Core Emotions And Defenses

Posted on: February 15, 2018

Katherine E. Watkins is a Santa Monica psychiatrist and senior natural scientist at the RAND Corporation. The overall goal of her research is to improve the quality of care for individuals with behavioral health disorders, by developing, implementing, and evaluating innovative treatments and treatment models of health care delivery.

What is a core emotion? Core emotions are biologically determined emotional responses whose expression and recognition is fundamentally the same for all individuals, regardless of ethnicity or culture. They are largely composed of physical sensations that we come to recognize and name as a particular emotion. Core emotions are hard wired and are not subject to conscious control. Triggered by the environment, each core emotion is pre-wired to set off a host of physiological reactions that prime us to respond to the environmental stimuli. For example, fear is experienced by the fight or flight physical response. Researchers disagree about how many core emotions there are, and sometimes call them by different names. There is general agreement that the core emotions are: sadness, fear, anger, joy/happiness, excitement/surprise and disgust. Some people also include shame, love and pride as core emotions.

What are defenses? Defenses are anything we do to avoid feeling anxiety or a core emotion. Somewhat surprisingly to me, we can defend against positive core emotions as well as negative core emotions. Defenses operate at both a conscious and an unconscious level. While they can be adaptive (as when a child learns to not show anger towards a parent who is abusive), they can lead to further suffering and loneliness when they distance us from feeling our full emotions. Depression is a defense because in that state we are out of touch with our core emotions. There are many defenses but some of the common ones include: joking, sarcasm, intellectualizing, criticizing, spacing out, minimizing procrastination, preoccupation, negative thinking, avoidance, and denial.

Why are defenses and core emotions important? While defenses can be adaptive in certain situations, ultimately they block you from experiencing core emotions. When core emotions are blocked, stress and suffering occurs, leading to emotional and physical illnesses. Experiencing core emotions can help you navigate your response to an external situation in a healthy and satisfying way.

Posted in: Fundamentals