Emotions, and working with them in Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotions are adaptive signals that help us survive and connect. Understanding them is the biggest piece of the puzzle in understanding the meaning of our experiences. They organize attention, prepare the body for action, and communicate important information about needs, values, relationships, and safety.

From an evolutionary lens, emotions developed alongside a demand for quick responses to survive challenges and recognize opportunities. For instance, fear prepares the body to respond to danger. Anger can mobilize protection and boundary setting when something feels unjust or threatening. Sadness may slow us down after loss and encourage us to seek or receive support. Joy strengthens bonding, motivation, and connection. Emotions serve specific and important functions.

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) runs with this idea and views emotions as fundamental for interpreting what we need. However, due to the complicated nature of external pressures or neurodivergence, people often learn, or are "wired" in such a way that certain emotions (and the thoughts and behaviours that follow) are unsafe, unacceptable, or overwhelming. As a result, they may disconnect from emotional experiences and not learn to integrate them, thus eventually becoming overwhelmed by them, or avoiding them with protective distractions such as addiction, dissociation, secondary emotions that leave us stuck in the problem, or intellectualizing or rationalizing. The latter strategy can be the most difficult as some people may know exactly what the problem is, how to describe it, and even what they need, but still cannot help themselves progress past it.

In EFT, change happens not by eliminating emotion, but by helping people safely access and understand, as well as have a transformational experience. Sometimes, we might notice how emotional reactions are adaptive and help us respond effectively to problems. Other times, emotions may be described as maladaptive, where they were shaped by past experiences. Specifically, the emotional reaction was allowed or adaptive at the time. Maladaptive emotional responses become our baseline and can continue operating in the present despite being only a temporary solution, no longer reasonably helpful or necessary.

When emotions are approached with curiosity, safety, and compassion rather than fear or judgment, they can become sources of information and direction. They can transform old automatic reactions and create a new baseline that affects our thoughts and behaviours. I see therapy as time to slow down enough to notice what emotions are missing from the picture, or have been cast into the shadow, and when integrated, lead to a more balanced, capable self.