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The following patterns of distorted thinking are presented here as a guideline
of the kind of irrationalities that a client is likely to present as defensive
left-brained avoidances, because of the empirical reality that his right brain
is all too aware of. The symbol in brackets after each heading is a mnemonic to
assist recall and the noting of thought distortions as they occur in session.
Example: 'I expect it'll be another boring party'. It is being stuck in a
mental groove. In particular you look for that which confirms your fear or
prejudice, remember it from the past and expect it in the future. You ignore
other points of view or the possibility of alternative solutions.
2. Awfulising (Aw)
Example: 'I can't bear going on these awful buses'. This attitude is
saying that it's unacceptable if things aren't as you would prefer them to be.
You take the negative aspect of a situation and magnify it. To handle this,
recognize when you use words like terrible, awful, disgusting, etc. and in
particular the phrase 'I can't stand it'. Examine their rationality.
Example: 'You're either for me or against me'. Things are black or white,
wonderful or terrible, a great success or a total failure, brilliantly clever
or really stupid, a certainty or a complete mystery, friend or enemy, love or
hate - there is no middle ground, no room for improvement, no room for
mistakes. judgments on self and others swing from one emotional extreme to
another and are easily triggered. It is important to remember that human beings
are just too complex to be reduced to dichotomous judgments, and that all
qualities fall somewhere along a continuum, containing elements of either
extreme.
Example: 'I'll never be any good at tennis' after one poor game. In this
distortion you make a broad, generalized conclusion, often couched in the form
of absolute statements, based on a single piece of evidence. If something bad
happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. If someone shows
evidence of a negative trait, this is picked up on and exaggerated into a
global judgment. This inevitably leads to a more and more restricted life and
your view of the world becomes stereotyped. Cue words that indicate you may be
over-generalizing are: all, every, none, never, always, everybody and nobody.
To become more flexible use words such as: may, sometimes and often, and be
particularly sensitive to absolute statements about the future, such as 'No one
will ever love me', because they may become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Example: 'Nothing can change the way I feel'. Making an assumption, presupposes
knowledge that you do not have. Assumptions are often popular beliefs that have
been adopted without examining their basis in fact, such as 'I'm over the hill
now that I'm forty'. Making decisions based on assumptions may lead to
disaster, as when an executive assumes that a new product will sell well,
having made no market research. Often, taking things for granted causes people
to be blind to possible solutions - assuming no-one can help them, a couple's
marriage may go on the rocks, when they could seek counselling. Question: what
leads you to believe this? Why do it this way? Who says? What alternatives are
there? What would happen if you did? What would happen if you didn't?
As a practical matter, all of us must proceed with the business of living by
relying on 'maps' of the world which we have taken on trust and which we have
not tested and often cannot test. To supplement personal experience, we absorb
a constant stream of reports, descriptions, judgments, inferences and
assumptions coming from a multitude of sources. From this abundance of stored
information, you piece together a mental 'model' of the world and its workings
that literally becomes your world view. However, people do vary considerably in
the extent of their misinformation and in the degree to which they
actively seek out new information, take opportunities to correct or update
their mental models, and expose themselves to new experiences.
Example: 'I know he doesn't like me'. Making false assumptions about what other
people think depends on a process called projection. It is like mind-reading -
putting words into peoples' mouths. You imagine that people feel the same way
you do and react to things the same way. If you get angry when someone is late,
you assume that another will feel the same way about you or others, in that
situation. If you don't like yourself, you assume others also think that way.
The answer is not to jump to conclusions about what other people think and feel.
Example: 'We haven't seen each other for two days - I think the relationship is
falling apart'. You read a newspaper article about some misfortune and wonder
if that could happen to you. Predicting negative consequences is a defense, to
protect oneself from disappointment by expecting the worst. Consider, what are
the realistic odds of that happening?
Example: 'Quite a few people here seem smarter than I am'. This is the
introverted tendency to relate everything around you to yourself, to think
people must be judging you, or to think that everything they do or say is a
reaction to something about you. It is the habit of continually comparing
yourself to other people, based on the underlying assumption is that your worth
is questionable. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a
person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better you have a
moment's relief; if you come up short, you feel diminished. Your worth doesn't
depend on being better than others, so why start the comparison gamble?
Example: 'It's your fault we're in debt'. If you see yourself as externally
controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate or 'the system'. You
don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone
make any difference in the world, so you try and manipulate others to take care
of your interests. Someone else is to blame and is responsible for your pain,
your loss, your failure. The truth is that we are constantly making decisions
and every decision affects and steers our lives. It is your responsibility to
assert your needs, to say no or go elsewhere for what you want. In some way we
are responsible for nearly everything that happens to us, including our
distress and unhappiness. Taking responsibility means accepting the
consequences of your own choices. Ask yourself: 'What choices have I made that
resulted in this situation? What decisions can I now make to change it?'
The opposite distortion is also very common - the fallacy that makes you
responsible for the pain or happiness of everyone around you. You carry the
world on your shoulders. You have to right all wrongs, fill every need and balm
each hurt; if you don't you feel guilty and turn the blame on yourself. Blaming
yourself means labeling yourself inadequate if things go wrong. With this
viewpoint you are very easily manipulated. The key to overcoming this fallacy
is to recognize that each person is responsible for himself - taking
responsibility doesn't imply that you are also responsible for what happens to
others. Remember, part of respecting others includes respecting their ability
to overcome or accept their own pains, make their own decisions and be in
control of their own lives.
Example: 'It's not fair, he should take me out more often'. The consideration
of unfairness results from resentment that the other person does not want or
prefer the same as you, or that events do not turn out in your favour. The
person gets locked into his or her own point of view, with a feeling of
ever-growing resentment. Be honest with yourself and the other person. Say what
you want or prefer, without getting involved in the fallacy of unfairness: that
people and situations shouldn't be the way they are.
Example: 'I feel depressed, life must be pointless'. You believe that what you
feel must be true - automatically. If you feel stupid then you must lack
intelligence. If you feel guilty then you must have done something wrong. If
you feel angry, someone must have taken advantage of you. However, there is
nothing automatically true about what you feel - your feelings can lie to you,
they can be based on misconceptions. If your feelings are based on distorted
thoughts, then they won't have any validity. So be sceptical about your
feelings and examine them as you would a used car.
Example: 'If we had sex more often, I'd be more affectionate'. The only person
you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. When you
pressure people to change, you are forcing them to be different for your own
benefit. Strategies for manipulating others include blaming, demanding,
withholding and trading - in order to make the other feel obliged. The usual
result is that the other person feels attacked or pushed around and resists
changing at all, or feels resentful if they do. The underlying fallacy of this
thinking style is that your happiness depends on controlling the behavior of
others. In fact your happiness depends on the many thousands of large and small
decisions you make during your life.
Example: 'You should never ask people personal questions'. In this distortion,
you operate from a list of inflexible rules about how you and other people
should act. The rules are right and indisputable. Any particular deviation from
your particular values or standards is bad. As a result you are often in the
position of judging and finding fault. People irritate you, they don't act
properly or think correctly. They have unacceptable traits, habits and opinions
that make them hard to tolerate. They should know the rules and they should
follow them. Of course, the answer is to focus on each person's uniqueness: his
or her particular needs, limitations, fears and pleasures, and consequently
different values. Personal values are just that - personal.
You are also making yourself suffer with shoulds, oughts and musts (or their
negatives). You feel compelled to do something or be a certain way and feel
guilty if you don't, but you never bother to ask objectively if it really makes
sense. Some people beat themselves up constantly for being incompetent,
insensitive, stupid, too emotional, etc. They are always ready to be wrong. The
psychiatrist Karen Horney called this the 'tyranny of the shoulds'.
Example: 'I've been doing this longer than you, so I know what I'm talking
about'. In this distortion you are usually on the defensive, needing to prove
to yourself and others that your views, assumptions and actions are all
correct. You never make mistakes! If you've got to be right, you don't listen.
You can't afford to - listening might reveal that you are wrong sometimes. Your
opinions rarely change because if the facts don't fit what you already believe
you ignore them. This makes you lonely, because being right seems more
important than an honest, caring relationship.
The key to overcoming being right, is active listening - making sure you really
understand what's been said to you, to appreciate the other's point of view and
what you can learn from it, which is effort better spent than in devising
rebuttals and attacks. Remember that other people believe what they are saying
as strongly as you do, and there is not always just the one right answer.
Example: 'I worked and raised these kids and look what thanks I get'. This
distorted thinking style accepts pain and unhappiness because 'those who do
good are rewarded in the end'. You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to
pay off, as if there was someone keeping score. You feel hostile and bitter
when the reward doesn't come. In reality the reward is now. Your relationship,
your progress toward your goals, and the care you give to those you love,
should be intrinsically rewarding. If not, you need to rearrange your
activities to provide some here-and-now reward, dropping or sharing the
activities that chronically drain you - Heaven is a long way off and you can
get very tired waiting.
To summarise, here is a list of the Thought Distortions with mnemonics, in
alphabetical order:
Assumption (Ass)
Awfulising (Aw)
Blame (B)
Black & White Thinking (BW)
Emotional Reasoning (E)
generalization (G)
Got to Be Right (GB)
Heaven's Reward (HR)
Manipulation (M)
Negative Thinking (N)
Projection (P)
Self-consciousness (SC)
Shoulds (Sh)
Tunnel Vision (TV)
Unfairness (U)
The best way to practice identifying Thought Distortions in everyday
life, is to take particular notice of one of the distortions for one day, and
notice whenever it is used - by others or by yourself!
Frequently, several Distortions are combined in a statement, or a statement
fits into several categories of Distortion. These are commonly
rationalizations - i.e. seemingly plausible explanations, excuses or
justifications, which in fact are ignoring or fudging the real issue. For
example. "I don't need to work hard on this course because no one else will,"
is an assumption, a generalization, negative thinking, tunnel vision,
projection, and so on.
A counsellor may use the following approaches (and there are many others) to
help a client clarify a statement containing distorted thinking, without
telling him that he is wrong or implying he is being stupid. In each case they
are questions to which only the client could know the answer.
1. Reflecting stated assumptions. Counsellor says: 'Are you assuming that Man
is an animal?' or 'What leads you to believe that?'
2. Focusing attention on alternatives: 'Can you think of other explanations
that somebody might hold?' or 'What are some alternatives?'
3. Exaggerating a generalization: 'So absolutely everybody in the world is out
to get you?' or 'Do you know somebody who is not?' or 'Are there exceptions you
can think of (to your generalization)?'
4. Finishing open statements: 'And they are specifically...?'
5. Eliciting counter-evidence: 'What data would you need to see before you
would change your mind?'
6. Requesting source: 'What is the source of your information?' or 'Are
you telling me that?' or 'You say "Alcohol reduces stress"... for
whom?'
7. Focusing on extremes: 'Do you mean all?' (or never, continually,
always, etc.)
8. Paying attention to indeterminate phrases: 'In what way does it seem
so to you?' or 'Exactly how do you think that is so?'
9. Focusing on choices: 'What alternatives did you have?'
10. Anticipating: 'Eventually, where do you think this idea is leading you?'
or 'What consequences would you anticipate?'
11. Utility: 'Would your idea be helpful to someone else to hold?'
12. Examples: 'Can you give a "for instance"?'
13. Critical incident: 'Tell me about an incident that was crucial to you in
forming that opinion?'
14. Quantifying: 'How bad would you rate that on a scale of one to a hundred?'
or 'What would you consider worse than that?'
15. Comparison: 'Compared with what?' or 'Compared to whom?'
16. Specifying cause and effect: 'How, specifically, does your wife make you
angry?' or 'How, specifically, does your job make you nervous?' [when a client
claims his thoughts, emotions, feelings or behavior are caused by another
person or thing.] Or, 'How, specifically, do you make her depressed?'
17. Challenging mind-reading: 'How, specifically, do you know he hates you?'
18. When no answer: 'Well, then guess' or 'Well, if you did know, what would
it be?' or 'Well, if you're not sure, then tell me a lie about how you felt'.
When running a counselling procedure, a client may develop an antagonism, due
to a disagreement or upset. Or after the handling he may be left with an
unpleasant feeling. This feeling will cloud his judgment and may do so for
some time afterwards if not handled.
The procedure starts by asking the client to identify the subject or the person
(which may be the analyst, or somebody who featured in the analysis) that he
has antagonistic feelings towards. Then the following specific questions are
asked. Each one is asked until the Meter no longer reads, or there is a
release.
Was your antagonism caused by:
(1) Something you were forced into?
(2) Something forced upon you?
(3) Something you didn't achieve?
(4) Something you found out?
(5) Something you felt was missing?
(6) Something someone supposed?
(7) Something someone didn't grasp?
(8) Something you wanted to keep secret?
(9) Reminding you of something else?
Note: If the antagonism doesn't resolve by the end of the 8th question, then
the 9th question will reveal a similar problem that occurred earlier; in which
case the procedure is repeated from the start. Frequently this procedure will
expose a new issue that needs a separate handling of its own; the fact that the
problem is indicated will relieve the client's antagonism.
This paper describes a comprehensive method of handling unwanted personal
difficulties, affecting the individual's happiness. A specific condition may be
connected with any or all of the following:
Chronic or particular communication difficulties,
Upsets and disagreements,
Problems,
bad actions, and withholds or missed withholds,
Identifications with personalities forming sub-personalities with fixed or
limiting beliefs;
Compulsions, fears and inhibitions;
defenses such as denials, suppressions, projections, invalidations, insincerity
- all types of survival computations;
Distorted thinking, generalizations and delusions;
Associated losses and traumatic memories;
Addictive problems such as drugs and alcohol.
During the course of a child's cognitive development there are changes in the
way that the individual represents (i.e. stores and retrieves) information that
is perceived through the senses. A small infant is limited to the actions which
it can make upon the immediate world surrounding it, when it first learns to
separate the world into 'me' and 'not me', discovering its body schema. From
then on its learning consists of developing and revising that schema as it
performs more operations on the outside world and learns from the effects that
result.
It is hard to imagine how a baby thinks. It cannot think in pictures of objects
because it has not really discovered what objects are yet, or what properties
they have, in a real enough way to picture them. Instead it remembers things as
a kind of 'muscle memory' (in the sensori-motor kinesthetic system) using an
internal representation of the 'feel' of things to code the information. Before
4 or 5 years of age traumatic memories and their accompanying considerations
and decisions that affect future behavior, are not available to recall in the
way that an adult recalls, like a full-perceptic movie, but rather in terms of
emotional body-centered feelings of needs and wants, or fears and pains,
although there will be an element of auditory and visual imagery particularly
accompanying poignant moments. There will be hardly any visual representation
of the first eighteen months, until the infant becomes ambulatory and starts to
walk and talk.
Beyond 4 years of age the predominant representation has become auditory, with
memories featuring received commands. During this period the child develops
realistic internal imaging of the world around him, so that by 7 or 8 years of
age a concrete visual mode of representation has become the predominant way of
thinking about and remembering experience.
Pretty soon though, the child's world widens further still, until it includes
information which isn't easily represented using pictures. (Try imaging a
concept like 'freedom' or 'fairness'). When this happens, the child becomes
more likely to use symbolic representation, including inner speech, using words
as formalised symbols which 'stand for' the concepts. At this point the child's
own decisions and intentions may be expressed as inner speech, whereas before
they were 'felt' intentions.
When memories are recalled there is a mass of information that could
potentially come into consciousness, so in order to make this manageable there
is a filtering process which selects material for conscious attention. Material
is recognized, its relevance, value and importance weighted and the most
relevant is passed upwards for conscious attention.
In attempting to recall an early experience, a client will therefore be
filtering information in this way. Because it is little understood that early
memories are different in nature to the adult's way of representing experience,
the student will tend to look for labeled experiences or more realistically,
for audio-visual pictures, whereas in fact below two years of age less than 3%
of experience is represented visually or auditorily, and nearly all of the
infant's experiences are represented by kinesthetic feelings.
Similarly, in recalling experiences between 2 and 5 years, only 10% to 20% is
visual, perhaps 30% auditory and the majority still kinesthetic (sensual
feelings and emotions rooted in the body-image). Between 5 and 8 years, audio
will tend to be the predominant representation, with a very concrete
(non-cognitive) view of the world; only from about 8 years onwards does the
visual mode become the predominant way that experience is retrieved, alongside
kinesthetic, auditory and verbal (symbolic) representations.
The client may therefore fail to recognize childhood experiences in the way
that they were actually stored and filter the recall of kinesthetic and audio
information as being irrelevant. Since early experience has been such an
influential factor in the individual's personality development, it is often
crucial to be able to access it in order that he can un-make past decisions
that resulted from the experience, and we therefore emphasize this aspect of
recall in Handling Unwanted Conditions.
Also the filtering process is subject to the fears of the Ego and prejudices of
the Superego, and for this reason it is often necessary to run through
experiences several times before all of the information is available to
inspection and can be re-evaluated from the adult point of view.
When the person being helped has contacted a feeling, he is asked to describe
what he is experiencing in terms of perception, emotion, sensation, behavior
and point of view. What are you aware of? What emotion do you feel? How is your
body reacting? What do you feel like doing? What does it make you think?
The acronym BASIC ID may be used to ensure no important aspect is ignored: this
stands for the modalities of - behavior, Affect (moods and emotions),
Sensation, Imagery, Cognition, along with the Interpersonal dimension and under
the heading of Drugs, the physical and medical modality.
For example: "I'm feeling very scared - my mouth is dried up, I need to go to
the toilet, I've got butterflies in my stomach, I feel like running away, I'm
all on my own, nobody cares about me, my vision is blurred, I'm useless".
Notice the person is encouraged to express his experience in the present tense.
Extending and clarifying questions should be used to help make the experience
as concrete and real as possible. Items (persons and topics) that read on the
Meter should be indicated, to help the person steer towards and identify
fleeting mental representations of the experience. Reading items should also be
noted so that, if necessary, they may be addressed separately later on.
Throughout this procedure the analyst is seeking to reduce the level of
abstraction of the perceived feeling so that it is specific and concrete. For
example, in response to "it's painful" the analyst will ask where it hurts,
what sort of pain it is, when did it start and so on. The more closely the
feeling is specified, the more it will be duplicated in the present, resulting
in eradication of the repressive charge.
The feeling, and what triggers it, will have a location in the time sequence of
the overall experience or incident surrounding it: it may be before an
incident, at the beginning, middle or end, after it or throughout.
The nature of the felt effort involved should be accessed: whether the person
made it happen or was letting it happen; and whether this was within his mind
or relating to another person or persons. The flow of the feelings may be
recognized, whether they are outwards, inwards or two-way. His sense of
self-awareness, sexuality, and of movement may also be retrieved alongside
sight, touch, hearing, smell, well-being and quality of feeling (enjoyable,
neutral or painful), and his cognitive thoughts.
There is another important factor which may make it difficult to access the
memories of early childhood. The dominant brain wave activity of children under
the age of six is in the four to eight hertz range associated with theta in
adults. The pattern of these waves more closely resembles that of adult alpha
waves. These lower frequency theta waves in adults are usually associated with
reverie and dreaming, and usually occur only in the transition from wakefulness
into sleep. As Dr. Thomas Budzynski and others have shown in recent years,
however, theta brain-wave production in adults is a vital component of learning
and memory encoding.
Clinical results at several centers have indicated that EEG brain-wave training
can provide reliable access to the alpha-theta consciousness states of early
childhood. This suggests a physical basis for the 'inner child' metaphor of
co-dependency. The surfacing of early childhood memories during theta training
(through biofeedback or binaural brain-wave entrainment) also fits Charles
Tart's observations of 'state-dependent memory', i.e. that information learned
while in an altered state of consciousness is more difficult to access when in
another state of consciousness. This equally applies to dreams, between-lives
or out-of-body experiences. The natural shift in dominant brain-wave frequencies
during maturation could therefore result in aberrative childhood experience
being preserved in the unconscious, and reactivated reactively in adult life,
causing dysfunctional behavior. It is effectively 'unexperienced experience'
as far as the adult is concerned.
Furthermore, the moments of insight in therapy occur when dominant brain-wave
frequencies are near the interface of adult alpha and theta rhythms, i.e. the
7-8 Hz range. To facilitate access to the consciousness state of early
childhood, where rapid learning was easy, also increases access to the
right-brain holistic awareness described as enlightening by mystics of all
religions.
To achieve this in the context of a therapy session, it is first necessary for
the client to be relaxed and thoroughly 'in session' with his immediate worries
and upsets sorted. It also helps to use a comfortable reclining chair with head
support and support for the arms holding the Bilateral electrodes.
Secondly, the client may listen to an appropriate binaural signal through
stereo headphones. The headphones should be of the transparent type so that the
client can still hear the analyst easily; alternatively, with closed
headphones, the analyst can use a microphone to communicate to the client,
mixed with the binaural signal.
Also, when running incidents, the eyes should be closed. The binaural signal
generator produces a supplementary signal which keeps the client alert and
prevents the drowsiness which tends to occur automatically when the eyes are
closed.
Because of the efficacy of such methods, binaural stimulation as an adjunct to
therapy should only be administered when you have considerable experience of
successfully running traumatic experiences without binaural stimulation, and
then only when the following more straightforward approach fails to obtain
access to a reading basic incident of infancy. For the majority of clients this
method is not essential, but it can speed progress towards basic case
completion and ensure that no hard to access case goes unhandled.
The binaural method should not be used with clients who are neurotic or
anxious; such persons should be brought into normal stability with the Life
Stress List and Upsets List or other handlings. Psychotic persons should not be
run on any traumatic handlings but should only examine pleasurable experiences
or the wrong indications about themselves which caused them to introspect
compulsively.
Step 1. A full evaluation of the unwanted condition must first be made
in order to select appropriate techniques to resolve the difficulties
experienced by the student.
Ask: What is it that you really want to get handled?
Then, if there is any lack of certainty:
What is it that you REALLY want to get handled?
Get as much background to the problem as possible. Ask who the problem
is with, and ask the student to differentiate:
Does your condition vary from one context to another?
What triggers it?
What is your viewpoint?
Step 2. Clear charge on this subject that has been reactivated and then
by-passed by the person in his life, causing the subject to have become heavily
charged, with associated mental blocks and defenses.
Ask: In this lifetime, on the subject of (condition or problem
addressed):
What has been SUPPRESSED by you or by anyone else?
Keep asking the Suppress question ('Has anything else been suppressed?')
until the person has a significant realization or has no more answers; then
continue by asking the following questions similarly:
What has been INVALIDATED by you or anyone else?
What has been EVALUATED by you or anyone else?
What has been IGNORED by you or anyone else?
What has been AGREED WITH, by you or anyone else?
What has been DISAGREED WITH, by you or anyone else?
What has been WITHHELD by you or anyone else?
What has been WITHDRAWN FROM by you or anyone else?
What has been RESISTED by you or anyone else?
What have you or anyone else been CAREFUL OF?
Step 3. The next step is called a protocol analysis - the aim is to get
the client to say out loud exactly what they are doing and feeling internally,
right now, as this condition is reactivated and the triggering situation is
being looked at. The client should be informed that you would like him to
express his feelings as they become apparent in the present moment.
Ask: What feeling do you have about (condition or problem addressed)?
Describe it to me.
As the person contacts feelings (which may include attitudes, emotions,
sensations and pains), help him to recognize them by steering him with the
meter, saying 'There!', 'That!' or 'What's happening?' as a read re-occurs. Particularly look for Right reads on the Bilateral.
With two-way communication, help him to define the feeling exactly.
If such an associated feeling reads but the client cannot contact it or all of
it, command the person to go back in time 60 seconds (or however long since the
read occurred) and to spot what occurs (to pick up another perceptual strand of
his experience in a new present time).
This may also be cued by suggesting possible feelings such as:
Too lonely? Too crowded? Too frightening?
Too low? Too high? Too familiar?
Too dry? Too wet? Too trapped?
Too slow? Too fast? Too painful?
Too bright? Too dark? Confused? Afraid?
Too empty? Too full? Anxious? Crazy?
Too cold? Too hot? Upset? Out of control?
Such a feeling should be run on Repeater: each time the client should
get the exact feeling and locate in his body, over and over, until underlying
feelings or experiences emerge. Other avenues may also be used to explore the feeling with the client, to make sure
that he has grasped the exact nature of his response to the difficulty. Use
such questions as:
What are you aware of?
What emotion do you feel?
What triggers that feeling?
What does it make you think?
How is your body reacting?
What do you feel like doing?
What do you feel like saying?
If the answers are not specific, follow up with clarifying questions to
obtain a concrete duplication of the condition. When the client's feeling (in
the right-brain) can be exactly and truthfully realized, then it can be
described, and so filed cognitively by the left-brain, and the block will have
been released. In so doing the client will probably realize the irrationality
of his previous beliefs which were at the root of the feeling (such distorted
thinking patterns as over-generalizing and exaggerating, misconceptions based
on false assumptions or fixed ideas, or manipulated behavior due to adopted
oughts, shoulds and musts that had been enforced upon him). If obvious
irrationalities and misconceptions are originated, these should be fed back to
the person, as described in Challenging Thought Distortions, to help
make them apparent.
Step 4A. If the feeling that has been contacted is a positive and
rational one, then the charge may have been erased by the process of
inspection. Help the person to validate this positive outlook by asking him:
When did you feel like that before?
Find out when and where this occurred, who was there, and other details
of the circumstance. Again, meter guiding may be used to assist the client.
Then ask:
Locate the precise moment when you had that feeling.
What is happening?
This should demonstrate that there is no scarcity of such a feeling in
the person's life. The release should be accompanied by a periodic needle on both meters and
good indicators. If not, ask the person what is happening, or how he feels
about this, or what does this feeling remind him of, and handle this as a new
feeling.
Step 4B. If describing the exact feeling does not resolve the
difficulty, it is then necessary to find a similar, connected case in which the
feeling was experienced.
Ask: When else did you feel like that?
Find out when and where this occurred, who was there, the duration of
the experience and other details of the circumstance. Again, meter guiding may
be used to assist the client. Then ask:
Locate the precise moment when you had that feeling.
What is happening?
Ask the client what sensations, pains, sounds, emotions and visual
images he is perceiving and what attitude he has. Then ask him to:
Move to the beginning of this incident and tell me when you have done so.
What are you aware of?
Then: Move through to the end of the incident and as you do so, tell
me what you are experiencing.
Repeat this several times if necessary, until the person has become able
to re-experience all of the original perceptions, which he should describe as
if he is experiencing them in the present time. Assist the client to make all
of his feelings and perceptions concrete.
You may also ask:
What other people are here?
What is their view of what is going on?
If there are blocks on the full experience (registered on the Bilateral Meter
by sharp reads to the left), ask:
Concerning this event, is something being repressed?
Concerning this event, is something being denied?
Concerning this event, is something being made wrong?
Concerning this event, is something being forced onto you?
Concerning this event, is something being pushed onto others?
Concerning this event, is something unacceptable?
Concerning this event, is anything being split-off from?
Concerning this event, is something being ignored?
Concerning this event, is something being covered up?
Concerning this event, is your attention fixated on something?
Concerning this event, is there something you are being careful of?
Concerning this event, is something you are not saying?
Concerning this event, is something embarrassing?
If the incident does not seem to be becoming easier to accept, with more and
more detail and perceptions becoming apparent and discharge occurring, with his
sense of location becoming centered within his body, and with movement on the
Bilateral Meter to the right hemisphere as the experience is experienced rather
than resisted, go to a similar, connected experience:
Recall another time when you felt that way.
Finally, when a root incident has been run through (usually the earliest in a chain), this will be found to get
lighter and more and more acceptable to the client. He may have spontaneous
realizations, accompanied by a lowered GSR Balance Point and a Periodic Needle
on both the GSR and Bilateral Meters, now that the charge on the incident has
been erased; if not, assist this by asking what considerations he had and the
conclusions and decisions he arrived at. It may be necessary to pick up on
irrationalities, misconceptions and fixed ideas that are expressed. You can ask about a fixed idea:
What does that get you out of?
What does that get you into?
How does that make you right?
How does that make another wrong?
A further aspect to examine would be:
Is there anything you wanted to say but didn't?
If the incident is still not clear to the person ask:
What intentions were stopped or made nothing of?
Was anything that you wanted suppressed or invalidated?
Get the client to spot the source of overwhelm in the incident, or what caused
him not to be able to have what he wanted. If there is still no significant
realization, ask the client to look again at the condition or difficulty in the present moment. Does it still exist?
If the unwanted condition is still unresolved, look for another feeling
connected with the difficulty (as in Step 3) and handle this the same way.
Step 5. Identity Clearing
If the client's attention is on a behavior that he or someone else has
manifested or is manifesting, list to a BD on the GSR and Right read on the
Bilateral: What sort of person would do something like that?
If the client's attention is still on a problem area, find out his main
(reading) consideration in the area and list to a BD on the GSR and Right read
on the Bilateral: What sort of person would consider ________?
If there is an unwanted behavior when doing a certain activity or skill, list
to a BD on the GSR and Right read on the Bilateral: When you ________ what do you become?
If the client's attention is on a major upset, list to a BD on the GSR and
Right read on the Bilateral: At that time what did you become?
If the identity persists or the client's interest remains on this Item, run it on the following:
How could you being a _______ make you right?
How could you being a _______ make others wrong?
How could you being a _______ help you escape domination?
How could you being a _______ help you dominate others?
How could you being a _______ aid your survival?
How could you being a _______ hinder the survival of others?
Or if the identity is that of another person, run:
How could another being a _______ make you right?
How could another being a _______ make you wrong?
How could another being a _______ help you escape domination?
How could another being a _______ help you dominate others?
How could another being a _______ aid your survival?
How could another being a _______ hinder the survival of others?
Further identification handlings that may be used (to an End-Point):
Do you have a belief or idea that leads you to be (identity)?
Is there a time when you decided that being (identity) is a good
thing?
Is there a time that you wanted to be like (identity)?
Have you done anything bad to (identity)?
Have you felt sympathy for (identity)?
What differences are there between (identity) and yourself?
What similarities are there between (identity) and yourself?
When the end-point has been attained, the positive gains from the
session can be realized and integrated by asking the following questions:
Is there something you have realized?
Has something been connected up with?
Has something been shown to be true?
Is something changing in your life?
Repair
If the session bogs down and indicators are not good, perhaps
with a rising GSR balance and movement far to the left on the Bilateral, you
can check the following to release bypassed charge:
Is anything being:
suppressed?
asserted?
invalidated?
missed?
protested?
decided?
unacknowledged?
AlsoHave I failed to find and clear:
Something you're being careful of?
Something you're not revealing?
Something you're anxious about?
This Trauma Assessment is used to assess the exact nature of traumatic case in
reactivation when Step 1 of the previous procedure does not produce an
unwanted condition of which the client is aware.
Step 1. Assess the following Trauma Assessment and note the reads.
infirmity
sickness
being unwell
bad feeling
apprehension
disagreeable feeling
soreness
hurting
ailment
a disorder
damaged body parts
allergy
skin irritation
unwanted feeling
dental problem
unwanted manner
depression
infection
unwanted behavior
injury
mishap
perception troubles
loss of a loved one
impulse
crime
restraint
energy
time
religion
unwanted body condition
auditing
anxiety
terror
horror
panic
alarm
timidity
distress
upset
complaint
body affliction
hurt body part
relative
skin disorder
job
the environment
problem
romance
contamination
friend
enemy
marriage
children
parent
urge
machinery
matter
space
church
people
fixed idea
upset
belief
identity
intention
purpose
goal
postulate
game
Step 2. Take the major reading area of trauma and ask:
'In particular, how does (assessed area) affect you?'
Step 3. The affect to be handled, as described in Step 2, is then
assessed with regard to the following list of conditions. For example 'a
disorder' from the Trauma Assessment may be described on Step 2 as 'arthritis'.
Referring to the following list, the question is asked: 'Are (PAINS) connected
with arthritis?', etc.
'Are _________ connected with (affect to be handled)?'
PAINS
SENSATIONS
FEELINGS
EMOTIONS
ATTITUDES
MISEMOTIONS
UNCONSCIOUSNESSES
COMPULSIONS
FEARS
ACHES
TIREDNESSES
PRESSURES
DISCOMFORTS
DISLIKES
NUMBNESSES
SOMETHING ELSE?
Step 4. The largest reading condition is then specified by asking a
listing question:
'What (assessed condition) are connected with (affect to be
handled)?'
For example, the largest reading condition is a BD on 'FEARS'. The
question is then asked (as a listing question): 'What fears are connected with
arthritis?' When a BD item has been obtained, this is then indicated:
'I'd like to indicate that the Item is ____'.
For example, the Item may be 'fear of death'. This should cause a recognition P/N.
Step 5. The resulting Item should then be handled as on the previous
Handling Unwanted Conditions (from Step 2. through to Step 5. of that handling)
Step 6. When the major reading Item found in Step 4 has been handled,
Step 4 should then be repeated, in case there is another chain of feelings
connected with the affect to be handled. Note: if the listing question does not
read, then check the other items that were previously listed for reads.
Step 7. Step 3 should then be repeated, in case there is another
condition connected with the affect to be handled.
Step 8. Step 2 should then be repeated, on the next largest reading item
on the original Trauma Assessment.
Step 9. Finally, re-assess the Trauma Assessment, in case new areas of
charge have been uncovered. When this list is clean, the procedure is
complete.
A new client should first have a General Assessment, with all reading items
handled to release using appropriate techniques. This may require handling
current upsets and problems, or Handling Unwanted Conditions. Toxic Parent or
Toxic Relationship handlings may also be indicated, as may a Life Stress List
or Upsets List. The Trauma Assessment should also be cleared, and he should
have learned the 15 Thought Distortions. In addition the practitioner should
use the basic techniques described in the advanced course, The Insight Project, such as the use of Primaries at start of session or whenever they break down, and when the client is sufficiency stable, with good self-esteem, Survival Computations (and
other Thought Distortions) should be run as such when they emerge in session.
This constitutes a thorough preparation for the client, and he or she would
then be capable of continuing with self-administered analysis on The Insight Project.
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