CBT: Emotional Mapping

If you follow me on twitter you might be aware that 2019 didn't end well for me.  I don't want to go into specifics about what happened for the simple reason that I don't think I am ready to talk about it publicly but suffice to say I went through a few difficult months and in many ways I am still dealing with the repercussions of that.  I live in the UK and despite the failings of our healthcare service we still have the luxury of a healthcare service that is free to use at the point of service and it was for that reason that I was able to seek out help.  There are a lot of things I have been through in my life, a lot of that has become baggage that I have carried for some time and things just reached a point where one more thing was all it took to make the whole thing fall apart.

Going through the process of getting help though I had to learn about some areas of psychology in much greater depth than I have before.  In particular, the study of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy [CBT] which I was aware of before given my passing interest in Psychology and prior exploration of Cognitive Psychology and Behavioural Psychology.  I have written about Psychology on this blog in the past and some of those posts did quite well in terms of views and interest they garnered so I thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some of the techniques that I learned about and what I found helpful and what I found to be not so much and in some cases damaging.  I want to devote posts in future to these techniques and their application.  It is however important to note that CBT is generally seen as a "bridge" not a destination, and that it isn't intended to be something you use long-term but rather something you use to process thoughts and feelings in the immediate with the aim of arriving at a better place mentally.  If it proves ineffective then there are alternate approaches and other forms of therapy that would then be used.

One of the first techniques I was introduced to when exploring CBT was the concept of Emotional Mapping.  This technique is centred around the concept of viewing your emotional state not as something that is fixed but rather as a path that you walk along with the various obstacles you encounter representing the obstacles that life throws at us.  The ultimate goal is to provide perspective and clarity in the moment by shifting the focus from what is happening at that moment and placing it in context with the path itself and the destination.

To this end, instead of focusing only on the emotion in the moment, you are encouraged to take time to reflect on the projected path.  You are encouraged to think about where the path leads and the emotions that will be felt going forward.

For example, if you have to deal with a life change, or you have to abandon a set routine and accept a new order that you're not comfortable with then you can use emotional mapping to navigate the emotions that will lead you to the desired destination.  If you are a student for example and you are planning on moving away from your family home to live at or near University, or to another country, or even if you just plan on moving to a new town then it's natural in the moment to feel nervous or anxious about the impending change.  Your routine and your environment are changing and you are losing the sense of familiarity, comfort, and security of that which you already knew.  If you allow your emotions to dominate your thought patterns then your focus will remain on the present, the thoughts and feelings that you are experiencing will get amplified, and the feelings of nervousness or anxiousness will grow.

Emotional mapping in this instance can be employed by looking forward to the path you will walk down and where it leads.  Mapping out this path with key events and projected experiences you should seek to identify the emotions that you expect to feel, with particular focus on the positive emotions.  Think about finally arriving at your new home, having a place of your own, building a life that you control, the independence, the freedom, the sense of fulfilment, the sense of accomplishment, the potential, the opportunities, the new friends you hope to make, all the hopes and dreams that you hope your path will lead you closer to, take all of these and think about all of the positive emotions that you will associate with them, the excitement, the happiness, the peace, the time to rest, and the time to relax.  Once you have that path mapped out, you need to hold onto this map in your mind and refer back to it when you feel overwhelmed by the present, shift your focus away from being blinded by everything that is happening now and place it in context with everything that could happen going forward.

That is the theory and how to apply it.  I found this technique to be useful to a point.  I'm quite a cynical person by nature, my mentality by default is one of pessimism, I tend to focus on the negatives more than the positives and I tend to take the view that if I expect the worst and it happens then I was expecting it, at that point anything better is a positive.  That mentality is ultimately one that seeks to avoid risk, in this case the risk of disappointment, by focusing on the negative you remove the possibility of something happening that is negative in nature that wasn't expected.  The problem with this mentality if it wasn't already clear is that our thought processes and our expectations in life inevitably influence the path we walk and the choices we make because we don't take the risks we should in life instead becoming content with the way things are even if they are shitty, or to put it bluntly we tend to use the "it gets better" mantra as an excuse for our complacency with being in a shitty situation right now, because we think better things will come so we can just accept things being shit.  This doesn't work in practice because "it gets better" relies on you actually attempting to reach the place where things are better - in other words you have to walk the path you mapped out, if you don't then you stay where you are, and tomorrow never comes because tomorrow is always a day away - thank you Little Orphan Annie.

This technique is useful but as I have highlighted above, you need to alter your mentality in order to use it if like me you tend to focus on the negatives in life.  You have to make a conscious effort to be positive when creating the map, you can do this in your head, you can do it on paper, you can type it up, you can even create vision boards or graphical representations of the map, whatever works for you as a means of documenting the journey and the destination that you need to make.  As for the destination it doesn't have to be Earth-shattering life altering changes that you plan a path toward, it can be something as simple or as complex as making it through the day - from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night it can be as short a time frame as you want, all that matters is that you are in one place, and want to be in another, and can imagine a path that connects the two.  You only need to alter your mentality when creating the map if it's too much effort or exhausting to fight what is your present nature, you just need to escape that mentality for a moment or however long it takes you to imagine a positive path forward.

This technique was the first I was introduced to, and as an introduction it was important because it got me used to a few concepts and made it possible for me to understand those concepts in context.  The main takeaways that I gained from this technique is the understanding that context is important and whilst every emotion is valid and every emotion should be felt and shouldn't be bottled up, they need to be given context so that they are not amplified.  Silence can be deafening, pain can be excruciating, and that feeling of hopelessness can drowned your thoughts and fill you with emotional water until you can't breathe, it's important to surface for air, to kick and to thrash and to strive to stay afloat rather than letting yourself sink because the latter can cause you to sink so low that when you do try and swim you are too far from the surface at that point.  This was my failing, I always gave in and allowed my emotions to be felt to their maximum, I had been lucky up until that point that those emotions had never been enough to drowned me although there were two moments where I came incredibly close as I have mentioned when I discussed suicide in a post last year.

Emotional mapping can be useful to help you navigate your emotions but ultimately it requires a level of self control, a prescience, and the ability to displace your thought patterns if only temporarily in order to contemplate a positive outcome.  It can help if you are able to invoke it when you are feeling overwhelmed but if you find it hard to control your emotions even without being pressure then it might not be for you.  I hope this post can help someone make a difference to their life.  I will write other posts about the other techniques I was introduced to going forward.