Experiencing avoided emotions in session while using ERT skills: motivational awareness, decentering, sensory awareness, regulatory flexibility, and contrasting.
Step-by-step guide
- Select an avoided emotional theme
- Prepare the client with decentering and bodily awareness
- Evoke the emotion through imagery, memory, or current material
- Track body, thoughts, and motivational signal
- Allow the emotion without escape or suppression
- Contrast current distress with the desired value-oriented state
- Identify one values-based action
When to use
- Modules 9-12
- After the client has practiced basic regulation skills
- When avoidance maintains anxiety or depression
Key phrases
Can we stay with this emotion and listen to what it is asking for?
Follow-up questions
What happens in the body as you allow it?
What does this emotion want to protect or restore?
What valued action becomes visible from here?
Alternative phrasings
We are not making the emotion disappear; we are learning to be with it.
Warnings
- ⚠️ Do not begin exposure before basic stabilization and skills are in place
- ⚠️ Monitor dissociation, panic, or shutdown
- ⚠️ Exposure must be collaborative and paced
Source: Mennin et al. 2018
Materials are informational and educational and summarize publicly available scientific sources. They are not medical or psychological advice, are not intended for self-diagnosis or self-treatment, and do not replace consultation with a qualified professional.