As stress levels rise from the speed of change, information overload, the abundance of temptations of consumption, and extremes in society, we need to reset how we process emotions to stay ahead of that stress and rewire the stress-induced health problems it has caused.
That is the role of EBT: a new skill set to bridge the gap between the self-regulatory skills that worked very well until about 1980, when stress levels started rising, along with mental and physical health problems, and the skills we need to have optimal health today.
Nowhere left to go but emotions
What is the link between emotional processing and physiology? First, processing emotions is our default strategy, knowing that research has shown that cognitive control (thinking, analyzing, and mindfulness) does not switch off the stress response at today’s levels.
A 2013 study demonstrated that in moderate stress, the most powerful cognitive technique, reappraisal, did not lower cortisol levels, the gold standard of measuring self-regulatory techniques. The success of behavioral strategies is dependent upon a high-functioning prefrontal cortex, and without stress protection from cognitive control, behavioral intervention is unlikely to be successful.
Emotions reflect physiology
Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese neuroscientist whose work deals with the relationship between emotions and their brain substrates. As a Professor of Psychology, Philosophy, and Neurology at the University of Southern California and, additionally, an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute, he developed the Nesting Principle of Neurophysiology.
The most important aspect of this model is that the brain is hierarchical, and emotions reflect fundamental, primitive elements of physiology. This is important to health, as when the stress response is activated, the sympathetic nervous system is dominant and associated with negative emotions and dysregulation.
The strategy in EBT is to process negative emotions to access positive feelings, which are associated with the dominance of the parasympathetic nervous system and improved biochemistry.
Feeling better signifies getting better
Decreasing the frequency of our natural tendency to “think” our way out of stress, increasing our awareness of our emotions as a sign of our physiologic state, and changing it if negative, are the fundamental premises of EBT.
It is also very appealing, as imagine your physician saying to you, “I want you to change your biochemistry so that your health issue (e.g., obesity, anxiety, depression) gets better. Your job is to notice if you are happy or not, and if you are not happy, process your emotions. Get back to joy.”
Yet that prescription is fundamental to healthcare, helping patients take really good care of their biochemistry naturally. As our nation struggles to become healthy again, this natural approach, which is neuroscientific, will be incorporated into more medical practices. What makes us get better is to feel better.
