TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotion-focused therapy for social anxiety (EFT-SA)
AU - Elliott, Robert
AU - Shahar, Ben
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies on 02 Jun 2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14779757.2017.1330701
PY - 2017/6/2
Y1 - 2017/6/2
N2 - Social Anxiety (SA) is a common, disabling difficulty characterized by persistent fear of other people. After a brief clinical description, we present an Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) theory of SA: We describe its developmental origins in experiences of social degradation, which result in primary emotional processes organized around a core sense of shame-ridden defective self. These give rise to secondary reactive anxiety that others will see the person's defectiveness, organized around a coach/critic/guarding aspect of self that, in the process of trying to keep the person safe from exposure, inadvertently generates the emotional dysregulation characteristic of SA. Following this we present a model and case example for working with SA via an emotional deepening process that begins with accessing secondary reactive anxiety of others in particular situations, then works backwards to accessing and activating primary maladaptive shame so that this emotion scheme can be restructured within a secure, accepting therapy relationship. We conclude with a brief summary of evidence for EFT-SA and some final thoughts about how working with this client population has changed our EFT practice.
AB - Social Anxiety (SA) is a common, disabling difficulty characterized by persistent fear of other people. After a brief clinical description, we present an Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) theory of SA: We describe its developmental origins in experiences of social degradation, which result in primary emotional processes organized around a core sense of shame-ridden defective self. These give rise to secondary reactive anxiety that others will see the person's defectiveness, organized around a coach/critic/guarding aspect of self that, in the process of trying to keep the person safe from exposure, inadvertently generates the emotional dysregulation characteristic of SA. Following this we present a model and case example for working with SA via an emotional deepening process that begins with accessing secondary reactive anxiety of others in particular situations, then works backwards to accessing and activating primary maladaptive shame so that this emotion scheme can be restructured within a secure, accepting therapy relationship. We conclude with a brief summary of evidence for EFT-SA and some final thoughts about how working with this client population has changed our EFT practice.
KW - social anxiety
KW - emotion-focused therapy
UR - http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpcp20/current
U2 - 10.1080/14779757.2017.1330701
DO - 10.1080/14779757.2017.1330701
M3 - Article
VL - 16
SP - 140
EP - 158
JO - Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies
JF - Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies
SN - 1477-9757
IS - 2 Part I
ER -