particularly effective to treat PTSD complicated by shame in a group setting, where the many components often become a natural process of the group's cohesion and mutual support. When other group members who suffer from post trauma symptoms share their story of how they believed they had personal responsibility that resulted in another's injury, it's much easier for the sufferer to see other's over reactions and offer support and validation. This helps them recognize their own exaggerated self-blame and begin the process of self-forgiveness, a kind of "opposite action" treatment.
References
Briere, J. (2002). Treating adult survivors of severe childhood abuse and neglect: Further development of an integrative model. In L. Berliner, J. Briere, C. T. Hendrix, T. Reid, & C. Jenny (Eds.), The APSAC handbook on child maltreatment; 2nd Edition., Briere (2002) (pp. 1-26). Newbury Park; CA: Sage Publications.
Briere, J., & Jordan, C. E. (2004). Violence against women: Outcome complexity and implications. Journal Of Interpersonal Violence, 199(11), 1252-1276.
Litz, B., Stein, N., Delaney, E., Lebowitz, L., Nash, W., Silva, C., & Maguen, S. (2009). Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: A preliminary model and intervention strategy Clinical Psychology Review, 29 (8), 695-706 DOI: 10.1016/j.cpr.2009.07.003
Silver, D. (2011, September 3). Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls. Truthout. Retrieved from http://www.truth-out.org/beyond-ptsd-soldiers-have-injured-souls/1315066215
It's been standard practice in Cognitive-Behavioral therapy to teach clients that our thoughts trigger our emotions. Thus with training and practice a client can learn to change feelings by changing thoughts. While that is generally true, what CBT specialists sometimes miss is that some feelings actually control our thinking, often in ways that are beyond our awareness.
When we are young, before the age of about 8, much of what we learn, we learn in emotional memory. Indeed, before the age of five, most people remember very little about that time of life. That's because emotional memory records no clear recollection of events, no words, only emotions and the sort of trigger that set it off. Emotional memories might be accompanied by verbal memory, but the connection is far from guaranteed and the trigger for the emotional memory is MUCH broader than the finely tuned and coolly calculated thought based trigger.Thus when a child younger than 5 years touches a hot stove, she will remember that a stove hurts and may stay away until she understands in detail how a stove works. Even then, she might be particularly cautious regardless of further learning until the emotional memory dims with repetition.
We continue to remember emotional memories throughout our lives whenever an experience has such an emotional impact, that our thoughts are impaired, our logic shutdown. Those emotional memories kick in when we become emotionally aroused in a similar situation. Those reactions are tough to change. It generally doesn't work to rationally decide you'll never react emotionally again. When strong primal emotions erupt, they are so compelling, that many think they lose control of their behavior. The angry strike out verbally or physically and the fearful cower or run.
The truth is that we can learn to be more aware of our feelings and stop ourselves from acting until we can muster some rationality to make a reasonable decision. The key here is what we believe. If we think we can't control our emotions, indeed we can't. If we believe we can stop ourselves and make a better choice, then we will.
Little did grandma know, the old advice to stop and count to ten has it's roots in brain physiology.
I meet the most incredible people in my work. Struggle as they might with various vices like substance abuse, serial monogamy, stormy relationships or keeping a job, the people I've worked with consistently have a surplus of one thing I highly value: empathy.
It seems as if people who have suffered greatly often have the ability to understand other's pain at a deeper level than most people. Often they have a depth of insight that far exceeds their "normal" peers. When they offer support, it touches deeply and effectively. But they are much better at helping others than themselves.
Most importantly, they are unique among those who suffer. They have asked for help facing and fixing their problems. Being willing to accept help gives them the willingness to look themselves squarely in the mirror and be willing to see what is really there. When they look at themselves, they feel a withering sense of shame about how responsible they with all that has gone wrong. With help, they see in exaggerated clarity all that they need to change. Shame has a way of discouraging any imagination of escape from the pattern of repeating mistakes. It often keeps people stuck or in denial for years. The willingness to walk through that process of sharing the darkest and most shameful events in their lives requires great courage.
Many times, all they really lack is a way to get beyond the shame of what they find inside themselves, make the changes and move on. Once they achieve that, they blossom before my eyes. And they are forever grateful.
Most days, I feel as if I've learned so much from them that I feel a little guilty getting paid to do this. Only a little... ;o)
I'm going to try to write more short posts rather than work on a big paper for months before I post.
There is a lot of hype about Facebook causing depression citing research. Actually, if you look, you will find the research had nothing to do with Facebook.
It all started with this article writing on this research article where the author rather loosely used the term "Facebook depression". There is of course no such thing as Facebook depression. The author submits her disclaimer here.
All the more reason to read about research in the media with considerable skepticism. Here is a past article I wrote on the topic.
There is reason to be concerned about spending long hours doing anything, including Facebook and the Internet, that could contribute to the development of depression. The causes are much more complex.
Reference
O'Keeffe, G., Clarke-Pearson, K., & , . (2011). The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families PEDIATRICS, 127 (4), 800-804 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2011-0054
This is the eighth in a series of articles about emotional intelligence for personal growth.
Emotions give our experiences a sort of color, a dimension of experience very different from other senses, different from even thoughts. Yet many of us find our emotions at times more of an enemy than a friend. Our emotions serve a purpose, one that is not entirely obvious.
Most current theories of emotion share the assumption that emotions serve an adaptive function in human life. Emotions play an important role in how we appraise and prepare to act on current circumstances. There are instances when emotions seem to interfere with what we do. The simplest examples are of anxiety reactions to public speaking, climbing ladders, or spiders. 'Emotion regulation' is a popular way of describing a solution to this problem.
Gross (2002) attributes the roots of the study of emotion regulation to Freud's early psychoanalytic theorizing about the nature of psychological defenses and Lazarus' stress and coping tradition. He describes two forms of emotion regulation. Reappraisal involves changing how we think about a situation in order to decrease its emotional impact. Suppression involves inhibiting ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. The method of reappraisal involves reinterpreting the emotional trigger into something less provocative. Suppression involves catching the reaction after it begins and containing it's consequential behavior.
However, this is a rather simplistic description of a complex process. The very act of suppressing the target emotion evokes more emotions. An emotional response that invites suppression might evoke embarrassment at the intensity of the reaction, fear about the consequences of inadvertent expression, and shame about not having learned from similar experiences in the past. Cognitive reappraisal is strategy that can be useful to head off a response, but is possibly even more useful as a method to review the experience after the emotion has been contained. It seems to me that there are few examples I can think of that don't involve both strategies more or less working together.
Gross & Levenson (1993, 1997) notes that expressive suppression can lead to decreased emotion expression, but interestingly, the body seems to feel the emotion even more intensely as reflected in increased sympathetic activation. Emotional suppression reduced memory for details emotional events, while reappraisal had no effects on memory.
Reappraisal may be related to relabeling and sublimination. Relabeling involves a cognitive reassignment of meaning that changes the qualitative emotional response, perhaps even it's valence. Sublimination is the directing of emotionally based response tendencies (motivation) into constructive problem solving responses that address the situation that elicited the emotion. Relabeling may play an important role in sublimination by redirecting energy into a more productive direction, presumably making it even more directable. Relabeling a suppressed emotion and subliiminating the motivation into a constructive response allows greater adaptive potential, memory, and interpersonal functioning.
Gross (2002) argues that suppression--as a response-focused strategy-- acts comparatively late in the regulation process. Thus, the emotion is already underway and thus the energy implied in the sympathic activation is no longer available to be redirected. The decreasing in expressive behavior has some side effects in terms of cognitive (impaired memory) and physiological costs (increased sympathetic activation). Suppression does not diminish negative emotions. In contrast, reappraisal theoretically takes effect before the emotion response tendencies have been triggered leading to fewer behavioral and experiential signs of emotion without increasing physiological responses or impairing memory. However, it's hard to imagine that a person could have perceived the emotional trigger and selected an alternative interpretation without experiencing the emotion. Emotional processes is known to be much quicker than the more methodical and step by step rational process (Kahneman, 2003). I think it's reasonable to assume some suppression is required to enable the time to reappraise, then the emotion is redirected into it's alternative conceptual context. Since reappraisal is known to decrease emotional activation, one must assume that the energy is redirected somewhere in a way that prevents most sympathetic activation. Redirecting the energy into motivation towards a constructive solution (sublimination) seems a likely explanation. Sublimination may well be regular part of the reappraisal process.
Gross and John (2003) found that the habitual use of both strategies is uncorrelated. That might be explained by a conscious or pre-conscious choice. Suppressing an emotion might be a decision distinct from brief suppression followed by reappraisal and sublimination. Perhaps suppression is used because an obvious reappraisal strategy is unavailable or the person has an underdeveloped reappraisal skill. One has to wonder what happens to the energy. Invitably, the emotional activation will be expressed cognitively. Strong activation requires an explanation. If there is none, then feelings of helplessness and anxiety can spiral into being overwhelmed quickly. Few people will have the ability to supress the emotion with denial, but anger and blame towards some external source might head off a spiraling cycle of anxiety and helplessness. One would expect that such unspoken expression of emotions to be incomplete, even unsatisfying, and create an expectation of more negative outcomes. This would appear to be a largely maladaptive strategy.
Gross and Thompson (2007) describe emotion regulation as one of four types of affect regulation. "Coping" is solely focused on decreasing negative affect across greater periods of time and multiple instances. They define mood as a global more persistent set of affect than an emotion and it's regulation as a means to manage the experience and action tendencies it may evoke. Emotion refers to one single meaningful event. It's regulation is focused on managing the experience and behavior tendency (motivation) it evokes evokes.
They describe five families of emotion regulation.
Situation selection involves planning to minimize any possible distracting or destructive emotions, by taking actions that make the desired outcome more likely. This is an important method used by parents during the life of a young child. A parent might recall a previous fantasy play at home with a toy doctor's bag to explain and distract the child during a visit to the doctor.
Situation modification involves quick actions that change the situation to one in which the outcome is more favorable. Very little planning is involved, though the skill might be developed by practicing and role playing. Supportive and empathetic responses to children's expression of emotion lead to more effective coping. Angry, denigrating, or dismissive responses undermine emotion regulation. An example might include bringing a book or activity to use during a waiting room period.
Attentional deployment involves directing one's attention within a given situation such as distraction, concentration, leaving, refocusing. This is probably how people suppress thoughts. Trying not to think about something is usually an exercise in futility. Replacing the thought with something incompatible is pretty effective. At least some cognitive restructuring is an example of attentional deployment. For example, you can refocus on past successes in solving problems when stuck with a current one. A glass is half-full, rather than half-empty.
Cognitive change involves altering the emotional significance of the appraisal by changing the meaning or changing one's capacity to manage the emotion. Cultural differences in socialization may play heavily on this skill, it's flexibility and effectiveness. Deciding that someone's inattentiveness caused them to bump into you, rather than a deliberate attempt to disrupt what you were doing would be an example of alternating the emotional significance of the event.
Response modification is the method that is used after the situation is perceived and a response is initiating. This method involves influencing the physiological, experiential, or behavior responding as directly as possible. Drugs, exercise, relaxation, alcohol, cigarettes, medication, and food have been used this way. You can also modify how the thoughts and emotions are expressed. An important consideration is the situational context impacts the meaning of how the emotion is expressed and the consequences of the expression. For example, appropriate expression is different at home than it is at the work place or even in the grocery store.
Most techniques of emotion regulation seem to assume that emotion is a distraction or a nuisance that needs to be managed or suppressed. Someone who has frequented this blog would be aware that the function of emotion is a common topic. Emotions have a purpose, otherwise we wouldn't have them. They have served humanity for a long time, apparently quite effectively. What's new is that we are actively second guessing their influence on our thinking.
Ayn Rand asserts unequivocally:
Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a bail and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown...
I think everyone would agree that emotions can distort our decisions if we are not aware of their impact. However, I challenge the assumption that we can reason logically. Certainly, we can structure our reasoning to be as logical as possible, but a self aware person will note that the logical conclusion is often in conflict with the personal preference.
Barrett, et al., (2001) describes a study that supports affect-as-information and emotional intelligence perspective.
According to that perspective, specific emotional states have more adaptive value than global affective states, in part, because ... emotions are typically associated with a causal object, whereas global affective states are not. Identification of the source of an emotional state has important consequences. ...emotion differentiation is correlated with emotion regulation.
.... Emotional intelligence is broadly defined as the ability to perceive emotions in self and other, to reflectively regulate emotions, and to access and generate emotional experiences to inform adaptation.... Those individuals with the ability to distinguish among negative emotional states and subsequently regulate their emotions may prove more ''emotionally intelligent'' than those who have less differentiated emotion representations. [Italics are mine.]
With practice, we can learn to influence but perhaps not totally control which emotions we have and how we experience and express them. We can act early in the emotion generation process or we can aim at modifying emotional response tendencies once they have already been triggered.
The purpose of emotion is to "inform adaptation". Emotions have evolved in the context of social relationships and serve as another avenue of exchange of information between and about people and relationships. Emotions reach beyond the logic of the situation to assess the risk in a social encounter and to communicate the nature of the relationship with the other person.
Rottenberg, J., & Gross, J. J. (2003) notes that its very difficult to operationally define 'excessive sadness', or any other emotional excess or disturbance because of the need to integrate a considerable amount of contextual information into research formulations. Excessive sadness about loss of a loved one is not the same as the sadness that comes from being overlooked for recognition. Defining excessive emotion seems a futile endeavor. It would be more fruitful to ask what is it about this episode of sadness appear excessive. Sobbing at work is hardly the same as doing so in the privacy of home. But observing sobbing at work, you still can't describe the sadness as excessive without inquiring as to what the sadness was about.
Our motivations are largely emotionally driven. Negative emotions push us to face and act on those things that make us most uncomfortable. Positive emotions allow us to enjoy success and give us energy to meet new challenges. But negative emotions inspire us to make changes.
Misery is perhaps the most creative force in our lives. Seldom do we make major changes in our lives without considerable emotional pain. Each negative emotion comes complete with an intuitive guide to action. Anger pushes us to stand up for ourselves and speak up when we've been treated with disrespect. Fear makes us hyper-vigilant to potential danger and readies us to duck or run away if needed. Sadness makes us review over and over again what we've lost. That ruminative search is for the knowledge to compensate for our loss [as well as reassess its meaning and purpose. Ultimately, such learning leads us with the wisdom to understand our lives from a new perspective and make our actions more adaptive.] Guilt reminds us of our responsibility in the errors we make and motivates us to work to understand our mistakes and learn how to avoid repeating them.
Emotions are made to be understood by experiencing them, by sitting with them for a time so as to make some sense of them. By trace emotions to their origins you can come to understand what they might mean for you today. That will enable you to make a reasoned decision about what should be done. As hard as it is to sit with a profoundly negative emotion, you will find that emotion an amazingly creative force for change.
Emotion regulation is learned in infancy when the child attunes with his mother. When attuned,
the infant is learning a number of very useful things: (1) that expressing her feelings can bring about positive outcomes--which generates positive feelings about the self and others; (2) that she can have impact on others -- which generates a dawning sense of agency or self-initiative; and (3) gradually, that particular affects elicit particular reactions-- which helps her begin to differentiate and eventually name her feelings. (Fonagy el., 2002 as referenced in Wallin, 2007).
The essence of mothering is providing a holding environment where empathy and devotion offer a supportive relationship for her child's growth. The quality of maternal attention, or attunement, was a key factor in determining how infants thrived. The "good-enough mother" is a mother who is able to adequately attune to her infant's needs and abilities despite the complex and always changing processes of growth and adaptation. In the natural process of infant care, misattunement and reattunement occurs regularly. Within the attachment relationship, the secure mother, at an intuitive, nonconscious level, is continuously regulating the infant's shifting arousal levels. Attachment can be defined as the dyadic regulation of emotion. And thus, emotional expression serves to stimulate a dyadic exchange within the attachment relationship that results in corrective and informative regulation. By being exposed to the primary caregiver's fluxuating attunement, the infant learns an expanding adaptive ability to evaluate on a moment-to-moment basis stressful changes in the external environment. Over time, this exchange with his mother allows infant to form coherent responses to future stressors and prepares him for future relationships. (Dales & Jerry, 2008)
Research in psychotherapy provides us with validation with the common sense notions of what makes a good approach to relationships: acceptance, permissiveness, warmth, respect, nonjudgmentalism, honesty, genuineness, and empathy or empathic understanding. Maintaining long term relationship require similar attunement and repair reminiscent of a mother and her infant.
Other research in psychotherapy has found complex positive emtions are experienced in the aftermath of the processing of intensely painful emotion and are highly correlated with positive outcome. Such "positive emotions may not only appear as a result of successful processing of negative emotions but be an integral, and perhaps overlooked part of modulating and deepening this processing." Presumably, such deepening and repair of attunment would enhance and deepen the relationship. Perhaps this is what is often observed when "kissing and making up" after a conflict.
For adults, as well as children, the amplification and regulation of these positive states by a caring other are critically important to the self's ongoing development, the discovery of new capacities, and the healing of old wounds. (Russell & Fosha, 2008).
Moreover, the regulation of otherwise overwhelming emotional intensity is vital in promoting the required depth of emotional processing. Finally emotion regulation involves not only the restraint of emotion, but at times its maintenance and enhancement (i.e., down- vs. up-regulation) (Greenberg and Pascual-Leone 2006, pp 616-617).
Clearly emotion is much more complex than a problem to eliminate or at least contain. Humans by their very nature are in capable of the cultural ideal of rational thought. Emotional expression is the core of our expression in relationships and evokes a response from the other that helps refine possible responses. Effective communication cannot occur without the emotional referents that define and structure mutual expectations and possible responses. Our awareness of this process is critical to learning effective relationship communication, boundaries, and building a support network. The key to learning how to express ourselves is understanding our emotions and using them to formulate a reasonable response based on an intuitive melding of emotion and rational thought, what Marsha Linehan (1993) elloquently calls "wise mind."
References
Dales, S., & Jerry, P. (2008). Attachment, Affect Regulation and Mutual Synchrony in Adult Psychotherapy. American Journal Of Psychotherapy, 62(3), 283-312.
Egloff, B., Schmukle, S. C., Burns, L. R., & Schwerdtfeger, A. (2006). Spontaneous Emotion Regulation During Evaluated Speaking Tasks: Associations with Negative Affect, Anxiety Expression, Memory, and Physiological Responding. Emotion, Egloff et al (2006), 6(3), 356-366
Barrett, L. F., Gross, J., Christensen, T. C., & Benvenuto, M. (2001). Knowing what you're feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation. Cognition And Emotion, 15(6), 713-724. doi:10.1080/0269993014300023
Greenberg, L. S., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2006). Emotion in Psychotherapy: A Practice-Friendly Research Review. Journal Of Clinical Psychology, Greenberg and Pascual-Leone (2006), 62(5), 611-630. GROSS, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences Psychophysiology, 39 DOI: 10.1017.S0048577201393198
Gross & Levenson (1993, 1997) cited in Gross, J. (Ed.). (2007)
Gross, J. J., & Thompson, R. A. (2007). Emotion Regulation: Conceptual Foundations. In Gross (2007).
Gross, J. (Ed.). (2007). Handbook of Emotion Regulation (2009 paperback ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.
Kahneman, D. (2003). A Perspective on Judgment and Choice - Mapping Bounded Rationality. American Psychologist, 58(9), 697-720. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.58.9.697
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Linehan 1993. New York: The Guildford Press.
Rand, A. (n.d.). Philosophy, Emotion and Reason from the Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from http://www.skysite.org/philo.html#link
Rottenberg, J., & Gross, J. J. (2003). When Emotion Goes Wrong: Realizing the Promise of Affective Science. Clinical Psychology: Science And Practice, 10(2), 227-232.
Russell, E., & Fosha, D. (2008). Transformational Affects and Core State in AEDP: The Emergence and Consolidation of Joy, Hope, Gratitude, and Confidence in (the Solid Goodness of) the Self. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 18(2), 167-190. doi:10.1037/1053-0479.18.2.167
Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. New York: The Guildford Press.
Tragically another music icon ends an incredibly creative life at age 27. Besides the uncanny fact that so many (10) incredibly talented musicians who died at 27, there is the other apparent truth that they all had everything their peers could have wanted. They were incredibly successful, had huge fan base, and were selling albums and tickets to concerts galore. What could possibly have gone wrong?
Ms. Winehouse said living dangerously generated her creativity, and she was often photographed half-dressed, wild-eyed and disheveled. The English tabloids reported she had suffered brain damage from excessive use of drugs and alcohol."
"Onstage, the more Amy Winehouse drinks, the better she sings, which is often the case. She's the hottest voice you've never heard -- her album hit No. 1 back home in England -- but right now, at her first U.S. concert, her nerves are bedeviling her. She makes awkward chitchat in that cockney twang. Tugs distractedly at her trademark ratty do. Yanks nervously on the strapless shift that's sliding dangerously south.
Finally, she requests an amaretto sour -- to hoots of approval. It's a part of her shtick, what her fans have come to expect."
We may never know exactly what led up to her death. An initial post-mortem proved inconclusive. A toxicology report is due within a few weeks. Her family insists that she'd quit drugs years before, and had recently quit alcohol. Family speculated that she may have had a withdrawal seizure or gone into shock.
There is no evidence that she was suffering from depression. In my experience however, depression is often a factor in drug or alcohol abuse. Artists have a unique ability to express their thoughts and feelings in their chosen media, in this case music. Songs of psychological pain are common, and certainly only a small number of authors are depressed or suicidal. Sadness and other negative feelings help color our world, help us appraise our environment, especially in novel situations or with unexpected elements.
Most of us can make some sense of our experiences and move on with new information with ourselves. Some however see negative feelings as evidence of a deeper problem in themselves or see them as signs of a flawed character. The misery of such knowledge without solution can lead a craving to escape it in self destructive ways. Drugs and alcohol is one of those methods.
Without help to find a way out, they may spiral downward into a self-image that is full of shame. Shame feeds the cycle of self-destructive escape and further misery until the trap seems inescapable. As symptoms worsen, concentration and focus deteriorates, relationships flounder, mood plummets until appetite disappears and even the escape of sleep is lost. Temporary escape becomes a preoccupation until it too fails to satisfy. Then, the only escape becomes self-destruction.
In simplistic terms, this describes how negative feelings and self-talk can lead to depression and perhaps even suicide.
It is truly tragic that so many of our most talented artists die so young. The stresses of being in the public eye with so much money on the line I'm sure are overwhelming. There is a tragic cost to fame and fortune. Perhaps more awareness of drug and alcohol abuse and depression will save lives in the future.
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