A Theory and Treatment of Your Personality. Garry Flint
intervention. Soon the subconscious may learn to do it without your asking.
T: Subconscious, are there any parts that don’t want treatment?
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, are there any more parts that don’t want treatment? [Just checking.]
S: Yes.
I problem-solve by resolving the reasons for not wanting treatment and repeat the last question until I get a “No.” Now I can start treating the list of identified issues.
3. Phobias
Phobias are relatively easy to treat unless severe trauma causes the phobia. Parts or memory structures create phobic responses in the patient’s experience. Sometimes, beliefs contribute to phobias. Before treating the phobia, I ask the patient to visualize the situation to get some idea about how much pain the phobia causes. Sometimes I ask the patient to guess the intensity of the pain on a scale of 0 (low) to 10 (high). Here is how to treat a problematic phobia.
T: You are prepared to speak. Can you visualize talking to 100 people?
P: Yes.
T: Do you feel the fear?
P: Yes.
T: Focus on that fear. Subconscious, do you see the public speaking phobia?
S: Yes.
T: Can you treat the basis for the phobia?
S: No.
T: Do parts cause the phobia?
S: Yes.
T: Can you treat all the parts that cause this phobia, one after the other, in the correct order?
S: Yes.
I usually ask if the patient can feel the emotion decreasing while thinking about the phobia. Sometimes, the intensity of emotions stops decreasing, which means there is another intervention needed.
T: [Done] Are we finished with the phobia?
S: No.
T: Is there a structure of memories that helps cause this phobia that can be treated?
S: Yes.
T: Please treat the structure and when the structure falls apart, tag and treat each memory element from the structure in the correct order.
S: Yes.
T: [Done] Are you finished treating the phobia?
S: Yes.
T: Are there any self-limiting beliefs associated with the phobias?
S: Yes.
T: Can you treat the self-limiting beliefs until they are false and compose and strengthen self-empowering beliefs?
S: Yes.
T: Is there anything else to do with this phobia?
S: No.
The following is an example of a strategy using the treatment just completed on one issue to treat another issue. This strategy saves time.
T: Can you use the same phobia treatment with the height phobia?
S: Yes.
T: Please do it and indicate when you have finished or have a problem.
S: Yes.
The treatment of simple phobias usually works and demonstrates the capacity of the subconscious to treat painful issues. But with increased intensity of the trauma history causing the phobia, the complexity of the treatment increases. Phobias are not always easy to treat.
4. Emotions
All emotions can be approached directly, with the hope they will be easy to treat. This patient had a problem with anger intruding into his relationship with his wife and causing disagreements on the job. In a previous session, we treated some anger parts and asked the subconscious to tag any problematic parts or memories between sessions that come into the Active Experience. Here is the way I dealt with some of the remaining anger.
T: Subconscious, did you tag any parts that gave anger intrusions?
S: Yes.
T: Do these parts all want treatment?
S: Yes.
T: Can you treat those parts, one after the other, and use their content and emotions to try to activate other parts that give anger?
S: Yes.
The content and emotions ploy appears to speed up uncovering related parts.
T: [Wait] Are you done?
S: Yes.
T: Is it good to do a Massive Change History, a Change History of the Ego States and to treat Shadow Memories?
Shadow Memories are weak neural representations of a strong emotion that are learned simply by the activity of the strong emotion. Shadow Memories can maintain an emotion or behavior even though the primary trauma memory has been treated.
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, please do the Massive Change History and everything.
S: Yes.
While the results of the initial treatment of an emotional issue is usually experienced immediately, further treatment of other parts or memory structures that contribute to the issue is often necessary.
5. Panic attacks
As with many issues, panic attacks can be simple or complex; some are easy to treat and some are more difficult, depending on the origins. Parts or other memories with extreme anxiety are usually the cause of panic attacks. Even in more complex cases, I find I can at least reduce the frequency of attacks, even after just one session. Panic attacks may continue for several weeks because other causes of panic remain dormant. Although panic attacks can be complex, in most cases in which I have been persistent, panic attacks no longer occur.
T: Subconscious, do you see the cause of the panic attacks?
S: Yes.
T: Are parts causing the panic attacks?
S: Yes.
T: Subconscious, please treat the parts that are causing the panic attacks.
Ask about other parts and treat the parts that don’t want treatment with problem-solving strategies.
T: [Done] Subconscious, is there a structure of memories associated with panic attacks?
S: Yes.
T: Please treat the structure associated with panic attacks and tag all memory elements when the structure falls apart. Then treat the memory elements in the correct order.
S: Yes.
T: [Done] Are we done treating panic attacks today?
S: Yes.
I also inquire about beliefs, do the change-history interventions, and treat the Shadow Memories. Although panic attacks can be complex, in most cases the panic attacks no longer occur.
6. Depression
Many issues can cause depression. Write down all the issues believed to be causing the depression: for example, grief, loss, childhood trauma, impairment due to an accident, parental models, failure, etc. Each issue may have to be treated separately. I always try to treat depression directly because after treatment some of the causes don’t need treatment or have been partially treated. Parts, memory or system structures, beliefs, as with phobias, may cause depression.
S: Yes.
T: Can you see a structure associated with depression?