9 Months To Birth Your Play is a new series designed for artists to explore well-being-centred approaches to their practice whilst gaining a more rigorous understanding of the psychology of drama. 8 Well-being Workshops by neuro-psychodynamic coaching psychologist Anna Webster run alongside Writing Workshops from 9 exemplary artists working in the wonderful world of new writing today.

The next workshop to be published will be Stories Over Ideas by Mia Chung on Friday 9th August.

Well-being Workshop 4: How Do We Respond When Psychological Needs are Threatened or Thwarted?

Welcome to Workshop 4! In this workshop we will be building on our exploration of the 7 feelings systems in Workshop 2 and our 3 basic psychological needs in Workshop 3. We will be looking at what we feel and how we behave when our needs are threatened or thwarted, and how this features in playwriting. 

Registering Threat

On the other side of the coin from the seeking system is the threat system. Where the seeking system seeks certainty for survival and thrival of the self, the threat system defends against  uncertainty for survival and thrival of the self. And just as the seeking system is constantly active, we are also constantly scanning for threats.  

Threat to the certainty of our survival and thrival is registered when our 3 basic psychological needs are threatened. If we move away from our 3 basic psychological needs being threatened it feels good. If we move towards our 3 basic psychological needs being threatened, it feels bad. 

What does threat to our 3 basic psychological needs evoke in terms of feelings and behaviours? 

Firstly, on the bottom left of the triangle, when our need for autonomy is threatened, it can feel like being forced to go against our will, coerced, compelled or controlled by internal or external pressures. 

Secondly, on the bottom right of the triangle, when our need for competence is threatened, it can feel like failure, humiliation, shame, exposure, or feeling undermined by negative feedback or comparisons. 

Thirdly, at the top of the triangle, when our need for relatedness is threatened, it can feel like separation distress, rejection, disconnection and abandonment. 

When our survival and thrival needs are threatened or thwarted, our brain’s defensive circuit is triggered. Three of the feelings systems described by Jaak Panksepp are engaged to defend us against this threat; rage, fear and grief. 

The rage system is triggered when an obstacle gets between us and what we want and need. So, it can be particularly triggered when our need for autonomy and ability to follow our own will is threatened, leaving us feeling a degree of helplessness and lack of control. The rage system is a spectrum ranging from mild irritation and frustration to blind fury.  

If the rage system overwhelms our nervous system, this can result in affective attack, lunging at the target of our wrath and biting kicking or hitting until it relents. However, if we have the capacity, we can think about the potential consequences of this by feeling our way through alternative actions learnt from experience and inhibit the instinctive rage reaction. 

‘Rage is not a ‘mere’ feeling (it plays) a fundamental role in survival. Imagine the consequences if we didn’t stake claims on the available resources and prevent others from taking our share. If we couldn’t become frustrated, irritated or angry, we wouldn’t be inclined to fight for what we need; in which case, sooner or later, we’d be dead.‘ –Mark Solms 

Reflection Activity

Now we’re going to do a reflection activity that involves bringing to mind emotional situations. If at anytime it feels too much, simply stop and take a break, or move onto the next part of the workshop.  

To get the most out of this activity, try and dig deep and allow yourself to feel the vulnerability and discomfort of the memory and the emotions. It is an activity just for you that you don’t need to share with anyone – so try and be as honest with yourself as possible. 

So let’s begin. I invite you to get into a comfortable position, drop your shoulders, close your eyes and take three deep breaths into the count of 5 and out to the count of 7.  

Now, bring to mind a situation either now, today or in the past where you have experienced obstacles to what you want or need. This could be anything in life but it might be particularly helpful to think of an obstacle in your playwriting process. It could be something like not having enough time to write due to the time taken up by other work and childcare. It could be that you don’t feel supported enough in your playwriting.  

What do the obstacles make you feel? Is it mild irritation, frustration, anger or rage?

What do those feelings feel like inside?

How did you act when you felt them?

How did you express or repress the feelings?

What did you feel like doing even if you didn’t do it?

The Fear System

Depending on what we individually fear, the fear system can be triggered by dangers to survival and thrival like heights, flights and poisonous vipers. It can also be triggered by threats to the need for competence and feelings of failure, shame, exposure and vulnerability. It is a spectrum from mild anxiety to terror. We avoid dangers with the same instincts and reflexes that other mammals have – we freeze or we flee. The conscious feeling of fear tells you whether you are heading towards or away from safety. The feelings play a part in learning what works and what doesn’t before it’s too late – therefore helping you stay alive. 

Reflection Activity

Now, bring to mind a situation either today, now or in the past where your ability to have an effect on the world and feel competent have felt endangered. Again, this could be anything in life but it might be particularly helpful to think of fear feeling related to your playwriting process. This could be something like comparing yourself unfavourably to other playwrights and thinking you’ll never be as good as them. Or it could be that the feedback on your latest draft wasn’t as good as you were hoping for. 

What do the threat to your feelings of effectiveness and competence make you feel? Is it mildly troubling, anxiety, fear or terror?

What do those feelings feel like in your body?

How did you act when you felt them?

How did you express or repress the feelings and what did you feel like doing even if you didn’t do it?  

The Grief System

Jaak Panskepp originally referred to the grief system as the panic system. This is because it is triggered by the need for relatedness, and by the distress of separation and loss from people and things that we are attached to. The panic of separation distress is grounded in our early fundamental survival need to be close to caregivers. Like rage and fear, the grief system is also a spectrum which can be illustrated by the following quote from Mark Solms: 

‘When mammals become separated from their attachment figures, a stereotyped sequence unfolds, starting with ‘protest’ behaviour and followed by ‘despair’. The protest phase is characterised by feelings of panic, together with distress vocalisations and searching behaviour. The panic is frequently combined with anger – ‘where are they? – which evokes a conflict, between grief and rage. The one emotion makes you want to keep your caregiver close to you, always and forever, whereas the other simultaneously makes you want to destroy them. The painful feelings associated with separation and loss – coupled with learning from experience – play a causal role in ensuring the survival of mammals which need caregivers.’

As well as a spectrum, these 3 feelings systems can fall into a hierarchy: with the fear of separation and loss, and the associated fundamental threat to certainty of survival and thrival, at the base and core.  

Like the tip of an iceberg, rage feelings and behaviours (even if just mild irritation) are often what show in how we initially defend ourselves against obstacles that threaten the satisfaction of our needs and goals. Rage feelings may be more or less obvious because people can find it difficult to access and express anger, and it can then be redirected more towards the self, for example as feelings of shame. 

With the rage system we are often also defending ourselves from the more vulnerable and fearful feelings underneath about threats to the certainty of survival. We may also be defending ourselves against the underlying grief feelings about potential or actual separation and loss of the self. 

With both rage and fear feelings and behaviours we can be defending ourselves (often unconsciously) from the excruciatingly uncomfortable, vulnerable, helpless, out-of-control feelings of separation distress and loss of the self that are particularly threatening. 

Emotion Containment

A key way in which the loss and separation distress in the grief system are countered is through the relatedness system. Through feeling cared for, and caring for others, we feel connected rather than separated – and belonging rather than isolation. Our most fundamental blue print experience of relatedness is in our relationships with parents and caregivers. From the beginning of our life as a bunch of cells, our parents and caregivers care for us and provide what’s called emotion containment. 

Emotion containment involves parents and caregivers helping and supporting infants to process, regulate, contain and express their feelings until they are developed enough to do this by themselves. It can include: soothing an infant by identifying with and attending to their feelings; accepting and validating their feelings and expressions of distress; allowing such feelings to be expressed but soothed so that they pass and change.  

Emotion containment also involves the carer not becoming overwhelmed by anxiety or distress themselves in the face of the infant’s distress, demonstrating that the infant’s feelings are safe and manageable, and that their underlying needs can be satisfied.  

At its core, this process includes the infant experiencing: that their distressing feelings don’t push the carer away; that the carer can help them feel regulated through co-regulation; that their need for connectedness and care rather than separation can be satisfied. 

It is unlikely that we have experienced this in any perfect way from caregivers and this can be intergenerational. Some of us will also have experienced variable, very little or the opposite of emotion containment from parents and caregivers in our prenatal period, infancy, childhood and beyond. 

One thing that can help us as young people or adults is to try and coach ourselves in emotion containment, so that we feel more seen, heard, validated, comforted and regulated, particularly when our feelings are in the rage, fear and grief systems. 

There are four stages to emotion containment: 

1. Become aware of our feelings, using mindfulness of feelings and sensations in the body. Try identifying and naming the mix of feelings and the primary feeling. 
2. Accept and validate that this is how you’re feeling and even though it is distressing or uncomfortable or excruciating, it’s ok to feel like this. The feeling in itself will not harm you and, like a wave that peaks, it will pass. 
3. Recognise that you’re not alone in feeling this and that other people also feel like this all the time. Find ways to anchor and express the feelings.  
4. Anchoring the feeling could include offering yourself comfort and self-soothing through a hand on your heart or a blanket, finding a sensory anchor like mindfulness of feelings in your body, paced breathing or stroking a pet. Expressing the feeling could include doing something physical, writing or journalling, screaming and crying, or talking or ranting to a friend or therapist.  

Playwriting & Emotion Containment

Plays and playwriting can also involve satisfying this care need for emotion containment. We can express and process our emotional experiences through playwriting. We can identify with characters and see our emotions reflected in theirs. Characters might function as a personal, emotional mirror so that one is able to experience the catharsis of feeling seen, recognised, and validated.  

Take a minute to think about ways in which you may have experienced emotion containment through your playwriting.  

Neurodiversity, Trauma, Caregiving & Societal Systems

It’s important to be aware that the ways in which people experience the 3 feelings systems in relation to threatened or thwarted needs can vary a lot, particularly in relation to neurodiversity, experiences of trauma, caregiving and social and cultural systems.  

The circuits for defending us from threat in the brain are complex. These circuits are located in areas of the brain that are regulated by higher-order, frontal areas of the cortex (the grey matter on the outer layer of our brains), which is the region of our brains that is also involved in speech formation, memory, and eye movement. The areas that process threat are subcortical (beneath the cortex, the grey matter) towards the bottom of the brain, and include the amygdala.

The amygdala can be thought of as the accelerator of defensive reactions to our needs and goals being threatened, and the prefrontal cortex at the top and front of the brain as the brake to these reactions. Neurodiversity and/or trauma and/or care can affect the structure and functional connections between these circuits, therefore impacting the effective functioning of the brake and accelerator, and how a person is able to regulate. 

To recap, in this workshop, we’ve looked at the threat system and the feelings systems of rage, fear and grief, which can be evoked when our 3 psychological needs are threatened or thwarted. We’ve reflected on ways in which we’ve experienced those three feelings systems and how they can be experienced in both a spectrum and a hierarchy. We’ve also explored emotion containment and how it can counter the separation distress of the grief system. We’ve looked at how we can offer ourselves emotion containment coaching in a 4 step process and how playwriting might contribute. We’ve also touched on how neurodiversity, trauma and social and cultural systems can affect the way people experience the 3 feelings systems in relation to threatened or thwarted needs. 

Home Practice

Our next workshop is on what happens when we are overwhelmed by our feelings systems, and skills for managing this. If you have time before then try noticing when you and/or your characters are in the rage, fear or grief systems. Try using the 4 stages of emotion containment coaching and notice any impacts.  

About Anna Webster…

Anna is a Coaching Psychologist, Wellbeing Coach and Psychotherapist in Training. She specialises in coaching psychology workshops and 1:1 programmes informed by emotion neuroscience, neuropsychoanalysis, and dialectical behaviour therapy.

Anna works for The University of Salford on SPECIFiC; a 7-session therapeutic psychoeducation coaching programme on the neurodevelopmental condition FASD, the first of its kind in the UK. She co-wrote the manual, co-delivers the programme and leads on Public Involvement. She was a member of the Steering Group on the UK’s first FASD prevalence study and was consulted as an expert by experience for the NICE Guidelines on FASD. She is also a Health and Wellbeing Coach for the NHS.