Anxiety and its Regulation: Neural Mechanisms and Regulation Techniques According to the Experiential-Dynamic Approach

Abstract

Abstract"lthough anxiety is not necessarily a pathological phenomenon, it can become dysregulated, causing sufering. Indeed, emotion dysregulation lies at the core of many psychopathologies. Thus, anxiety regulation is central to all efective psychological treatment. The predominant perspective on emotion regulation and dysregulation is appraisal theory, which proposes that the cognitive appraisal of an event generates an emotional response. "ccording to Gross s process model, any emotion can become dysregulated when the patient lacks or fails to use an appropriate regulatory strategy. Therefore, the clinician must teach the patient beter regulatory strategies. The perspective we put forward departs from Gross s model based on appraisal theory. The experiential-dynamic emotion-regulation model, EDER, grounded in afective neuroscience and modern psychodynamic psychotherapy proposes that emotions precede cognition temporal and neuroanatomical primacy , emotions are not inherently dysregulated they have speciic properties of time and strength proportional to the quality of the stimulus , and dysregulation derives from the combination of emotions plus conditioned anxiety, or from secondary-defensive afects, both leading to dysregulated-afective states D"Ss . To regulate D"S, the clinician must regulate the dysregulating anxiety or restructure the defenses, which create defensive afects, and then help the client to fully express the underlying emotions that elicit anxiety and defenses. In this chapter, we speciically focus on dysregulated anxiety, its neural bases, and how to regulate it according to the EDER model. First, we present hypotheses and data to show the neural bases of anxiety. Then, speciic strategies and techniques to regulate anxiety are explained and clinical excerpts illustrate their application.

Seeing emotions, reading emotions: behavioral and ERPs evidence of the effect of strategy and of regulation for pictures and words.

“…Our study is the first to show an effect of modulation over LPP due to a not commonly studied strategy defined as distancing. Although distancing was originally proposed by Gross [53] to be a cognitive strategy, we believe that it should be considered not a pure cognitive strategy (no explicit thought generation, nor rethinking effort), but rather an experiential strategy as it involves a different way of relating to the stimuli (see also [1,2,61]). Research has shown that adopting a mindful, or unemotional self-observation attitude, can be a useful mean to reduce emotional reactivity to negative information comparable to, or even more efficient than, cognitive strategies [61][62][63].…”

“…In daily life, we usually express emotions by means of words, and we react with emotions to other people Emotion regulation and ERP words. A case in point, is what happens during a psychotherapy session where the clinician uses language to elicit and regulate patients' emotions, and to understand the emotional states of patients by listening to their words [4,1,2]. Freud defined psychotherapy "a cure through words" [5]: a cure to help patients express and possibly regulate linguistic contents.…”

Schema Therapy for Emotional Dysregulation: Theoretical Implication and Clinical Applications

“…These relational and experiential techniques can overcome some of the limitations of the standard CBT approach such as the poor attention given to elaborate and problematic emotional states. Improved cognition does not necessary mean improved emotion regulation (Grecucci and Job, 2015; Grecucci et al, 2015a, 2016). Greenberg and Safran (1984) provided evidence that rational cognitive language-based systems are independent from emotion based systems.…”

“…Within this model and these therapies, emotion dysregulation is treated through behavioral methods, attentional methods, cognitive methods and mindfulness and acceptance methods. The Experiential-Dynamic Emotion Regulation model (Grecucci et al, 2015b, in press; see also Campos et al, 2004 for a similar account) claims that events trigger: innate emotional responses with inborn adaptive action tendencies which precede cognition (temporal and neuroanatomical primacy) (Grecucci et al, 2016). Once elicited, emotions have a duration and intensity proportional to the stimulus and automatically self-regulate.…”

Dysregulated Anxiety and Dysregulating Defenses: Toward an Emotion Regulation Informed Dynamic Psychotherapy

“…In the present paper, starting from the above considerations, we propose that emotions, as evolutionary products, are not inherently dysregulated (as assumed by cognitive models of emotion regulation), and dysregulation can be better understood as the result of: (1) emotions plus dysregulated anxiety, or (2) defensive affects resulting from dysregulating defenses. We have defined these states as Dysregulated Affective States (DAS; Grecucci et al, 2015 , 2016a ). Second, we provide a framework and methodology for an Experiential-Dynamic Emotion Regulation Methodology (EDER) that integrates Experiential-Dynamic Therapy techniques and emotion regulation science principles for the clinical treatment of DAS.…”