An emotion-focused approach to the overregulation of emotion and emotional pain

The importance of facilitating productive therapeutic processes to gain access to overregulated primary adaptive emotional experience is discussed. In addition to describing common two‐ and three‐step emotion sequences involved in change, this article presents the more complex sequences involved in facing emotional pain. Key aspects of facing pain are allowing the experience of “brokenness,” or a “shattering” of the self, feeling the associated painful emotions, and processing them to completion. This promotes a transformation in view of self, world, and other. A case example and some general principles of emotional change are given. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 57: 197–211, 2001.