According to emotion-focused psychotherapy (EFT, Greenberg, Rice, Elliott, Johnson, etc.), emotions organize the affective immediate reaction and feelings (physically felt experiential units) into a meaningful overall experience. The emotion thus consists of these two parts (affect and feeling) and has a result, namely information about ourselves.
The emotion is therefore an information to ourselves in the form of a meaning. The meaning is an entire package of information which, in addition to feeling and affect, also includes a trigger. The meaning consists of a need or a wish and contains an action tendency.
Emotions thus inform us what is good for us and what is bad, what we need and what we are missing, whether we should stay, go closer or want to go away and create distance. They inform us which preference we have at the moment and what we rather reject, whether we actually have joy or feel sadness, shame or pride, guilt or esteem, are lonely and therefore want to make contact with someone or feel sufficiently warm and taken care of. In order to recognize the meaning of emotions, we need the capacity for reflection and awareness.
Emotion-focused psychotherapy has introduced the distinction between primary, secondary and instrumental emotions. Basically, all emotions can be primary, secondary or instrumental. The terms "primary, secondary and instrumental" refer to the different functions that an emotion can have.
Primary adaptive emotions
This is the actual good and important emotional information to ourselves. They are immediate emotional inner responses to situations we are in right now. Although they are immediate inner answers, to many people they are not easily accessible and often not properly perceived. Despite their immediacy, it takes a certain calm and introspection to recognize them, to perceive them correctly and then to express them and possibly to act accordingly. Primary emotions are usually soft emotions, they can only be perceived through a "pure" inner view (introspection only), without external circumstances or persons being taken into account. Because of this pure inner view, they are always accompanied by vulnerability. This applies to both positive and negative primary emotions. Sadness, insecurity, fear, injury, shame, guilt, joy, happiness, surprise, humour, tenderness, confusion, emotional injury, hopelessness... All this and even more can be primary emotions, but also secondary or possibly instrumental emotions. As mentioned above, the emotional content is not decisive in determining whether it is a primary or secondary emotion. The function alone is the decisive criterion.
The function of primary emotions
Primary emotions signal to us what is really important for us at the moment, how we really feel about a particular topic, situation or circumstances in life. These are authentic emotions with the really important information content. To perceive primary emotions and to be able to express them is a real psychological resource. Those who do mindfulness exercises, for example, are essentially concerned with the primary emotions and the meanings they have for their own lives. In the Focusing technique according to E. Gendlin, primary emotions are what Gendlin called "felt sense" and "shift". To exaggerate, one could say that one is really oneself most of the day if one succeeds in always feeling and acting according to one's primary emotions.
- Fully perceiving and also expressing primary emotions does good and leads to a new fresher basic feeling, even if it was sadness or fear as primary emotion in the first place.
- Primary emotions are always associated with vulnerability and are expressed from "within". The expression does not adapt to the external circumstances. It is a turning out of what is actually "inside".
- Expressing primary emotions usually triggers understanding and a certain amount of real participation and compassion from the other person, even if it is (healthy) anger expressed towards a person. Anger as a primary emotion is necessary, for example, to restore boundaries, to finally acknowledge a legitimate need that is ignored, or to protect oneself from self-abandonment and too much resignation.
- Primary (adaptive) emotions inform us about what we should really do, what we could really need the most now (or what we really lack).
- They guide us to meaningful actions that fit in with our lives (even if it may not suit our fellow human beings).
- Primary emotions, after reflection, are somehow accepted and understood by all (even if you might disappoint someone).
- The expression and implementation of primary emotions always leads to a more harmonious continuation of one's own life. They lead to decisions that one accepts deeply inside oneself, even if the result of the corresponding decision may not completely turn out as intended.
In order to access the primary emotions it can be helpful to concentrate on the physical sensations. Where do I feel something? In my throat, stomach, shoulders? Is it hot, cold, does it ache in my heart? These physical sensations (the feelings) are the stepping stone to recognize the entire primary emotion and its meaning.
We can also recognize the presence of primary emotions by the emergence of strategies to exclude primary emotions from consciousness, especially if they are negative primary emotions.
- For example, we force ourselves to think of something else.
- We become irritated and angry and look for someone to criticize (we only perceive the secondary emotion, see below).
- We try to distract ourselves.
- We belittle the meaning of what we feel in order not to have to perceive it (distorted perception, denial, repression).
- We try to cheer ourselves up (artificially) and make ourselves happy again.
- We begin to look for reasons why we should not feel this way (rationalizations).
- Numbing: We open a bottle of wine, smoke pot, take tablets, exercise excessively or stay three hours longer at work.
Primary maladaptive emotions
Unfortunately, there are primary emotions that used to make sense because they were the only possible ones we could have. These emotions also feel very basic and "deeper", they also have an immediate character, but they have an "old" smell. They are no longer adapted. They are often painful, lead to no relief, no meaningful actions anymore, try to satisfy "old", no longer current needs. The environment does not react spontaneously with compassion or understanding, but with confusion and a certain helplessness. Such primary emotions have arisen in the past, often in situations of great stress, dependence (as a child) and danger, pressure or prolonged negative circumstances. These primary maladaptive emotions must be replaced by new primary, more adaptive emotions. This is one of the main tasks of emotion-focused psychotherapy.
Secondary Emotions
Secondary emotions are emotions that react to primary emotions. Therefore they are secondary. This is my own emotional response to the primary emotion. For example, if I am primarily sad, but do not perceive this sadness, then a secondary emotion automatically arises on it. One could also formulate that I then transform this sadness into a secondary emotion. The most common secondary emotion is (unhealthy) anger.
Suppose I'm happy to see my partner. When I come home, I see that my partner is mentally completely absent and does not pay attention to me. I do not express my joy at all (primary adaptive emotion). I therefore become sad (again a primary adaptive emotion). I do not recognize or perceive this new primary emotion because there is a certain vulnerability in it. I transform this sadness into a secondary emotion, anger for example. With this anger I sit at the table and criticize my wife for something she just said. I could also have told her my sadness (primary emotion) that she wasn't happy with me when I came home. Because I was very happy (primary emotion).
So the most common secondary emotion is (unhealthy) anger, in all its forms of play. The "cold" version of secondary anger is pride, stubbornness, silence, saying nothing, withdrawing, coming back (revoking) unnecessarily on something already said, barking back, being cynical or sarcastic, shouting back, stonewalling, physically hitting back, wordlessly punching the other one down, punching back, breaking things, hurting oneself. The "hot" version consists of criticizing, nagging, insulting, attacking, loudly being frustrated, protesting, massively accusing, threatening, humiliating, open violence.
But also fear or insecurity, hopelessness (depressed feelings) can be secondary emotions. This can only be identified for each individual situation. And it is always an emotional reaction to a primary emotion.
Secondary emotions do not lead to good decisions, our fellow human beings often react to us with their own secondary emotions, they do not come closer to us. Secondary emotions rather push others away. They hide our vulnerability, they pretend to be genuine but they are not. They are on the outside, not from the inside.
Instrumental emotions
Instrumental emotions are the most inauthentic of all. They serve to awaken certain emotions in others arbitrarily or intentionally. There is something manipulative about them. This often happens unconsciously. I "lament" loudly in order to attract attention. I make a sad face so that someone asks me: "Is something wrong? Are you not well? I threaten loudly and bang my fist on the table because I want my counterpart to be impressed and a little afraid. We often do that and quite often we do it very subtly. The more grown up we become, the more subtle the use of instrumental emotions gets. The younger and more childlike we are, the more conspicuous these emotions are and are usually immediately seen through by the parents. They have an appelative purpose. They want to trigger something in the other.
In a couple relationship, instrumental emotions are usually those which the partner will at least pay attention to, unless he (or she) does not notice that he (she) is being manipulated with it. Instrumental emotions are often used to try to win arguments or to swing to the top when it comes to differences of opinion.