message-centered psychology

A new patient enters the room. She is a woman in her 30s, stunningly beautiful, with fine, delicate features. She has a husband, who is a small business owner, and two teenage daughters. The atmosphere in the family is one of warmth and closeness.

‍

A few months ago, her husband had a bad cold and was prescribed a cough syrup containing codeine. The syrup helped, and some was left over. Around this time, she also started to cough, and tried the syrup herself. Her cough was gone, but the syrup stayed: she liked it too much.

‍

A nurse in a physician's office, she had access to prescription blanks and learned to forge his signature. After six months, she got caught. She lost her job, her license, and faced legal issues. But the main problem was not all of that or even her addiction – it was her husband's reaction. She had never seen him this angry. He said that she “stabbed him in the back with a knife” and that he couldn't even look at her. He used the Russian word predatel'stvo – betrayal, in a register more severe than the English word carries. No matter how much she tried to apologize, nothing helped.

‍

Since the issue was the husband’s anger, I assumed that there was something in this episode that the husband perceived as a threat to his decision-making power. I tried to put myself in his shoes: in my little kingdom, it’s my job to protect my girls from any harm – and suddenly I find out that for six months my wife was in trouble and didn’t tell me, preventing me from doing my job! It was not her decision to make. From his perspective, she had no right to keep him in the dark, hence his extreme anger: it was a clear message to her that this must never happen. 

‍

I suggested she find a moment to tell her husband: “If I could go back to change only one thing, I would have told you right away.” She didn’t see how this might help, but followed my advice nevertheless. 

‍

When she came back a week later, her first words were: “Doctor, I don’t know what magic was in this stupid sentence, but after I said it, he cried, he hugged me, and I had my husband back.”

‍

I told the story to a female colleague. Her reaction was: “Only a man could think of that!” – but she was wrong. It's not me being a man. It's me applying Message-Centered Psychology.

‍

Questions Matter

‍

A psychoanalyst asks: why? What is the cause of the patient's issues? She analyzes traumas and childhood experiences. His eyes are turned to the past.

‍

A cognitive-behavioral therapist asks: how? How do we fix the problem? He targets patterns that are here and now and works to rewire them.

‍

An MCP clinician asks: what for? What is the purpose of the patient's behaviors, issues, symptoms? What is the patient trying to achieve or prevent? And how can this be done in a healthier way? The MCP clinician's focus is on the future.

All these perspectives are internally coherent, all producing results. Together, they form a triangle – a strong frame capable of carrying the weight of mental health. 

‍

Words Matter

‍

We say feeling when we mean emotion. We say emotion when we mean affect. We say affect when we mean feeling. We know they must mean different things, and still use them interchangeably. Maybe it doesn’t matter – we are still able to understand each other. Or are we?

‍

In 1981, Paul and Anne Kleinginna counted 92 different – even contradictory – definitions of emotion in peer-reviewed psychological texts. Nearly half a century later, little has changed; the term is often left undefined, as if self-evident. Unlike everyday language, terminology requires precision: one word – one meaning. When the terms are blurred, the reasoning built on them is blurred as well. The first task of MCP is to establish consistent terminology for the fuzzy realm of feelings and emotions. 

‍

MCP focuses specifically on emotions’ communicative function, deliberately setting aside their neurological and physiological aspects. The power of MCP stems from its intentional limitation, which is not its weakness but its strength. That is what makes MCP’s terminology precise and its models clear and effective. 

‍

Feelings, Emotions, and Affects

‍

In MCP, we do not rely on intuition alone when it comes to terminology. Given the lack of consensus in existing definitions, we introduce our own – attempting to make them as unambiguous as possible. 

‍

We define a feeling as an internal call to action – a message to yourself, which tells you that an action is required: to eat, to hide, to fight. Different feelings call for different kinds of actions: where there is no need to act, there is no need to feel.

Some feelings call for a specific action: communication. We call these feelings emotions. Their internal message is a call for sending an external message to others. Each emotion sends its own message: respect says “I accept your right to make your own decisions,” and anger says “I am too strong for you to disrespect me.” 

‍

All emotions are feelings, but not all feelings are emotions: we can say “a feeling of anger” or “an emotion of anger,” but not “an emotion of hunger.”

‍

Messages conveyed by emotions are nonverbal, delivered through observable behavior. In MCP, we call that behavior affect. Affect goes beyond body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. Any behavior can be read as a message, whether we realize it or not. Persistent tardiness, for example, also sends a message.

‍

Verbal Or Nonverbal: Distinction

‍

The focus of MCP is nonverbal communication through emotions. We need to distinguish it from verbal communication – beyond the familiar “one uses words and the other does not.” 

‍

In MCP, we hold – and our observations support – that every act of communication contains two channels, serving two different goals: one conveys knowledge, the other evokes feelings, not necessarily in equal proportion. For example, a lecture on quantum mechanics is primarily knowledge-oriented. Yet if the delivery evokes boredom, the knowledge may never be received. A blind-date conversation, by contrast, is primarily feeling-oriented, although factual information may also be exchanged. Building on this functional distinction, we define the two components by their intended effects: verbal communication aims to change what we know; nonverbal, how we feel. 

‍

By this definition, not all verbal communication uses words: knowledge is delivered through technical drawings, schematics, maps, and formulas. By the same token, music and poetry are functionally nonverbal, even though they can be written down with notes and words, because their primary aim is to evoke emotions. Sometimes communication only pretends to be verbal – as in greetings, verbal fights, or small talk, where the goal is to exchange emotional signals rather than knowledge: everybody already knows what the weather is and who won the game.

‍

Verbal and Nonverbal: Interplay

‍

Although it is commonly assumed that what we feel depends on what we say, MCP predicts – and observations confirm – that, counterintuitively, the rational meaning of words has little influence on how we feel. Maybe this is because our capacity to feel evolved hundreds of millions of years before our capacity to speak. It is not what is said but how.

‍

Consider the following situation. A husband comes home and says to his wife, “We need a new car.” Imagine how different he would feel if she replies, “Are you crazy? Where do we get the money?” rather than, “This is such a great idea, our car is old and unreliable. Let’s think where we get the money.” And yet the underlying message is identical: they cannot afford a new car.

‍

If we focus solely on what is said, the how can take on a life of its own, escalating arguments or sending emotional signals that foster false hopes or misguided expectations. This dynamic extends into the clinic – for example, CBT protocols may fall short if the nonverbal dimension of the cognitive interventions is overlooked.  

‍

The Map of Emotionland

‍

What we need is a map that would tell us which feeling signals what. With this knowledge, we can figure out the best way to act on the feeling rather than follow automatic, suboptimal, ingrained, and not necessarily healthy patterns. 

‍

The MCP method gives us a way to build this map. Instead of trying to guess what external message each emotion implies, MCP followschose another approach: we analyze which messages are generally necessary in a society must be there and then try to associate those messagesem with known emotions. 

‍

All socialization starts with communication needed to coordinate behavior. The repertoire of necessary messages depends on a society’sthe level of coordination: the higher the level, the greater the need. More complex societal needs do not cancel simpler ones, and therefore a more developed society still retains old messages along with new ones that serve its advanced needs. That is why we share many emotions with other social animals: we can read the emotions of our pets, and they unmistakably read ours. 

‍

Since emotions stem from communication needs, we built a set of models of social interactions, starting with the simplest ones and adding complexity as we go. The goal is to identify necessary messages and pair them with known emotions, staying as close as possible to our intuitive understanding. In MCP, we start with the simplest model of society, where all participants are identical. This doesn’t mean that we actually imply the existence of such societies (although a school of fish or a herd of sheep serve as close approximations). It means that our analysis is focused on what the individuals have in common rather than what makes them different.  

‍

The next level of complexity comes from adding a second uniform group, which brings new types of interaction both inside the groups and between them. Then we add more groups and arrange them in a hierarchy. And the last model is the closest to contemporary life in developed countries: a network, where each individual participates in multiple hierarchies simultaneously.  We have mapped the messages essential for the functioning of such structures to a number of known emotions. Our map contains joy and fear, remorse and shame, guilt and anger, pride and envy, and many more. 

‍

Detective Work

‍

When a patient presents a problem, talks about their feelings, or blames themselves or others, the therapist is trained to form a clinical understanding based on that. And yet, are we ever truly aware of our own motives? All too often, neither the patient nor the clinician knows the patient’s real motivations and needs.  

‍

To figure this out, we need to rely on subtle clues: unexpected words, sudden changes of topic, incongruent body language and facial expressions – everything that might hint at what is going on beneath the surface. These clues are as, if not more, informative than the content of the patient’s story. Here again, the how may tell us more than the what. 

To interpret these clues, we rely on models and methods provided by MCP. To be a good detective, you need the right tools. 

‍

The patient is a 16-year-old boy.

‍

– I am very good at communicating with adults and children, but with peers, especially girls, I feel terrible. I behave stupidly. My voice disappears – I think I talk, but nobody can hear me. My palms get sweaty… 

– Can you hide it?

– Obviously not!

– What message do you think people get from this behavior?

He thought for a long time.

– I think, maybe, that I am nervous about talking to them?

That was my opening. 

– If you send this message anyway, why don’t you try and send it in words? Maybe then you won’t have to do it with your body with all this suffering.

‍

It took him a few weeks to muster his courage, but when he eventually tried, it worked.

‍

Without MCP, I would be focusing on his symptoms – those of social anxiety – and teaching him to breathe in a specific way and repeat positive mantras. With MCP, I looked for the message behind the symptoms.

‍

‍

– Doctor, I need you to remove my phobia using hypnosis.

– What is your phobia? – I asked.

– I am afraid to drive after an accident.

– Oh, I hope you were not seriously hurt?

– No, nobody was hurt. It was a fender-bender at the red light, the car didn’t even need a repair.

Well, I think, this doesn’t sound like a phobia-causing trauma. So, I tell her:

– I can take away your phobia, but I am afraid it may hurt you more than help. 

– Hurt? How? – she asked.

– Well, the phobia is there for a reason. It may be protecting you. If we take it away, something else may replace it – something even worse.  Let’s talk first. You live in New Jersey, people don’t walk here. How do you get around without a car?

– My husband drives me around.

‍

Now we are getting somewhere. I have a hypothesis: her “phobia” is a message to her husband that she wants to be closer to him, have him around, spend more time together – something along those lines. So I asked her about her life and her relationship with her husband. By the end of the session, we had settled on what seemed to be the root of her problem, and we brainstormed alternative ways to achieve her goals in the relationship. We never even touched the phobia again, but it was “magically” gone that same day. I learned that the next day – when she drove to my office to cancel her next appointment. 

‍

I am afraid many of my colleagues would focus on treating her phobia. A distinctive feature of MCP is looking at the behavior as a potential message.

‍

The patient is a student who cannot prepare for a final because her dog is dying from cancer, and she cannot think of anything else. She is a long-time patient, and, since she was familiar with our way of thinking, I asked her a question that a new patient would most likely not understand and might even find offensive:

‍

– If your inability to focus is read as a message, what do you think this message could be?

After a long pause, she said tentatively:

– That I have a heart?

That gave me a way in.

– Why don’t you start telling everybody who matters to you how terrible the situation is and how devastated you are? Maybe if you send this message in words, you won’t have to send it with your body.

She passed her final – no antidepressants, no tranquilizers. 

‍

A functional alcoholic with thirty years “in the field” wants to break the cycle. He tried rehab, tried to recognize and avoid triggers, tried therapy, and yet here he is. I told him upfront that we will not talk about his drinking patterns, triggers, and relaxation techniques. We will go straight to the root. 

‍

He tells me about his wife, his son, his mother, his business, and his lack of close friends. I listen, my attention on two things: what message his drinking may be sending, and to whom. Soon,the pieces began to fall into place: he feels he is not in control of his life, that his wife and mother make all decisions for him. From time to time he gets drunk into oblivion. And when he is drunk – no more Mr. Nice Guy. Even I got a taste of it: when drunk, he would call me at night and leave horrifying voicemail messages complaining that the Nazis did not finish the job exterminating “you people.”  He was not antisemitic, just showing me his no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy-ness.

‍

The next morning, he feels guilty and the cycle of dominance (theirs) and submission (his) continues.  

‍

Since his drinking looked like an unsuccessful attempt to rebel, we started working on how to deal with controlling and manipulative people, confronting them without confrontation. We worked on his assertiveness and his ability to recognize manipulative blame for the ruse it is, disarming the manipulator without apologizing or becoming defensive. Since he was the only breadwinner in the family, I helped him see the decision-making power he could have. With time, he felt less and less like a controlled child and more like a respected leader who makes decisions, benevolently delegating some of them to his wife.    

‍

Three months later, he said he had not even realized he had gone two weeks without a drink (I already knew – there had been no nasty late-night voicemail messages).  Not because he was controlling his impulses – he simply forgot. He didn’t feel like drinking. A month later, he had friends over (he now had friends!), and they had a bottle of wine – but he didn’t fall off the wagon afterward. Doesn’t this make the unquestionable dogma “once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic” questionable? 

‍

I tried the same approach with other patients struggling with addictions. The results were similar, but only when I could figure out both the message and its addressee.

‍

Conclusion

‍

MCP is still in its infancy, yet it already shows remarkable clinical promise. With our collaborative approach, more than one clinician can work with the same patient, allowing us to combine MCP with psychiatric care, crisis intervention, and other approaches such as CBT, EMDR, EFT, and more. We have learned how to help patients struggling with a wide variety of issues, including uncontrolled anger, excessive guilt, social anxiety, depression, prolonged grief, personality disorders, addictions, burnout, and emotional difficulties related to learning disabilities.  

‍

Of course, MCP cannot address every problem, and we are working to define the boundaries of its use. A mature approach knows its limits, and we are still discovering ours.