This fantastic book on affective and interpersonal neuroscience reads like a who’s who from many of the leaders in the field on the cutting edge of neuroscience-based psychotherapy. Big-name contributors include Jaak Panksepp (Affective Neuroscience), Stephen Porges (The Polyvagal Theory), Daniel Siegel (Interpersonal Neurobiology), Pat Ogden (Sensorimotor Psychotherapy), Diana Fosha (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), and Susan Johnson (Emotionally Focussed Therapy).
The Healing Power of Emotion outlines the neurobiology behind attachment trauma, emotional dysregulation and mental illness, and explains how and why empathic connection and emotionally focussed somatic therapies are the most powerful for healing it.
It is the most solid scientific validation I’ve come across yet for the powerful emotionally-centred, trauma-informed, attachment-based approach I use to help my coaching clients overcome anxiety and build self-confidence.
Some of the highlights for me are:
Chapter 1: Jaak Panksepp on Brain Emotional Systems and Qualities of Mental Life
From Animal Models of Affect to Implications for Psychotheraputics
Emotional dysregulation is the key to understanding and treating mental illness.
The seven basic emotional systems of affective neuroscience: SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC and PLAY.
Childhood emotional abuse and neglect lead to sympathetic and parasympathetic dominance respectively in the autonomic nervous system, which remains in adulthood until the trauma is fully processed.
The importance of play, which requires a sense of safety in order to engage.
The key role of empathy in repairing inadvertent relational damage during play, and why it defuses aggression.
“Clearly, music and the other arts need to be incorporated into all therapies that are clearly concerned with the human spirit.”
Chapter 2: Stephen Porges on Reciprocal Influences Between Body and Brain in the Perception and Expression of Affect
A Polyvagal Perspective
The neurobiological connection between the polyvagal theory, attachment theory, social engagement and mental health.
Infants learn to regulate their emotions through the non-verbal empathic bond to their mother which relies largely on vocal tone and facial expression. We have specific nerves and neurons to support this function and having this empathic connection with our mother during infancy is key to emotional regulation in adulthood.
Neurological damage is caused when parents withdraw emotionally from a distressed infant rather than engaging them in soothing behaviours that they can eventually internalise as they mature and ultimately learn to self-soothe.
The social engagement system is involved in coordinating autonomic activity with social behaviour. It is mediated by the ventral parasympathetic branch of the vagus nerve that governs eyelid opening, facial muscles, middle ear muscles, laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles, and head guilting and turning. These function automatically based on the experience we had attempting to bond with out mother in infancy.
The impact of attachment trauma on the social engagement system and the implications for social anxiety in adulthood.
Chapter 3: Colwyn Trevarthen on The Functions of Emotion in Infancy
The Regulation and Communication of Rhythm, Sympathy, and Meaning in Human Development
“Infant research supports the use of nonverbal intersubjective therapies, such as music therapy, movement or dance therapy, drama therapy, pictorial art therapy, and body psychotherapy because these approaches accept that we are all equipped with a sensitivity for movement and qualities in movement, not only in our own bodies but in the bodies of others we touch, see and hear.”
Chapter 4: Ed Tronick on Multilevel Meaning Making and Dyadic Expansion of Consciousness Theory
The Emotional an Polymorphic Polysemic Flow of Meaning
Making meaning out of our emotional experiences is a biopsychological process.
Our degree of secure attachment with out infant caregivers, principally our mother, determines the meaning that we make from our early life experiences, particularly those involving connection, emotion, acceptance and rejection.
Chapter 5: Allan N. Schore on Right brain Affect Regulation
An Essential Mechanism of Development, Trauma, Dissociation and Psychotherapy
For most people, the language centre Is in the left hemisphere of the brain, whereas the right hemisphere dominates for emotion and physical sensation. This disconnect is why somatic (body-based) therapies are more effective than pure talking therapies: the dominant emotions requiring processing are in the opposite hemisphere from our speech centre.
Chapter 6: Daniel J Seigel on Emotion as Integration
A Possible Answer to the Question, What Is Emotion?
The centrality of emotion in psychological integration leads Seigel to conclude that emotion is integration. I’m not sure I agree, but I get where he’s coming from regarding the primacy of emotion in the process of psychological integration.
Chapter 7: Diana Fosha on Emotion and Recognition at Work
Energy, Vitality, Pleasure, Truth, Desire, and the Emergent Phenomenology of Transformational Experience
Her Emotion-Based Transformational Process.
Dyadic affect regulation, when two people regulate their emotions together while empathically connected, is the key to healing attachment trauma.
Chapter 8: Pat Ogden on Emotion, Mindfulness and Movement
Expanding the Regulatory Boundaries of the Window of Affect Tolerance
How to widen the window of affect tolerance and improve emotional regulation using mindful movement for sensorimotor and emotional processing.
People with unresolved attachment trauma are “torn between a desperate need for relationship and a profound fear of it.”
How emotions work in the body.
“Encouraging simple joy, humour and lightheartedness that accompany play behaviour and the feeling of competence, joy, peace, love, and the authentic expression of other positive affects can counter the often arduous work of therapy and help patients expand their regulatory boundaries to include intense positive emotions as well as negative ones.”
Chapter 9: Marion Solomon on Emotion in Romantic Partners
Intimacy Found, Intimacy Lost, Intimacy Reclaimed
When we don’t learn to regulate our emotions via secure attachment in infancy, it becomes difficult in adulthood to distinguish between anger, anxiety and early defenses against frightening or painful emotions.
Unresolved feelings about parents from childhood get projected unconsciously onto our romantic partner.
We are drawn to romantic partners with similar or complementary childhood emotional wounds so that we can potentially heal them in a securely attached relationship.
The fear centre of the brain (the amygdala) evolved long before the seat of conscious awareness (the neocortex) and can disrupt our thinking when we are under threat.
How patterns developed early in life play out in current relationships.
The relationship between mutual emotional regulation, self-regulation and secure attachment.
The healing power of well-regulated emotions.
Chapter 10: Susan Johnson on Extravagant Emotions
Understanding and Transforming Love Relationships in Emotionally Focussed therapy
Harnessing the transformational power of emotion in emotionally focussed couple therapy.
The importance of emotional connection in romantic relationships.
Emotional appraisal of, and body responses to changes in our environment occur much faster than reasoning; especially in fear reactions.
Quoting John Bowlby (Attachment & Loss):
“The most intense emotions arise during the formation, the maintenance, the disruption and renewal of attachment relationships. The formation of a bond is described as falling in love, maintaining a bond as loving someone, and losing a partner as grieving over someone. Similarly, threat of loss arouses anxiety and actual loss gives rise to sorrow; while each of these situations is likely to arouse anger. The unchallenged maintenance of a bond is experienced as a source of security and the renewal of a bond as a source of joy. Because emotions are usually a reflection of the state of a person’s affectionate bonds, the psychology and the psychopathology of emotion is found to be in large part the psychology and psychopathology of affectional bonds.”
Secure attachment reduces our stress response, the subjective experience of pain, anxiety and vulnerability; whereas separation causes distress.
The fearful avoidant affect regulation strategy pretty much explains my mother’s avoidance of emotions and emotional intimacy.
The difference between attachment styles:
- Secure attachment: where an infant regulates their separation distress and reconnects when mother returns
- Anxious attachment: where an infant become extremely distressed on separation and either cling or become angry when mother returns.
- Avoidant attachment: where an infant showed physiological distress but little emotion on separation or return.
An overview of Emotionally Focused Therapy and its interventions used with couples.
Merely thinking about loved ones can trigger a release of oxytocin, which increases the tendency to trust, reduces stress hormones such as cortisol, and strengthens the cardiovascular system.
Emotion is the most powerful force in human behaviour.
Chapter 11: Dan Hughes on The Communication of Emotions and the Growth of Autonomy and Intimacy within Family Therapy
Family is the context for a great deal of suffering.
Children develop secure attachment in parental relationships with direct, open, reciprocal emotional communication.
The meaning a parent gives to a child’s emotional expression will determine what meaning the child gives to its inner life.
Children learn to regulate their emotions through the empathic connection with emotionally well-regulated adults. When this happens frequently, children become able to regulate their emotions even when the parent isn’t there.
Adopting an attitude of playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy (PACE) in therapy.
Experiences are never “right” or “wrong”; they simply are.
Conclusion
This is a fantastic book but it’s written in academic-speak and goes into so much detailed neuroscience that the average reader seeking to heal a traumatic attachment wound is likely to end up over-analysing everything. Intellectual analysis is great for understanding the nature of a problem, but it inhibits the very emotions we seek to feel and express in order to heal. Also, the book is really aimed at therapists and psychologists, and is relatively expensive.
For a more accessible, generally readable and cheaper option aimed at helping people who want to heal themselves, I recommend Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender by David R. Hawkins which covers similar ground from a practical self-help perspective.
The overarching theme of The Healing Power of Emotions is that we need an empathic connection with another person’s sufficiently-regulated nervous system to heal an attachment wound. Although there’s heaps of great wisdom in these books, just knowing how the process works isn’t enough: we have to actually practice connecting with and expressing how we feel in the presence of an empathic person who won’t reject, abandon, criticise, dismiss or disengage from us when we are in emotional distress. That’s why a great coach, therapist or psychologist trained in affective neuroscience, attachment trauma and somatic experiencing can be such a valuable part of the process.
Build your self-confidence faster with The Confident Man Program
0 Comments