Healing and our Brains, Moving to a stress-free reality

Stressed out from working too hard?

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Did you ever wake up one day and realize that you’ve been working way too hard at something? That there is a much better way to accomplish the exact same thing, with much less effort and struggle?

This waking up happened when I was listening to a recording of a relationship therapist talking about how he gets people back on track. He mentioned that they have to “do the work” and how it took a lot of commitment, and one had to be in this “for the long haul”. I was not exactly thrilled by this labour-intensive approach, to say the least.

Overall, his approach was one which contained a lot of concepts that I hear commonly promoted:

– success is the result of persistence and much hard work,
– having a better life takes a lot of effort,
– changing your behaviours requires serious, long term work, and
– the process of personal change takes place over a long time.

My well-considered, totally scientific, and peer-reviewed reply to these concepts is “phooey”. Now, before you think I’ve jumped ship into the camp of “all you need is to think positive thoughts, say some affirmations and invoke the all-powerful Law of Attraction” crowd, relax. Having created a couple of rather successful companies in my former life as an entrepreneur, I know from personal experience (and a fair amount of related research) that neither the “work long and hard for many years” nor the “magic wishing bean” formula is what is really happening when people get more of what they want in their lives.

In a nutshell, what I have observed is that when people are able to achieve personal and business success, it is a result of several factors, including:

– doing the right things in the right order at the right time
– making appropriate mid-course corrections when needed
– having a vision of where they want to go, and some solid plans on how to get there
– being mainly free of any internal blocks to success.

This last factor is a key one, as anyone who has self destructive bad habits and/or beliefs will not be able to succeed, no matter how much effort they invest. They will continually find ways to stop themselves from obtaining that success, often at the last minute. More information on this can be found here.

The importance of altering the influence of self-sabotaging habits, thoughts and beliefs is not new – people have been talking about this for many years. In fact, one of the most famous books of the past century was Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, a work with much influence on many of the modern approaches to self improvement and success. While it certainly contains many useful and empowering concepts, this book, and much of the self-improvement industry, concentrates mainly on cerebral changes without giving much consideration for the rest of our being. It is sort of like trying to improve a car’s ride by properly inflating one of the four tires, and neglecting the other three. It is possible that the car will drive a little better with that one properly inflated tire, but the goal of a better ride is unlikely to be achieved if the other tires are under or over inflated. The same thing happens when we only focus on improving our minds, and neglect to take care of our bodies and our hearts.

The other potential problem that arises when one focuses exclusively on improving one’s thought processes in order to institute personal or professional change is that the likelihood of disappointment is higher – all the eggs are in one basket. If those efforts to improve thought processes are not successful, then one could feel more like a failure than a success.

Must… Work… Harder…

There is a phenomenon in which people often re-double their efforts when what they are doing does not produce the results they want. They see no other option than to “try harder”.  I was in that place at times during my life, so I know what frustration can arise when one tries and tries and still doesn’t reach a goal.

The paradigm guiding these sorts of approaches can be expressed as

Awareness + Effort = Success

We become aware of something such as a bad habit that we have, and we then expend a lot of effort trying to either suppress it or convert that habit into something useful. Maybe we put up notes around the house or office, reminding ourselves to not do “X” or to always do “Y”. Maybe we create some home-brew aversion therapy, punishing ourselves each time we catch ourselves doing something we decided not to do any more. Or maybe we tell ourselves what we want to be, trying to visualize it and repeating these affirmations day after day. And, to add to our self-inflicted labours, we analyze and study relentlessly our habits, beliefs and thoughts, trying to figure our why we do “X”. No matter what particular approach we adopt under this paradigm, the underlying principle is the same: change takes much effort and time and is a struggle.

For many years, I laboured under that illusion, like so many others. I “worked’ at change. I used many techniques and “tools of the personal development trade” to try to shape my thoughts, to attempt to convert them, to instill what I wanted in place of what was there. It was a lot of work. It was often a struggle, and it generated disappointment any time I was not able to advance as fast or as fully as I wanted.

The funny thing is that I was following the script that so many personal growth systems claim is the answer: work at altering your thought patterns to match those of the successful people and you will become successful. What is rarely, if ever, mentioned is that this sort of struggle against our existing beliefs and patterns not only wears on us, it is expensive in terms of emotional and physic energy. It is almost like having a tug-of-war between your two arms – how can that result in a real victory?

Fortunately, all this “work” taught me something very valuable – success was not obtained through the sole application of awareness and effort and that struggling with myself was actually counter-productive.   I discovered that rather than trying to use force and willpower to get myself somewhere, I could get there doing something rather different – I could relax.

Let go and flourish

After trying so many of the effort-based approaches, I came across a path that is so simple and yet so effective. This paradigm can be expressed as:

Awareness Deepened + Intentional Release = Possibility = Success

In this paradigm, when we become aware of something about ourselves that we want to be different, such as a habit or belief that does not serve us, we deepen into a full awareness of the experiences around that situation. We notice how we are when we are involved with it, paying attention to our body sensations, our feelings and emotions, our thoughts, etc. Having noticed what goes on for us, we then intentionally release any of the emotional and mental glue that holds that unresourceful habit, belief or thought in place. At the beginning, it may be a bit hard to figure out how to release this glue, and that is where a system like AER can help a lot. Once we intentionally release any emotional and/or mental glue, it suddenly becomes possible to consider all sorts of new possible approaches to our projects and even to our beliefs and worldview. Projects which were hard become easier. Motivation is easier to find and resistance to success and change lessen, often dramatically.

For example, if I was considering applying for a new job, and I was very nervous about it, the old paradigm would have me trying to psyche myself up for the interview, perhaps cajoling myself into a sense of false confidence.  I might have talks with myself, rationalizing my fear in an attempt to minimize them. I might repeat over and over some sort of mantra-like affirmation such as “I am worthy of this job”. These are all common coping mechanisms being applied to try to wrestle feelings into submission using mental processes. This could be an exhausting tug-of-war, with much expenditure of effort and time and great potential for stress to be stored up from the process.

With the Intentional Releasing paradigm, one would simply start by noticing any tension in the body that arose upon contemplating the interview, set the intention to allow that normal human feeling to flow out, and then use an integral release technique such as AER to facilitate the release of the tension. If anything else arose, such as thoughts of self-doubt, these too would be released in turn until all the “stuff” that was coming up and bothering us when we contemplated the job interview was released out of our system. This releasing process is not one of struggle or effort, but one of allowing normal accumulated stress and feelings to flow out. Instead of feeling worn down by the effort, one feels relieved to have let go of the blocks.

While there are a few things that can slow down this release process, such as any attachment to beliefs and feelings, etc., most people quickly distinguish between themselves and their feelings, thoughts and beliefs, and are quite happy to let those that do not serve them any longer to flow out.

So, if you have been trying hard to shape yourself into a better person or achieve a challenging goal and have found it a tiring and stressful process, consider using the new paradigm of releasing instead.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved

Moving to a stress-free reality

So, how does that make you feel?

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OK, I admit it, the title is a trick question. But don’t be surprised if you got onto that track of thinking that “something makes you feel a certain way.” These days, it is the thing to do, promoted by therapists, counselors, moms and dads, teachers, popular music, etc., etc.

And, crazy as it might seem at first blush, that line of thinking is just plain silly. (I actually had some much less nice words to describe this concept, but good sense got the better of me.)

We unfortunately live in times of little personal responsibility. For quite a few years now, we’ve been encouraged to blame others for our actions and now for our feelings. We blame our misbehavior on our early years, our lack of nurturing as a babe in swaddling, our absent parent. Heaven forbid that we might have something to do with our actions today – no, it is far easier to blame it all on something or someone in the past.

A quick Google search turned up thousands and thousands of references to songs which have the words “you make me feel”. Actually, I fudged – there were more than 3 million hits on that phrase! Listening to modern music is like being brainwashed – endless references to how someone made someone else feel good, bad, upset, ecstatic, and more.

The expression “that made me feel…” has crept into our language so much that we take it for granted. And, like a mind-virus, it has taken over some of our critical thinking functions. Instead of understanding that our feelings arise inside us, we are constantly telling ourselves that somehow someone or something outside us is causing us to feel a certain way. Did you just hear that “boggle” sound? That was my mind…

Some people might think this is just nitpicking over language. However, there are lots of studies that show that we are influenced by the language we hear and the language that we use.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany

The current propaganda is that our feelings are generated and controlled by others. This means that we are not responsible for them, and so when we act inappropriately as a result of our feelings, we can always blame it on someone else: “They made me so mad I punched the wall.”

Say this sort of thing to yourself often enough, and you’ll start to believe it. Instead of owning your feelings, you’ll spend your time blaming others for how you feel (and act), and end up feeling … powerless and stressed. How else could one feel when someone else can make you feel a certain way at their whim?

Take back your power

The funny thing is that all you need to do is take ownership for your feelings and you get all that power back. Rather than saying that someone else made you feel a certain way, you state the more accurate truth: they said/did X and as a response, you felt Y.

Let’s try this on:

  • Joe said that I was lazy and I felt mad.
  • Jill made a face at me and I felt sad.
  • Billy paid little attention to me and I felt ignored and hurt
  • Mary said I was silly and I felt ashamed

and so on.

The key thing here is that by stating the actual relationship between the exterior event (actions or words spoken to us) and our inner world response, we start to see how we are not subject to an outside power, although we can be influenced by exogenous (outside of us) elements. Notice that a cause -> effect relationship is not being used here. Instead, we state that something happened and then how we felt. This differentiation is also particularly important, as our response/reaction to an external event can vary tremendously.  One day we can be very upset by something and the next we can shrug it off, depending upon our mood, our level of distraction, our hormonal levels, etc.

The other thing that can really affect our response to a situation is how much emotional pain we still carry from prior similar situations. If we carry little pain, either from not having had much history of this sort of situation or by having released that pain using a technique such as AER, then our response is likely to be moderate. If we have lots of accumulated pain, we are more likely to get really upset and or hurt.

Talking and thinking about how we respond to situations reinforces our sense of ownership of our responses. No longer are we blaming others for how we feel – we are owning those feelings and noticing them arise in us. And, as a result, we can also own our actions. We get back our power in relation to our feelings, and we can actually have less stress, since we are not in a position of having handed over our power to others.

“Man’s unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden.   Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”
Viktor E. Frankl

So, the next time someone tells you that you made them feel a certain way, ask them where exactly on them is this magic button to make that feeling appear – it may be on their elbow… Tell them you want to make a note of it, so you can use it in the future. 🙂

Yes, you’ll probably get a puzzled look in response, and maybe you’ll have to thank them for giving you so much power over them, so they start to see what is really happening.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved.

Healing and our Brains

Brain Plasticity and AER

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Recent research into how our brains adapt to inputs from the environment, rewiring themselves to reflect that to which they are exposed, has triggered some thoughts in my own cranium on how my AER Stress Reduction technique can be used even more effectively. (If you want to know more about this adaptive process of our brain, do a search for “Brain Plasticity” and you should get close to 1 million hits. Happy Reading! OK, that might be a bit much to do this afternoon, so instead, visit this site to start.)

If we consider that the neural networks of brain matter that store old memories and feelings can be influenced by the use of meditative techniques such as AER, not only will those memories and feelings be greatly reduced in intensity, but the opportunity then arises to supplant them with more positive feelings. The use of affirmations, for example, will then have a fighting chance of provoking change, as the resistance presented by old memories and feelings will be much lessened. Normally, affirmations only work when there is no emotional blockage getting in the way. Telling yourself that you live with abundance when you have trouble paying the bills each month rarely does more than frustrate you – nobody is being fooled.

When I first started writing about this concept on my Real-Personal-Growth.com web site, I knew it would work (having already used this approach to help lots of people), but the scientific evidence had not yet been published. Now, it is most gratifying to see the research coming out to validate this approach to improving one’s emotional wellness.

Getting an Affirmation to work

A positive affirmation can help steer you onto a better path, so long as there is no emotional issue (trauma, dysfunctional belief, etc.) which is contrary to that affirmation. If such an issue exists, then one needs to first clear the “pathway” in the brain (which includes the brain in your head, the one in your heart and the one in your gut. If  that “pathway”of the emotional response, or what some might call a rut, is not “smoothed out”, then no matter what one tries to do (like align oneself with an affirmation), then that pathway will be followed as the default route.

This is where AER (Awareness Expression Resolution) comes in. The AER process can significantly speed up the natural human process of releasing emotional “stuff” which is no longer of any use to us. This “stuff” can include residues of traumatic events, stress, anxiety, grief, sadness, anger and other feelings/emotions which get in the way of us having a peaceful life. Humans are not designed to hold onto these feelings for a long time and traditional societies often had processes to enable us to release them. Modern society has become fixated on convenience, and as a result, instead of releasing these feelings once they have run their course, we “take a pill” and muffle them until they come out as heart attacks, depression, apathy, etc. These “pills” which provide some temporary relief or distraction are not only prescription medications, but also plenty of others which are readily available in your neighborhood: chocolate, ice cream, fudge, alcohol, nicotine, TV, extended exercise, etc.

There are many ways to release emotional “stuff” and stress, and all effective ones work on the basis of what we humans do naturally – so long as we do not constantly re-activate the feelings and there-by retrace their neural pathways, they will fade away over time. Much of psychotherapy, for example, is based upon this repeated limited exposure to unresourceful feelings and thoughts, with just enough time spent on them to allow the feelings to surface briefly and then fade a little more. Eventually, they have faded to the point that they no longer present a problem to the client.

When I started researching trauma and how it could be dealt with effectively, I noticed that most therapeutic modalities did two things:

– they gave clients limited exposure to the trauma so as to not overwhelm the client (and the practitioner) and

– they stopped the releasing process once the feelings had reached a “manageable” level.

Most modalities, other than those which are more body-centric (somatic), tend to involve “thinking” about the feelings associated with an issue rather than actually experiencing them fully. Research has shown that different parts of our head brain get activated when we think than when we feel. If one spends time thinking about the issue, it is natural that some of the feeling associated will surface. However, the amount of feeling that arises is typically only enough to allow for a very limited release. This explains, in part, why talk therapy can take a long time to produce results – there is only a little releasing happening in each 50 minute session, as most of the time only the thinking part of the head brain is activated.

There are therapeutic modalities which invoke much deeper experiences of the feeling and these often produce a faster releasing of the stored feelings. Even with these, though, there is often a lot of thinking activity being used – the client might have to repeat certain phrases or tell some sort of story/dialogue or do other mental exercises. Based on my experiments, most of this verbalizing and thinking actually gets in the way of the releasing process as often as it helps. People who have come to me to experience the AER process after trying to let go of issues and traumas using a variety of modalities report that they got distracted by all the steps and talking involved in some modalities.

AER – Awareness Expression Resolution is actually one of the simplest approaches to releasing that I have seen. It takes the normal human releasing process and “boosts” it by using intention, full awareness and full presence of the stored issue, together with the now well accepted advantages of using contact on body meridians.

Since AER is designed to work as an accompaniment to the natural human releasing process, people find it works well even if they get the steps out of order or forget to do a step – so long as they have the intention to release, all the rest of the AER process serves to assist that intention become a reality. AER is not a process that involves a lot of willpower and effort to release. It involves a surrender to what it is, with little thinking about it and a full experience of what is.

We all know how to release emotional “stuff” and we do it all the time – “time heals all wounds”. It is our modern addiction to convenience and pain-free living that has caused us to do everything but experience some feelings fully and then release them fully.

AER just boosts that process for us. I’ve seen people let go in 10 minutes of the trauma of having had bombs fall around them.

What is the role of affirmations?

One does not “need’ affirmations, per se. They can be a good way to enhance our lives by pointing toward where we want to be. If you want to use any of the many affirmation processes out there, AER can truly enhance that experience and make it more effective, by helping clear the neural pathway for the affirmation to take hold. This also applies for any of the Law of Attraction systems you may be considering.

Who can use AER?

AER is a process that anyone can do by themselves. It is quick and easy to learn. I plan to put together some training material in the coming weeks – a PDF manual, an MP3 recording and a video. All will be available for a modest sum.

While it is a good idea to have someone properly trained facilitate your first AER session, just like having someone guide you when you learn to ride a bicycle, it is not essential.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved

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