An emotion is “an intense, fleeting, sudden and acute affective experience that activates different physical subsystems and provides vital energy, constituting the motivating force that guides and directs human behaviors” (Lizeretti, 2012, p.38)
All emotions are located in the so-called “emotional brain” or limbic system; this system is formed by structures that regulate our emotional responses, memory, and learning. In addition, it interacts with the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for reasoning, reflection, and planning. The joint work of the limbic system and the cerebral cortex explains why we can control our emotions.
When a person suffers from depression, their brain changes: it shows hyperactivity in regions of the limbic system such as the amygdala, altering their emotions, personality, and behavior. We see a study that corroborates this.
Svenja Taubner, a researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Klagenfurt, in southern Austria, has investigated the changes that occur in this brain function when patients with depression undergo psychotherapy. The type of therapy chosen for the study was psychodynamic therapy.
The research involved 18 unmedicated patients with recurrent depressive disorders. There was also a control group, consisting of 17 healthy individuals. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans; a clinical and research procedure that allows showing in images the brain regions that perform a specific task, both at the beginning of the experiment and eight months after the start of psychotherapy.
At both times, all of them were presented with experimental stimuli in the form of phrases that described their dysfunctional patterns in their interpersonal relationships, in order to see how their brains reacted to these stimuli (for example, they were told: “you want to be accepted by others, so you do too much for them”).
In the first scan, it was found that certain brain regions of individuals with depressive disorder reacted to the presented phrases with hyperactivity. However, eight months after the start of psychodynamic therapy, the brains of patients with depression had changed. In fact, their activity was no longer distinguishable from that of healthy participants. Furthermore, evaluations of their depressive symptoms improved significantly after those eight months.
According to Taubner, the study therefore confirms that changes in the limbic system triggered by stimuli with clinically relevant content can be normalized with psychological treatment.
In this sense, psychotherapy helps the person to intelligently manage their emotions and solve problems as effectively as possible. ISEP trains psychologists who pursue the Master in Clinical and Health Psychology to design psychotherapeutic sessions that ensure the patient is capable of:
-Becoming aware of what they feel
-Naming the emotion/feeling (expressing what we feel).
-Identifying the most basic feeling (the primary experience).
-Assessing whether the primary (basic) feeling is healthy or not.
-Identifying maladaptive thoughts that accompany an unhealthy emotion.
-Finding alternative healthy emotions based on their needs
-Expressing emotions proportionally and appropriately to the environment in which they are situated.
The Master in Clinical Psychology from ISEP is considered the best master’s degree in its specialty in Spain, according to the El Mundo Ranking and highlights the quality of the faculty, made up of professionals with more than 10 years of experience, and the observation and practical sessions in the ISEP Clinic offices so that their students can see the direct application of the acquired knowledge.