Emotion-image therapy (EIT) [analytical and effective]. Nikolay Linde
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our point of view all psychological and psychosomatic problems are caused by some chronic fixed negative emotions which at present may be quite groundless. As soon as you remove this fixed pathogenic emotion, all problems that have grown like shells on the initial ground will disappear. It is this that can explain such “miracles” made with the help of EIT as immediate cure if the right method is applied. The best illustration is the correction of psychosomatic problems. When fixation is removed, the pain goes away, breathing becomes free, complete relaxation comes, and the client feels an unusual surge of energy. But in order to apply the method correctly it is necessary to find the right point for applying it first that means the initial fixation point. You will read about it later. Now, however, we will give one example of such quick cure, though there will be many such examples ahead.
At one of the seminars I asked my students to show their work. One student asked to solve her psychosomatic problem. For two months, she has been suffering from constant pain in the back, which didn’t let her sleep well, the back hurt in any position of her body. She went to doctors but they failed to help her.
I asked her to make an image of this pain. She saw it as a very big spider sitting on her back. As a spider is usually the symbol of a man, I supposed that she had a serious problem with a man. It turned out that her friend is a drug addict and she keeps trying to save him from this addiction, but in vain. She tries to break up their relations but for some reason can’t get rid of him. We tried different methods to free her from the presence of the spider on her back but nothing helped to save her from the harmful emotional dependence.
She realized that she would not be able to save him that she sacrifices her health and her life, but for some reason she couldn’t let him go. Then I offered her to imagine that the spider is sitting on a chair, sit on this chair and become this spider in her mind after that on his behalf answer the question: “Does he want to be saved and brought on the back to some place where he doesn’t intend to go?”
“I don’t want to get where she is dragging me, what has she taken into her head?”– replied the girl with somewhat rough male intonations. Replying as the spider the girl understood that in actual fact he didn’t want to be saved that’s why he resisted. At this very moment she could let the spider do to be more exact it disappeared from her back by itself, and the pain in the back went away too. That evening she broke up with this narcomaniac. In some time, she met another man married him a child was born she is happy. Since that time, her back didn’t hurt [at least during four following years]. But she still remembers the main question that I asked her. She told me this story four years after the séance which I had forgotten already. The séance lasted not more than 20 minutes.
COMMENTARY. It is clear that the student couldn’t cut agonizing relationship because of the wrongly understood feeling of responsibility toward the young man, she hoped for a miracle didn’t want to be accountable for his further degradation. That is why she sincerely didn’t make use of the methods offered her earlier. After speaking on behalf of the spider she understood that he didn’t want to saved and his further degradation is determined by his own will and she is not responsible. She realized that she was carrying him on her back against his will.
This direct realization which couldn’t be achieved before by any arguments of a physician, made it possible for her to let this man go and stop straining her back to save him. That’s why the pain in the back passed at once and never came back. She could part with this man, get rid of emotional dependence, truly refuse from the wrong feeling of duty which fixed the problem situation and caused the pain in the back to be more exact in the shoulder girdle. We can refer this problem both to the area of psychosomatics and to the area of emotional dependence. Both problems are difficult tasks for traditional therapy.
If we can change the state with the help of EIT the needed reactions come by themselves. This is such a great surprise for some clients that they begin to suspect that they were hypnotized. After a week of successful séance one of my clients started to ask me with some prejudice why in a relevant critical situation he behaved not in his usual way but in a new way, which surprised him and troubled. I explained that his initial state had changed, so he himself produces new reactions and if he was pleased with them. Yes, these reactions pleased him, but he was surprised that they were produced as if by themselves, not by his deliberate choice and not after some thinking but just by themselves. I explained again that sincere reactions meant that he had really changed, and that was good, but I am afraid he didn’t understand this logic and wasn’t pleased.
So you can and should work with the emotional state itself helping not only understand what caused it but transforming it into a positive form.
7. EMOTIONAL STATES
Some emotional states are kept in one’s psyche for years and even decades. It was Sigmund Freud who pointed out that all events and feelings are preserved in one’s subconscious part of our memory in the present tense irrespective of how long ago something happened. Emerged once emotional states continue determining the perception of reality, thoughts and behavioral reactions of a person independently from his consciousness. Because of that a person says that he can’t do anything with himself, even though he realizes that he acts inadequately and has feelings which cannot be explained rationally. Our theoretical premise is that it is negative emotions that cause any psychic and psychosomatic disturbance.
The basis of human psychological world is his essence.
This notion is difficult to define, but this is what we really are, our essence. Carl Jung called it selfhood, you may call it your soul or your deep Ego, but we prefer the term essence. The essence predetermines main capabilities of a person is the initial point that unrolls into his potential. The essence has its layers, levels and parts, but normally is a whole, well– integrated formation. Any damage of the essence can lead to serious psychic disturbances even to psychic disorders. In such cases the essence seems to break up and its parts start fighting with each other. There is a supposition that in case of schizophrenia a person rejects himself fully, totally which is the reason of wrong perception of reality [delirium, hallucinations].
Figure 1 shows the scheme explaining these ideas
When disturbances are not too bad depressions, panic attacks, neurosis of obtrusiveness, psychosomatic diseases may occur. For example, a person may reject his Inner Child or some “bad” part of himself. He rejects this part but it comes back to him again and again and he lives in constant fight with himself. Different problems of personal identity, for instance, sexual identity also refer to essence disturbances. See some examples further.
The essence can give rise to [or maintain] a certain set of emotional states. According to circumstances these states are more or less probably switched on. A well– wishing essence will hardly produce angry and aggressive states. A depressed essence can’t produce tender, playful and joyful states.
But even if the essence is intact and undamaged the psyche can keep some negative emotional states, which then may act as self– sufficient inner causes that bring about neurotic or psychosomatic disturbances. The theory explaining the appearance of chronic negative emotional states as a result of a psychodynamic conflict will be given later. These same conflicts may damage a person’s essence, when for some reason a person revolts against himself, separates from himself, refuses from himself and even loses himself.
We draw your attention to the fact that the offered model presupposes active behavior coming from deep psyche to the outside reality, and not just reactive behavior only reflecting reality reacting to outer events.
8. LEVELS OF AN INDIVIDYAL AND THE TASKS OF EIT
Both clients and doctors may approach treatment tasks from different premises and at different levels, which depends on theories that the doctor believes in consciously or subconsciously as well as on his aims. A personality can reveal itself ae different levels: the level of behavior, of thinking, of insight [understanding] of states and of essence. Everything starts from the deeper level of essence and gradually unrolls to the level of behavior. Behavior leads to some results according to which a person makes some conclusions.