Emotions and Emotional Avoidance

Emotional Avoidance and its therapeutic impact

Contents

Introduction. 1

Emotion. 1

Moods. 3

Pitstop. 4

Emotional Avoidance. 4

Client Impact. 5

Emotional Processing. 6

The sequence of the system of Emotion. 7

Emotions that hang around. 7

Introduction

What I am going to do here is state what an emotion is and delineate it from a mood. Then we are going to look at the levels of emotional avoidance and then we are going to look at its therapeutic impact, how does that sound, have I missed anything??

Emotion

What is an emotion, well a lot has been written about it. My take derived from what I have read and experienced is this:

Emotions are the names of congruent systems within humans whose nexus is that something is currently important\significant which has an impetus to action. Emotions can be understood as on a continuum of intensity.  Low intensity means a weaker congruence of the various systems, and a weaker urgency to act. Higher intensity is a stronger congruence and a stronger urgency to act.

Whilst it might be said that emotions are prototypical. That is to define an emotion is to compare it against a prototypical example of it, most emotional states are mixes of different emotions.

The main aspect of an emotion, its nexus is that something is of significance to the person having the emotion.  As soon as something is understood to be significant, then the rest of the complex can become instantiated. Below there is an example of an emotion as it spans across the variety of human systems, the style mentioned for these systems, is the congruent style, for the type of significance. So sadness, the style is something I value has been taken away. Anger that a rule I value has been broken.

What then are the human systems that become congruent in an emotional state?

1.       Affect, i.e. feeling

2.       Cognitive

3.       Motivational

4.       Behavioural

5.       Perceptual

6.       Memory

7.       Imaginal

8.       Physiological

 If I am anxious, I believe there is a threat to something I value. So I may think of all the other times I have not been able to protect myself from important things being taken away, I may be motivated to retreat to a safe place, or to call for support to protect what I value. Behaviourally I may fight\flight or freeze.  I perceive the scene in front of me in terms of the emotion that I feel. So in anxiety then the escape routes and the threats will all be more pronounced. My memory, will have a bias to previous events that are related to anxiety. My memory will associate the atmosphere of the situation in relation to previously anxious situation, e.g. the smallness of the room. Imagination will imagine anxiety based scenarios played out, to establish the action that motivation calls me forth to do.

So in summary, when something is immediately of importance to us, or significant to us, then we have an emotional state, this prompts us quickly to action and aligns all aspects of our being into this action. Of course the stronger the emotion, the greater the congruence, the greater the number of systems that are involved.

Now it can be reasonable to say that not all of these components need to be present to call something an emotional episode. If your child broke a window, you might at the time it happened feel anger, but later in the day, when the feeling has subsided, say to them, “I won’t give you any money to go out as I’m still angry with you”.  It could be argued that you are still are in the state of anger with them, but there is no affect. What this does is to highlight the difference between the episodic nature of an emotion versus its state based aspect.

An episode is fleeting, for instance the feeling of love. Then there is the state of being in love, where you may not feel love all the time to your partner, but you generally act with styles that reflect this, in some way this is your nexus. Of course over and above that are moods that we will come on to in a moment. Before we do, just to summarise by way of example the various aspects of emotion:

So if you feel fear in the face of a pack of wolves:

1.       Type of appraisal

a.       Judgement that something I value will be taken away, i.e. my life

2.       Affect

a.       Fear

3.       Cognitive style

a.       One that will understand the situation in terms of fear, and how I can escape the feared object.

4.       Motivation

a.       The desire to act will be on the fight, flight or freeze register, dependent on the combination of appraisal of the situation and memories of past events, related to the current one

5.       Behavioural style

a.       Here the behaviour will depend on the results of the motivation, but running, hiding, fighting will here be the order of the day. Of course whilst deliberation is happening the behaviour might well be to reduce the attack surface, to cower or hide until the decision has been made

6.       Perceptual style

a.       How the scene in front of you is perceived will be in terms of the possibilities of level of danger, means of escape, allies that we can call on, instruments we can use to defend us, indicators of the ferocity of the wolves.

7.       Memory style

a.       What may be called up to inform our current scene is times I have dealt with associated items before, fear, wolves etc.

8.       Imaginal style

a.       Again whilst I perceive the current scene in terms of fear, I can play out in imagination, likely scenarios to see which one would be the best to take.

Thus to define emotion would be the state a human is in when something is currently significant to them, where there is congruence of their various systems and there is a call to act.

 To talk about emotions in this way, whilst it seems to have worth to be analytic about them, and to be able to see their components, is however abstract.  To have the emotion of fear in the face of a pack of wolves, is to already presuppose I find myself situated in a scene, containing me and the world, and the world containing wolves. It is already to presuppose myself in a matrix of projects, I was walking in the woods, to soothe my head after a hectic day at work. My job being something I do for a variety of reasons. It could then be argued that whilst the predominant emotion would be fear, actually when we site any scene within the matrix of projects, then we take along our mood, what then do we mean by mood?

Moods

If I could define a mood as a general way of being open to the world. So similar to an emotion but happening over a long period. Thus you may describe someone as in an irritable mood as things generally draw them to irritation, or optimistic as they have a tendency to be drawn to hope.

Whilst I’m not sure a hierarchy is possible, moods seem entwined with projects that we have. The projects can be a determinate task, fix the car, or a value of career success, or a role of being a father, at any time a person will no doubt be in the throw of many projects all with different types of orientation to.

It is from the projects, the things that I care about, that the background is set to the unfortunate situation where I meet the pack of wolves. The mood I am in is the style of situatedness I have, my deportment to the world. It is prior to the perception that I have of the wolves, and indeed explains the perceptual bias I have, as I first see them. This perceptual bias, is the perceptual congruence we have to mood\emotion, where in states of anxiety we have a perceptual bias to see things we could be anxious about, and means to deal with them. Indeed it could well be argued, that it’s not just a perceptual bias of a pre-existing objective world, the world of the scientist devoid of bias, but rather, our world is the world of perceptual bias, as yours is of yours.

As we talk about mood, this can either be an emotional hue, e.g. anxious or depressed, or it can be more purposive and rational, or more rational and philosophic, a mood, then is a general disposition to engage in a certain way with the world, that is the container in which an emotion appears.  Whilst it might be a chicken and egg thought but there is a relationship between the collective hue of the style of your current projects and your current mood.

It could also be argued that your current mood is defined out of the impact of your relation to your various projects and the weighting each of those projects has to your current mood is dependent on your emotional engagement to those projects, and how recent. Thus if you had been very angry as a father and about how others were treating your child, then this my start to generate a theme of injustice within your mood.

There seem other constituents to mood apart from your project engagements:

Somatic input and societal

On a somatic level, so sleep levels, sexual satiety, fitness levels, your relationship with food, drink and drugs.

On a societal level there can be emergent themes, as we are generally in the grip of austerity, or your firm is doing very well, or there are many burglaries in the neighbourhood, then these things as well will contribute to your mood.

As moods last over longer times, then they span emotional episodes, so coming out of that can be certain mood styles, where you may get quick movement between emotions, or very intense emotions, or indeed very strong reactions when certain emotions are felt.

In terms of sequence then in the complex of your current projects and mood, you perceive the world and your relationship with it and within that can experience emotion. Dependent on your engagement with the world and the development of your projects so your mood and perceptions change.  

Pitstop

Just before we move on it might be worth introducing a third term for emotions, that of state.

So we can have an occurrent emotion, we feel fear in front of a wolf. We can also said to be afraid of wolves, so I have an emotional relationship to wolves, such that when I see them, I feel fear. This may help the sense of the emotional state of love, which doesn’t depend on feeling love all the time when in the presence of your partner.

Emotional Avoidance

To talk of emotional avoidance is to talk of avoiding what is of significant to you, what you care about in the world that calls you to action.

So what can we give as examples of emotional avoidance? Well there can be the immediate sense of an emotion being replaced with something else. This something else can be emotional, behavioural or cognitive.

Emotionally, when someone is hurt they might quickly feel anger and ignore the hurt. If someone feels angry they might quickly start cleaning the house to take their experience away from the anger.

Behaviourally someone might feel shame, but quickly make a joke out of it, to reduce the engagement they have with shame. Likewise there may be an emptiness of feeling, where the effect of shame is not acknowledge or paid attention to.

Cognitively someone might feel excitement, they might intellectualise so as to reduce their joy.

As much as emotions felt can be replaced with something, there can also be the case that emotions can be avoided, through avoiding triggering situations.  This can be done to structure your world such that you attempt to avoid a certain feeling, you try to stay in control at all times to avoid feeling fear.   You may avoid people who have strong emotions, avoid thinking about something that happened in a certain way. So the death of your father, you might not think about the loving relationship that is now lost, but rather you may think about the times that he let you down so that you can mitigate the feeling of loss.

Our engagement with the world through perception, memory and imagination, which would seem like a perceptual engagement with past, present and future, can also be engaged in, in an emotionally avoidant fashion.

Memory can you be used so you might only remember certain aspects of an event or person to diminish their feelings.

Perception can be, well I would argue always is biased, and this bias can be to avoid the emotionally provoking aspects of a scene.

In imagination likewise the future can be rolled out in an emotionally muted fashion.

It can also be argued that people can find certain emotions or maybe a range of emotions incredibly unpleasant to deal with. Instead of feeling them, then some form of escape route is taken, this can be through anything that provokes another feeling, so drink, drugs, shopping, sex, career success, can all be things that can be used to manage unpleasant emotions. Of course, the only way to tell if this is the case, would be to do a functional analysis of the person’s behaviour in question.

Three other strategies of emotional avoidance are

1.       Avoidance

2.       Disassociating

3.       Worrying

Firstly there can be avoidance of situations that provoke an unpleasant feeling, or escape from a situation where there is the experience of an unpleasant emotion, for instance anxiety.

Secondly there is disassociation where you can see yourself in a situation rather than experience directly.  Dissociation ranges on a continuum from detaching yourself from a boring situation, which gives yourself a feeling of not being there, of being in your own bubble to dissociative disorder where you dissociate to the point of amnesia, or dissociate from your way of being to another, as in multiple personality disorder.

Thirdly worrying can be a way to reduce the emotional effect of a memory, or perception.

You might also wonder whether the dominant mood could have an impact on emotional avoidance, if someone mood is very intellectual then this would mean to predominantly engage intellectually, or if someone was in a grumpy mood, then they might other emotions that weren’t grumpy ones.

Client Impact

So if a client is emotionally avoidant what does this mean? Well firstly I guess we need to state how avoidant? Of one emotion, of all emotions? Let’s put it on a scale from one to all emotions, and I guess people who are avoidant of all emotions are practically zero.

Let’s say that the core of emotions is that they tell me about something of value to me, something that I care about is present and it could be a threat to that, that it might be taken away or it could be that I am going to gain it, and that I am called to action.

So whilst a fully emotionally avoidant person is an unlikely client to have, what does it mean if someone looks to avoid experiencing certain emotions?

Well firstly they can’t get to realise that there is something that is of value to them that action needs to be taken about. They also can’t get to find out if the emotion which contains a judgement is a sound judgement and also if they are willing to act in the way that their emotion directs. Indeed if the latter were frequently the case, then it is unlikely the emotion would be felt. No prompt to action would be issued as no action is taken. Thus there is the sense that the client is not going to understand their world, and what is important to them as much as they could. They are restricted, their vision limited.

Given there is a call to action from emotions, then for a client to avoid certain emotions, is then to lose spontaneity in that situation and to not be in a certain type of relationship within the world. So if a client eschews anger, then when a situation that calls forth anger, then spontaneity is lost, and the authentic relationship the client has with the world is lost.

We must however distinguish two different aspects of emotion, that that turns up in an emotional episode and that that turns up via a mood. If we talk about anxiety as a mood and anxiety as an emotion, then the anxiety of mood construct the situation in which the emotion is then felt.  Here you have the phenomena of how the situation is set up anxiously and then the anxiety that it provokes is turned away from.  But again the irony in that there is only something to be anxious about because of the anxious moods construction of the world as such. The left hand creates the world, the right hand looks away.

Emotional Processing

If we understand the affect within the emotional complex to be the call to immediate action, then there are several ways that we can respond to it.

1.       We can act as if it’s true

2.       We can avoid it

3.       We can experience it and understand it

In the first instance we can act as if it’s true. Emotions contain a cognitive appraisal, so there is a sense in which an emotion can be true and false.  If I feel anxiety because I know there is a hungry tiger at my door, then this would be a true appraisal.  If however I have a high level of fear as an adult in the face a house spider then we would say the appraisal in the emotion is false.  In both of those situation there is a call to fight or flight, although actually it would seem more useful in the latter case, to experience the emotion, to discover the appraisal is false.  Sometimes then to act on your emotions is to deny yourself finding out they are not true. However not to act on an emotion with a true appraisal could be costly, especially in the case of the hungry tiger.

In the second instance we can avoid the emotion This can be by any of the mechanisms noted above. So we can focus our attention away from it, or use a cognitive, behavioural, physiological or emotional strategy to take our attention of it.  Here we fail to find out what is potentially significant about what happened for us. Moreover we are failing to find out, if the emotion is actually true.  For instance, we may be hurt by something someone said, and our avoidant strategy is immediately get angry and cover the hurt. It could be when we look at why we feel hurt that this contains an archaic interpretation of events that doesn’t still suit us.

In the third event aspect we can experience the emotion, not act on it, but sit with it and understand it. This may reveal propositional statements about ourselves\the world\others which may not be true, or may not suit us anymore. It may reveal prior emotions that we didn’t realise we felt, above all it can show us cognitively our values, which may have slipped away from us.

The sequence of the system of Emotion

You may well notice the sequence of the emotional complex.

We perceive a scene, biased by the emotion that we are in.  The emotional hue is tempered by our association with our memories, and the thrust of our projects via our imagination.

Within this perceptual horizon we focus on a specific aspect of it, we think about it in a certain way, which in turn has an emotional and physiological impact. On the basis of the emotional call to action, then behaviour can ensue, which can play out the emotion. In anger the wrong righted, in anxiety the fear avoided, in joy the sublime scene enjoyed, in sadness tears cried.

Thus from initial perception to behavioural response, the emotion is instantiated, then discharged. Of course there are an infinite number of variants in this, with emotions\physiological responses being events that create other sequences, but in its simplest form we have the above.

This seems useful to point out, as many theorist consider the expression of emotion to part of the emotion, but it seems more that than, it seems the end of an emotional episode, and conceivably the start of a new one.

Emotions that hang around

As emotions are calls to actions, then we have 3 choices, act, ignore or dispute. In action we end the emotional episode and bring a new one. If we deny we hear the call to action of the emotion, and we dispute the validity of it, or it’s utility. I may feel fear as I speak to a lecture hall of students, but I think there is no need for me to, so I will notice the fear that I am feeling and carry on regardless.

If I don’t discharge the emotion, then it will be associated with the memory of that event, it will be more likely to be recalled by association. So if I was in a car crash and I haven’t processed the emotions from it, then when I see a car brake suddenly I can be reminded of my accident and I can relive the scene with the original emotion that was attached to the memory.