Page 106 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 22
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training in cogni�ve-behavioural, psychodyna- between healthy and unhealthy forms of anger.
mic, emo�on-focused, acceptance and com- Yet, emo�on-focused therapy has a humanis�c
mitment, and integra�ve psychotherapies. See- focus on the self whereas Chris�an approaches
king to be�er understand emo�on, I worked look beyond the self to God and others (wi-
under the supervision of Antonio Pascual-Leo- thout devaluing the self per se), iden�fying he-
ne to study emo�onal awareness and emo�on althy anger as “asser�ve anger” versus “righ-
change processes in psychotherapy. Most nota- teous anger,” respec�vely.
bly, we conducted a brief therapy-analogue stu-
dy comparing cogni�ve and emo�on-focused My Ph.D. training had socialized me into a secu-
interven�ons for lingering and unresolved fee- larized approach to psychology, which le� me
lings of anger in response to interpersonal grie- as a func�onal integra�onist rather than as a
vances in clinical and subclinical samples. We fully Chris�an Psychologist per se. What I mean
found that cogni�ve reappraisal facilitated im- by this is that my way of thinking about and ap-
provements in self-reported anger arousal, re- proaching psychological topics began with con-
solu�on, and forgiveness of interpersonal grie- temporary psychology by default, a�er which I
vances, whereas iden�fica�on of unmet psy- would apply a Chris�an lens or filter to discern
chological needs was associated with improve- which components were compa�ble with a
ments in forgiveness in the subclinical sample, Chris�an worldview and which components
but not in the clinical sample. needed to be modified or discarded. While
valuable in its own ways, what I desired to do
I was fascinated by this research and I could see instead was to start with biblical Chris�an con-
many similari�es and differences between ceptualiza�ons of psychological topics from
emo�on-focused and Chris�an conceptualiza�- which we can build dis�nc�vely Chris�an mo-
ons of anger, par�cularly in David Powlison’s dels of psychology as alterna�ves to non-Chris-
book Good and Angry. For example, both ap- �an psychologies.
proaches see value in emo�on and differen�ate
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