During Brainspotting therapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy sessions, we may ask clients to notice where in their bodies they are experiencing their feelings. For some clients, that’s a difficult question. They may have spent decades trying hard not to feel anything in their bodies, often due to early childhood trauma. Learning the location of feelings in the body may take time.
This article describes how recognizing and labeling our emotions can help calm our brains and reduce distress.
“For many of us, emerging from pandemic life has created a flurry of new emotions. A large body of research shows that labeling these emotions — something scientists call ‘affect labeling’ — can calm your brain and reduce stress.”
“‘We think labeling the emotion will cause us to focus on it and accentuate it,’ said Matt Lieberman, professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the book ‘Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.’ ‘In reality, labeling the emotion tends to dampen it a bit so we move on to other things.'”
“Labeling the emotion appears to essentially turn off the alarm bells that are ‘telling your brain to be scared or angry,’ said Dr. Lieberman. ‘Our brain seems to be wired such that as the front of your brain gets a clear understanding of your emotional state, the amygdala calms down a little bit so that emotional alarm is less distracting.'”
“Identifying your emotions takes practice. At the Hoffman Institute Foundation, which offers a weeklong retreat to help people identify negative behavioral patterns, each session starts by asking participants what they are feeling. The Institute has compiled a detailed list of more than 300 feeling words to help people tune into their exact emotional state. You can download the complete feelings list here. (Consider printing the list and putting it on the fridge for the whole family to use.) It can be a fun exercise to scan the list to find just the right word to describe how you’re feeling.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/well/pandemic-wellness-mental-health.html
Brainspotting Therapy with Elaine Korngold
I am a Certified Brainspotting Therapist and an Approved Consultant and would be happy to talk to you about Brainspotting. Brainspotting therapy accesses the genius of our deeper emotional brain. During the healing process I am fortunate to observe how intelligent, inventive, and intuitive all human beings are. Creativity is revealed through their resilience, survival, and recovery. The processing that occurs with clients finding feelings in the body while being focused on a Brainspot is deep, rapid, and unpredictable. During each session I wait for the surprise and I am rarely disappointed.
With your focused vision and my attuned presence and verbal guidance, emotional Brainspots can be released in a gentle and non-invasive way. There is no need to be in chronic emotional pain. Please text or email me for a free consultation.