Process Healing
Using the Subconscious to Heal

 

The Process Healing treatment method was discovered in 1994. It has gradually developed to become more respectful, better organized and more systematic since then. Based loosely on science and mainly on clinical experience, Process Healing is essentially an education process. I teach patients how all aspects of the personality and subconscious are normal and develop from conception to now. This chapter gives an outline of the treatment method and includes a scripted session to give you the feel of how The Process Healing Method works. If you have any problems with the vocabulary, Appendix III is a Glossary and Appendix IV is a Glossary of New Concepts.

Here is a brief outline of how Process Healing works. The therapist first educates and works with all aspects of the personality to convince the aspects to want to be treated. This approach is respectful to the patient and builds trust between the therapist and patient. This is called the organizing process. During this process, the reader or patient learns a way to communicate with their subconscious and aspects of their personality. When all aspects are on the treatment team and give permission, the therapist then teaches the subconscious how to treat painful emotions. Then the patient or therapist asks the subconscious to use the treatment process to treat painful or problematic issues.

The Treatment Team and treatment
A key feature of the Process Healing Method is the internal Treatment Team (Satir, 1972). The Treatment Team notion is introduced to organize all aspects of the personality into a cooperative group. Arranging for parts to cooperate is a major asset for the treatment process. It makes the treatment process easier with fewer problems and a safer experience. It is always necessary to discuss the reasons for being treated and to resolve the barriers for treatment in order to get all parts to join the Treatment Team.

A strategy for safely treating extreme pain is then presented. This strategy will be explained later in this section. Next, the mechanics of integrating or joining parts with the main personality is described. Finally, after double-checking to see that all parts are on the Treatment Team and want the treatment process to be taught to the subconscious, the subconscious is taught how to treat with a metaphor. A simple phobia or moderately painful belief or memory is identified for the subconscious to practice diagnosing, forming a treatment plan and treating. Then the subconscious treats the issue and removes the negative emotions associated with the issue. You will feel the pain of the issue gradually reduce in intensity. The subconscious becomes an ally in therapy by analyzing treatment issues and directing treatment.

Memory - Dormant or active
Before I continue, I want to tell you about dormant and active memories. Memories are either dormant (asleep) or active. Active memories are in what I call the Active Experience. The active memories contribute to creating behavior. Some of the active memories combine to create behavior by evoking a response from the body. Changes in the person's environment are represented in the Active Experience. Change in the environment activates other relevant memories that combine to create the next response. Others memories go dormant. For example, if I ask a question, you will know the answer. The answer "woke up." Now, before you have the answer, here's the question. "Are you right handed or left handed?" Your response woke up, became active, and you thought of the response. Dormant memories are active, waiting to be triggered into the Active Experience as an active memory. The Active Experience includes both the conscious and unconscious active memories. These will be discussed further in Chapter 3.

Building rapport
By describing how the personality and subconscious came to be, one can usually set up early rapport with all aspects of the personality, at least with those who are listening. Dormant parts will not hear unless they are triggered into the Active Experience. The goal is to get all parts on the Treatment Team so they want to be treated, to join the main personality and later, to work together to develop a treatment plan for each part. It is made absolutely clear the subconscious will not be taught the treatment process until all the parts join the Treatment Team. All parts, even the frailest, "baby parts," must feel safe with the idea of internal treatment and agree with it. The next step in getting parts on the treatment team is to tell them the advantages of treatment and of joining with the main personality

Reasons for getting treatment and becoming one
The reasons for getting treatment and joining the main personality are explained with the intent to motivate aspects to want to be treated. Here are the advantages of getting treatment. The parts will have more satisfaction and less pain and the main personality will stop having intrusions or experiencing lost time. The main personality will no longer hide important information and will be safer. All parts will perform with the entire memory of the personality. With identical memories, they will take part in running the body as one personality. This removes conflicts between parts, removes distractions and makes all our skills available. It is also pointed out that mono-personalities succeed fare better in realizing their potential than people who have many amnesic or dissociative parts (Ross, 199x).

Reasons for not wanting to join the Treatment Team
While trying to get the parts to join the Treatment Team, there are usually a few objections that have to be resolved. A part may think that it will die or that it will lose some or all of its knowledge, wisdom and understandings. It may be afraid that it will have too much pain during the treatment process, which may damage the main personality or other parts. It may think that it will no longer be able to protect the main personality with emotion or behavioral intrusions. A part may think that it will not be able to run the body any more or that the conscious memory of the trauma will further traumatize the main personality. It may think there will be more inner conflicts among parts or that the strong parts will not listen to wee baby parts. The next step is to help parts who have reasons for not wanting treatment.

Reasons for not wanting treatment
There are many reasons for not wanting to be treated and join with the main personality. Except for pain, these objections are all beliefs often held by the parts. By using the desire or need for more satisfaction and less pain as an incentive for accepting the therapist's explanations, these barriers for treatment can be changed. The rationale for removing these barriers will be presented in detail in Chapter 3. Wanting more satisfaction and less pain is the primary incentive to get parts to communicate when they don't want to talk to the therapist. This incentive is also used to get parts to want to be treated and to join with the main personality. The objective of getting more satisfaction and less pain is the goal used by the basic neurology for assembling groups of active memories to run the body.

Treating intense fear or pain
Treating pain can cause problems. After several years of being creative with many ploys to treat massive pain safely, a simple solution was found. This simple, easy strategy works to treat safely and, and in most cases, painlessly the trauma memories of amnesic and dissociative parts and other trauma memories - even those with the extreme pain. The subconscious orchestrates the treatment process and the trauma part cooperates by following directions. Treating extreme pain is done with an adjustable treatment rate based on a scale. For example, if the main personality can just barely feel 100 units of pain, then five or fewer units of pain could be treated in each treatment. Then, the main personality wouldn't feel any pain during the treatment. The amount of pain treated can be adjusted in a treatment plan to reduce the fear of all parts on the Treatment Team. This will prevent a flooding of emotions by the trauma part being treated and the triggering and flooding of any other part into memory. All parts will be safe and usually feel no pain.

When treating extreme pain, here is another important consideration. Since activating five units of pain destabilizes the trauma part, successive treatments could increasingly destabilize the part and cause flooding of emotions into the Active Experience. A destabilized trauma memory is like a word on the tip of your tongue - it's ready to flood and become conscious. With words on the tip of our tongue, we look for triggers to get it to flood into our thoughts. With trauma memories, we look for ways to prevent the flooding. To prevent gradual destabilizing of trauma memories and eventual flooding, the trauma part is allowed to relax or rest until it is stable after each treatment. This strategy using the treat-rest, treat-rest, treat-rest pattern effectively insures that the trauma part will not destabilize and flood emotions into the Active Experience during the treatment process.

Joining with the Main Personality
The treatment process causes all painful emotional associations with the trauma part to be replaced with neutral to positive emotions during the treatment process. After the trauma is neutralized, the treated part can join with the main personality. Joining or integrating the trauma part and the main personality involves the parts exchanging memories with each other. In other words, the trauma part and main personality exchange memory associations until they have identical memories.

When the exchange is complete, the main personality and the trauma part can both run the body with identical memories with no conflict. The main personality and the trauma part continue to have their own, unique neural structures and experience the good and painful body sensations and less pain because they will be able to participate in avoiding pain. If someone was yelling at you and about to hit you in the face, the parts could participate in neutralizing the situation and avoid more intense pain. The "something wrong would be felt" but it would be caused by the outside world, in most cases, unless the pain was caused by an untreated part became active. The joined parts will participate in avoiding pain. However, all joined parts will be in total agreement when running the body and there will be no conflicts.

Now it is time to teach the subconscious how to treat
When all the aspects say that they want the subconscious to learn how to treat trauma from the inside, a demanding question is asked. The point of the question is to contact any aspects who are uncomfortable or afraid about the subconscious learning how to treat trauma. Problem-solving with these fearful parts will eventually get all parts agreeing to be treated. When there are no objections to teaching the subconscious the treatment procedure, the subconscious is given the treatment procedure in a simple metaphor. After the metaphor is read, the subconscious is asked to treat a previously identified simple phobia or belief.

Treating a test issue
Treating the test issue will assess whether the subconscious has learned how to diagnose and treat painful memories or not. The patient will usually feel the treatment process in their brain or feel the pain of the issue gradually decrease to zero or to a fitting level. Usually, they feel both experiences. This experience proves to the main personality that the subconscious now knows how to treat trauma and emotional pain.

Summary of the treatment method
Here is a summary of the entire treatment process that is described on the next page (see Figure 2-1). The content of the memory includes the movie consisting of sensory experiences and all other massive neural activity such as perceptual distortion, organ, eye, and muscle activity and drug effects that took place during the trauma. The stars represent traumatic emotion memories that are attached to the neural activity in the content memory of the

traumatic memory. We know this is true because, after the trauma is treated, the content of the memory doesn't change. The content of the memory is usually unchanged or expanded with more detail or accuracy. The subconscious orchestrates the treatment process using a treatment plan and safely replaces the negative emotions (the stars) with the present positive or neutral emotions (the hearts). During the treatment process, the patient notices the pain of the traumatic memory gradually decreasing. After treating the issue, there is no pain associated with the traumatic memory, unless there is some protective value to having emotions as with a height phobia.

More information is given to the subconscious to help the treatment process. This information involves fields that are allegedly useful in other treatment methods or are important for the learning process. The subconscious is told that the use of the bioelectric field created by the heart and information gained through field receptors in skin cells can help the treatment process. In addition, there appears to be some primitive, positive "energy" that is available from the brain stem and a field from the pineal gland that helps treatment. I don't have any scientific proof that these fields are useful in the treatment process, but most, if not all, of my patients' subconsciouses confirm these suggestions as being useful in the treatment process.

Disorganization and barriers
Treating parts and other bothersome issues can now begin, but not without problems. Some of the problems are prebirth parts, parts that demand to be treated, or parts who want to be treated at the same time. Often parts can wake up and interfere with the communication with the subconscious or don't want to be treated. These parts cause a barrier for the treatment process and have to be helped to join the Treatment Team by some representative of the Treatment Team, the subconscious or the therapist. There are many barriers to treatment that are described in detail in Chapter 3 and in later chapters. These parts disorganize the Active Experience, which stop the treatment process.

The activity of other parts or active memories in the Active Experience can cause disorganization. The treatment process stops working when the Active Experience is disorganized. When the Active Experience is disorganized, the changing activity in the Active Experience creates a series of new memories. This prevents the negative emotions associated with the target memory from changing. The trauma memory is changed to create new unique memories. The new memories are not permanent because they are constantly changing. The pain associated with the target memory doesn't get changed.

There are many kinds of barriers that can stop the treatment process or communication with the subconscious. Removing these barriers will be explained in detail in Chapter 3. Giving information or looking at the barrier in a different way handles most barriers. Sometimes removing the barrier involves explaining the function of the brain or explaining how the barrier interferes with getting more satisfaction and less pain. Here is a partial list of the barriers. A part has just awakened and needs educating or there is more than one part active in the Active Experience at the same time. Sometimes there is a part that doesn't want to be treated because of the fear of pain or loss of function, or a part wants more pain and less satisfaction. Some parts have a belief that is stopping the part from communicating.

A field or field learning may be disorganizing the Active Experience. Fields elicit emotions that are not treatable in the Active Experience by the subconscious. The active emotions caused by a field block the treatment of trauma emotions. The fields must first be treated and cleared before treating the trauma memory. The treatment of fields is described in Chapter 11 and, in most cases, fields are treated in a way similar to the treatment of neural based trauma memories. Less often, a barrier is caused by a part without eyes and ears or a part whose emotional or muscle content is active with the sensory experiences of the part remaining dormant. Finally, a barrier can be caused by a brain polarity reversal that stops the learning process necessary for treatment.

Below is a transcript of the first treatment session between a therapist and the patient and the subconscious, to give you an idea how Process Healing works with a patient. It shows how I introduce the Process Healing Method. There are several barriers resolved. I have also included examples of treatment interventions showing how I handle issues. There are some examples of problem solving. I also describe some of the ways I do interventions, namely, tagging and treating parts, and treating shame and guilt, dreams and anger.

An example of teaching The Process Healing Method
This transcript is a condensed example of teaching the information needed for doing Process Healing with a patient, friend or yourself. As you recall, I present a model of the development of the personality, the reasons for getting treatment and joining with the main personality and then address barriers. These were barriers for both wanting to join the Treatment Team and barriers for treatment. I found the more I taught Process Healing the less I had do to resolve some barriers. I blame this change on the seeming fact that communication is taking place through the personal field. I leave out most information and try to use a "bare bones" approach and only teach the information needed to use Process Healing.

I recommend that with your first patients you initially give all the reasons for being treated. Then review with the patient most of the barriers for not wanting to be treated or join the Treatment Team. This repetition of teaching Process Healing will firmly implant these concepts into your memory. I recommend that you read Chapter 3 many times, so the barriers and reframes are easily available from your memory. Implanting these concepts will help you remember the correct solution to a barrier when you need it and strengthen the concepts in your personal field.
I draw pictures to help the patient understand more clearly, what I am saying when teaching Process Healing in my office. The pictures add a visual aid to my explanation. Teaching Process Healing over the telephone is different. Here, I try to give a visual picture to go with what I am saying. Sometime, I direct the patient over the telephone to draw some of the figures on a piece of paper. So far, people who are willing to do therapy over the telephone are usually experienced with therapy and are easy to work with. I ask them to download the PDF file to see if they can teach the treatment process to themselves. Here is an example of teaching the treatment process to a person in my office. I have included several examples of its application.
T: (That's me.) So, would you like to have me teach you Process Healing?
P: (The patient.) Yep, I sure would.
T: I am going to try to get all aspects of your personality to join a Treatment Team. All members of the Treatment Team will want to be treated, to join with the main personality and to work in a consensual basis. I usually start by giving you a visual description of what I am describing. Can I move a little closer to you so you can see my paper? (See next page.)
P: Yes.
T: Can you see my paper?
P: Yes.
T: Up here on the top, I am drawing our lifeline here. This point here is conception and this is birth. Sometime before birth, our brain learns words and phrases. At birth, when our senses activate, the objects and actions that we see and hear associate to the words. A language forms and continues to form throughout our whole life (a). I call it the subconscious (S). Does that make sense?
P: Yes.
T: Then shortly before birth or at birth, our main personality (MP) starts forming and here we are now (b). (I initially draw a straight line.) We start learning in utero and continue to learn all our lives. Learning means the formation of memories. The formation of memories becomes our personality. Memories in the personality are what run our body and thoughts. Memories are always active. They are waiting to be activated into our experience by an emotion or some content in the memory. For example, if I asked you this question, oops, the answer is not there yet because the question has not triggered the answer. But, if I ask, "Do you remember when you last rode a bicycle?" The question will trigger the answer. The answer or memory awakened and popped into your Active Experience. Do you understand so far?
P: Yes.
T: Now, I am going to explain how our behavior and thoughts are formed. Here we have what I call the Active Experience (c). The Active Experience represents all the activity in the brain and body that is related to survival. It is where all our internal and external sensory experience, all our internal processes and the main personality are active. It includes all the content and emotion memories triggered into our experience that are used to form the next response. It's a recurrent process, which means that our next response is the basis for the next response. For example, suppose I am moving my hand to scratch my ear. My nose starts tickling. This new stimulation will result in changing the direction where my hand is going. My hand will scratch my nose. Now, what is interesting about the Active Experience is there is a dissociation part (d) that causes conscious and unconscious experience. It is the job of the dissociation part to simplify the content and emotions of our conscious activity so we can behave to get more satisfaction and less pain. There is also an association part (e). When memories in the subconscious trigger memories, the association part allows the most fitting memories to be triggered. If it lets memories in too easily, then a pencil might look like a penis. The association process is like a metaphor manager and limits which memories can become active. Do you have any questions at this point?
P: No. [Of course, some people may not understand enough to ask a question]
T: Now I am going to talk about how severe trauma causes amnesic parts. When we look at trauma (f), we know that some trauma is fully remembered. For example, I fall off my bike, go to the hospital and go home, I can tell everyone I know about my experience. However, when both the trauma has extreme emotions and there are no memories to create a response to the situation, the brain mobilizes. When the brain mobilizes, the main personality (MP) is pushed out of our Active Experience and survival behavior is created. Behavior is created from the start of the trauma to the end of the trauma. This behavior is the behavior that is associating to a new memory structure - a trauma part. When the trauma ends (End), the main personality rushes in and the new trauma part (TP) out. Because the main personality rushes out and in so fast, there are few associations between the main personality and trauma part. This rapid departure and entry of the main personality is what causes the amnesia between parts. Does this explanation make sense to you?
P: It makes total sense. [Yeah, right. Most patients say, "Yes" whether it is true or not.]
T: The main personality now has these bumps on it. These represent amnesic parts and the up-line represents amnesia. The problem with having amnesic parts is the emotions from the parts can be triggered into the Active Experience and distort the here and now conscious and unconscious experience. With this distortion in the Active Experience, the response created may not get more satisfaction and might put the person at risk. Getting more satisfaction and having less pain is the main reason for parts to be treated and integrate. Healing just means that treatment will remove all the negative emotions from the memory of the part and replace them with neutral or positive emotions. Then the part can join with the main personality. Parts don't die or lose information. Their positive skills are strengthened with positive emotions. They simply exchange information with the main personality. The part's memory becomes exactly the same as the main personality's memory (i). Now, the trauma part and main personality can run the body at the same time without conflict. They still have unique structures. The response creation process uses their knowledge and wisdom, as needed, to get more satisfaction and less pain. Any questions?
P: No.
T: I want to ask all your parts to join the Treatment Team (TT) (j). By joining the Treatment Team, you all will want to be treated and want to join with the main personality. Then you will make decisions about the treatment plan with total agreement by all members. One hundred percent agreement is necessary to accept treatment plans. However, I expect that some of them are worried about treating big pain. If you look at figure h, I will explain how big pain is treated. The trauma part works with the subconscious that is drawn beneath the Active Experience. The trauma part moves over to the Active Experience and puts a little pain into the Active Experience. Five units of pain is just a little of the trauma time (f). The members of the Treatment Team can adjust the rate of treatment until all members are comfortable with the rate of treatment. It can be 5, 3, 1 or 0.5, or whatever the Treatment Team decides. On the other hand, if we treated five units of pain one treatment after the other, the trauma part would destabilize and flood emotions into the conscious experience. It is like a word on the tip of your tongue. The word has not flooded your experience so you think of words or associations to help it become conscious. We want to stop the flooding so we rest after each treatment. Over here (ttttt), you can see the part destabilizes and we wait a few seconds (t) until the part has stabilized again and then we treat some more. We repeat the process, treat/rest, treat/rest, treat/rest until we have treated all the emotional pain associated with the part during the trauma. Will all the parts who want to join the Treatment Team please join the Treatment Team? Any questions?
P: No.
T: Now I want to set up rapport with your subconscious. Please put your hands flat on your legs or the couch beside you. Thanks. (Move each finger as you say the following.) I am going to call the index finger as "Yes" and the thumb as "No." Then I'll label the little finger as "I don't know" and the middle finger as the "I don't want to tell you." In addition, no response is a response. All of these responses allow me to respond better with all aspects of you and the subconscious. Now here comes the fun. I am going to ask if I can talk with your subconscious. Your job is to be curious about whether one of your fingers is going to move and to not move them consciously. Now, if you feel sensations on the pad of your finger or something like that I can't see, you can move the finger so I can see it move. Do you understand?
P: Yes.
T: Can I talk with your subconscious? [Wait]
S: [The middle finger raises. This response is probably a part.]
T: Oh, [The middle finger - we both blush.] Thank you for talking to me. Did you just wake up?
S: Yes.
T: Would you be willing to talk to the subconscious and get all the information about joining the Treatment Team, getting treated and, then, joining with the main personality?
S: No.
T: Are you worried about big, big pain?
S: No.
T: Are you worried that your memories will traumatize the main personality?
S: Yes.
T: Well during the treatment process, the subconscious can have the dissociative part dissociate all those memories so they will never go into conscious experience. Would you now be willing to join the Treatment Team? [This is an example of a reframe or explanation that neutralizes the concern.]
S: Yes.
T: Thank you. Subconscious are all the parts on the Treatment Team?
S: I don't know. [Little finger]
T: Can I talk to the part that said, "I don't know?"
S: No response.
T: Is this part a prebirth part? [Prebirth parts learn to share information form the subconscious to the conscious experience and are frequent barriers to communication with the subconscious.]
S: Yes.
T: Would you and all the other prebirth parts be willing to join the Treatment Team?
S: Yes.
T: Thank you. Subconscious, are all the parts on the Treatment Team?
S: No.
T: Can I talk to all the parts that don't want to join the Treatment Team?
S: Yes.
T: Will you all talk to the subconscious to find answers to all your questions and considerations? Then you can make an informed decision to join the Treatment Team, be treated and become one with the main personality? [When I get the part to talk to the subconscious, it saves time.]
S: Yes.
T: [Wait] Subconscious have all those parts joined the Treatment Team?
S: Yes.
T: Are all the parts that are active on the Treatment Team?
S: Yes.
T: Do all the members of the Treatment Team want me to teach the subconscious the treatment process?
S: Yes.
T: You mean there are no parts that have an objection to me teaching the subconscious the treatment process?
S: No. [Oops wrong answer. Also, "I don't know," "I don't want to tell you" and no response are answers that lead to problem solving.]
T: [Guessing] Is this part a wee little baby part that is afraid that it won't get an equal vote on the Treatment Team?
S: Yes. [Cute, ay?] [Ay is Canadian for "You know what I mean?"]
T: Well, all the parts on the Treatment Team have agreed to give all parts, even you, equal vote. Would you be willing to join the Treatment Team?
S: Yes.
T: Thank you. Do all the members of the Treatment Team want me to teach the subconscious the treatment process?
S: Yes.
T: You mean there are no parts that have an objection to me teaching the subconscious the treatment process?
S: Yes.
NOTE: Before reading the following metaphor that teaches the treatment process, check with your subconscious. See if it is okay to read the treatment metaphor and that it will not be disrespectful to any aspect of your personality.
T: [Quickly, before any new parts wake up, you will read or give the metaphor for teaching the treatment process.]
You will learn two metaphors for teaching the treatment in Chapter 3 and 4. To read it here would be disrespectful to some aspects or parts in your personality.]
T: Subconscious, do you understand the metaphor?
S: Yes.
[Here I can point out helpful healing fields, Therapeutic Touch, back of brain stem, the pineal gland and the heart field. Sometime I make these connections to add support later during the session.]
T: Can you think of a phobia on which we can try the treatment process? [A belief or trauma memory also work or a part "wants to be treated now."]
P: I am afraid of public speaking.
T: Subconscious, is this phobia a good practice phobia to try out the treatment process?
S: Yes.
T: Okay, imagine preparing well and speaking to 100 people. On a scale of zero to ten, where ten is terrified, how high is your fear or anxiety?
P: Oh, it's about eight.
T: Focus on your image of public speaking so you feel the fears and ask the subconscious to treat your public speaking anxiety. [Wait.] Do you feel the anxiety going down?
P: Yes.
T: [Wait.] Subconscious have you finished treating this phobia.
S: No.
T: Do you feel the treatment process in your head?
P: Yes, it feels like the back of my head is warm.
T: Different issues can cause different feelings. Is it still processing?
P: Yes.
T: [Wait.] Subconscious, are you finished?
S: Yes.
T: About what level do you feel now when you think of talking to some people?
P: It's about a two.
T: That is about right. You need some anxiety to do your best. Some fear may remain for motivation or to uphold your attention, like with a height phobia. Subconscious, can you create a treatment plan for all members of the Treatment Team.
S: No.
T: Did another part awaken?
S: [No response.]
T: Does this part want more satisfaction and less pain?
S: Yes.
T: Would you be willing to talk to the subconscious to get all your questions answered?
S: Yes.
T: Thank you. [Wait about 5 seconds.] Subconscious did this part join the Treatment Team?
S: No.
T: Does this part want to treat now?
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, will treating this part be politically okay with the others?
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, please treat this part. [Wait.] Subconscious, are you done?
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, can you create a treatment plan for all members of the Treatment Team.
S: Yes.
T: [Wait.] This treatment process is hard to believe, isn't it? What do you think?
P/T: [Engage in a conversation.]
T: Subconscious are you done creating treatment plans?
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, will you do the change history of all memories about getting treatment in Memory III. Then treat the predisposition to response to negative memories and look for any belief barriers to clear the way for independent and automatic treatment. [These interventions are given in detail in the next chapter.]
S: Yes.

Examples of Using Process Healing
Here is an example of the strategy I use at the beginning of sessions and of the treatment of several common issues that we all might have.
Example of starting a session
Treating tagged parts
Phobias
Emotions
Panic Attacks
Depression
Dreams
Physical issue