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This form of psychotherapy centers on emotion: The objective of this approach is to help clients to work through any defenses they may have to experiencing their feelings, because ultimately, the fear of feelings—or affect-phobia—underlies most of the work psychotherapists do. Because people are afraid of their feelings, especially strongly negative feelings, they will avoid them. To do this, they create barriers to feelings so that they do not even begin to experience their emotions. These maladaptive emotional blocks sometimes lie at the core of clients' presenting problems, so that simply eliciting feelings is often the most direct path toward resolving any therapeutic issues.
The approach follows three primary steps:
- Work through emotional defenses (Defense restructuring).
- Elicit feeling (Affect restructuring).
- Change sense of self and sense of others (Self–other restructuring).
The approach emphasizes emotions but includes cognitive therapeutic aspects as the therapist leads clients to understand their feelings. In a sense, the approach is a sort of exposure therapy typically used to treat phobias. In this case, the therapist exposes the client to their emotions so that they lose their fear of feelings and begin to experience their emotions naturally and appropriately.
Return to Affect-Focused Dynamic Psychotherapy
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