Esra’s Reviews > Changing Emotion With Emotion: A Practitioner's Guide > Status Update

Once emotion changes, cognition and narratives also change. Now, people, neglected as children, who no longer feel unworthy change their narratives: Where once they were unlovable, now the narrative specifies that others were incapable of love. Where once people who were abused blamed themselves and felt ashamed or guilty about the abuse, now they see themselves as not responsible.

Shakespeare wrote, “Be fire with fire; threaten the threatener and outface the brow of bragging horror” (V, i, 48–50; Staunton, 1898). In other words, respond by using a similar method, match kind with kind; so, here: change emotion with emotion.

The paradox of this path to emotional change, however, is that it does not start with trying to change emotion. Rather, itʼs the opposite: to fully accept the painful emotion. Emotions must be fully felt and their message heard before they are open to change by new emotions. Emotion acceptance always precedes emotion transformation: You have to feel an emotion to heal an emotion.

I have found that the primary maladaptive emotions most in need of change that arise in most therapies are fear of danger, fear of separation, shame of unworthiness, and the sadness of lonely abandonment. And the adaptive emotions that help in the transformation process are empowered anger, the sadness of grief, and compassion (Greenberg, 2015).