I learned about the “Affective Bridge” exercise in the second module of Schema Therapy training (third wave CBT approach). We practiced this exercise in threes, then I used it in consultations with clients. The exercise, if done correctly, almost always leads to interesting and even unexpected insights. Reminds me of a quantum leap in memory from the present to childhood (and vice versa). At the cognitive level, the client cannot always remember some traumatic stories from his childhood that triggered the mechanism of maladaptive behavior, and emotional memory can often provide access to these events. Let me give you an example from practice (a collective image). At the session, my client (I’ll call him Denis) and I discussed two situations that happened to him over the past week. In these two situations, there was a repeating pattern of mental, emotional, and behavioral responses. First situation. He texted his girlfriend, she didn't respond. His thoughts on this event: “She is not at all interested in me. Why am I writing first? I’m a loser.” Emotions: shame, despair, anger at yourself. Behavioral reaction: load yourself with work. Second situation. I came to the seminar. When the speaker asked the participants to break into pairs, he suddenly felt anxiety, shame, and loneliness again. Thoughts: “No one will approach me. No one is interested in me.” Behavioral reaction - he left the office under the pretext that he needed to make a call. Shame is an emotion that arises from an internal feeling of one’s own defectiveness. The experience of defectiveness is triggered by situations associated with expected rejection. I had a hypothesis that in childhood Denis often had to experience rejection as a result of emotional deprivation from his parents. A person with trauma resorts to one of three maladaptive reactions to a situation in which his needs are not met: capitulation (if he experiences rejection, he puts up with it, feels bad, unworthy of love), avoidance (avoids relationships for fear of being rejected) , overcompensation (becomes very demanding in terms of showing love to oneself). In both cases, Denis took an avoidant position, trying to drown out emotional pain by immersing himself in creativity, business, computer games, automatically scrolling through the feed on his phone, etc. I asked Denis to close his eyes, return to the second situation described at the seminar, when he experienced anxiety that no one would approach him, then shame, loneliness, and again feel these emotions. Then I suggested that he erase the situation itself in his imagination, leaving only emotional experiences and asked if there were situations in childhood in which he felt the same. Denis recalled several situations at once, one of which was repeated very often: he approached his mother to hug her, get her love, attention, and his mother drove him away every time with the words: “Leave me alone, I’m sick without you!” Faced with rejection from his mother over and over again, Denis told himself that he did not need love, and developed a tactic of distancing himself, throwing himself headlong into some kind of busyness. Being busy brought him a momentary sense of satisfaction and temporarily reduced his need for love and feelings of inferiority. Identifying early trauma allows the client to recognize the source of maladaptive response mechanisms and then work through the trauma, transforming perceptions and behavior patterns so that they are able to meet their basic needs and improve their quality of life. *Images created using the Kandinsky 2.2 neural network. More useful information and communication in my telegram channel. I would be glad to subscribe 😉 https://t.me/burkova_psy Respect copyright in accordance with Art. 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ©