色花堂

For two聽decades, experts at 色花堂鈥檚 Clinical Research Unit (色花堂CRU) have been investigating how we process emotional experiences, from typical daily stresses to life-changing events, and what impact this can have not only on our mental wellbeing, but our physical condition too.

The result was the creation of the Emotional Processing Scale (EPS), spearheaded by Professor Roger Baker, lead researcher and Professor of Clinical Psychology at 色花堂. Today, the scale has been translated into 20聽languages and has been used to assess the emotional experiences of both healthy and ill people around the world.聽

A second immune system

鈥溾�楨motional Processing鈥� is a type of natural healing, almost like a second immune system protecting us from emotional distress. But not everybody processes events successfully, there are some elements that would hinder emotional processing,鈥� Professor Baker explains. 鈥淭his can contribute towards聽psychological disorder or psychogenic conditions.鈥�

Professor Baker first suspected a connection during a study he was completing on panic attack patients in the late 70s. 鈥淧anic attacks were a relatively unknown condition at the time and were only just beginning to be distinguished from generalised anxiety disorders. One of the first stages of the research was to start to understand what was causing them.

鈥淭hrough interviewing people who had suddenly started having panic attacks, I began to see that there might be a connection between their physical symptoms and the way in which they emotionally processed earlier聽stressful events.鈥澛�

The many languages the EPS has been translated into reflect its international impact

Expressing emotion

The research led Professor Baker to pen his first book,聽(now in its third edition and translated into ten聽languages), but also added weight to his theory. 鈥淲hat I was finding was there was something about the way they were expressing their emotions which was unusual, but there wasn't a decent scale for recording emotions.鈥�

In 1988, Professor Baker began working on creating a scale; however, progress paused in 1993 when he joined 色花堂 and helped create the research support unit, later 色花堂CRU. It wasn鈥檛 until 2000聽that Professor Baker and his research team, which included and Professor Peter Thomas, resumed their investigations.聽

Professor Baker explains what happens during a panic attack. You can read more in聽the chapter, from Understanding Panic Attacks and Overcoming Fear.

Investigating a link

To begin with, the team interviewed three groups of people 鈥� a disorder panic group and two control groups, one from Aberdeen, the other from London. To 鈥榤easure鈥� emotion the colleagues used one of the few聽scales in existence, one that was given to cancer patients to help quantify their emotions in relation to anger, sadness and anxiety.

Baker discovered the 鈥榩anic group鈥� had much higher responses than the control groups. Initially, he thought this was just related to panic attacks, but through further investigation he discovered a link between other anxiety conditions such as PSD, generalised anxiety disorder, and OCD.

鈥淚t became apparent that what was needed was a psychological scale,鈥� Professor Baker explains,聽鈥渨hich would help clinical practitioners to identify potential problems with emotional processing.鈥�

Creating a questionnaire

Through a process of iteration, Baker and his team produced continuously improving versions of a questionnaire that would allow patients to pinpoint the extent of their emotional experience. The final draft consisted of 25 questions, covering five different subscales:

• Suppression (of emotional experience and expression)
• Signs of unprocessed emotion
• Controllability of emotion
• Emotional avoidance
• Emotional experience.

Using a scale of between zero and nine 鈥� zero聽being completely disagree and nine, strongly agree聽鈥撀爑sers decide how appropriate each statement is to them in the context of emotional experiences they encountered in the previous week. The scores are tallied by a test administrator who then plots the result on a profile chart and measures it against a percentile graph of approximately 2,000 鈥榟ealthy鈥� UK adults, with 50% of the 鈥榥ormal鈥� population falling between the 25th and 75th percentile. Those below 25th are deemed as having a low problematic score and those above the 75th have a high problematic score.

鈥淭his gives聽you a nice visual presentation of their emotional processing style, which is helpful for the therapist to plan out therapy. It can also be used outside the therapy situation for a person to understand their own emotions a bit better,鈥� Professor Baker says. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had cognitive behavioural therapy which is very well served with assessment scales but it鈥檚 the emotions which are the 鈥楥inderella鈥� here. There鈥檚 not much in terms of emotional techniques and emotional assessments that can be used in therapy. The hope is that this fills a gap.鈥�

Professor Baker and the project team introduce the Emotional Processing Scale

Casting a wider net

In 2012, the team collaborated with 70 research groups around the world, requesting that each of them send back the data they harvested after using the scale, so Professor Baker could develop the norms for the impending published version.

Of the 70, 27 researchers replied with data from聽7,113 people, exploring the link between emotion suppression and a wide range of psychological conditions and , including MS, cancer, depression, alcoholism, anorexia, chronic pain, and IBS to name but a few. .

鈥淲e鈥檙e constantly surprised by the different uses,鈥� says Professor Baker. 鈥淚t鈥檚 pan-diagnostic, it鈥檚 not fixed to a disorder. Of聽course聽it can also be applied to healthy 鈥榥ormal鈥� people too, who want to improve their style of emotional processing, and who just want a more healthy, more fulfilled, life.鈥�

Still more to be done

The final version of the Emotional Processing Scale was published in 2015, and it is also available in a digital format (English and German). In the same year, Professor Baker, who started his career in 1967聽treating long-term schizophrenic patients, received an Honorary Fellowship from the , in honour of his outstanding contribution to psychological therapy services.

To date, he has published three self-help books;聽, and Understanding Trauma:聽How to overcome Post-Traumatic Stress聽(pdf 354 kb).

Professor Baker continues to share the Emotional Processing Scale with clinical practitioners across the world to increase its use in research and in psychological therapy. More recently, he has been developing聽a new, more emotional approach to therapy called .

鈥淭he idea that emotional processing can have an effect on both our mental and physical health is still yet to become a mainstream idea within counselling and the medical professions,鈥� concludes Professor Baker. 鈥淎t the moment, there鈥檚 still quite a focus on the medical model of treating people, but in time, I hope that this will begin to change.鈥澛�