It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self

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Ask yourself if you are feeling sad, fearful, angry, disgusted, joyful, excited, and/or sexually excited. I found the core concept intriguing enough to want to try to work this triangle myself and with others. Traditional therapy focuses on people’s thoughts and stories while AEDP is a healing methodology that helps people connect with their core emotions.

She shows us how to work the Change Triangle in our everyday lives and chart a deeply personal, powerful, and hopeful course to psychological well-being and emotional engagement. healing change occurs as the patient forms new expectations for relationships based on the secure relationship with the therapist.Whereas conventional therapy encourages patients to talk through past events that may trigger anxiety and depression, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), the method practiced by Jacobs Hendel and pioneered by Diana Fosha, PhD, teaches us to identify the defenses and inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, and anxiety) that block core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement). Though some of the tools are less than intuitive they are explained in simple steps to help you work them into your own life, and beyond just that Hendel hammers one thing repeatedly throughout the text. It allows you to reacquaint yourself with your feelings, to recover a more authentic self and to be more calm, curious and connected. Hendel discusses Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) which sounded to me very similar to Internal Family Systems, with the additional triangles, in that it actively addresses the parts of our minds that were created when we were younger; such as talking to the 5-year-old you who suffered the trauma. Bruce Perry, I could connect some of the topics regarding trauma, the effects on our bodies, and how trauma can be treated and healed.

This is possible but requires working the Change Triangle to arrive in the openhearted state as often as possible and tolerating the discomfort that change always brings. In the book, Jacobs explores how she the “Change Triangle” to identify defenses (behaviors used to block core/inhibitory emotions), inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, anxiety) that prevent us from fully experiencing our core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement) which would allow us to then enter a state of openheartedness. Hilary says, “shame is our physical and physiological response to primal rejection”, so when we are shut down by others, shame is triggered. This may include stuff like allowing yourself to feel angry instead of feeling scared, or feeling “disappointed” instead of feeling angry.I may revisit the Change Triangle the next time I'm having a hard time, but honestly I don't think laying the points out in a triangle was effective for me (so you go around the triangle? If you grew up with constant drama and excitement around you, for better or for worse, states of calm might feel dead, or boring. Her approach reminds us and focuses on our innate drive to health and teaches how to use that more effectively.

But “The Change Triangle” is also super helpful for clinicians to be aware of when working with clients.In an openhearted state, we are calm; curious about our mind, the minds of others, and the world at large; connected to our body and to the hearts and minds of others; compassionate to ourselves and to others; confident in who we are; courageous in our actions; and clear in thought. Fascinating patient stories and dynamic exercises help you connect to healing emotions, ease anxiety and depression, and discover your authentic self. To add to this, the author did mention something about trauma, but it's not the FULL ON/REAL DEAL trauma that some people expected when reading this book.

Jacobs Hendel led these patients and others toward lives newly capable of joy and fulfillment through an empathic and effective therapeutic approach that draws on the latest science about the healing power of our emotions.When using this tool, Jacobs is able to help her patients heal past wounds, depression, anxiety, stress, or trauma; by accessing the memories of the deeply buried core emotions from the past, patients can release and experience their emotion, feel it in their bodies and release it. I would recommend this book to literally everyone, especially those working to heal from past abuse or current depression. The point of the Change Triangle is to help understand what is a defense, what is a secondary emotion, and what is a core emotion. I liked how throughout the book there were a lot of hands-on experiments for the reader to try and put the theory explained in the various chapters, to use. It can also release some of the expectations we have around emotions, and feeling like we need to “fix” them or change them.