title: An emotion-focused approach to the overregulation of emotion and emotional pain.
abstract: The importance of facilitating productive therapeutic processes to gain access to overregulated primary adaptive emotional experience is discussed. In addition to describing common two- and three-step emotion sequences involved in change, this article presents the more complex sequences involved in facing emotional pain. Key aspects of facing pain are allowing the experience of "brokenness," or a "shattering" of the self, feeling the associated painful emotions, and processing them to completion. This promotes a transformation in view of self, world, and other. A case example and some general principles of emotional change are given.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada. lgrnberg@yorku.ca
authors.forename: L S
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Greenberg
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bolger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D013811:Psychotherapeutic Processes