emotions

Archived Posts from this Category

May 13, 2010

Parataxic Distortion

Posted by Nathen under co-counseling, countertransference, emotions, family therapy, going meta, Harry Stack Sullivan, parataxic distortion, psychology, Sigmund Freud, therapy, transference, words
[2] Comments 

My favorite new term from my family therapy program is parataxic distortion, coined by the “American Freud” and one of the grandfathers of family therapy, Harry Stack Sullivan.

A parataxic distortion is when a current situation or person reminds you of something from your past, often without you knowing it, such that you behave to some degree as if you are in your past, dealing with that situation or person. Parataxic distortion is an umbrella term for confusions like Freud’s transference (client gets inappropriately emotional about therapist) and countertransference (therapist gets inappropriately emotional about client). It is also very much like to co-counseling’s “restimulation of distress.” Most likely every psychotherapeutic school has its own name for this phenomenon.

The idea is that there is a way in which your memories are categorical, not specific. That is, if your dad hit you when you were a kid, you not only attach fear and anger to your dad in your memory, you also attach it to a range of things, maybe bald men, short men, men in general, authority figures in general, certain kinds of places or rooms, etc.

Mostly, our memories are useful. This ability to generalize, for example, helps us avoid burning ourselves on hot stoves in general instead of having to painfully learn not to touch each hot stove. Neat trick!

But with a parataxic distortion, our unconscious memory keeps us from being able to understand and deal with situations as they are, in the present. It patterns your behavior. It limits your options. Usually without your knowing it, it makes your life more scary, sad, irritating, and ultimately isolated than it needs to be. Most therapeutic modalities have some version of this three-stage recipe for resolving parataxic distortions: 1) Form a trusting relationship with someone who has less distortion in the area you have trouble with. 2) Have a “corrective emotional experience,” where you basically re-experience your distortion-driven emotional pattern while demonstrably safe in this trusting relationship. 3) Have a “cognitive reappraisal,” meaning come to a new understanding of your behavior in light of current reality as it is. Go meta.

Easier said than done, of course, but well worth it!

 

February 15, 2010

Alexithymia

Posted by Nathen under alexithymia, emotions, mystification, parenting, psychology, somatization
[5] Comments 

Alexithymic describes someone who can’t talk about emotions. They also have trouble knowing when they or others are experiencing an emotion, and trouble distinguishing which emotion it is, if they do notice one. It is not a considered a clinical condition, but it can produce clinical conditions, like somatization, where people develop various body conditions instead of feeling emotions. It becomes a problem when somatizers insist on one medical test or procedure after another for a problem that will never yield to biological intervention. I read one estimate that 20% of money spent on medical services is for these kinds of concerns. (!)

There are social consequences, too, of course. If you can’t recognize that you’re in the grip of an emotion, you can be hard to understand and hard to deal with. It’s also hard for an alexithymic person to relate to others who are having emotions–it’s more difficult to take their perspectives and to have empathy.

It’s not a black-or-white condition, of course. Everyone is somewhere on the spectrum of emotional fluency. It’s not an intractable state, either. You can learn emotional fluency, and most people do, to some extent. It’s part self-awareness, part self-acceptance, and part vocabulary. It’s something you continue learning throughout life, given a supportive environment. Parents can stifle the learning curve in their children by how and when they give them attention. Somatizing children, for example, can come from parents who give them attention for physical pain but not emotional pain. Another problematic parenting technique, called “mystification” by psychologists, works to slow the emotional learning curve; when a child is angry, for example, a parent might say something like, “You’re not angry,” or “You shouldn’t be angry.” That kind of thing goes a long way to confuse people about emotions.

 

« Previous Page