Racket feelings

Emotions are such an emotive topic. There are many and varied definitions about them and lots of alternate theories of emotion. In transactional Analysis the term racket has been used in many ways and some are listed here.


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Racket feelings are generally seen as pathological and hence it seems opportune to define what a healthy, here and now feeling is.

Also enclosed are different solutions to feelings. Again there is much conjecture on what is the psychologically healthy way to deal with feelings - express them, inhibit them or think them away.



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Anger work in psychotherapy

Preliminary notes

It is necessary to use anger work in a context in counselling. In some areas such as the bodywork approaches this is not done and anger work can be used just as an exercise in itself. It must be relevant to the contract at hand and have a clear role in assisting the client to achieve that contract.

For example a client could say, “I want to shout at my father because of the way he treated me the other day”. In order for a therapist to go along with such a contract he needs to be aware of what happened between the two people as the anger work could be just a part in the game. What is the client’s script messages about anger and its expression. The client may be chronically angry and to go ahead and do the anger work would be contraindicated.

Anger work is a regressive technique. That is it encourages the client to ‘regress’ into the Child ego state and out of the Adult and Parent ego states. This has obvious uses for the individual who is stuck in his Parent and Adult and excludes the Child ego state, which many people are who attend psychotherapy. On the other hand there are people who are too much in their Child ego state and exclude the Parent and Adult, clearly one would need to be careful in doing such anger work with these individuals. For example the chronically angry person, and the hysteric personality type.



Anger work also destabilises the personality. This is one of its great therapeutic advantages. A client’s script becomes set and solid over time after many, many rehearsals and reinforcements day after day. Anger work can be used to shake it up and loosen the concrete holding it together. Once loosened one can then restructure the script into another form that allows the individual to live a more emotionally liberated life. That is, less script bound and more autonomous.

The down side of this destabilisation is that what if the client is already destabilised such as can be the case with schizophrenia, dependent personality, borderline personality and the obsessive/compulsive personality. One would need to be cautious using anger work in such situations.

Another difficulty with anger work is that anger always has the potential to turn into physical violence. So if the client is impulsive and has a tendency to be explosive then one needs to be very careful with anger work particularly if the client is bigger than you.


These women need to do some anger work, for sure!


In all my years of counselling I have never had a client express their anger in a way which hurt me or any of my property. One can use “Stop” techniques if necessary. Another advantage of this is with the client who comes from a physically violent back ground. By doing anger work they get first hand experience that there can be anger without physical violence.

Anger expression can be self validating. If one feels they have been wronged, then the act of saying so , especially to the face of the other party says to the individual - “I am worthwhile”. So to say such things with the expression of anger can assist with the self esteem.

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Writing

I had forgotten what it was like and how it worked. For the past two weeks the publisher had asked me (twice!) to put in the proposal for the book on emotions. I had thought about it, meant to start it, “ummed and ahhed” about it all and nothing had happened.


To all you smokers out there, remember the cool, smooth flavour of Camel.


Well stuff was happening but it was all behind the scenes. My mind, as I ate my dinner, went for my walking exercise, bathed and other such domestic tasks was slowly but surely getting it together. How do you put together an 80,000 word manuscript? What is the overall structure of the thing which of course is the most important part of all. It was not like I had set myself the task to ‘get the overall structure of the book’ it was kind of thinking about this bit here and that bit there. Definitely done in a non systematic way.

On my computer desk top is the folder which has all the stuff in it for what the publisher is wanting. It just sits there in the bottom left hand corner. Today I sat down at my computer and opened up the folder. I had no intention of doing that, it kind of just happened. Then three hours later it was done. It was one of those things where you start something and then you look at the clock and realise three hours have gone by. All of a sudden you realise you have that sort of numb feeling behind your eye balls because your concentration has been so intense for such a protracted period of time.



It reminded me of how I wrote the manuscript for the book on working with suicidal individuals. I never forced anything, it happened and came when it wanted. At times I was a bit concerned as I would go for a week or two with out writing anything. But then it would come and I would write a whole bunch of stuff.

Back to the current book.

I have an exercise for anyone out there who might like to do such a thing. You need to get four separate pieces of paper (Blank sheets with no lines on them).

On the first page draw a picture of an angry person
On the second page draw a picture of a sad person
On the third page draw a picture of a scared person
On the fourth page draw a picture of a happy person

Then if you like send them to me and I will analyse them.



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Emotional dysregulation

I was recently reading an article on emotional dysregulation. Sounds impressive eh?

The person who is capable of emotional regulation can initiate, maintain and modulate the occurrence, intensity and duration of internal feeling states. Impressive eh? In other words they are capable of self soothing.



In Transactional Analysis terms one could describe emotional dysregulation in the following ways



The child begins life in a symbiosis with mother. It has to do this or it will die as it has no Adult or Parent ego states to keep it alive. The child will use mother’s Parent and Adult ego states to get food and water and all the psychological needs it has for love and human contact.

As the child grows in its early days it learns that at times it will experience distress of various kinds. It has hunger, thirst, wind, a need to be changed and so forth. It learns or is programmed to let mother’s Adult and Parent ego states know of its needs by crying. When mother hears the cry she swings into action and sets about solving the child’s distress and thus the child is emotionally regulated as the distress eases.

When this happens the child learns four things
It learns that it is important, it has worth and people will help it out
It learns that it can get its needs met
It introjects a soothing Parent ego state into its own Parent ego state
It learns the experience the feeling satisfied and calmed down



Sometimes this does not happen. For instance mother may be suffering post natal depression. She begins to find herself isolated in the house, lying in bed for long periods of time during the day. When the new-born cries she finds it very hard to get out of bed to deal with the child, at times she does not even recognise the child is crying. As a result the child has to cry for long periods before it is dealt with and sometimes the help never comes and the child just gives up crying.

When this happens the child learns
That it is of little worth
It develops the injunction, “Don’t get your needs met”
It does not introject an internal soothing parent figure
It has no experience of the feeling of being soothed

Combine this with certain inborn natural temperament qualities and the young person can be set up with a life of emotional dysregulation. Consider this list of temperament qualities.



If the child is born with a negative quality of mood and an intense level of reaction combine this with a lack of internal self soothing ability, a “Don’t get your needs met” injunction, that it is of little worth and has no experience of what it feels like to be soothed then it is likely to suffer emotional dysregulation.

Should this happen then the person will develop other ways of coping with the dysregulation. Three common ways are:

Self harming. This is common with the borderline personality. As I mention in my book on working with the suicidal there are eight main reasons for self harming

1. Self harming as part of gang tattooing behaviour.
2. Self harming to make self feel real which can be found in those who dissociate.
3. Self harming to make self feel something.
4. Self harming used as a means of tension relief and to release pressure build up.
5. Self harming as a physical expression of emotional pain. Self harming is seen as providing concrete evidence of the pain.
6. Self harming as a means to self nurture. It allows the person to care for self as can be found in Munchausen Syndrome.
7. Self harming as a means to punish self and an expression of self hatred.
8. Self harming as a means to manipulate others or as a cry for help.



People who self harm as a way to cope with emotional dysregulation would most often be doing it for the reason cited as number 4.

Drug use. Some cope with emotional dysregulation by self medicating with drugs weather they be licit or illicit



Comfort eating. One way to soothe self is to eat good tasting food. When this happens the person is said to engage in what is called comfort eating. They deal with ongoing painful emotions by self soothing using eating.

Therapy with such people is not all that complex. The therapist simply soothes the client when necessary. Of course this is easier said than done but the overall direction of treatment is quite clear. This soothing can range from lending a sympathetic ear and a soothing voice, to holding work, to the client learning methods of self soothing such as using a pacifier and so forth.

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It happens sometimes

I have seen a twenty something woman about 4 times. About the end of the second session I could see it in the way she looked at me. A strong positive transference is developing, maybe even very strong. She reports the sessions have been most fruitful for her and is keen to attend further sessions.

But it is the way she looks at me right into my face and eyes. I find it a little bit disconcerting as she can kind of stare at me for a little time. Not an excessively long period of time but it is a little longer than would usually be the case.



Why do I feel a little perturbed by it? At the moment I am “The best thing since sliced bread”, in her mind so I am supposed to feel good about that aren’t I?. But it is the swiftness of the emotional development, it could have a romantic quality to it and they could be quite intense emotions.

I have dealt with such clients in the past but I suppose I am yet to find out how such intense emotions are going to be displayed by her. If she is an acting out type of person then it is going to be some hard work at times. Some clear boundary setting is going to be required along with some clear confrontations. I suppose I am not looking forward to the possibility of that. However from how she has behaved so far, acting out is not one of her traits.



As I have mentioned before an intense positive transference sooner or later turns around to an intense negative transference. As I write I feel I am perhaps hyper vigilant with her at this time due to the strength of the emotions she is feeling towards me.

Maybe also it is the fact that she really looks into my face and eyes. Maybe I am finding that a kind of ‘closeness’ which I am not currently comfortable with. I get a sense of too much too soon sort of thing.


In dealing with her I kind of feel like this at times

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