Emotional Disorder Case Example

Name: Emotional Disorder Case Example
Uploaded: 2025-11-02T00:06:27.000Z
Description: David Barlow demonstrates the nature of emotional disorders through a case example.

David Barlow demonstrates the nature of emotional disorders through a case example.

From the course

Unified Protocol: A Transdiagnostic Treatment

That tendency or proclivity to experience intense emotions and to process that experience in a very negative or aversive way then is functionally related. Very strongly so. To the behavior of doing everything in one's power to avoid or suppress or otherwise escape through any means possible, this very immersive experience. And it is that functional relationship that is at the heart of all emotional disorders. I can use an example from a recent patient This patient was a very high ranking CEO of a Fortune five hundred company who sought us out for a very specific problem. And that was she found herself unable to speak in corporate meetings. Obviously, her job depended on her being able to express herself and lead a meeting. She had been very good at this, which was one of the reasons she had risen to CEO in this particular company. But one day in a meeting that was not going terribly well, she sensed that there was a small group of guys who clearly had been scheming to try to make her look bad. At that point, She became furious if she wanted to lash out at them, but that would not have been an appropriate response. Remember the action tendencies of fight and flight? Well, her action tendency was to fight, but she knew it would be a disaster. If she actually reacted in that way as CEO. That anger attack then instantaneously transferred into a panic attack. And the panic attack was the notion that she was losing control. Potentially of her emotions. She made it through that meeting without saying much. The next meeting came, and she was dreading it because she remembered this strong intense emotional attack, and how hard she had the work to suppress that emotion. And we now know, we know through decades of research that the worst thing an individual can do if they're trying to bring their emotions under control is to attempt to suppress an emotion, particularly a strong emotion, because it will explode. It will just explode on you. And that's what was happening to her. The next meeting, all she could think of was will I be able to control my emotions? He would try very hard to suppress any emotional sensations or feelings or experience. She made the illogical connection that if she began speaking, She might lose control of her emotions again just like she almost did the last time at great cost to her. She became unable to speak in meetings. Totally irrational on her part. She knew she was very good at leading meetings. She knew that her job depended on it, She knew there was nothing wrong with her that no harm would come to her physically from expressing herself or even having an intense emotional experience when she did. And yet, she could not bring herself to do it. And it is the old story, the ancient story of in the battle between emotion and reason and emotional disorders, emotions always win.