Affect Theory: Conquering Trauma and Anxiety to Find Happiness
The key to happiness is understanding how we function as a human being. Our brains want us to be safe and happy. As a result, the more we understand how we respond to different situations, the easier it becomes to manage and understand who we are.
Silvan Tomkins, a psychologist and playwright, developed Affect Theory from the 1960s until his death in 1992. He understood our feelings & emotions are biologically-based and wrote Affect Imagery Consciousness. This 4-volume work explains how we form our personality, develop strategies to survive, and alter our responses to life as needed.
Are you ready to explore Affect Theory?
The Beginning of Affect Theory
Right after Silvan Tomkins earned his Ph.D. in Psychology, he decided to stay home with his infant son for the first year. As Tomkins witnessed playdates with other infants and toddlers, he observed how the babies had the same facial expressions regardless of what was happening. This observation sent Tomkins to explore Charles Darwin's work.
As Darwin traveled around the world, all faces registered the same look based on the stimulus in the environment and reactions to the current moment. A smile was a smile in either India or England. Through Darwin's work, Tomkins found his life's calling, Affect Theory, with a focus on affects, feelings, and emotions based in biology.
Are you ready to explore how Affect Theory works?
Understanding Affect Theory
As Tomkins returned to his psychology practice, his background as a playwright surfaced. He saw how the brain patterned and responded to scenes creating scripts to guide people through life. These scripts mean we do not have to relearn a new skill. When scripts activate it means you live more in the past than the present moment.
While exploring scripts and the patterning each person faces in his life, Tomkins did more and more research on the power of a person's physical stance and facial expressions to understand feelings and emotions. Through many years of research, he developed nine affects to explain the affective system and affects as our motivational system.
Are you ready to hear about the nine affects?
Affect Attributes
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Affects Create a Sense of Urgency.
When our affects activate, we receive a strong message from stimuli in the environment to act.
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Affects are Abstract.
Affects do not associate meaning to the stimuli activating them. If fear activates, you do not always know the source.
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Cell Receptors activate Affects.
Our skin, hair, muscles, stomach, and other organs receive stimuli from the environment activating affects.
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Affects are Contagious.
Mirror neurons in our brain help us understand what others are feeling. We can easily take on another person's affect.
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Healthy People allow Affects to Lift Easily.
When conscious of an affect, a person can name their affect out loud or analyze what happened to have the affect lift.
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Faces, body language, & voices express affects.
We benefit by knowing how each affect gets expressed through facial expressions, body language, and the voice.
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Affects Generalize from one Event to another.
Our brain fosters experiential learning, which patterns and scripts us to generalize from one thing to another.
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One Affect can Control another Affect.
Abused children often use the fear affect to diminish their anger to avoid more abuse from their caregivers.
What are the Nine Affects?
Affect Theory makes sense and explains human behavior. Affect Theory explains how our emotions, feelings, and affects come together to create our story and form our personality. Experiences stimulate and allow our brains to create patterns and scripts making it difficult to remain in the present moment so the past often controls us.
Nine affects are the basis for Affect Theory. The Positive Affects are Interest-Excitement, Enjoyment-Joy; the Neutral Affect is Startle-Surprise; and the Negative Affects are Distress-Anguish, Anger-Rage, Fear-Terror, Shame-Humiliation, Disgust, and Dissmell.
Are you Ready to Explore Affect Labeling?
What is Affect Labeling?
Discover the power of putting affects and feelings into words. A research project through UCLA documented the power of the voice to release the pressure on the emotional brain or the amygdala when an affect is named out loud. The study showed how the amygdala no longer was stressed once a person named an affect out loud.
Affect Labeling offers a door into the past without having to focus on all the details. Once you name your affect out loud, you feel the change in your ability to function, remain calm, and develop a solution to what is concerning you. A simple statement -"I am experiencing fear."- is a good example of how to name your affect out loud.
Are you interested in learning how Affect Labeling can be a great tool to release Anxiety and Trauma?