ABSTRACT
Emotions are either painful or pleasurable sensations in the body. Painful “bad” feelings, like fear and shame, contract the muscles and viscera. Pleasurable “good” feelings, like love and gratitude, are non-defensive, expansive, and energizing. In couples therapy, we look for the implicit and explicit sensory cues and painful emotions that partners trigger in one another that limit their intimate pleasures. When an emotion is triggered, changes in bodily states may be accompanied by mental images that can be traced to a past event that blocked emotional release and resolution. Blocked emotions can become chronic emotional traits leading to physical and sexual symptoms. Chronic shame is particularly destructive as the individual is beset with an inner voice of self-judgment and feels defective. Resolving shame dynamics between partners is especially critical. Eroticized shame can intensify sexual excitement in paraphilias like fetishes, exhibitionism, and voyeurism and can be a factor underlying sexual harassment. Transformative “corrective emotional experience” often involves age regression to an original unresolved traumatic event to re-do the experience with a new, self-affirming ending. Several vignettes are described where feelings triggered imagery of past events and present-centered experiential processes allowed resolution of the past event and opened up a more empathic and loving interaction between partners.
