emotional processing course how to understand and handle your emotions professor roger baker,...

Emotional processing course

How to understand and handle your emotions

Professor Roger Baker, Consultant Clinical PsychologistMrs Sandra May, Primary Care Counsellor

Mrs Ann Henderson, Primary Care Counsellor

© Roger Baker 2006

Welcome

Emotional processing

“most people successfully process the overwhelming majority of the disturbing events that occur in their lives” Rachman 1980

“it is as if the body has a second immune system, an emotional system, devoted not to physical protection but protection from

emotional hurt and trauma” Baker 2003

Sessions

Session 1

Understanding emotions

Session 2

Are emotions our friends or enemies?

Session 3

What does our emotion rule book say?

Session 4

Bottling up emotions or facing them

Session 5

Looking emotions in the eye

Session 6

Tying it all together

Session 7

Follow up session

“Emotional processing;healing through feeling”

Dr Roger Baker, Lion-Hudson Publishers, 2007

Why run the course?

Emotions are an important source of information about the world

Listen to feelings and understand them better

Identify blockages to emotional lifeFace emotions, not avoid

Learn to express feelings better

Find the right balance in emotional life

‘On waterloo bridge ’ by Wendy Cope

Why group sessions

Can take in information and apply it as individuals

But with the added benefit of learning fromothers’ experienceRealise you are not alone and notmentally abnormalHelp each other

ConfidentialityAll information shared in the group is confidential

It should not go outside the group

Please don’t share others’ information at home(feel free to share your own)

This helps us to feel more secure in sharing things

R E S P E C T

Identifying emotions

Emotions are complexMixture of positive and negative elementsMany different emotionsThey change quickly

We can ‘pick’ certain aspects of the memory to focus onUnhelpful rumination on negative events

Identifying emotions: the interview

Our expectation about the friendshipOur beliefs about what happenedOur general way of viewing the world

We have typical ways of judging the intentions of others

The emotions we experience are affected by:

What are normal feelings? (1)

We have many different feelings/emotions each day

Emotions do not have to be powerful (eg anger) but can be quite small (eg mild feeling of satisfaction)

Some emotions are simple eg anger, others complex eg guilt at feeling so happy, tinged with yearning to be a better person

Emotions are usually a reflection of important things (positive or negative) happening to us

What are normal feelings? (2)

These things can be big (car crash) or small (late for work)

The strength of our feelings is usually related to the strength of the trigger event (eg loss of a fiver v loss of a parent)

We are more sensitive when tired, fatigued, ill, alcohol or drug use, under stress

We can have feelings about having feelings (eg exasperated at feeling anxious)

Session 1 - Homework

What’s the positive emotion you feel most often?What’s the negative emotion you feel most often?

Even if you found today difficult, please come to the next session.

Keep going.If there’s something which makes it difficult for you to return, please tell Sandra or Roger. We might be able

to sort it out.

See you next time