Principles of Working With Emotion in Depression

Question 1

How does Davidson define resilience?

Answer 1

as the maintenance of high levels of positive affect and well-being in the face of adversity, and he emphasized that it is not that resilient people do not feel negative affect; what characterizes resilience is that the negative affect does not persis

Question 2

How are negative feelings replaced with positive ones?

Answer 2

by the evocation of meaningfully embodied alternate experience to undo the negative feeling

Clinical observation and research suggest that emotional transformation oc- curs by a process of dialectical synthesis of opposing schemes. When oppos- ing schemes are coactivated, they synthesizecompatible elements from the coactivated schemes to form new higher-level schemes, just as in develop- ment, when schemes for standing and falling in a toddler are dynamically synthesized into a higher-level scheme for walking

Question 3

What are the Criteria for when to focus on, go into, deepen, and explore emotion and when to regulate emotion?

Answer 3

using an Intensity-clarity continuum

help clients identify a point at which emotion gets to be too disorganizing,overwhelming, and confusing, at which point it needs to be regulated

Question 4

What are the criteria for facilitating more emotional experience?

Answer 4

1. Build the relational bond (needs to be sufficient to contain the emotion)

A counterindication to facilitating the evocation of emotion is that the therapeutic relationship cannot yet support it because the client lacks the perception of safety.