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Chapter 1
The Discovery of The Process Healing Method
The Process Healing Method is a treatment intervention.
The theory behind The Process Healing Method is unusual. This requires
you to shift your way of thinking about what causes us to think and
behave - a paradigm shift. To help you to understand how I arrived at
this new way of thinking, this first chapter leads you through the experiences
that gave me this novel view. These experiences also led me to trust
the use of the subconscious to direct treatment, to do treatment interventions
and to validate metaphors that approximate internal processes. The treatment
method, Process Healing, based on this new way of thinking is effective
for many mental health issues. Here is some empirical support for The
Process Healing Method
Dr. Joaquin Andrade, M.D., spearheaded finding an effective treatment
method for the patients served in 11 outpatient clinics in Argentina
and Uruguay. He was looking for treatment methods to get better treatment
results. About 16 years ago, his clinicians started experimenting with
Thought Field Therapy (TFT) (Callahan, 1985). This treatment involves
tapping on acupressure points to remove pain. For fifteen years, the
research team collected data to assess effectiveness of treatment. The
research team contacted patients who had received treatment in a double-blind
format at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months (Andrade and Feinstein, 2001). Double-blind
means the interviewer didn't know what treatment the patient received.
They found the tapping treatment routinely got 60 to 70 percent positive
outcomes with 29,000 patients. These patients had diagnoses of
panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobias, specific phobias, obsessive-compulsive
disorders, generalized anxiety disorders, PTSD, acute stress disorders,
somatoform disorders, eating disorders, ADHD and addictive disorders.
In 2001, Dr. Andrade found the Process Healing web site. He followed
the instructions in the Process Healing course and learned how to teach
the subconscious to treat trauma. He tried this treatment method in
several clinics. With the first 100 patients who were failures with
the routine tapping, he got 60% positive results (Personal communication,
2002). With more experience and some coaching, he found 65 percent effectiveness
by the end of 200 patients (Personal communication, 2003). The Process
Healing Method would probably be effective with all the success cases
treated with tapping. If this were true, then one could estimate that
Process Healing would be effective with between 84 to 89 percent of
all patients who came through the clinics. The Process Healing Method
is effective and worthy of study and use by both individuals and mental
health professionals.
The discovery of The Process Healing Method took me by surprise. This
discovery was that the subconscious could do the treatment inside the
patient. The subconscious learned the tapping treatment method as the
patient did Thought Field Therapy interventions. This discovery process
continued over nine years of personal study and research. Trained as
an experimental psychologist with emphasis on the theory of learning,
I studied the behavior of rats, pigeons and squirrel monkeys. This training
taught me that observation was important (Skinner, 1953, Flint, 1968).
I now use this practice of observation in my work with patients. I carefully
watch and listen to my patients to notice what I do that causes changes
in their present experience and in their experience of their issues.
I have little formal education in clinical theories to interfere with
my insight into personality dynamics. This combination of observation,
ignorance in clinical theory and training in hypnosis, Neurolinguistic
Programming and several new, effective treatment methods resulted in
developing Process Healing as a powerful treatment method. It is supporting
to have preliminary research show The Process Healing Method as remarkably
effective.
To introduce Process Healing, I shall explain how my patients taught
me how to use the subconscious in my therapy practice. My patients taught
me that the subconscious is a useful ally to identify and treat issues
in therapy. The subconscious is a language process that has access to
the neural activity of the entire brain and body. It can learn to change
the role of memories by removing or adding emotions. These three properties
of the subconscious, ease of communication, access to all memories and
a method to change memories makes the subconscious an excellent ally
in any treatment setting.
I also assume that unique memories cause all brain, behavior and body
processes such as muscle movements and organ activity. An active memory,
such as thinking a thought or word, is neural activity. Your automatic
response "Great" to someone saying, "How's it going?"
is a learned response caused by remembered neural activity. When you
learn a memory, like meeting a handshake with your hand, the memory
runs the body automatically to meet the handshake without your even
thinking. Memory involves learned neural connections that manage your
physiology to create the learned response, namely to run the muscles
to cause you to meet the other person's hand. Memories run all conscious
and unconscious learned behavior. Mental problems are memories with
negative emotions associated with them. It is possible to easily change
learned neural connections. Since the subconscious can change the emotions
connected to memories, the therapist can try to treat any learned brain
or body process when working with the subconscious. I now believe that
it is possible to heal any learned mental or physical issue.
The subconscious uses our native language and we can easily communicate
with the subconscious. I have learned to use the subconscious to choose
which psychological issue to address and the interventions that would
be the best to do the treatment. In short, I routinely use the subconscious
to direct the treatment of my patients.
The strategy of having the subconscious direct treatment has moved me
from doing therapy directed by the therapist to doing therapy directed
by the patient. This patient directed therapy is clearly respectful
to my patients. It has also changed my problem solving approach. I no
longer looked for solutions from my own knowledge. My problem solving
has become patient oriented. I now look for solutions to problem behavior
in some feature of memory caused by the learning process. Some form
of traumatic experience always causes problem behavior. Any trauma memory
from the past distorts the Active Experience. I can treat these trauma
memories with Process Healing. I use the subconscious to discover solutions
to problems and to carry out the interventions.
Solving problems, this way has led to developing a model of learning
and memory. Based on clinical observations and the solutions to real
problems, this model is practical. Patients' experience and behavior
changes confirm the effectiveness of using interventions based on this
model. The model has become a useful tool as it provides ways to explain
and treat maladaptive behavior. Best of all, solutions to problems with
one patient have worked with other patients.
Over the years, I had been looking for faster ways to treat trauma.
I learned many different treatment techniques. The most significant
treatment technique learned and the basis for Process Healing was training
to diagnose specific sequences of acupressure points to treat mental
problems (Callahan, 1993). The treatment involved tapping on the diagnosed
acupressure points. After returning from this worthwhile training, my
next patient taught me the subconscious could do the tapping treatment.
This internal treatment was the basis for the treatment approach that
I eventually called Process Healing.
The practice of observation and using directions from the patient are
both respectful and essential when working with this theory. This respectful
approach and the theory give flexibility to problem solving and treating
difficult mental issues. The theory, then, is the basis for responding
to and understanding a patient's description of his or her mental health
issues.
The keys to our personality dynamics are amnesic and dissociative parts.
Largely ignored in traditional therapy, these parts are like minipersonalities
that serve some role in our behavior. People are not usually aware of
amnesic and dissociative parts. I am going to describe how I found that
amnesic parts could be barriers for hypnosis and that various prebirth
amnesic parts can disturb adult behavior. I also found the effects of
preverbal trauma can have a strong impact on later behavior while in
utero trauma can cause subtle lingering effects on our behavior. Another
significant finding was that amnesic and dissociative parts could fool
the therapist. The possibility of deception keeps me alert to further
explore unusual results. Another finding, contrary to my beliefs, was
that I could damage the subconscious. I will describe this later.
This journey started when a patient showed me the subconscious could
teach me how to do better interventions. This experience challenged
my more traditional approaches in my clinical practice. If the subconscious
can teach me how to do therapy better, why not routinely use the subconscious
to become a better therapist? His subconscious helped me to create an
intervention to move traumatic pain out of conscious experience into
the unconscious while doing Eye Movement Dissociation and Reprocessing
(EMDR) (Shapiro, 1995). EMDR involves having the patient both focus
on a painful issue and on my fingers moving back and forth in front
of them at the same time. Though underwhelming to my EMDR teachers at
the time, the intervention that I developed effectively reduced the
intensity of emotional pain experienced while doing the eye movement
treatment. It also served to control the problem of emotional flooding
when doing eye movement processing. Emotional flooding occurs when the
patient experiences all the trauma pain as if the trauma were happening
again. It also clarified the role of the dissociative process. The dissociative
process causes experience of the active memory to not be in the conscious
experience but in the unconscious experience.
My interest in theory led me to meld ideas based on learning theory
(Skinner, 1953, 1962) and chaos theory (Freemen, 1991) to explain the
active ingredients of EMDR (Flint, 1994a). The theory explaining EMDR
is the basis for Process Healing. The following is a brief introduction
to the theory underlying Process Healing.
Note: I want to mention to the reader's aspects that this book is basically
providing information. While some aspects may be threatened or triggered
by the information in the book, the treatment method, which is taught
to the subconscious, can be seen as the primary threat that has to be
assessed carefully. Before the subconscious learns to treat traua, all
the barriers for treatment are resolved. If some of the content of this
chapter triggers emotions or internal voices as you read, perhaps you
should consult with a therapist before you read this book. If you feel
a flood of emotions at any time while reading this book, please stop
reading, use your best judgment about continuing and consult with a
therapist.
The Theoretical Basis for Process Healing
About ten years ago, I started thinking of the brain as a chaos process
(Freeman, 1991). I had written a paper describing the active ingredients
of change when using EMDR (Flint, 1994a). This theory, described in
greater detail later, has helped me get rapport with my patients. I
explain to patients that memories start forming shortly after conception,
not after birth, which is the common opinion. All areas of the brain
begin storing memories while the brain is first developing. At some
point, as the brain starts developing responses to sensations, words,
phrases and sentences that come through the mother's stomach wall are
remembered. By birth, the fetus has many verbal memories but no language.
After birth, learning continues with remembered verbal memories but
now, neural representations of objects and actions associate with the
words. The memory of words associated with objects and actions becomes
a functional language. This language, learned without sensory experience,
is the subconscious. At the same time this language is developing, the
Main Personality starts learning. The language learned by the Main Personality
associates with sensory experience and other qualities of the State-Dependent
Memory. The subconscious and the Main Personality, therefore, learn
two different neural representations related to the same experience.
The subconscious learns without sensory experience and the personality
learns with sensory experience.
Because of the vast amount of information coming in through the senses,
the brain reduces the quantity of information that we receive in our
conscious experience. The primary process to reduce information is the
dissoci
ation
process (see Figure 1-1). The dissociative process causes all or part
of a memory to not be in our conscious experience. This dissociative
action creates the unconscious Active Experience. With the dissociative
process, unnecessary or painful parts of a memory can be "flagged"
by the dissociative process to move the unwanted parts of a memory into
the unconscious. One calls the "flagged" memories dissociated.
The activity of dissociated memories is inthe unconscious experience
and not the conscious experience.
Memories that are not active in the Active Experience are called dormant.
While all dormant memories are said to be asleep, they are all active
- waiting. The dormant memories are actively waiting to be triggered
into activity in the Active Experience. Memory activity or active memories
used here, always refers to those memories that are active in the conscious
or unconscious Active Experience. Memories that are waiting to be triggered
are called dormant or asleep.
The subconscious has access to everything experienced in the brain in
both the conscious and unconscious experience. The subconscious does
not experience any form of hurt; in other words, trauma never hurts
the subconscious. Later, I will explain how I was able to hurt the subconscious
by having the subconscious do something not normally done. It is important
to stress the seeming fact that the subconscious is always whole and
healthy with no barriers to inhibit the view of the internal "reality."
When I talk to a patient about the formation of the personality, I explain
the reasons intense traumas cause amnesic parts. I explain that these
parts are normal personality parts but with few neural connections to
the Main Personality.
Patients often hear comments or experience a "Yes" feeling
while I talk. This makes this model of their personality true for them.
Usually, the subconscious will talk in the first session by using finger
responses signaling, "Yes," "No," "I don't
know," and "I don't want to tell you."
My Neurolinguistic Programming Training (NLP) (Rice and Caldwell, 1986)
taught me about auto treatment. Auto-treatment is obvious when personality
changes occur without involving the personality. One can teach an NLP
intervention, called the six-step reframe (Cameron-Bandler, 1985), to
treat issues at night while the patient sleeps. When this works, the
patient asks to change beliefs or behaviors when he goes to bed and
awakens with the change completed. After an experience with a patient
that impressed me with the power of the subconscious, I decided to extend
the auto treatment notion. I have found barriers to auto treatment in
individuals. The subconscious can treat these barriers to enable the
subconscious to treat issues automatically and to perform independently
of the active personality.
The Subconscious Can Teach the Therapist
The first clinical experience that caught my attention occurred when
I was seeing many patients with multiple personality disorders. One
of my patients allegedly had 200 dissociated or amnesic personality
parts. These parts were all amnesic or unaware of one another because
they could not communicate. This patient was difficult. Often, the part
that came to the session did not believe there were any other parts.
Sometime she didn't know who I was. She learned that by talking as fast
as she could, she would not dissociate. When she dissociated, a trauma
part would begin to run the body. She always dissociated during the
latter half of the session. The active amnesic part was usually willing
to work with me. I treated parts using Eye Movement Desensitization
and Reprocessing (EMDR). I had to be careful using this treatment with
my patient (Shapiro, 1991) because of the possibility of emotional flooding.
This patient taught me something important that changed my life.
One day, after completing a session, I turned my back on the patient
to write an appointment card. I heard a loud gasp. As I turned around,
I saw her pushing her chair back with her feet. The chair was bouncing
across the floor. When she stopped bouncing, I saw the patient's eyes
wide-open and moving back and forth rapidly. I noticed that her eyes
focused just above her knees. She said in a panic tone, "I see
a white light; I see a white light." I calmly reassured her the
experience was not unusual. I asked if I could talk to her subconscious.
The subconscious said, "Yes." She said, "No." Most
of her parts didn't like me talking to parts. Her response most always
came out, "Yes, No." I asked, "Subconscious, are you
telling me that I should do the eye movements down near the knees?"
The subconscious said, "Yes." The visual hallucination immediately
stopped. This experience started me to explore deliberately using the
subconscious to orchestrate and refine my treatment interventions.
From this point, I began to use increasingly a semi-hypnotic technique
with my patients. While the patient was awake, I used finger responses
to talk to the subconscious. I communicated by using leading questions
to which the subconscious said, "Yes" or "No." The
subconscious advised me in which order to treat issues and to identify
which therapeutic technique to use to treat an issue. I felt that my
therapy was becoming more respectful to all aspects of the patient while
addressing treatment goals that were more relevant to the patient.
Treating Emotional Pain in the Unconscious
By working with a patient's subconscious, I developed a treatment intervention
to control flooding while doing EMDR. The treatment intervention provides
for painless treatment of trauma pain by combining EMDR and the dissociative
process. By suggesting that the pain be dissociated while treating the
trauma with EMDR, the dissociation process takes place and the trauma
pain moves from the conscious experience into the unconscious experience
as the processing continues. The patient does not feel the painful trauma
emotions during the treatment.
Stimulation of the brain with the eye movements causes an exchange of
the painful trauma emotions with the relaxed or neutral emotions that
are active (Flint, 1994a). With repeated eye movements, the pain gradually
reduces to the point where the trauma memory is no longer painful. I
used this process with four or five other patients who also helped with
minor details in developing this treatment technique. The technique
has been effective for treating severe trauma because it lowers the
chance for emotional flooding into the conscious experience. Patients
ranging from age nine to 52 years old have responded well to this procedure.
Subconscious Directed Treatment
My theory is that different neural patterns of eye movement were active
during trauma. This neural pattern becomes associated with the memory
of the traumatic pain. Bearing this in mind with many of my patients,
I have asked the subconscious to tell me the direction of eye movement
that is most helpful for treating the patient. I have received many
unique and interesting instructions from the subconscious. For example,
with one patient, the subconscious told me to move my fingers in random,
smooth, circular strokes while moving my hand closer to and farther
from the patient. In addition, the subconscious told me that I should
hold a silver pen with a gold tip in my hand for the patient to follow
with his eyes. Though I forgot about the pen nearly every session, the
subconscious always reminded me to use it. For five weekly sessions,
this unique procedure, "ordered" by the subconscious, continued.
During this time, the patient had a continuous severe headache. The
headache stopped, indicating the completion of treatment. The subconscious
no longer reminded me to use the gold-tipped pen. For this patient,
this unusual treatment neutralized the pain of seven years of viewing
frequent gory traumas and deaths.
Discoveries
Barriers for hypnosis
When using hypnosis, some patients are difficult, if not impossible,
to put into a deep trance. There was a barrier blocking the trance induction.
While addressing this problem, I received strange finger responses.
I discovered that prebirth traumas caused prebirth parts. In some ways,
prebirth parts are just like the amnesic parts previously described.
However, the experience of prebirth parts in utero is similar to the
young subconscious; namely, it is always awake. Prebirth parts learn
to relay information from the subconscious to the personality. These
prebirth parts can become barriers to getting deep trance. I learned
to set up rapport and talk to the prebirth parts. I usually get them
to accept treatment and become quiet. With these barriers quiet, I am
able to put the patient into a deep hypnotic trance.
Prebirth parts and behavior
The awareness of prebirth parts helped me to overcome barriers to communication
with the subconscious. Often, while I was building rapport with the
subconscious, I discovered the presence of prebirth parts. When I treated
prebirth parts with EMDR, I asked the subconscious to manage the rate
of experience of the traumatic memories of a prebirth part. I provided
eye movements to treat the part's trauma. This approach has been effective
with many of my patients. The effect sometimes resulted in a subtle
but pervasive change. One case example is a 40-year-old patient who
had a tendency to wail like a baby when she was upset. She had been
a difficult, disruptive patient during treatment at the local Mental
Health Center. Treating the trauma of the prebirth part who caused the
wailing stopped the wailing behavior. At the end of the session, the
patient told me her mother told that when she was in utero, her father
had kicked her mother who started bleeding. Mother had a Cesarean delivery.
Preverbal trauma
A therapist can use the same treatment procedure to treat preverbal
traumas - traumas that occur before the development of verbal skills.
One can access preverbal traumas by asking directly or by presenting
stimuli to elicit the trauma part. In one case, a young boy had had
sixteen earaches between the ages of six and twelve months. I triggered
emotions associated with the trauma of the earaches by putting my hand
right next to his ear. After I treated this trauma with EMDR, he would
allow me to put my hand near his ear without an emotional response and
showed no emotional reaction. This resulted in a marked change in his
behavior at school. In the next session, I tested his response to the
trauma related stimuli by moving my hand near his ear, and he had no
fear. I told him to imagine that I had a white coat on and I put my
hand near his ear. Again, emotions flooded his experience. Matching
the conditions of his trauma evoked even more intense emotions then
I had previously seen. I treated these emotions by using EMDR.
Lingering early trauma
A patient complained of mood swings, which resembled something like
manic-depressive behavior. While problem solving this issue, the possibility
of lingering trauma picked up in utero occurred to me. I considered
novel ways to explain the cause of manic-depression or at least the
mood swings experienced by this patient and other patients. What if
some prebirth and preverbal neural activity switched in and out to cause
the rapid mood changes? I hypothesized that a specific trauma occurred
that was associated with the neurology of the entire brain. Could it
be that some form of trauma occurred during the prebirth and preverbal
periods before brain structures and functions fully developed? This
led to guessing the possibility of lingering trauma picked up in utero.
I speculated the first trauma that a fetus would experience would be
the emotional response caused by the limit of movement. The limit of
physical activity causes a memory of the emotional response, or at least
a neural response associated with hurt. During this frustration, the
brain is working without well-defined neural patterns. Under these conditions,
a trauma would associate with all neural activity of the entire brain.
Later, specific areas of the brain would increase in activity and assume
some function, such as muscle control, midbrain functions and so forth.
Later, those specific areas that actively serve some function erase
the early trauma memories. Much later, after full development of patterns
of brain functions and muscle movements, the early trauma memory would
only remain in the quieter neural areas of the brain. A great portion
of the brain may not have constant repetitive neural activity and this
is where the traumatic memory of the early constriction trauma lingers.
I call it lingering prebirth trauma.
I confirmed this theory with an intervention I carried out with many
patients. I discovered this treatment by working with the subconscious
of my patients. To treat this condition of lingering trauma, I used
a treatment intervention developed to treat trauma pain associated with
eye position and the shifts between brain hemisphere activities during
trauma. The intervention involved the Callahan 9-Gamut procedure (Callahan,
1985). One does the 9-Gamut procedure in the following way. Direct the
patient to tap steadily on a point on the back of the hand, a half-inch
behind both of the large knuckles of the ring and little finger. While
tapping, direct the patient to look straight ahead, close their eyes,
look down to the right, look down to the left, whirl their eyes in a
circle in one direction, then whirl them in the other direction. Then
direct the patient to hum a tune, count one to five and, then, hum a
tune again. The subconscious said that this procedure would work to
treat these hypothesized traumas lingering in quiet areas of the brain.
The following case had a prebirth trauma so I tried treating lingering
trauma. I tapped on the 9-Gamut spot on the back of both hands of the
patient and had the patient do the 9-Gamut treatment. The patient said
that after doing three 9-Gamut treatments, she was dizzy. After three
more 9-Gamut treatments, she had pain in her side and stomach. After
four more treatments, she had anger and pain. After four more, the subconscious
signaled the completion of the intervention. Then she had pain in her
head. I followed the directions of the subconscious. After two more
9- Gamut procedures, this pain was gone. The treatment was obviously
having some effect on neurology and produced some behavioral effects.
She reported the procedure weakened self-limiting beliefs involving
guilt.
I used this procedure of repeated 9-Gamut treatments with a ten-year-old.
He experienced dizziness, sleepiness and then dizziness that he described
as "like emptiness in my whole head with something swirling around."
Then he felt more dizziness. Then he felt clearer and I assumed that
we had completed the intervention. In the following session with this
young fellow, the subconscious led me to develop another procedure working
on the entire brain. This time, the patient repeated the following intervention
suggested by the subconscious: tap eight times on his forehead and eight
times on the back of his head. In the following replications of this
intervention, he felt tired and woozy, then more dizziness and then
very dizzy. Then he had a headache, and then he felt a little "drunk."
The subconscious told me to treat this last feeling with the eye movement
procedure (EMDR). A week later, this patient said that he was doing
better at school, that he felt it was easier to concentrate, and that
he was becoming more independent in his play.
The subconscious as the treatment agent
One month after I completed the Thought Field Therapy diagnostic training
with Callahan, I received an incredible learning experience from another
one of my patients. This 36-year-old female came into my office complaining
of feeling incapable of handling her financial problems. I used the
Callahan diagnostic and treatment techniques to treat the belief: "I
can't control or manage my life." She immediately had the insight
that her boyfriend was reinforcing her belief of being incapable. While
talking to her about this possibility, she said "I feel this tickle
on my upper lip." I asked her subconscious, "Subconscious,
are you trying to tell my patient to tap on her lip?" The subconscious
said, "Yes" by raising the index finger. I had the patient
tap on her upper lip. We continued talking.
Again, she felt a series of sensations at different points on her head
and face. I inquired again and the subconscious told her to tap on the
points where she felt the tickles. At one point, she said "Oh God.
They're going too fast! They're going too fast!" I said, "Hold
it, subconscious. Hold it." I asked the subconscious if she could
do the tapping on the inside to treat the trauma while the patient just
sits. The subconscious said, "Yes." I asked the subconscious
if she would do it. The subconscious said, "Yes." Therefore,
the patient sat there with her left arm on her lap and her right arm
pointed up. After a minute or so, she said "Wow. All this energy
is flowing out of my fingertips." She said that she felt clearheaded
and capable, and knew what she wanted to do to resolve her present financial
predicament. I believe her subconscious had completed treating some
traumatic history having to do with competence. The subconscious, to
my surprise, had learned to treat internally. This experience showed
me that it is possible to have the subconscious treat a patient's issue
without my intervention.
The subconscious in trouble
After this experience, I started systematically to teach the subconscious
of my patients how to do self-treatment - the internal tapping. I had
another patient who had sixty parts that were ready to receive treatment.
After treating many parts, I wanted to find out the number of untreated
parts remaining and asked the subconscious. To my surprise, what I learned
from the subconscious was that she had independently treated nine parts
in the preceding weeks. I asked her if she had tried to treat the suicidal
parts that I had identified in an earlier session. She said, "Yes."
With further inquiry, the subconscious said that she became frightened
when she provided treatment of those parts on her own. By asking leading
questions, I discovered the suicidal parts had flooded into the Active
Experience and had started to run the body. They presented a serious
suicidal threat. The subconscious was "frightened"; namely,
she recognized the danger of suicide. Other parts who became active
had difficulty protecting the patient from the suicidal intent of the
suicidal parts. Since then, I usually try to treat suicidal parts as
soon as possible. It is easier to do this now since I have learned a
strategy to treat dangerous parts slowly and safely. This strategy removes
the possibility of having suicidal thoughts or parts motivated by emotional
flooding. It is respectful to all aspects of the personality.
Damaging the subconscious
One of the most helpful qualities of the subconscious is the subconscious
is not subject to damage by trauma and emotional experience. The subconscious
can accurately see life history and help diagnose and treat traumatic
issues. However, I managed to damage a patient's subconscious. This
damage was easy to repair, as you will see. I damaged the subconscious
by having the subconscious step into her body experience and converse
with me directly by using spoken language. I wanted to expand my understanding
of the internal processes and thought that direct communication with
the subconscious would promote this goal. The subconscious was able
to do this and in one session, we conversed readily.
In a later session, I noticed the subconscious was not as effective
in identifying and treating issues as she had been previously. Using
leading questions, I discovered the subconscious process had associated
with sensory experience. The sensory experience created barriers for
seeing internal history and was restricting her view of the inner dynamics
and her control of internal processes. I corrected this mistake by having
the subconscious look through the patient's eyes while I did eye movement
processing. After treatment, the subconscious again became effective
in identifying and treating issues.
Parts can fool the therapist
The following is an example of the usefulness of working with the subconscious
to solve a problem. In a session with a cult survivor, I identified
at least three new parts that I had not met in previous sessions. I
asked the subconscious if she could treat these parts. The subconscious
said, "Yes." I asked her to treat these parts and to let me
know when she had finished. After she finished, I asked if she had joined
these parts with "Mary" as I normally had her do. She said,
"Yes." I asked Mary to become the active personality. She
spontaneously commented that the three parts that had recently joined
with her had made her experience chaotic. I returned to the subconscious
to discover that I had been working with a surrogate subconscious -
a fake subconscious. The integrated parts still had trauma emotions
associated with them. The trauma emotions associated with the parts
caused a disturbance in Mary. While the surrogate subconscious was the
active personality, I asked the true subconscious if she could treat
this part. The subconscious signaled "No" with a thumb response.
I communicated with the subconscious by asking leading questions and
getting "Yes" and "No" answers. It is similar to
the game of twenty questions. I discovered the surrogate subconscious
was a programmed part. One of its activities was to repeat, "I
won't do it" continuously in the unconscious. This repetitive,
unconscious behavior caused a barrier for treatment. It complicated
the patient's behavior so treatment will not usually work. It's like
trying to do therapy while singing "Mary had a little lamb."
I reassured the subconscious that painful emotions motivated the program,
"I won't do it, I won't do it." The patient learned these
emotions from the trauma during the programming. I stressed that the
repeating response would become less motivated as she treated the trauma
emotions associated with the program. She said she would try to treat
the programmed part as I had previously requested. I waited while the
subconscious was doing the treatment and talked to the programmed part.
After several minutes, the surrogate said, "I'm beginning to feel
confused" and then within a minute, she gradually went sleep state;
my patients eyes closed and her head slumped. Mary switched into the
body, namely, became the active personality. She said spontaneously
that another fragment joined with her. Therapy continued.
Flexibility when treating with the subconscious
In a recent case, a patient came in complaining that she felt confused
after she exercised. She had stopped exercising for about ten days and
started feeling clearheaded. Conversation with her subconscious suggested
there was a part that was co-conscious in her conscious experience when
she was exercising that gave her the lingering confusion. I set up rapport
with all parts and was soon teaching the subconscious how to diagnose
and treat parts. I then ran into a barrier. I was not seeing any finger
responses. I deal with these barriers by assuming it is a part. My approach
is to set up rapport with the part and then heal the part. I told her
that any parts including the prebirth parts, the parts formed at birth,
the preverbal parts or any other traumatic parts were all members of
one personality. Trauma created the parts who seemed independent. They
had experience in the body that gave them a false sense of ownership
or fears about treatment. If they were all treated by neutralizing their
trauma emotions, they could join the Main Personality. They would then
experience more satisfaction in life and be able to protect themselves
more effectively. With this explanation, I was hoping to get permission
from this part and other parts to teach the subconscious how to treat
trauma memories. Through this process of educating and being respectful
to all parts and by answering their objections, all parts wanted treatment
and to join with the Main Personality.
After getting permission of the parts, I taught the subconscious to
locate the treatment points by tapping the points on myself. My demonstration
taught the subconscious how to treat traumatic emotion memories associated
with the trauma memories learned during the trauma experience. The subconscious
eventually signaled that she was able to treat a part who was co-conscious
with the patient and was the cause of her confusion. I asked the subconscious
to start this process and chatted lightly with the patient as the subconscious
continued to treat the part. After three or four minutes, the patient
said that she felt clearer. I asked the subconscious to signal with
a finger response when she finished. Within a few moments, the subconscious
signaled that she finished. The patient felt much clearer by the end
of the session. She later reported that she had no problems with confusion
after exercising.
Summary
A language process starts forming in utero and later becomes our subconscious.
By explaining how the subconscious and the personality formed, one can
get rapport with the subconscious and all aspects of the personality.
The subconscious is useful to direct the path of treatment, to help
create new ways to treat difficult issues, to organize treatment plans,
and to learn how to treat the effect of trauma. In addition, the subconscious
can learn how to treat negative experiences automatically and independently
of the Main Personality. The subconscious can treat memories stored
in different ways, negative beliefs, simple memories and life experiences.
The subconscious can apply these techniques to treat unknown trauma
in a person's history, self-limiting beliefs and all other traumatic
experiences and memories. While this form of treatment lacks support
from published research, it is effective for scores of patients treating
themselves, patients in my office and patients in the clinics in Latin
America.
The Process Healing Method is a treatment intervention that developed
out of my relationship with my patient's subconsciouses. To summarize
the process, the therapist, first, educates and works with all aspects
of the personality to convince the aspects to want to heal and join
with the Main Personality. This approach is both respectful to the patient
and makes later treatment easier. I call the process of getting parts
on the Treatment Team the Organizing Process. The goal is to get all
aspects of the personality to want to heal and join the treatment team.
During this process, the 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 in the Treatment
Process, the patient or therapist asks the subconscious to treat painful
or problematic issues.
This tale started in October 1991. By 1994, I taught the Process Healing
Method to my patients by modeling the tapping treatment process. At
first, I physically showed each of the acupressure treatment points
to the subconscious, point by point. Now, a 30-second metaphor, that
always works, teaches the treatment process. Chapter 3 described the
entire basic procedure getting all parts on the Treatment Team and teaching
the subconscious the treatment method. The procedure to get rapport
with the subconscious and all parts is routine. In Chapter 4, I give
detailed examples of many useful treatment interventions and aids. I
use these treatment interventions routinely with most all patients.
Chapter 5 will teach you how to treat parts and Chapter 6 gives ways
to treat personality issues.
The next chapter introduces the more complex features of memory, namely
memory structures and other constructs. These structures and constructs
resolve problematic behavior and unusual experiences in the patients
(Chapter 7). Fields may be esoteric and controversial but present barriers
often in my experience when using Process Healing. I give various interventions
for handling field phenomena in Chapter 8. The most recent development
is the use of the personal field (Chapter 9). The brain and body neural
activity creates a personal field that surrounds us. The notion of the
personal bioelectric field seems significant. It appears as if the subconscious
can work in the personal field to heal trauma in memory. The personal
field is also the means to communicate the therapist's treatment wisdom
to the patient. Chapter 10 presents protocols that are useful in treating
many emotional issues. Chapter 11 is the theory chapter.
The next chapter, Chapter 2, introduces and describes the theory and
procedure of Process Healing and a transcript of the first session of
The Process Healing
Click to
download the free how-to-do-it
Process Healing course (2000KB PDF file).
Go to Process Healing Course
(Rev. 02-09-04)
Copyright
© 1997-2004 Garry A. Flint, Ph.D. All
Rights Reserved.