Entry for 7 Dec 2017: FEAR Conference on Brain, Behaviour
and Society in Aarhus
Sandwiched between my November Scottish work period and my
December California work-and-holiday-period, I’ve just been to a fascinating
and challenging two-day conference hosted by the University of Aarhus Institute
for Advanced Studies (AIAS). I found
this conference fascinating because it was by the far the most
multidisciplinary scientific meeting I’ve ever been to. I also found it challenging, for exactly the
same reason: The scientific disciplines
featured ranged from cellular biology and neurophysiology on one end of the
spectrum, to political science and even history and theology at the other
extreme, with many gradations in between.
Along this spectrum, I would have to put myself somewhere in the
middle. What all these folks had in
common was an interest in understanding fear and anxiety at multiple levels and
from different angles.
I’m pretty sure that the work that I’m going to find most
useful going forward is that of the largest group of folks in the middle of
that continuum: A collection of experimental field biologists/ethologists/neuroscientists,
who are essentially doing animal psychology on animals ranging from racoons to
South African birds to snails. These
folks, most notably Liana Zanette, Mike Clinchy, Dan Blumstein, and Tom Flower,
do naturalistic field research on predator-prey interactions in wild animals,
which is a natural place to study fear.
They use a range of relatively new methods such as camera traps (think
motion-sensitive or sound-activated CCTV for spying on animals),
battery-powered portable speakers (for scaring animals with the vocalisations
of predators), and robotic pseudo-predators. Related to them are more lab-based
neuroscientists like Ken Lukowiak and Cornelius Gross, who use new, elegant
technologies such as optogenetics to turn particular sets of brain neurons on
and off at will, in order to study their behavioural effects and to trace
neural pathways.
I found this work, in itself, to be fascinating, and because
I read Science News regularly, I felt
I was able to follow it pretty well. It also helped in conversations over meals
to be able occasionally to ask for translation of the more obscure jargon terms. So on first approach I loved being drawn into
the world of field biology/ethology, which deeply resonated with the young boy
I had once been, fascinated by strange animals and the adventure of field work.
However, this work is actually important for Emotion Focused
Therapy and our understanding of how human emotion processes function and can
go awry, even when they are doing exactly what they are evolved to do. Over the
two days, I was able to see many useful connections. This group has identified
persuasive analogues for several important clinical/EFT phenomena:
First, Liana Zanette & Mike Clinchy, from the University
of Western Ontario (now rebranded as Western University), have developed an
analog for PTSD by subjecting prey animals (eg, chickadees, racoons) to
predator stress, created by intermittently playing predator sounds in the
immediate vicinity of birds or smaller mammal further down the food chain. Played repeatedly and predictably over time,
this creates chronic stress in the animals, including behaviours that resemble
many specific symptoms of PTSD, such as hypervigilance, exaggerated startle
response and loss of appetite. Most strikingly, they have shown that these
stressed animals have higher mortality rates and fewer offspring; even more
strikingly, this increased mortality and lowered reproductive success is passed
on their offspring, and also affects species below them in the food chain.
Yesterday before I left to catch my bus back to Billund
Airport, I had one more relatively brief visit with Liana and Mike at
breakfast. They wanted to make sure I
got their main message: Trauma-induced chronic fear/anxiety -- which EFT refers
to as Primary Maladaptive Fear/Anxiety – is from an evolutionary point of view,
not maladaptive but fundamentally adaptive:
By motivating constant vigilance, this reaction to stressful or even
traumatic predator exposure increases the probability of not being killed by those
predators. They argued that falling victim
to a predator instantly reduces the individual’s chances of survival to
zero. Our emotion system evolved the
ability to overgeneralise from single traumatic events because this has
survival value, especially in predator-rich environments, which until recently
were quite common. As Mike said this morning, this tendency purchases
maintenance of life at the cost of quality of life. Mike and Liana wanted to know if I had heard
anything in these two days that was going to affect how I work with
clients. Of course, it’s hard to know
exactly with new ideas, but I told them I thought it might.
One thing for sure, however, is that it’s going change how I
talk and write about emotion response types: From an EFT point of view, we
assume that by and large Primary Adaptive ERs are more adaptive than the
others, and that the broad goal of therapy, both within and across sessions, is
to help clients reduce Primary Maladaptive, Secondary Reactive, and Instrumental
ERs while at the same time increasing Primary Adaptive ERS. However, it’s now clear to me that all four
types of emotion response distinguished in EFT theory evolved because they had
useful functions and survival value, especially in social units or groups:
• Primary Adaptive Emotion Response
(ER): This is what the emotion evolved for in the first place, eg, danger =>
fear => flee/freeze. This is our
first, natural and specific emotional response to a particular situation. Note that in a given situation, our first,
most natural response to a situation does not always provide the best way to
get our needs met; eg, violation in the form of abuse by a powerful/unsympathetic
other => anger => increased danger of further/worse harm.
• Primary Maladaptive ER:
Predisposes us to develop quite general, long-lasting learning from single
traumatic episodes, “because I can’t afford to wait for a second chance”; increases
sensitivity/strength of response to danger, but also anticipation of possible
danger => anxiety => pause/orient/prepare. In fact, “generalised
primary emotion response” might be a more accurate term for this kind of
emotion response.
• Secondary Reactive ER:
Gives us the ability to respond in complex ways (such as
inhibition/interruption) to our emotion responses; eg, violation => anger
=> fear of possible damage to relationships => partial inhibition of
anger allowing time to develop more nuanced useful responses
• Instrumental Emotion Display:
Gives us the ability to influence others, behave appropriately, or preserve
relationships even when we are not feeling the relevant emotion; eg, danger
from manageable adversary (eg, mountain lion or bully) => instrumental anger
display to intimidate. Drongo bird
(South Africa) example (from Tom Flower): Opportunity to steal food => give
danger alarm cry to scare or distract the other. This works bests where the instrumental
emotion display is the expected response or, failing that, where the other
lacks the ability to detect the true emotion, or can’t afford to get it wrong.
The implication of this analysis is that the judgement of
adaptiveness requires more than just identifying the type of emotion response;
some further consideration of two kinds of context is required: First, the emotional context of our key needs
in the situation; second, the interpersonal context of others’ likely responses
to our emotion responses. Taking these
further factors into consideration requires a fairly high level of emotional
intelligence, both awareness of the range of our important emotions in the
situation and reasonably accurate simulation of others’ likely reactions to our
emotion responses.
This is why in EFT we don’t talk about maladaptive emotions (except when we are speaking
carelessly), but only about maladaptive emotion responses: This emotion
response was useful originally, in the presence of danger, but isn’t here and
now, in this particular situation. Liana
and Mike’s research suggests that the tendency to form overgeneralised,
automatic fear responses is deeply embedded in us in an evolutionary sense, and
research by others (such as Cornelius Gross) indicates that it is very likely
to be mediated by the limbic system (especially the amygdala and the
hippocampus).
To conclude, when a client with PTSD presents with a stuck
feeling of constant fear of being revictimised that is causing them a lot of
emotional pain and ruining their ability to get on with important life projects
(as in the video I showed at the conference), it is clearly not true that their
fear has always been maladaptive. It’s also the case that their continuing
hypervigilance and strong response might very well be adaptive in some
situations in their current life, more adaptive than a more relaxed view. Thus,
it is only in particular situations, in which the person finds themselves
unreasonably afraid when they and others’ carefully assess that this is not the
case, that we would be justified in concluding that the person’s emotion
response of fear is maladaptive, because it doesn’t fit the current situation. However,
the fact that they have this response is completely natural, understandable and
in the broad evolutionary sense adaptive.
