scholarly journals Emotion Processing and the Role of Compassion in Psychotherapy from the Perspective of Multiple Selves and the Compassionate Self

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Kenichi Asano

Emotion processing is an important factor for successful psychotherapy. Clients tend to suffer from maladaptive emotions, which contribute to states of confusion, rumination, and stagnation. The therapist should demonstrate adequate empathy and understanding of the client’s complaints to help the client to recognize and respect their own emotions and desires. In most cases, there is more than one desire, and each desire should be confronted. The compassionate self exercises are helpful to distinguish and integrate confused states. In this report, the author introduces a case in which the therapist helped a client to process emotional experiences by leading the client to pay attention to her own emotional responses. The client accessed multiple desires for each emotion and recognized the context for each. To integrate multiple desires and contexts, the therapist used multiple selves exercises from Compassion Focused Therapy. The compassionate self exercises play a role in integrating complicated emotions and in directing the client toward making an adequate choice independently. On its own, processing emotional experiences can induce adaptive and healthy desires; however, using compassionate self exercises helps the client to integrate complicated emotions and to approach their own values in a more direct way.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobyn Bell ◽  
Jane Montague ◽  
James Elander ◽  
Paul Gilbert

Abstract Compassion focused therapy (CFT) is rooted in an evolutionary view of the human mind as formed of a multitude of contrasting, and often conflicting, motivations, emotions and competencies. A core aim of the therapy is to help clients understand the nature of their mind in a way that is de-pathologizing and de-shaming. The approach is also focused on the cultivation of compassion to work with these difficult aspects of mind. CFT includes the ‘multiple-selves’ intervention which involves the differentiation of threat-based emotion and an exploration of their conflict. Compassion is then applied to the client’s affective world to aid regulation and integration. This paper focuses on clients’ experiences of a chairwork version of multiple-selves, wherein clients personify their emotions in separate chairs. Nine participants with depression were interviewed directly following the intervention and the resulting data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three interconnecting themes were identified: appreciating emotional complexity; the role of chairwork process; and compassionate integration. The results highlight the importance of emotional differentiation in understanding internal multiplicity and conflict in depression, and the role of compassion in creating a sense of personal coherence. The embodied and enactive nature of chairwork was found to be of benefit in identifying and separating emotion, and in developing new forms of self-relating. The paper discusses the clinical implications of such findings for the treatment of depression. Key learning aims As a result of reading this paper, readers should: (1) Learn about the ‘multiple-selves’ framework for working with threat emotions. (2) Appreciate the complexity of emotions in depression. (3) Understand how chairwork processes can be used to access, differentiate and address emotional material. (4) Develop insight into how compassion can be used to regulate emotions and integrate aversive experiences.


2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rong-kou Liu ◽  
Ruey-ling Chu ◽  
Batja Mesquita ◽  
Mayumi Karasawa

2021 ◽  
pp. 009365022199149
Author(s):  
Shan Xu ◽  
Zheng Wang

This study integrates the theory of multiple selves within the theoretical framework of dynamic motivational activation (DMA) to identify the dynamic patterns of multiple self-concepts (i.e., the potential self, the actual self) in multitasking (e.g., primary and secondary activities) in daily life. A three-week experience sampling study was conducted on college students. Dynamic panel modeling results suggest that the self-concepts are both sustaining and shifting in daily activities and media activities. Specifically, the potential and actual selves sustained themselves over time in primary and secondary activities, but they also shifted from one to another to achieve a balance in primary activities over time. Interestingly, secondary activities were not driven by the alternative self-concept in primary activities, but instead, by the emotional experiences of primary activities. Furthermore, the findings identified that multitasking to fulfill their actual self did not motivate people to re-prioritize their potential self later.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110088
Author(s):  
Colin Agur ◽  
Lanhuizi Gan

Scholars have recognized emotion as an increasingly important element in the reception and retransmission of online information. In the United States, because of existing differences in ideology, among both audiences and producers of news stories, political issues are prone to spark considerable emotional responses online. While much research has explored emotional responses during election campaigns, this study focuses on the role of online emotion in social media posts related to day-to-day governance in between election periods. Specifically, this study takes the 2018–2019 government shutdown as its subject of investigation. The data set shows the prominence of journalistic and political figures in leading the discussion of news stories, the nuance of emotions employed in the news frames, and the choice of pro-attitudinal news sharing.


Author(s):  
Luis Manuel Blanco‐Donoso ◽  
Jennifer Moreno‐Jiménez ◽  
Laura Gallego‐Alberto ◽  
Alberto Amutio ◽  
Bernardo Moreno‐Jiménez ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 302-303
Author(s):  
Stephanie Yamin ◽  
Roxana Manoiu ◽  
Gary Naglie ◽  
Sarah Sanford ◽  
Elaine Stasiulis ◽  
...  

Abstract Driving often provides a sense of independence, quality of life and emotional wellbeing. For older adults living with dementia, driving cessation eventually becomes inevitable. Driving cessation has been shown to negatively impact older adults’ mobility and, consequently, quality of life. Caregivers of persons with dementia (PWD) who have ceased driving are also impacted as they often become responsible for meeting the mobility needs of PWD and they provide emotional support in respect to this significant life transition. To date, there is little information on the role of gender in the transition to driving cessation in PWD. The purpose of this study was to examine the role that gender plays among drivers and ex-drivers with dementia from the perspectives of PWD, their caregivers, and healthcare practitioners. Secondary thematic analyses were conducted from a pre-existing sample of persons with dementia (N=10), family caregivers (N=13), and healthcare practitioners (N=6) who participated in interviews and focus groups about their experiences around driving cessation in the context of dementia. Data analyses involved an inductive thematic technique that allowed for generating themes. The main themes identified gender differences as a significant factor in: (1) difficulty accepting driving cessation (2) driving as it is tied to identity, (3) emotional responses to driving cessation, (4) driving as part of the caregiving role. The findings suggest that there is a need for tailored interventions for men and women who lose their ability to drive, in addressing their unique emotional responses and in supporting them through this important life transition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 102986492097472
Author(s):  
Katherine O’Neill ◽  
Hauke Egermann

Recent research has explored the role of empathy in the context of music listening. Here, through an empathy priming paradigm, situational empathy was shown to act as a causal mechanism in inducing emotion, although the way empathy was primed had low levels of ecological validity. We therefore conducted an online experiment to explore the extent to which information about a composer’s expressive intentions when writing a piece of music would significantly affect the degree to which participants reportedly empathise with the composer and in turn influence emotional responses to expressive music. A total of 229 participants were randomly assigned to three groups. The experimental group read short texts describing the emotions felt by the composer during the process of composition. To control for the effect of text regardless of its content, one control group read texts describing the characteristics of the music they were to hear, and a second control group was not given any textual information. Participants listened to 30-second excerpts of four pieces of music, selected to express emotions from the four quadrants of the circumplex theory of emotion. Having heard each music excerpt, participants rated the valence and arousal they experienced and completed a measure of situational empathy. Results show that situational empathy in response to music is significantly associated with trait empathy. As opposed to those in the control conditions, participants in the experimental group responded with significantly higher levels of situational empathy. Receiving this text significantly moderated the effect of the expressiveness of stimuli on induced emotion, indicating that it induced empathy. We conclude that empathy can be induced during music listening through the provision of information about the specific emotions of a person relating to the music. These findings contribute to an understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underlie emotional responses to music.


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