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Guest Contributor: Diana Fosha, PhD "Good Spiraling:" The Phenomenology of Healing and the Engendering of Secure Attachment in AEDP Reprinted with permission of Connections & Reflections, the GAINS Quarterly, Summer 2007 Introduction phenomena. Vitalizing positive affective In this second part of a two-part article on experiences are fundamentally linked with transformation and AEDP, I want to zoom in on transformance and its moment-to-moment the healing process itself and take a look, up close operation in therapy: they mark it (somatic and personal, at the phenomena that mark its markers), accompany it (vitality affects), and are gorgeous unfolding. I also want to talk about the the result of it (transformational affects). double helix of attachment and transformation: Moreover, these positive vitalizing experiences are how, through tracking the moment-to-moment the affective correlates of a neurochemical unfolding of transformational processes in the environment in the brain that is most conducive to context of a dyadic relationship where the optimal learning, development, and brain growth individual feels safe and known, security of (Schore, 2001), and that are at the core of health, attachment is engendered. So this is all about how, well-being, resilience, and flourishing in adult treatment, transformation and attachment (Frederickson & Losada, 2005; Sander, 2002). go hand in hand. In this piece, I want to share with you something In the last decade, I have been interested in about the trajectory of my own journey, which led exploring the process of change and the motivation to the development of the concept of for change, healing, self-regulation, and self- transformance, and the growing appreciation of the correction, all those forces that are always there for affective experiences that invariably signal its the entraining in adult treatment, even with the operation. I will describe some of the specific most recalcitrant of patients. Another way of processes and affects that made themselves known saying this is that I have been interested in to me, once this interest declared itself. I will then exploring the motivational forces that are the show how these phenomena and processes are part counterparts of the forces that drive resistance, i.e., and parcel of the processing of difficult, painful, in the forces driving/motivating/informing healing and heretofore too frightening emotional tendencies in the patient. I have coined the term experiences to completion in the context of a safe, "transformance" for those forces (Fosha, in press; affect-facilitating dyad. Finally, I also want to see also the Winter 2006 edition of the GAINS show you how AEDP and the dyadic, experiential Quarterly). work with intense emotion and transformation become a very specific methodology for the In the first part of this article, which was titled engendering of security of attachment and its AEDP: Transformance in Action, I defined ultimate internalization in a vital and resilient self. transformance as an overarching motivational force, operating both in development and therapy, Something About How All This Came to Be that strives toward maximally adaptive organization, coherence, vitality, authenticity, and A number of years ago, I became very interested in connection, and that drives processes that, in the a particular clinical phenomenon: whenever I right environment, eventuate in healing and spoke with patients about how they felt about thriving. Transformance is driven by hope, while something positive that had happened in treatment, its motivational counterpart, resistance, is driven or as a result of treatment, they would invariably by dread. A felt sense of vitality and energy start to cry. I became intrigued. I began to pursue characterizes transformance-based emergent this more systematically. Whenever patients had a positive, transforming, therapeutic experience, I started to inquire into, and engage them in an Patients would explicitly say that they were not experiential exploration of their experience of this feeling sad or pained; rather, they would speak of change. I started to ask questions such as: "What is feeling moved, and being filled with feelings of it like for you to feel understood?" "How do you appreciation, love, and gratitude toward me, in my experience this feeling of safety?" What does that role as their dyadic other, witness, and companion feel like in your body as you tell me about it?" on their journey. Subsequent to these tears, which "What is it like for you to be able to share this with my then three year old daughter dubbed "happy me?" "What is it like for you to feel assertive and tears," as we kept processing, there would be all not afraid?" "What does the experience of sorts of deepenings. More often than not, a state I liberation feel like?" “What does the feeling of came to call "core state" came to the fore. In this love feel like in your body?" “How does seeing me state of calm, everything fell into place: patients so moved by your feelings/actions/what have you effortlessly gained access to experiences of make you feel about me? About you? What is it wisdom, generosity, ease, clarity, and, more like for you to have done generally, compassion and this with me?" bigness of heart and mind toward self and other. They As I got emotionally-based also became able to tell their answers, I kept exploring story and make sense of their the experience of those life. experiences. I simply kept asking "And what does that It seemed that we had tapped feel like?" and then once I into a powerful healing got an answer, "And what mechanism. These affects, does that feel like?" And expressed through soft, open there would always be tears, seemed to another round. I felt like affectively/somatically mark we had uncovered this the very process of healing spiral down which we transformation. It also seemed could keep traveling, as if that the process unleashed by ad infinitum (the process exploring the experience of made finite only by the transformation, was itself a pragmatics of finite transformational process, a sessions, and other reality vehicle of therapeutic healing. constraints). Thus the It seemed to be the mirror "good spiraling" of the image of the process of title. I will say more about mourning, another essential it later. process of therapeutic resolution. In mourning, resolution comes about through the psyche's As I did this, and as I kept doing it, I started to coming to terms with not having, i.e., through observe uncanny regularities in the phenomena processing painful experiences of loss and associated with these processes, remarkable deprivation. Instead, in this new process, it seemed invariants amidst the infinite variety of response. like resolution came about through the psyche In response to the exploration of patients' coming to terms with having, i.e., through experience of change for the better (in the context processing positive experiences (which of a safe dyadic connection), a very specific set of disconfirmed negative expectations and answered affective experiences would come to the fore: hopes that people dared not have, but had anyway). patients would report an upward feeling ("a rush," In trying to find a name for the therapeutic process " a surge"), their eyes would go up, and then their that is the opposite of mourning, I came up with eyes would invariably fill with tears. However, "the affirming recognition process" or, "the these were not tears of sadness or grief; rather, they process of the affirming recognition of the were tears of happiness or joy, or poignant tears. transformation of the self" (a mouthful, I admit). I came up with the name "the healing affects" for the tremulous affects. The tremulous affects (see positive affective experiences—tears, gaze Fosha, 2006) include: fear/excitement, up—that marked the process of affirming shock/surprise, curiosity/interest, exploration, and recognition, and the name "metatherapeutic positive vulnerability. Which side of the yoked processing" for the therapeutic activity of pairs comes to the fore depends on the security of exploring the patient's experience of what is the relationship. therapeutic in therapy. This is all described in my book, The Transforming Power of Affect (Fosha, 6. The healing vortex and the sensations of 2000). quantum transformation. The transformational affects that accompany this metatherapeutic I continued to delve into the process of process are bodily sensations of vibrations, experientially exploring the patient's experience of oscillations, reverberations, energy shifts, and transformation as a transformational process (the other bodily-based sensations that accompany the redundancy in the language is intentional). experience of profound, and somewhat sudden However, in continuing to focus on patients' transformation. experience of therapeutic transformation, additional metatherapeutic processes, with their respective affective phenomena that I named "transformational affects"—the invariably positive Recognition Processes, Metatherapeutic affects that mark these transformational processes Processes, and Transformational Affects and are signposts along the road to healing—came The process and experience of recognition within to the fore to make themselves known. To date, the dyad is key in reflecting back to the self other types of transformational affects something about the self, which can then be accompanying other metatherapeutic processes owned. Then, that new "knowledge," so to speak, have been identified. All six are listed below: can be entrained, integrated, and harnessed in the process of development, growth, and healing, 1. The completion of emotional processing and the while also strengthening the attachment bond. post-breakthrough affects. Its transformational When such dyadic experiences occur, not only is affects are the post-breakthrough affects of relief, the experience of each partner of the dyad enriched hope, feeling lighter, cleaner, stronger. and transformed (this is one of the mechanisms by which growth takes place), but there is a very 2. Affective mastery and the mastery affects of joy specific identifying experience of vitalization and and pride ("I did it.
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