第五章 同理理解：情感的三大类别

59CHAPTER 5 Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion As we’ve discussed, in CFT, the groundwork for self-­compassion is laid in helping clients under- stand their challenges in relation to the ways that our brains and minds work. In chapter 4, we explored how tricky dynamics between old brain, new brain, and body can serve to perpetuate emotional responses even when the external events that triggered them are long gone. In this chapter, we’ll introduce a model of emotions that will allow us to quickly increase clients’ under- standing of why and how their emotions work the way they do, and how this makes sense in the context of evolution. Modern research in affective neuroscience has identified a number of basic emotion systems that have evolved in humans and other animals (e.g. Panksepp & Biven, 2012; LeDoux, 1998). CFT has drawn upon this research to articulate a model of emotions that helps clients understand their feelings and related experiences as the result of human evolution. In this way, instead of seeing emotions such as fear, anxiety, or anger as something that is wrong with me, clients can instead see them as part of what helped my ancestors survive. By considering emotions and motives in terms of their survival value to our ancestors, clients can begin to see that how these experiences operate within us makes perfect sense. This process—­helping clients consider their emotions, motives, and challenges through the lens of evolution—­is sometimes referred to as evolutionary functional analysis (Gilbert, 2014).CFT Made Simple THE THREE-­CIRCLES MODEL OF EMOTION In CFT, emotions are grouped into three emotion-­regulation systems, related to their evolved functions, as shown in figure 4.1. First, we have emotions like fear, anger, and anxiety that function to help us identify and respond to threats (the threat-­protection system, or “threat system” for short). Second, the drive-­and-­resource-­acquisition system (“drive system”) emotions motivate us to pursue goals and resources, and reward us for attaining them. Finally, the safeness-­soothing-­ contentment system (“safeness system”) emotions help us feel safe, peaceful, and calm when we’re neither defending against threats nor pursuing goals. Let’s briefly consider these systems individually. Three Types of Emotion Regulation System Driven, excited, vitalContent, safe, connected Incentive/resource focusedNon-wanting/ Affiliation-focused Wanting, pursuing, achieving, consuming Safeness-kindness Activating Soothing Threat-focused Protection and safety-seeking Activating/inhibiting Anger, anxiety, disgust Figure 4.1: Three Types of Emotion-­Regulation System. (From Gilbert, The Compassionate Mind [2009], reprinted with permission from Little, Brown Book Group.) 62Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion The Threat System The threat system involves emotions that orient us toward perceived threats, assisting us in identifying and responding to things that may harm us. This system includes many emotions that our clients may struggle with, including anger, fear, anxiety, and disgust. The threat system picks up on threats very rapidly, and activates powerful bursts of feelings that alert us, orient us toward perceived threats, and motivate us to action—­fight, flight, or freezing/submission (Gilbert, 2010). Research has shown that we’re biased toward processing threat-­related information, with nega- tive information capturing our attention and memory more powerfully than does positive informa- tion (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenaurer, & Vohs, 2001). Threat emotions organize us in powerful ways, narrowing our attention, thinking, mental imagery, and motivation onto the source of threat in “sticky” ways—­we can struggle to disengage from these emotions, even when we want to. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that these emotions would be equipped to push other, more positive experiences out of the way—­our ancestors faced a harsh world filled with very real dangers. These ancestors were able to survive and pass their genes along to us partially because they possessed these threat emotions, resulting in our having brains designed to prioritize threat-­ processing through the action of structures such as the amygdala and hypothalamic–pituitary axis (LeDoux, 1998). These emotions were shaped by evolution to play out powerfully within us, and they operate on a “better safe than sorry” basis. Threat-­based learning can occur very efficiently, with many of our clients experiencing significant distress stemming from a single threatening incident. As we discussed in the previous chapter, new-­brain abilities of fantasy, meaning-­making, and rumination allow us to keep this system running even in the absence of any genuine external threat. Through new-­brain activity that allows humans to form mental connections that go well beyond our original learning experiences, fear stemming from a powerful initial experience can come to impact many areas of our clients’ lives. In this way, new advances in our understanding of learning, such as relational frame theory (Hayes, Barnes-­Holmes, & Roche, 2001; Törneke, 2010), have har- rowing implications for how experiences of threat can be magnified and multiplied in our minds. (We’ll explore this more in chapter 6.) When it’s balanced with the two other systems, the threat system helps alert us to potential threats and obstacles we need to deal with, to keep our lives moving in desired directions. However, it’s easy for this system to take up more than its share of mental energy, so we need to help clients learn to find balance when they’ve spent lots of time living in states of threat. The Drive System In addition to defending themselves from threat, our ancestors also needed to acquire the things needed to survive and prosper—­things like food, shelter, comfort, mates, and social posi- tion. This is the job of the drive-­and-­resource-­acquisition system (or “drive system,” for short), which is associated with feelings like excitement, lust, and ambition. Through the activity of 63CFT Made Simple chemicals like dopamine, this system alerts us to opportunities for pursuing goals and resources, helps focus and maintain our attention on pursuing them, and is associated with experiences of pleasure when goals are attained (Gilbert, 2009a; 2010). Like the threat system, this system can be very activating and motivating, and can powerfully focus our attention on what we are pursuing—­ which can be tricky when the blind pursuit of our goals can be harmful to others or ourselves. We can also develop powerful cravings for the intermittent rushes of pleasure that come when goals are attained—­likely one reason things like videogames can be so addictive. However, when it’s bal- anced with the two other systems, the drive system helps keep us activated in the pursuit of impor- tant life goals. The Safeness System In Western cultures at least, our clients will likely be familiar with emotional experiences associ- ated with the previous two systems. Experiences of threat and drive are powerfully motivating, a fact used liberally by advertisers and political groups to activate people around their products and platforms. These emotions are important, but they can also be linked with problems when the systems are out of balance—­mapping nicely on to the sources of suffering described in Buddhist psychology: attachment (going after what I want) and aversion (moving away from what I don’t want). Unlike these systems (which activate us), the safeness system is associated with feelings of being safe, calm, peaceful, and content. These emotions help balance us out when there are no threats to defend against and no goals that must be pursued. Safeness emotions are experienced positively, but are very different from the activating experiences of the drive system (Gilbert, 2009a; 2010). As you may suspect after our discussion of the roles of the therapist in chapter 2, the safeness system is typically linked with experiences of affection, acceptance, kindness, and affiliation. Such interactions soothe us, and can help us feel safe and calm. Through the action of chemicals like oxytocin and the endorphins, these interactions can reduce stress, affect pain thresholds, impact immune and digestive functioning, and reduce threat activation in the amygdala (Gilbert, 2010; Depue & Morrone-­Strupinsky, 2005). In contrast to a mind that is narrowly focused on threats or goals, when we feel safe, we can experience relaxed, reflective attention and we tend to be explor- atory, prosocial, and altruistic (Gilbert, 2009a, 2010). Fueled by warm connections with others, the safeness system helps balance out the other two systems, helping us approach life in an open, kind, and reflective fashion. The linkage of the safeness system to social connectedness presents therapists with both chal- lenges and opportunities. Unfortunately, many of our clients will present with maladaptive attach- ment histories or interpersonal trauma, from which they will have learned to feel unsafe in connection to others. Closeness then becomes associated not with safeness, but with threat. This presents us with a primary challenge—­what to do when our clients’ experience has taught them to fear the very connections that should help them feel safe (evolutionarily speaking). As we’ll see, the linkage 64Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion between safeness and social connection makes the therapy room a perfect laboratory to do exactly this work. Done skillfully, therapy can be utilized to help clients “get the safeness system online” and help them face sources of threat in their lives, and in their minds. ORGANIZING OUR EXPERIENCE If you spend much time in CFT circles, you’ll quite commonly hear therapists talk about how dif- ferent emotions and motives “organize the mind.” It can be very useful to introduce this concept to clients while we’re helping them understand the three-­circles model. The diagram in figure 4.2 illustrates what we mean by this. Attention Thinking and Reasoning Emotional Experience Fear Imagery and Fantasy Motivation Behavior Figure 4.2: How the Threat System Organizes the Mind. (From Kolts, The Compassionate Mind Approach to Managing Your Anger [2012], reprinted with permission from Little, Brown Book Group.) The idea is that different emotions (such as anger, excitement, safeness) and related motives (such as aggressive, competitive, connection) are associated with distinctly different patterns of attention, felt emotion, thinking and reasoning, mental imagery, motivation, and behavior. This 65CFT Made Simple diagram can be used to guide Socratic dialogue with our clients to help them learn about how these emotions play out in them and to relate that organization to the evolutionary origins of the emotion. Let’s consider a case example: Therapist: Jenny, now that we’ve introduced the three circles, I’d like to talk a bit about how these emotions play out in us. In CFT, we talk about how different emotions can “organize the mind” in different ways, as I’ve demonstrated in this “spider diagram” here (points at diagram)—­although that’s kind of a silly name because it only has six legs. Jenny: (Nods.) Therapist: In addition to the feelings we get with different emotions, we also experience differences in how we pay attention, think about things, and imagine things in our minds when these emotions come up. (Points at “attention,” “thinking and reasoning,” and “imagery and fantasy” circles on diagram, sequentially.) They also affect what we want to do (points at “motivation”) and what we actually do (points at “behavior”). So with any emotion we feel, there’s actually quite a lot going on—­which is why it can be so easy to feel trapped in a feeling. Does that make sense? Jenny: (Nods.) It’s kind of like what we talked about last time—­that different thoughts can fuel different feelings, which bring up more thoughts. Therapist: (Smiles.) Exactly! Now we’re going to explore how your threat system and safeness system organize your mind in very different ways. First, let’s consider a time when you’ve felt very threatened. You’ve brought up a couple of situations like that—­fears about going on a social outing with friends, and being afraid that you’d be called on in class. Want to focus on one of those situations? Jenny: How about going out with friends? Therapist: Sounds good. Could you briefly describe a situation that brings up feelings of threat in you? Jenny: Sure—­one happened just the other day. Some girls from my floor stopped by to ask me to go out with them this Friday night, like to eat and go to the bars, that sort of thing. Therapist: Perfect. Now let’s work our way around the spider diagram. What emotion should we put in the middle, here? Jenny: Definitely fear or extreme anxiety. Therapist: (Writes “ fear/anxiety” in the center of the circle.) Okay, so let’s start with this “felt emotion” circle. To start, it can be helpful to consider how emotions feel in the body. 66Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion Jenny: When they asked, my heart started pounding, and I had troubling concentrating. It’s like the world was closing in on me. I just sort of nodded and said I’d let them know. After they left, I calmed down a bit, but I was really tense and scared. Even now, it’s hard to think about it. Therapist: Let’s talk about that—­what you think about it. What thoughts come up when you’re feeling anxious about going out? Jenny: Like I want to do it, but also that I really don’t want to do it. I think that it would be fun, for any normal person, but that I would screw it up. I think of all the millions of things that could go wrong. I even have thoughts that they don’t really want me along—­that they’re just inviting me so they can watch me squirm, or to have someone to make fun of. Therapist: It sounds like those thoughts may have some pretty powerful images along with them. When you’re feeling anxious, what are you imagining? Jenny: That I’ll do something stupid—­wear the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, whatever—­and they’ll regret bringing me. That they’ll talk about me later, making fun of me, or even decide they don’t want me around and leave me at the bar. (Appears anxious.) Therapist: That sounds terrifying. When you’re in this space, what do you want or plan to do? What do you usually do? Jenny: I just want to stop worrying about it, to stop feeling this way. So I usually back out…tell them that I remembered that I have a big exam the next week or something. Therapist: So this whole thing (gestures toward spider diagram) is organized around how terrible this could turn out, motivating you to escape the situation—­which is what you would normally do? Jenny: (Pauses a bit, with sad look on her face.) Yes. Therapist: We can also notice that even remembering this threatening event organizes things in specific ways right now—­feeling anxious and tense, focused on the threat. It’s almost like these experiences combine to create an anxious version of you—­completely focused on the fear and anxiety. Does that sound right? Jenny: It’s absolutely right. I spend a lot of time feeling like that. Therapist: So “Anxious Jenny” has been hanging around a lot lately. Jenny: She sure has. 67CFT Made Simple Therapist: Let’s thank Anxious Jenny for sharing her perspective with us, and see if we can get to know what “Safe Jenny” is like. Jenny: I’d like that. I don’t know if there is a Safe Jenny, though. Therapist: Well, I’m here to help you find her. In helping clients observe how they are organized very differently by varying emotions, it can sometimes be useful to refer to these as “different versions of the self,” noting that our bodily expe- rience, attention, reasoning, imagery, motivation, and behaviors can all be very different depending on the emotion or motive that we’re experiencing. It can seem like we’re different people when we’re caught up in these different emotions. Using terms like “Anxious Jenny” can help clients recognize that as powerful as these experiences are, this is only one version of the self, and that we can develop other, adaptive aspects of the self (paving the way for the idea of the compassionate self). This language can also help set the stage for distinguishing “Anxious Jenny” from the current, experiencing self—­the self that is observing and aware of the emotion (rather than caught up in it), which ACT therapists refer to as “self-as-context.” Now that Jenny has explored how her anxiety organizes things, let’s consider how the therapist might continue to then introduce the safeness system. When making such transitions, it’s good to do a little soothing rhythm breathing, to slow down the breath, get the parasympathetic nervous system going, and help us shift into a compassionate state of mind. Therapist: Jenny, now that we’ve explored how the threat system organizes the mind, I think it would be good to look at how the mind is organized very differently when we feel safe. We want to get to know what Safe Jenny feels like. How does that sound? Jenny: Sounds like it’s worth a try. Therapist: Let’s start by doing a minute or so of soothing rhythm breathing. Breathing in this way can help us balance things out after we’ve been working with threat emotions. Let’s take a few moments to slow down the breath. Jenny: (Closes her eyes; slows her breathing.) Therapist: Slowing down the body…slowing down the mind. (Waits one minute.) Therapist: Opening your eyes, returning to the room. (Waits a few moments until Jenny’s eyes are open and she’s orienting.) How was that? Jenny: Better. Therapist: Good. It’s good to learn that we can move into the perspective of an emotion like anxiety, and look closely at how it’s organizing our minds, and then we can choose to shift back out of it. Soothing rhythm breathing can really help with 68Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion that. Don’t worry if some of that anxiety sticks around—­you’ve spent a long time learning to be anxious. Anxious Jenny has been going to the gym for quite some time. Jenny: (Smiles.) She sure has! Therapist: I’m here to help with that. Now let’s explore how feelings of safeness organize the mind and body. Have you had times when you felt completely safe and at ease—­ maybe when spending time with someone you felt really comfortable with? Jenny: (Thinks for twenty seconds or so.) Yes. I did have one friend in high school. Her name was Sophie. We had so much in common—­she was even anxious, too. (Brightens; speech takes on a comfortable pace.) We used to do all sorts of things together. We’d spend hours talking on the phone, or sitting at a coffee shop talking. We’d go down to the beach sometimes, or just hang out wherever was convenient. I really miss those times. Therapist: That sounds wonderful. Do you see Sophie anymore? Jenny: Sometimes on holidays. We graduated, and she went to one college, and I went to another. We kept in touch really well for the first few months, and then gradually talked to each other less and less. Life gets busy, you know? Therapist: It sure does. For now, I’d like to focus on a time you were with Sophie, and felt completely safe and comfortable. Can you recall a time like that? Jenny: Yeah. There was this one time we picked up mochas at our favorite coffee shop and went down to the beach in the evening. We climbed up the lifeguard tower to watch the sunset. We just sat there, wrapped in blankets, talking for hours. It was wonderful. Therapist: That does sound wonderful. As you remember that time, imagining being back there, how did you feel? Jenny: Really relaxed, like I didn’t have a care in the world—­just enjoying the coffee and the sunset over the ocean, and talking. Therapist: So it sounds like your attention was wide open—­enjoying the coffee, the beautiful sunset, maybe the sights, sounds, and smells of the sea? Jenny: Yes, it was so beautiful there. I love the ocean. Therapist: I do, too. You mentioned that you and Sophie spent a lot of time talking. What did you talk about? 69CFT Made Simple Jenny: We talked about all kinds of things: where we wanted to go to college, and what we wanted to major in. What sort of careers we wanted to have. Boys we liked. Movies and music. All kinds of things. Therapist: Notice how it feels as you describe this. This is a perfect example of how the safeness system organizes the mind. I can just imagine you there, feeling completely comfortable. Attention open to notice all the wonderful sensations that surrounded you. Thinking open and flexible, able to think about the sort of lives you two would like to have, able to let your thoughts go wherever they took you… Jenny: It was so nice. Therapist: It is nice. Notice how the imagery—­the pictures in your mind—­work when you’re feeling safe. Even now, bringing up that memory feels soothing, doesn’t it? Jenny: It feels great. I miss those times. Therapist: I’d miss them, too. Then, I imagine your mental imagery was flexible and open like your thoughts—­imagining what your future would be like, what you’d like to do… Jenny: Yeah. The future seemed more interesting then, like I was excited about going to college, even though it was also a little scary. Therapist: So feeling safe there with Sophie, you were able to even be somewhat excited about something that you also found a bit scary. Jenny: Yeah. Now it’s mostly just scary. Therapist: (soothingly) Yeah. (Pauses for a few moments.) But would you say that in thinking about that time, you were able to connect with a little bit of what Safe Jenny was like? Jenny: (thoughtfully) I was. Therapist: So let’s review what we’ve learned about how different emotions organize the mind. Notice that when we considered the threatening situation—­friends asking you to go out—­your attention, thinking, mental imagery, and motivation were all very narrow and focused on the perceived threat. All of that was focused very narrowly on fears of being embarrassed or humiliated. Jenny: (Nods consideringly.) Mmm-­hmm. Therapist: And then when we brought up that memory with Sophie, all that changed. You remembered feeling safe, comfortable, and connected. 70Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion Jenny: (Smiles thoughtfully; nods gently.) Therapist: Feeling safe, your attention opened wide to the things you appreciated about your surroundings, to your future, the things you wanted for your life…Your thoughts and mental imagery were flexible and open as well, as you imagined the sort of life you’d like to have. You chatted about all sorts of things. Your motivation was no longer captured by feeling like you needed to protect yourself, and you could imagine doing all sorts of things…even feeling excited about doing something that was also a little scary, like going to college. Notice how different your mind was organized from when you felt threatened? Notice what Safe Jenny was like? Jenny: It was a lot more open and free. I wish I felt like that more often. Therapist: How about we work on that? Jenny: Sounds good. In the vignettes above, the therapist guides Jenny through an exploration of how these differ- ent emotions organize her mind. This is done in two ways—­exploring how her mind was organized within the situations she is recalling, and exploring the affective reactions she experiences in the present, due to bringing up these memories. While we’re primarily focused on highlighting the former (exploring how attention, thinking, imagery, motivation, and so forth are organized during different affective states of threat and safeness), highlighting the way these memories shape current emotions helps pave the way for future imagery work, and for understanding memory as a powerful stimulus to the emotional brain. The therapist prompts Jenny to bring up memories associated with threat and safeness, and guides her in exploring different ways these emotions organize her experience. Reflections of feeling and validating statements are peppered throughout, to deepen the affective experience and reinforce the connection between client and therapist. When Jenny begins to shift offtrack (for example, when she becomes wistful about missing “those times,” expresses regret over the loss of relationship with Sophie, or comments that now things are “just scary”), the therapist compassion- ately validates her experience and then quickly brings her back to the focus of the exploration. The therapist also attempts to create safeness within the therapeutic relationship, making statements that communicate warmth, confidence, and support: “That’s what I’m here to help you work on.” “How about we work on that?” We revisit “Anxious Jenny,” this time accompanied by “Safe Jenny,” reflecting the idea that powerful emotions and motives can organize us as different versions of the self—­versions that we can understand and value, and that we can selectively choose to strengthen. This sets the stage for compassionate-­self work, as we work to develop and strengthen a perspec- tive that is compassionate, kind, wise, and strong. 71CFT Made Simple WHAT ABOUT SADNESS? You may have noticed that in talking about the three emotion-­regulation systems, we haven’t really discussed sadness. Sadness is an interesting emotion that is challenging to categorize using the three systems, because it doesn’t easily fit. While sadness can be seen as threat-­related in that it often is linked with experiences of loss or disappointment, its physiological and psychological profile is very different from other threat emotions, which involve heightened arousal, tension, and a narrowing of thinking and attention. In contrast, sadness typically involves lower levels of arousal, and sometimes involves more open thinking and attention—­for example, reminiscing and reflect- ing on life’s meaning. Sadness also can serve to elicit caregiving responses from others, perhaps serving a safeness-­eliciting function, and it usually involves a deactivation of drive pursuits. While research is needed to further explore the ways that sadness organizes us, I think rather than trying to simplify things by forcing it into the threat circle, we’re perhaps best served by con- sidering sadness in terms of patterns of activation, and in relation to the contextual factors (such as loss) that trigger it. From this perspective, we can perhaps see normal sadness as a state involving low-to-moderate levels of perceived threat (loss but no active danger), low drive, and moderate safeness (we feel safe enough to really connect with the experience of loss and what it means to us). This can also help us in guiding treatment interventions for clients experiencing the deep experi- ences of sadness linked with major depression, which might involve much higher threat activation (as depression often involves significant anxiety—­for example, with losses that threaten one’s entire way of life) combined with very low drive and low-to-moderate safeness. In such a case, we’d want to help clients increase feelings of safeness to balance out the threat activation, but also get the drive system moving as well—­as attested to by research showing the beneficial effects of behavior activation therapy with depression. For example, behavior activation around increasing positive social experiences might help to serve both of these purposes. MOTIVES AND SOCIAL MENTALITIES In addition to the emotions associated with the three circles, CFT also emphasizes that we can be powerfully organized around evolved motives. We can see motives as being the motivational and behavioral extensions of the three circle emotions—­for example, motives to connect, pursue goals, attack, assert social dominance, defend oneself, mate, and play. These motives can manifest inter- personally in what Paul Gilbert has called social mentalities (Gilbert, 2009a; 2010; 2014). We can con- sider social mentalities to be organizing frameworks that structure our social interactions around certain motives. It can be quite useful to explore with clients how different social mentalities can organize their experience in entirely different ways. For example, we can use the spider diagram presented earlier to compare and contrast how defensive, competitive, caregiving, and sexual social mentalities are associated with very different patterns of paying attention, thinking, mental imagery, felt experience, motivation, and behavior. Such awareness (and the consideration of what sorts of 72Compassionate Understanding: Three Types of Emotion social mentalities would be helpful) can be of great use in helping clients understand and work with relationship difficulties. SUMMARY In this chapter, we introduced the three-­circles model of emotion. This model serves a number of purposes in CFT. It helps decrease shame in our clients’ relationship with their emotions, as their understanding of these emotions shifts from something that is wrong with me to the realization that we all have these feelings because they helped our ancestors survive. Through this lens, they can see many of their unwanted emotions as their evolved brains’ efforts to keep them safe when threats are perceived. Rather than condemn these efforts, a compassionate approach seeks to validate, soothe, and find more helpful ways of working with these experiences. The model also helps pave the way for compassion as a way to work with suffering. We can help clients recognize self-­attacking as serving to continually reactivate the threat system, and compas- sion as a way to get the safeness system working for them as they take responsibility for working with difficult feelings and life challenges. Finally, this model can serve as a sort of shortcut for developing mindful awareness of emotions. We might suggest to clients that when they are strug- gling, they could bring to mind the three circles and consider where they are in each—­perhaps by quickly rating their threat, drive, and safeness on a 1-­to-­10 scale. As one of my graduate students (who was also a cheerleading coach) suggested, “When in doubt, circle out!” If our clients do this and observe that they are stuck in the threat system, it can be a prompt to slow down with some soothing rhythm breathing and then work with the emotion and situation using the compassionate strategies I’ll be introducing later in the book.