“Change Negative Thinking And You Change Bad Feelings” May Not Be The Best Approach. A New Therapy Based On Research By Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio Challenges This Cognitive Therapies’ Premise.

Cognitive-Behavioral therapists work on the premise that emotions are difficult to change directly, and so they target the thoughts (I must be perfect in everything or else I will be a failure) and behaviors (constant frowning) that are contributing to the bad feelings (depressive moods) and behaviors (self-defeating behaviors like irrationally insulting one’s boss). This approach works.

But there is a more direct way to change bad feelings---and in the process change the bad thinking associated with the bad feelings.

Based on the research of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on affect, a therapy has been developed that can directly access various feeling states. Further, feelings, good to bad, pleasant to unpleasant, can be deliberately manipulated not only to yield sustainable good feelings, but also to upgrade thought processes.

Specifically, feeling states can be purposefully accessed that upgrade the thought processes in the following ways: increase motivation (the usual choice, or diminish it for dieting or drug-addiction purposes); enhance the number and variety of consciously available ideas; improve multiple-perspective thinking; heighten creativity; upgrade pattern recognition; create mental states that feature calm, unbiased, empathic attention, interest and curiosity---ideal for decision-making and mindfulness practices.

With the new NET therapy, it was found that feelings don’t have to last very long to lead to successful outcomes that not only create instant good feelings, but also create sustainable good feelings.

All feelings have valence: they have some degree of pleasantness or unpleasantness, and some degree of arousal. That is the only mental information in a feeling. The rest of what is experienced as a feeling comes from the ways we assign meaning to it via learned concepts. Feelings push us to either approach, accept, tolerate or avoid any instant external object or internal thought or state. Every single thing we think, say, do, hear, write, desire, fear, create, learn, hate, decide, evaluate, remember, fantasize, plan, or dream of is obviously, or subtly, accompanied by a feeling.

Feelings range from very good to moderately good to very bad. It turns out that specific levels of feeling provide the foundation for certain types of thinking. For example, the mid-range between good and bad feelings (that is, a feeling level that feels quite good, but not necessarily with ecstasy or elation) provides the feeling-foundation for calm attention, non-judgmental acceptance, interest and curiosity---ideal for what we call a “mindfulness” state. Why not super-good feelings? Because super-good feelings are good for brainstorming---but not for critical thinking. When people feel elated or joyous, they produce a lot of ideas---but many are inaccurate.

The “mindfulness” state can be seen as an attitude, and an attitude consists of thoughts, motor reactions, and a feeling. That feeling is a compassionate-tinged empathy, a powerful approach FEELNG that creates a felt acceptance for all things as they are, including oneself. The mindfulness attitude could not exist as an UNFELT thought or behavior.

The therapy we speak of is called Neuro-Experiential Therapy or NET. The word “neuro” indicates the fact that NET is based on research in neuroscience, and “experiential” points to the fact that it makes use of instantly-created experiences, for example, the experience of being interested in something.

If you are interested in how feelings can be accessed and used, either in therapy or in your own  ongoing life, I urge you to read my book: “What You Don’t Know About Feelings.” A homestudy course (10 Continuing Education credits) based on the book is also available for mental health professionals.

How You Can Tell if Your Child is Resilient

In working on a book about building resilience I’ve read more than 90 research articles. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adverse events. Researchers have identified certain abilities as “must haves” to be resilient. After reading all the research I could find, I’d say that only a few are really critical---and one is super-critical. It’s critical because if it’s not in operation it’s hard---if not impossible---to carry our other possibly needed tactics.

In their landmark research, Conner and Davidson found that resilient people have these traits: They view change as a challenge or opportunity; They have  a willingness to engage the support of others and have close and secure attachments to others; They have personal and meaningful goals; They believe in their own efficacy (the power to accomplish personally-desired goals); They have a history of past successes; They have a sense of humor, and an action-oriented approach; They are patient; They tolerate negative affect; They are open to change; They are optimistic and have faith.

Before addressing the issue of which of those traits are most essential in dealing with stress, let me remind you of what happens when you perceive what you believe is a threat or a danger.

Your body launches a series of actions designed by evolution to protect you.

Your amygdala sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. The sympathetic nervous system sends signals to the adrenal glands. Epinephrine is pumped into the bloodstream. Your heart beats faster. More blood enters your muscles and other vital organs. Blood pressure goes up. Airways in your lungs expand and send more oxygen into your brain, increasing alertness and wariness. Sight, hearing, and other senses become sharper. Epinephrine triggers the release of glucose and fats into your bloodstream increasing your overall energy-level. Your attention is hijacked to search for bad things.

You are set up to fight, flee, freeze, appease, faint, or wait-and-endure. (The most frequent immediate response is freeze.)

You may be in a semi-panic state and begin to ruminate. Your brain is trying to process the trauma and figure out what happened. You may have a lot of strong feelings and intrusive memories at this stage. Kahneman’s System 1 thinking prevails: quick and automatic thoughts that just pop-up in your mind.

To pull out of a stress reaction, you have to help your parasympathetic nervous system do what it’s supposed to do: restore homeostasis, i.e., shut down the stress reaction.

Of all the tactics suggested in the research as helpful in this regard, one is more critical than the others in that it works DIRECTLY on the main mechanism that controls your emotions: Emotional Regulation is needed. So-called Emotional Dysregulation rules. This is at the heart of a stress reaction and refers to a poor ability to manage emotional responses or to keep them within an acceptable range of typical emotional reactions. The dysregulated emotions might be sadness, anger, irritability, or extreme frustration.

What is needed is what Conner and Davidson call “tolerance of negative affect.” Many miss the importance of the word “tolerate.” You can’t consciously will a stress reaction to go away.

And that is the key: the ability to tolerate a really lousy feeling that is not under immediate conscious control is needed. The more it is tolerated, the faster the recovery. There is no “piling on” of ineffective actions. It is while you are tolerating the negative emotion, that you can EFFECTIVELY initiate a variety of other resilience-building tactics.

A major way you can tell the degree to which a child is resilient is by knowing how he or she deals with negative emotions. Are they tolerated, or do they lead to more negative thoughts and behaviors?

This whole topic came to my attention as I was recently looking at Village Publishing instruments that I did not create, and was therefore not all that familiar with 

It was because I am doing a book on resilience that I noticed that the Discipline Index assessed the area most critical to the ability to recover from stress.

The DI reflects the manner in which a child is being socialized---to delay gratification of impulses and to think before acting. This is emotional regulation. Kids with poor emotional regulation do more poorly in school, have poor relationships with peers, seek out peers who also have problems, and fail to negotiate the perils of childhood and adolescence very well.

And they need help to develop the skills of resilience.

Thanks for visiting Village Publishing, Barry Bricklin, Ph.D.

FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS ARE NOT THE SAME THING

The Powerful Role of Feelings In Decision Making

Neuroscience research, especially the research and thinking of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on FEELINGS, has contributed greatly to the development of the Bricklin/Elliot tests and tools. Research suggests that 95% of the choices, decisions and judgements of adults and children are more influenced by feelings than thoughts. People might have many thoughts about some particular choice, but the “select” button is a feeling. Every single thing we think, say, do, hear, write, desire, fear, create, learn, hate, decide, evaluate, remember, fantasize, plan, or dream of is obviously, or subtly, accompanied by a feeling. The way a child or adult FEELS about a choice, decision, or judgment is much more likely to be valid than what is said by that child or adult about the choice, decision, or judgment. This is true in any setting, and especially true in a forensic setting.

Feelings are based, in great part, on memories. A child’s feelings toward a parent, based on that child’s memories, more accurately represent the nature of his or her interactions with that parent than do the words a child might say about those interactions.

In the research literature, the terms “emotions” and “feelings” are almost always used interchangeably. Emotions are but one source of feelings. Inputs from our external senses, as well as inputs from our viscera, represented by homeostatic efficiency, also contribute to our feelings.

An emotion---which can affect our perceptions, attention, memory, judgment, and reasoning--- involves three very distinct components: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response. Ekman believes there are 13 emotional states: fear, disgust, anger, surprise, happiness, sadness, embarrassment, excitement, contempt, shame, pride, satisfaction, and amusement. In humans, an emotional state is launched by a cognitive appraisal. Emotional reactions are innate and automatic. Emotions evoke facial expressions, vocal expressions, changes in one’s body, felt experiences, readiness to act, and social inclinations.

Feelings are the subjective mental representations of an emotion. Bacteria manifested what we would call emotions 3.5 billion years ago. Feelings, as we know them, were not possible until creatures had nervous systems. This occurred about 600 million years ago. Humans showed up around 5 million years ago. 

Feelings are based on inputs from our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, tongue, and hands, from proprioception and other internal senses like those in the viscera and from inner drives like sex and thirst, from thoughts and fantasies, and from our emotional reactions to all that life throws at us. It turns out that the phrase “gut feeling” is particularly critical because the viscera, affected by all of the other inputs just noted, become the primary biological source of our consciously experienced feelings, represented by the status of homeostatic efficiency.

Feelings are powerful and pervasive forces pushing human judgments and decisions. They influence thoughts, actions, feelings, attention, perception, the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information, as well as associative learning for children as well as adults.

Feelings all have valence, the degree to which they feel good to bad. They all manifest some degree of arousal---some degree of alertness, excitement, or engagement. They also manifest some degree of regulation---the degree to which any feeling can be controlled by willpower. The role of feelings is to motivate adaptive behaviors that contribute to the passing on of genes through survival, reproduction, and kin selection.

Contrary to the popular belief that feelings are generally bad for decision making, research has found that individuals who experience more intense feelings achieve higher decision-making performances. Antonio Damasio found that when humans damage the area of their brain where emotions are generated and processed, despite still being able to use logic and function in most areas, they make poor decisions in self-care, and struggle to make any decisions, even simple ones, like what to eat for lunch.

Effective Therapy For Resistant High Conflict Divorcing Families (Part 4)

(If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2 or 3, start here)

Q: I always worry that the judge won’t do anything to help when a parent in a high conflict family refuses therapy. What should I do?

As evaluators we often must deal with the fact that in high conflict families (continual litigation, continual arguments, failed mediation, various degrees of Parental Alienation) we typically find that all participants need therapy and frequently there will be one of them, a parent, who refuses it, usually the one who needs it most. And we know, annoyingly so from prior experience, that all too many judges are unwilling to force custody litigants to accept therapy.

In a prior post, we made the assertion that the typical evaluator believes the way to deal with parents (or children) who need therapy and refuse it is to write an extra-strong report that emphasizes to the judge the pathology of the family member who needs therapeutic help and refuses it.

Our main point is that this is only part of the task. Most judges in fact do believe the parent could profit from therapy, but the typical judge also believes that people who refuse therapy will not profit from it. These judges believe that a conscious willingness to cooperate is an absolute necessity for effective therapy.

Now it is certainly true that client cooperation makes therapy much more likely to succeed. But there are other pathways to therapeutic success, pathways that do not require conscious cooperation, and are completely ethical in that they will have healthy, not unhealthy effects on the client and certainly be “in the best interests of the child(ren),” the reason they are all in court to begin with.

So the evaluator’s mission is not only to make the client pathology crystal clear to the judge  (emphasizing the continual damage to the children), but also to make the case that there are ethical therapeutic methods that can operate successfully even with those who refuse therapy.

The research bases for effective therapy for high conflict families will be addressed in the next post.

Effective Therapy For Resistant High Conflict Divorcing Families (Part 3)

(If you haven’t read Parts 1 or 2, start here)

Q: What is the best therapy to suggest for a custody family where the parents constantly argue and undermine each other?

Informed court involvement is important when it comes to ordering therapy for high conflict families. What you have to explain to the judge involves an area most mental health professionals believe they fully understand, while it is unlikely the judge has ever thought about the area at all. In our opinion even mental health professionals may not fully understand the area either. It is Systems Theory thinking, and especially the unexpected implications for treatment that follow from Systems thinking.

First, some background. As we go through the day we operate within a steady parade of different systems: alone; with spouse; with children; with anyone else who may be in house; within the workplace (which may harbor several systems), after work in recreational and other social circles. Each system will automatically elicit (stimulate) a different (some slightly different, others very different) cluster of body-mind neural circuits in your brain. You will, almost literally, be a different person in each system. (I have four children. It was obvious to me even years before I was trained in my field, that I felt different, and acted differently, with each child.)

Each custody family is a unique system. Each member will act differently within that system than when part of any other system. This means the members of this family really require a special type of family therapy to be able to deal with the unique things that happen in that system. but, as said, we also know that this is impossible. (By “special type” we mean a therapy that can deal with typically non-cooperative clients. This type of therapy requires backup help from the court.)

So what to do? Family therapy is needed and will hardly ever happen. And even if it were to come about, in a high-conflict case the sessions would be chaotic and likely scare the children.

The next post continues coverage of this dilemma and the problems encountered by evaluators when dealing with judges in high conflict cases.

Effective Therapy For Resistant High Conflict Divorcing Families (Part 2)

(If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, start here.)

Q: What is the best therapy to suggest for a custody family where the parents constantly argue and undermine each other?

One would first think about a Parent Coordinator, but you would have to find one trained in psychotherapy. Further, many judges are reluctant to hand over the kind of power most Parent Coordinators demand.

Since the parents typically cannot agree on anything, and can’t work together cooperatively,  and in parental alienation cases one parent will insist the children are “terrified” to be near the other parent, they will refuse any therapy where they have to be in the same room. They will each want individual therapy, and will want the right to choose a favored therapist. The parents may honestly want therapy for the children, but what they really want for themselves is an “expert” who will believe what they say and back them up in court. All too often everyone ends up with his or her own therapist. This usually leads to a chaotic and even greater adversarial mess than existed earlier, especially if there is even the slightest amount of parental alienation in the mix. Each client tells a different story, usually convincingly, and each therapist, consciously or unconsciously, ends up advocating (to a judge in ongoing litigation) for his or her client.

The blunt scientific truth is that this situation demands family therapy, the therapist must know the ploys and tricks typical of high-conflict parents, and the further blunt truth is that this is impossible to arrange. No judge would order it, high conflict parents would never accept it, and if a child is alienated he or she would scream bloody murder. And an unenlightened attorney or mental health professional will chirp in with “why should we be concerned about a family system that no longer exists.”

But this system does exist and will forever exist in the minds of the family members. And since the neural circuitry was wired-in when many members were young, the neural configurations that encode family relations will remain primed to “fire” as intact circuits until they die. Note well also that every system has countless unique properties, and the members of a system will behave in ways within this system that are unlikely to occur outside of that system. There are many behaviors that will emerge (and be open to observation) only within a specific system.

The next post will provide some background on systems theory and its implications for providing therapy to court-involved, high conflict families.