- the emotional response
- the issue or trigger to which the emotional response relates
- agreement before and after emotional clearance in order to achieve 'acceptance' (of the process)
and I explain we must 'unitise' the three elements - that is, bring them together and 'thread' the emotional response through the issue like cotton thread through the eye of a needle. You achieve this by repeatedly moving into the emotional response. Of course it's not quite that simple - if it was we wouldn't get into these emotionally overcharged states in the first place.
Some trapped emotional responses can be cleared within 30 minutes; some have taken me several years to work towards and release - usually the more difficult to remove being related to events I experienced over 20 years ago. Some triggering events have been 'sharp' while others are very vague for a while until we expand the viewpoint and recreate past scenarios that lasted over several years and involved several people.
Regardless of the emotional type, intensity or the triggering situation or issue that created the response, the basic method of repeatedly approaching the 'three core elements' has proved an effective strategy time after time for me and others I have spoken with - even if one of the three elements was weak or difficult to understand at times.
As you move towards 'unitisation' of the three elements you become increasingly aware there is a focal point where all meet. The focal point may be external, internal or 'widebeam' (meaning you're probably actually making a social statement that you haven't quite heard yourself - I'll explain this further down).
Where the focal point for bringing the three elements together is located depends on which type of anxiety disorder you have (in reality it's not located anywhere other than in your own perception - but that may not be absolultely right. The science of biophotonics suggests the centre of emotional energies lies just outside of our bodies and I always get a distinct sense of moving my body into an external emotional response when I do this kind of work. It takes quite a bit of experimentation and honest intense self-observation; including paying attention to any 'visual cues' that your unconscious may send you, to figure out where the focal point for bringing all three elements together lies in regard to each and every emotional response.
People sometimes tell me they have only phobias but as they continue opening up to me I can tell they also have or are developing obsessions - they just haven't seen the difference between the two conditions in themselves yet. When I advise them to start de-sensitising as soon as possible, and seek counselling support, their usual response is 'I'm not ready yet'.
The trouble is the longer you leave such things the worse they become because trapped anxiety conditions are 'active association builders' - they don't heal with time. An intense emotional response held trapped within the body can easily generalise and as we fight the response it just produces more responses. Waiting for the condition to 'calm down' before we decide to face up to it produces the opposite affect.
Phobias
In phobias the focal point for bringing the three elements together is external - so you have to move your body physically to the location of the object or situation to begin the de-sensitisation process. You can achieve this using the power of the imagination alone but won't know if you've been completely successful until you're again in the presence of the physical object.
Having a phobia isn't so bad if what you're phobic about is something you rarely come across such as ancient stone bridges or hot air balloons (I would imagine de-sensitising to a hot air balloon could turn into an expensive hobby). However, if the phobia relates to things like kitchen knives or birds or plastic piping (and I know people who are phobic to these things) life starts to become more difficult.
When I had my phobias I was phobic to street lights; pens; bollards; shovels; sweeping brushes; saucepans and several other objects (I had 14 phobias in all and I had trouble remembering what they were just now - that's how effective de-sensitisation is). These phobias were also linked in to my obsessions. The two external and internal focal points this created bounced and fed off each other. Incidentally - you can still lead an apparently perfectly 'normal' external life while all this is going on simply by denying yourself the need to face your emotional pain.
All of the phobias and obsessions I had were sparked by a two year period of anxiety caused by a failing relationship that led to low self-esteem, followed by my reading a newspaper article that caused me to have a deeply shocking emotional reaction. I was 21 when I read that article and it took me about 24 years to deal with my response to it. I didn't deal with it because I thought it was 'silly' and I had 'bigger responsibilities to deal with'. Look what happened to me.
In phobias developing a de-sensitisation programme involves moving towards an external trigger and allowing the emotional response to release while re-training the unconscious mind to see the situation differently.
Removing anxiety disorders is more about experiential learning, rather than mental learning - the actions of the body re-train the beliefs of the mind. The training does eventually lead to the re-routing of neural pathways in the brain and until this is achieved there is a possibility of the reaction coming back as a 'setback'. Repetitive retraining by going through the de-sensitisation process over and over again eventually makes the change permanent. There comes a point when you can remember having the reaction, then almost missing it(!) once it has gone; and then you completely forget about it - unless you want to write blog posts about it and have my problem of remembering what you were afraid of, that is.
Obsessions
The focal point for bringing together the three elements of healing an obsession is held internally in the brain. Obsessions are powered by intense trapped emotional responses attached to images (or sounds) held in our minds and in order to de-sensitise we must do exactly the same thing as we do with phobias - repeatedly move towards the trigger (the image or sound or whatever it is that keeps bothering us). Incidentally, simply the suggestion of a shape is enough to trigger a panic attack when you have an obsession and that may sound strange until you consider what kind of a reaction you would normally have if you saw the shadow of a lion against your kitchen wall - shapes have meaning for us.
The great thing about having an obsession is the tools for healing are all built into you - no need for the production of a hot air balloon; the horrible thing is they never stop following you around. The trick to healing an obsession is, for a while, to become more obsessed about following it than it is about following you. Only an obsessive can produce the determination it takes to call the bluff of an obsession.
Panic Attacks and Generalised Anxiety and/or Social Disorders
This is my experience - yours may be different - but all my panic attacks and general anxiety responses were based around 'vague' - at least at first that's how they appeared - triggers. I learned to go 'widebeam' on the point of focus. Instead of moving towards a focal point where the three elements came together, I would sometimes find with these 'vague' problems that I was actually sending things outwards. When your body wants to tell the world something important, it wants to tell both you and a whole collection of other people. It may not be that individual hot air balloons are the trigger - it could be a collection of hot air balloon pilots that you've got a problem with.
An example of this is where you had a traumatic childhood event happen to you and you can see it's going to happen again and you're trying to warn the relevant people that someone is at risk and they completely ignore you. You may have stopped telling them about it verbally, but your body is still telling them about it emotionally. Your logical mind may have forgotten the content (or trigger) that's causing your condition - but your body is still carrying on the fight.
It took me three months of daily practice before I could even get close to working on my obsessions effectively because every time I even considered 'going in' I would have an immediate intense panic attack. And they would last for hours until I got distracted - after which time I just felt continually bad. I could never quite see what it was I was afraid of - but by repeatedly going towards the obsessions I started to think differently and my unconscious started to produce lots of 'pictures' - which at first I completely ignored.
It started to dawn that the pictures were 'try this approach' plans my unconscious had started to produce - even in my sleep - and I started to use them - and they started to work. Over months of this (I think we're talking about 18 months here) I developed a subjective viewpoint of what was occurring. Like an evil scientist testing and experimenting on myself I gained a bigger picture of the 'subjective me' and I became aware I was developing a part of my mind I had previously been unaware of - I called it 'the Silent Observer' back then - I've discovered it's actually called the ARAS - the Ascending Reticular Activation System. We've all got one and we all need to learn how to use it - because it's 'us'.
What I've learned is that eventually 'vague' becomes clear as day - there are no anxiety disorders without structured reasons and plans behind them. It's really just a matter of how hard are you willing to work to find out what the plan is. If you're looking at an emotional response and can't figure out what the focal trigger point is - go widebeam.
How to go widebeam? Here's an example: let's say you're having a strong reaction to a memory involving one person and you can't figure out what you're emotionally saying. Just remain with that person, and look around for other related memories. Add other people who were around at the time. Think about other events that happened in the time period before and around that event. Bring up other emotional responses (especially the painful ones). Did you feel guilty about something then? Do you STILL feel guilty about it now, knowing what you know with hindsight? Challenge and question.
If you still haven't picked up the 'issue' you haven't spent long enough with the experience. You can only de-sensitise when you've eventually discovered what it is you're saying to these people - and agreed to release the emotional charge. Keep going in ... and look for what you're saying outwards ... re-build the entire social scenario if you have to ... eventually you find the widebeam focal point and kaboom - the energy is released and you actually end up liking yourself a whole lot more when you see the true motivation behind the feelings.
To summarise:
To de-sensitise to phobias we go towards external triggers; to de-sensitise to obsessions we go inwards to internal triggers; to de-sensitise to generalised conditions we go inwards and outwards and look for the 'widebeam' that we're projecting outwards. Don't impose what you think the answer is; what for the answer to be presented to you.
Finally - I keep reading material by respected psychiatrists/psychologists (and bloggers) that say de-sensitisation doesn't work for obsessions and generalised disorders as well as it does for phobias - well, you could have fooled me. I have used de-sensitisation to remove at least 50 emotional blocks including fear, rage and disgust attacks - some of them easily, some of them with difficulty, some of them with very 'vague' triggers (at first). The truth is you just have to keep 'going in to find out what's going on'.
Tomorrow I'm going to post about developing a detailed systematic de-sensitisation programme.
Please leave any comments or questions (or constructive criticisms) below or write to me at carl@managemesystems.com
Regards - Carl
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sCN9-awn6sx9f2ZXaH6wpoOUK8EOUQh3ooP2yADBF4BUxlEsAn3iDa-daX62UUZoTmOOBxUXH5IHiyPXfxT9WYiMVtYdn4E15riVe4Psfp0k6t3e1iM_E8aPrlOtlw3G8VSf2Kx4lQwVpmNdDvFc8H=s0-d)
No comments:
Post a Comment