One of the cornerstones of alcoholism recovery is a concept called emotional sobriety. The idea is that alcoholics and other addicts hoping to stay sober over the long haul must learn to regulate the negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and—ultimately—relapse. Doing so is a lifelong project and requires cultivating a whole new way of thinking about life’s travails.

But the recovery literature also says “first things first”—which simply means “don’t drink.” Especially in the early days of recovery, alcoholics are counseled not to analyze why they are addicted or how they might have avoided alcoholism: “Don’t think and don’t drink” is the maxim. Take it one day at a time and do whatever works—prayer, exercise, meetings—to distract the mind from the compulsion to pick up a glass.

These approaches represent two very different kinds of emotional regulation, when you consider it. Distraction is unthinking—it amounts to cognitive disengagement from thoughts of alcohol and the anxiety of craving by any means possible. It is a blunt instrument in the toolbox of recovery. In contrast, long-term emotional sobriety requires the slow, steady rethinking about all the people, places and things that once did—and could again—throw us off kilter. New research suggests that a healthy mind deftly flips between these techniques when facing unpleasant emotions. By studying these mechanisms, researchers are beginning to understand how people cope with painful feelings and what goes wrong when those skills are missing.

Recovery programs teach these fundamental principles of emotional regulation because addicts do not know them intuitively. But the techniques apparently do come naturally to many healthy people. At least that is the conclusion of some recent studies by psychological scientist Gal Sheppes of Stanford University and his colleagues who have been examining the strategies that people choose for dealing with negative emotions of different kinds and intensities. The researchers had the idea that people process different kinds of emotional information in the two ways described in recovery literature—either by blocking it entirely or by thinking about it carefully in an effort to reevaluate it. For example, if an experience or thought were especially intense and threatening, people would nip it in the bud early. They would simply disengage and not pay attention, in that way blocking negativity from awareness, much as newly recovering alcoholics are advised to do. This technique would keep potent negative thoughts from ever gaining force.

Distract Me
People faced with milder negative emotions, on the other hand, would not block them out. These emotions would be regulated by a second cognitive mechanism, which applies more elaborate processing to these unpleasant feelings in an effort to render them harmless. But first, the negative thoughts and emotions must be stored in memory for reappraisal and reinterpretation. At least that is Sheppes’s theory, which he and his colleagues tested in a series of laboratory experiments. They hypothesized that healthy people would tend to distract themselves quickly from intense emotional experiences, and in contrast, they would tend to engage with milder, less threatening experiences to diffuse their emotional power.

The researchers recruited 20 volunteers and instructed them on the two methods of emotional regulation—distraction versus reappraisal—then had them view photographs depicting negative emotions of different intensities. A low-intensity image, for example, might show a woman holding her head in an ambiguous state of distress, whereas a high-intensity photograph might show a woman in extreme distress, with blood streaming down her face. The volunteers looked at a series of such pictures, gazing at each for half a second then narrating out loud for five seconds how they were processing the emotion—whether they were distracting themselves from it or thinking about how to reinterpret it. Other volunteers and observers characterized the subjects’ regulatory strategies as either distraction or engagement and reappraisal. Just to be sure the results were accurate, the subjects also pressed a button to indicate which emotional processing style they were using.

4 Comments

1. 1. promytius 10:29 AM 3/7/12

   You want emotional sobriety? Just be glad you are not a lab mouse! see sciam's own article here http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=depression-how-depressed-is-mouse

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2. 2. RobLL 01:21 PM 3/7/12

   If you happen upon an emergency needing calm cool collected thinking and action(kid is bleeding badly, car fire, plane is crashing etc), most of us simply turn off the emotional response. Which in my experience delays the response, not eradicating it.

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3. 3. apark6 12:08 PM 3/8/12

   Most addiction patients, especially newly abstinent, suffer from a mild or severe ALEXITHYMIA. The difficulty or inability to identify and express emotion. Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome is the major source of this condition. Most of it is transient and dissipates with time. The issue here that is relevant also to us professionals, is to re-frame the belief systems of what role emotional expression plays in recovery and to life. One of the most observable cognitive distortions is, EMOTIONAL REASONING. For example; " I feel it is terrible therefore it is." The reason that I see this in most cases, is because of the past centuries dogmatic elevation of emotional expression as vital in mental health, as a huge element of our cultural ethos. "how does it make you feel", has become synonymous with shallow, over invested parody. The needs of our newly sober patients are to identify what thinking and the beliefs were present that blindly bound them to using. Identifying thinking is very do able, thoughts are accessible and emotions have no life without thinking generating them. The focus on joining and then on abstinence stability, is not a struggle for the patient when it comes to knowing ones thoughts. But to do something they have no ability to do; like identify their emotions when for a very long time chemicals were masking them , is unwittingly creating in them, a sense of failure.
   I have been an addiction focused treatment professional LCSW for 25 years in practice and for the last 18 years, have been a clinical director of a NYC major drug program at a major hospital, and also for 18 years I manage the National Football Leagues' drug program for the 9 teams in the northeast. Please respond and let's create a dialogue on this. Best wishes,
   Andrew Park LCSW-ATOD

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4. 4. cccampbell38 05:59 PM 3/9/12

   Andrew, I live outside Chicago now but used to head up the Chemical Dependency Counselor program at Suffolk Community College out on the Island. I agree with what you have said here and would like to place it in the context of my own experience.
   
   I was taught, as a kid, that it was inappropriate to show feelings. I incorporated that it was also inappropriate to have feelings. I was in counseling briefly when I was 25 or so and when the counselor asked me "how do you feel about that?" I literally had absolutely no concept of what she was talking about, much less if I had feelings or what they were.
   
   Many years later, trying to get sober, I began to learn about feelings, what they were, how to identify them, and most important, what to tuck away for later and what to deal with now. I learned that feelings, though they may hurt, cannot harm unless I let them. My choice. I well remember the very first time that I felt joy and was able to identify and enjoy it. WOW!
   
   I learned all the techniques in this article and put them into practice with a good deal of success. It's been a really good life for the last 40+ years. And----I learned it all in AA, long before the days of formal credentialling for addictions counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy.
   
   It still amazes me that these pioneers in recovery were so insightful and so far ahead of their time-so to speak. Maybe they didn't have the jargon, the science, the training, but for many of us they damn well knew how to get sober and to recover.
   
   The formal study of addiction and the practice of counseling has come a very long way since then but in some ways not all that much has really changed. We will always owe them a lot.

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