An Emotion Management Practice: A Therapeutic Process of Reciprocal Inter-Personal and Inner-Personal Engagement

Abstract

This article presents a brief personal reflective practice that may help, over time, to reduce the frequency and intensity of troubling emotions. The practice is offered as an extension of collaborative therapeutic process, for possible use as "homework" either between sessions or after treatment. Referencing recent discoveries in neurobiology, the article proposes a simple four-step process by which a person may activate, modulate, associate, and reconsolidate emotionally charged procedural memories. The practice may be imagined as transferring collaborative process between the consulting room and the reflecting mind. The practitioner may be conceived as embodying a reciprocal conversation between left and right cerebral hemispheres, and cortical and subcortical neural networks, constructing an evolving integrated personal reality less dominated by difficult emotions and potentially more able to negotiate a collaborative inter-personal reality. A clinical example illustrates a possible approach and outcome. A number of therapeutic modalities offer homework assignments to clients (a well-known example is cognitive behavioral therapy). During the therapy session, the assignment is explained, discussed, and possibly rehearsed. The client may receive worksheets to take home, work through, and bring back for further discussion with the therapist. Ideally, such homework enables people to deal with particular issues and build up pertinent skills, to receive timely guidance and support for their continuing efforts, and to realize an enhanced degree of personal agency over time. Following suit, this article presents and explicates a "homework pamphlet" that attempts (1) to extend the therapeutic model of inter-personal relationship into a practice for "inner-personal"