Shafir Tal
The Graduate School of Creative Arts Therapies, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of HaifaHaifa, Israel; The Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann ArborMI, USA.
Front Psychol. 2016 Sep 23;7:1451. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01451. eCollection 2016.
Emotion regulation is a person's active attempt to manage their emotional state by enhancing or decreasing specific feelings. Peripheral theories of emotion argue that the origins of emotions stem from bodily responses. This notion has been reformulated in neurophysiological terms by Damasio, who claimed that emotions are generated by conveying the current state of the body to the brain through interoceptive and proprioceptive afferent input. The resulting brain activation patterns represent unconscious emotions and correlate with conscious feelings. This proposition implies that through deliberate control of motor behavior and its consequent proprioception and interoception, one could regulate his emotions and affect his feelings. This concept is used in dance/movement (psycho)therapy where, by guiding to move in a certain way, the therapist helps the client to evoke, process, and regulate specific emotions. Exploration and practice of new and unfamiliar motor patterns can help the client to experience new unaccustomed feelings. The idea that certain motor qualities enhance specific emotions is utilized by the therapist also when she mirrors the client's movements or motor qualities in order to feel what the client feels, and empathize with them. Because of the mirror neurons, feeling what the client feels is enabled also through observation and imagination of their movements and posture. This principle can be used by verbal therapists as well, who should be aware of its bi-directionality: clients seeing the therapist's motor behavior are unconsciously affected by the therapist's bodily expressions. Additional implications for psychotherapy, of findings regarding mirror neurons activation, are discussed.
情绪调节是指一个人通过增强或减少特定情感来主动管理自身情绪状态的行为。外周情绪理论认为，情绪起源于身体反应。达马西奥从神经生理学角度重新阐述了这一观点，他认为情绪是通过内感受和本体感受的传入输入将身体的当前状态传递给大脑而产生的。由此产生的大脑激活模式代表无意识情绪，并与有意识的感受相关联。这一观点意味着，通过有意识地控制运动行为及其随之产生的本体感受和内感受，人们可以调节自己的情绪并影响自身感受。这一概念被应用于舞蹈/运动（心理）治疗中，治疗师通过引导患者以特定方式运动，帮助患者唤起、处理和调节特定情绪。探索和实践新的、不熟悉的运动模式可以帮助患者体验新的、不习惯的感受。当治疗师模仿患者的动作或运动特质以感受患者的感受并产生共情时，也会利用某些运动特质能增强特定情绪这一观点。由于镜像神经元的存在，通过观察和想象患者的动作及姿势也能够实现感受患者的感受。言语治疗师也可以运用这一原理，他们应该意识到其双向性：患者看到治疗师的运动行为会在无意识中受到治疗师身体表达的影响。本文还讨论了关于镜像神经元激活的研究结果对心理治疗的其他影响。
