Hi Kurt, thank you for getting in touch and giving me permission to reply through the blog.
The main body of your initial email and the second smaller follow-up email you sent are at the bottom of this post in italics if other readers wish to look at the whole thing. To answer your email as thoroughly as I can I am going to split the content up into paragraphs and then respond to each paragraph separately if that’s OK?
Here we go:
Learning to Think More in Pictures
When healing from my my own obsessions I would go into the nearest available emotional response available (this may sound a bit strange but when you have practiced doing this for a while you get used to the idea that entering the emotions trapped within is the key to remove emotional disorders of every kind).
When I did this very strong imagery would come up. By ‘strong’ I mean it completely dominated my mind while I was in the emotional response.
I would move my Conscious towards the obsessional image and then other images, not the image at the centre of the obsession (although that was there too) would start to appear after several hours.
They were either images regarding the nature of the process I was trying to enforce or about the situation and environment I was in at the time the obsession developed.
At first I did not realise these images had any meaning or use at all. I would just get a ‘sense’. After a while though (a few weeks) I started to realise this was how my Unconscious was talking to me. Sometimes it was warning me not to go towards the obsessional image (with pictures of certain death) and other times it presented imagery I had not seen before (such as the picture of a hill or of a horrible building in the middle of a beautiful scene).
It took me a few months of doing this on a daily basis for me to realise these images were advice on how to see things in order to heal.
When we enter our emotions we also enter our Unconsciously stored memories of the pictures we sent down, sometimes years ago (in your case, 10 years ago). If we enter them repeatedly and communicate to our Unconscious we want a new approach to resolving our blocked emotional problem eventually the Unconscious starts coming back with suggestions of its own - it communicates these suggestions in pictures.
If you think of your basic internal design as being similar in structure to any human business organisation you can form a picture of your Conscious, thinking brain, being like the Board of Directors while your Unconscious acts in a similar way to how a large workforce would.
If an organisation makes cars, for example, and suddenly it decides to drop cars and make bicycles instead management should expect a bit of a rebellion from the workforce in regards to what looks like to the workforce a crazy management idea going to put everyone out of a job.
Fear, anger, frustration, rejection should be expected. But if management are as gentle as possible while they keep pushing for the new approach eventually the workforce starts to co-operate and comes up with ideas of its own on how the new goals can be brought about. This mostly happens for us when we start to accept our own intense emotions have not actually killed us yet despite our belief they just might.
The first impression I got when I received your email was of a ‘wall of painful information that cannot be resolved or coped with’. I got that impression just by looking at your email as a whole without reading the content. There are few paragraphs separating the text in your email (if any) and if you look at it visually the words look like bricks in a wall. I assume this is what your Unconscious is currently seeing? An impenetrable wall?
The second visual impression I get is of a concave mirror. The reason I get this visual impression is because the content of your email reflects my own experience several years ago during my healing process.
I remember saying to a counsellor how, when I looked at my condition, I felt I was in a mirrored ball with only my own emotional responses bouncing back at me. I could not seem to get through that wall.
Does that relate to your experience at all?
As we heal from emotional disorders such as obsessions and OCD I found we become much more image and pattern focused - this is because pictures with emotional energy attached are the common language between the Unconscious and Conscious minds.
Word-based thoughts produced in our thinking mind create pictures (like sticks used to build a hut) and then these pictures, produced in the right neo-cortex (our picture and pattern mind), are projected down into the Unconscious.
Some of these pictures look threatening – we see ourselves as though we are not coping or could not cope with them – and we attach a negative emotional response to these pictures.
Where the threat is genuine in the real, outside world we feel ourselves ‘forced into a corner’ to react and protect ourselves and at some point we fight, flee or surrender. This usually discharges the emotional energy produced and we are able to accept and move on with external life.
But when we believe the threat is a product of our own internal imagination we may tend towards pretending the response itself should not be acknowledged as real and then not worked with because the feared external threat is not real.
Our Conscious may now reject the idea of processing strong negative emotions in regards to what it sees as ‘only imagined events’ and the emotional energy attached to the image is not discharged. It remains in the body still attached to the pictures. Those pictures are continually sent upwards by the Unconscious which is really just asking for permission to release the energy attached to the image now dominating our mind.
A problem for our Unconscious is it has no filtering mechanism for deciding real events versus imagined events - that is the job of the Conscious. When we send imagery downwards with strong emotion attached it is always treated as a real event.
Thought-based self-talk has almost no effect on changing how we currently emotionally react to things unless it is concerned with gently taking us into moving towards the trapped emotional responses and pictures presenting in the Conscious mind.
In summary: pictures and feelings are what you need to focus on most.
So that’s the first thing I wanted to say! Let us start looking at your email content.
i was wondering if you could help me with a 10 year problem, i had a panic attack 10 years ago , and after that i was looking for what happend thinking some one put drugs in my beer, as the week went buy i seacrhed for whta happned
You had a panic attack and you thought something had gone wrong with you. What if you had a panic attack and thought ‘I am having a panic attack and that is perfectly normal and I will just keep feeling my way through it and I will eventually get back to normal’ instead?
What if you knew that all intense emotional responses such as these take several hours to several days and sometimes even several months (such as when suffering grief) to go through?
We think something has gone wrong with us because it is the first time we have experienced the situation (you remember it, the moment sticks in your mind a bit like a car crash would). But what if instead you just felt it, accepted people have these experiences, and did not start searching for what went wrong? ‘Oh, I have had an intense fearful reaction. I will feel it without criticising it until it has gone’. And then it goes and does not return.
Naturally with it being an unusual experience you wanted to find out if there was a physical threat in your environment and you suspected someone had put drugs in your beer. This is a genuine thing to be concerned about but from what I gather here you believe it was an imagined threat you should not have imagined.
I would have a short burst of fear if I thought someone may have put drugs in my beer, by the way, and so would most others. It is perfectly normal for you to suspect things. What we have to do when we have these kinds of suspicions is accept we have them, think about the thing and discharge the emotions as we go through them. You could not act out your suspicions by blaming people in the real world because it was just a suspicion - but did you make the mistake of blaming yourself for being ‘suspicious’? It is normal to have suspicions. Just watch them and let them go by, and eventually they will.
If you had found out someone really had put drugs in your beer you would have had a right to do something about it - our suspicions simply prepare us for dealing with things should they occur in the real world.
You could say ‘nothing happened in the outside world but internally I had a strong emotional response and I now have to feel it out of my system’ or you could say ‘nothing happened in the outside world so internally I refuse to feel it out of my system because it should not keep bothering me’.
By refusing to accept the whole thing as a normal part of being human you have frozen the experience into your body, into your Unconscious, and it is still acting like it needs to be listened to and is telling you the emotional energy needs release.
In that short section there you’ve provided some very strong images and I’d suggest you return to those; return to the situation and just re-interpret all your emotions and suspicions as perfectly normal.
That is going to be a lot harder than it sounds though as your Unconscious ‘workforce’ is blocking you from doing that.
OK let’s look at the next section of your email (by the way, I used to have this problem too):
i was thinking alot analizing alot, so i started picking on my thinking, then made rules up , no more going into detail, no more thinking as much , not more analizing, FROM NOW i would say , but i noticed when i started saying FROM NOW, it has been going on for 10 years and never worked, if i get a doubt thought i cant amalize it , cause i have this rule dont go there, because if i allow my self to think any thing, i will get a doubt thought and think of ways how to mange it, i will think of 2 or 3 ways to perfect it , if i get a bad feeling i will try and think of ways so i dont get this feeling any more, if i get doubt , i panic thinking its ocd, if i get tired , panic its to do with ocd, if i need a bill , panic its to do with ocd, these feelings are normal feelings , but i confuse it for cd cause the ocd causes me the same emotions, my obsesion is to think about my thinking , ways to master it, ,,if i say dont go there, this will work for a week, but i go back as soon as i get tired, if i allow my self to think it , its oges on for ever, i doubt every thing i think , if i think thoughts in detail , ITS WRONG, if i try and clarify what someone has said to me and i think it 2 times to let it sink in , WRONG , since i have said dont go there,its like form what i have read from ur blog is, i am sqaushing these thoughts and emotions dont go there, and when i get a thought close to my thinking obseesion, i panic,im scared of every thought , checking into seeing if its ok to think , cause i dont want to think my obsession, but its not working
You know how when you go into a feeling it shuts your thinking down and eventually all you can see is the image or the painful feelings or the ‘bad thing’? That’s normal during intense emotional discharge.
In your brain hormones are released that override all thinking processes and these hormones, for a period, force the entire brain to focus only on the issue concerned. You are not designed to work in any other way. During feeling you look at the images and thoughts and you figure out what actions you need to take to stop those feelings being repeatedly generated. A problem for us though is sometimes we can’t bare to look. We need to look.
What you should do here is feel it. Accept it. Rest if you are tired.
Your current thinking is denying the emotional response process what it needs. Your thinking is trying to beat your emotional (physical) system into submission instead of working with it. We have to get our thinking out of the way and FEEL ourselves out of obsession and anxiety conditions.
If you FEEL like resting, rest. If you FEEL frightened, feel it. Eventually it feels all the way out of you.
Anxiety disorders such as this are not driven by thoughts - they are driven by trapped emotional energy needing release. When you feel you release that energy. If the thoughts and images the energy is attached to are still coming into your Conscious mind, Kurt, you have not released the energy attached to them yet. Think ENERGY and only about the ENERGY.
Emotional problems are energy release problems, not thinking problems. Thinking they are thinking problems is the problem.
I kept slipping back into my thoughts too but eventually I learned - you have to allow your thinking to close down and go into your feelings and let your body do its job. It takes several hours to several days to several months of daily work to clear the blocked energy out (when I first started my self work it took me 3 months to clear my first obsession; but I had 27 of them - once I learned the technique though I could clear an intense response in a much shorter time. One obsession I got rid of in 30 minutes).
Go into the imagery and the feelings. Stop criticising the process with your thoughts. FEEL and SEE.
Eventually you will have new thoughts coming up as ‘insights’ and these will change your thinking so you do not have this problem in the future as long as you keep working with instead of against your emotional release process.
Again, this is a very difficult thing to do. Removing an emotional block is a bit like emptying a reservoir through a one inch hole in a dam wall - all that thinking trains your Unconscious to stop emotional release and now you’ve got to re-train your thinking mind to simply slow down and give in to the natural emotional release process.
This will be very painful and you will need the support of your therapist (well done for having the courage to seek help through one and for being willing to share your current condition with others).
Control
Removal of an anxiety disorder, and eventual total control, is achieved indirectly by giving ourselves permission to work with our emotional responses in private, knowing we have no need to do something in the outside world in order to achieve full release, whenever they occur.
So, for example, if someone gets me angry this week or a situation makes me afraid this week, real or imagined, I do not tell myself I should not feel these things - I absolutely positively fester on them; I have imaginary arguments with the people I am angry at (and I write my points down and agree with them too) and I explore all the reasons for my fears and angers.
I do not self-criticise or find a way to think myself out of the experience.
You know what happens after I’ve done this? They disappear. Once you work with instead of against your internal world this stops your apparent lack of control being a worry.
We do not directly control our emotions - we cannot stop them once they have started. It is possible to interrupt negative self-talk now and again to stop negative emotions being produced but if we try to use positive self-talk to block a negative response coming up it actually makes us ill.
Mastering the emotional release process, rather than preventing ourselves from having emotional responses at all, is what brings a sense of control.
Time Involved
You’ve mentioned having made several attempts to ‘go in’. Well done on that - a lot of people get quite upset about just thinking about doing that but you’ve actually started doing it. You’ve learned it makes you feel worse and it’s very tiring.
That’s normal.
You need to do this every day for the rest of your life if you want to both cure your emotional block and then remain emotionally well. If you do this you will get rid of all your anxiety disorders and remain emotionally well in the long term. It is an on-going process through which you get happier and happier. I noticed as I processed each emotional layer I started having longer and longer periods of plain and simple happiness.
10%; 20%; 80% …. play the percentages. It is not possible to be 100% happy all of the time because life throws things up now and again. But 90% happy sounds great, doesn’t it? I found if you take up things like yoga it bumps it up another few % too.
Can you see? You need a permanent approach of dealing with your emotions (everyone does). At first it is going to get much, much more difficult. This is a skill that is very difficult to learn but one which will benefit both you and everyone else you come into contact with.
Once you have adopted the new approach for long enough the emotional healing takes care of itself as you see it working and your approach to new emotion-generating situations becomes automated. It stops being a matter of ‘what do I do?’ and just a matter of ‘when do I do it?’.
Kurt, I don’t think I’ve answered everything in your email by a longshot, but please read other posts on the blog (most of them will be relevant to you) and keep leaving comments and sending emails.
Thank you so much for getting in touch.
Regards
Carl
Here’s Kurt’s full email:
how are you , i was wondering if you could help me with a 10 year problem, i had a panic attack 10 years ago , and after that i was looking for what happend thinking some one put drugs in my beer, as the week went buy i seacrhed for whta happned, then i noticed i was thinking alot analizing alot, so i started picking on my thinking, then made rules up , no more going into detail, no more thinking as much , not more analizing, FROM NOW i would say , but i noticed when i started saying FROM NOW, it has been going on for 10 years and never worked, if i get a doubt thought i cant amalize it , cause i have this rule dont go there, because if i allow my self to think any thing, i will get a doubt thought and think of ways how to mange it, i will think of 2 or 3 ways to perfect it , if i get a bad feeling i will try and think of ways so i dont get this feeling any more, if i get doubt , i panic thinking its ocd, if i get tired , panic its to do with ocd, if i need a bill , panic its to do with ocd, these feelings are normal feelings , but i confuse it for cd cause the ocd causes me the same emotions, my obsesion is to think about my thinking , ways to master it, ,,if i say dont go there, this will work for a week, but i go back as soon as i get tired, if i allow my self to think it , its oges on for ever, i doubt every thing i think , if i think thoughts in detail , ITS WRONG, if i try and clarify what someone has said to me and i think it 2 times to let it sink in , WRONG , since i have said dont go there,its like form what i have read from ur blog is, i am sqaushing these thoughts and emotions dont go there, and when i get a thought close to my thinking obseesion, i panic,im scared of every thought , checking into seeing if its ok to think , cause i dont want to think my obsession, but its not working, i have seen alot of numerous therapist, i am thinking and changing my mind every day , of which RULE i should have DONT GO THERE OR GIVE IN , BUT WHEN I GIVE IN , I ONLY LAST 2 DAYS AND GET DOUBT AND GO BACK TO DONT GO THERE, its really annoying i guess im just looking for help from some one in this 10 years to say , GIVE IN, and say with this , cause if u r not scared it will bore out, but if u keep going back to dont go there, it will keep going on, ,, i have obsession with fixing my self and thinking, and emotions , i just wish i could accept emotions and dont run, accept thoughts and dont run, and to know some times i will think my obseesion, and sometimes i will let them go , but dont go there will never work 100 percent cause u need to go throught this to not be scared not run, sorry about it being so long, but this ocd has cost me a house and my job , and i cant keep ging on , and reading stuff on the internet anymore , i jsut want to give in , what ever what ever please help ,,,,,,,,, thanks in advance kurt
hi carl thanks for getting back to me, you have my permission to put my name up there or email , i dont mind, one more thing is , the therapist said to me today, just ASK YOUR SELF IF THIS IS CONTROLLING YOUR THINKING, AND IF SO LET IT GO , BUT NOW I SEE IM OBSESSING IF THIS THOUGHT IS CONTROLLING OR IF ITS CHALLENGING , OR ACCEPTING IT , JUST A NEW OBSESSIION AGAIN,, YES PLEASE MATE, LET ME KNOW HEN U HAVE POSTED IT WITH THE WEB PAGE, CAUSE IM DESPERATE TO READ IT THANKS KURT
