Be Careful of Catharsis Addiction

Culturally, we’re often told catharsis is the way to move past emotional difficulty and process stress. It makes sense - the tools we use to manage our emotional states often result in a build up of compressed energy.

So it makes sense to blow the lids off, say/shout what needs to be said, act out, and discharge the compression. However, this ironically doesn’t often lead to a long term change, and the research is mixed at best when it comes to this as a big picture solution.

This is because rapidly arising, forceful, cathartic movements of the body and/or emotion don’t allow for real metabolism of experience; which is what we need to adjust internal dysregulation. Catharsis often then becomes another technique to manage our state rather than to resolve our ongoing threat response.

After catharsis, we are likely still filling up with compression for the same reasons and at the same rate as before, but now discharging it in a new way. The cycle of intense buildup and intense discharge can have its own addictive properties. Catharsis doesn’t often result in more self organization due to it being powered by mostly disorganized impulses (which are ok to have).

If someone’s been stuck in a freeze or shutdown response for a long stretch of time, it could absolutely be helpful to experience cathartic mobilization as that frozen state begins to thaw; but if we go much beyond 1-2 rounds of that, we’ve now likely traded “shutdown” for “catharsis” as the go-to management strategy. -

What’s needed is actually a slowing down and stretching out of our activation responses while remaining present inside the body; so that the compression can be slowly metabolized over time. Then we can change the way the nervous system orients itself in and more accurately evaluates its environment, allowing for appropriate and present focused responses