R. Scott Shanks, Jr.
So. The bit on Saturday bore fruit, and succinct fruit at that.
- I assess duties and make decisions dispassionately
- Afterwards I determine my emotional needs
- If they are in conflict with the recently made decision, I aggressively question my worth as a person
That’s as succinct a syllogistic horror as anyone can expect. 48 hours have not wrought new insights, clarity, or sudden bursts of inspiration. I understand the problem fully, and sometimes can work around it.
This hypnotherapy stuff has had immediate and far-reaching, damned near comprehensive, results. That isn’t, in my experience, how any kind of mental hygiene works. Normally, one talks things out until several things fall into place:
This is, necessarily, a drawn out process. One has to define the world, define oneself, reformulate based on hypothesis, and then change with no more motivation than a willingness to see something new happen — which usually (again, my experience) means gritting one’s teeth and carrying through the new actions without feeling motivated to do so.
And, natch, it doesn’t work terribly efficiently, people being ineffective at concision. A lack of accurate or complete concept at any step will cause trickle-down faults.
I imagine hypnotherapy varies widely from provider to provider, and possibly from application to application. But. What was done with me was asking me to set a scene from my actual past. This was analyzed briefly for relevance and proximity to my issue-origins. When the scene was revealed as not actually terribly close to the origin, we went further back, finding related scenes closer in, and so forth. Eventually a scene came to light in which formulation of behavior was still taking place, and then a fictitious scene was improvised wherein I was asked to step in as my adult self and redirect my younger self.
I’m fairly good at visualization and role-playing, so this was an actual experience for me. The result was that I actually experienced a rewriting of what actually happened, and, without necessarily thinking much about it, carried forward an altered experience of events that I shuffled into my existing life, which provided slightly altered reactions to current events, and when new actions were called for, slightly different motivations were present to let me make changes with greater ease.
What, I wondered, was the difference between the two methods? Both found the situation, the stimuli, the reactions, the new actions.
One was explicit. One was subtextual and inclusive by implied relation, based on a gestalt.
I think I get it.
Talking things out, thinking them out, is only as useful as the thinking. Acting something out includes many factors that are not necessarily consciously considered, and so factors that are not known, not acknowledged, or poorly understood while acknowledged as significant are all worked into the solution. Everything, every action in the scene became symbolic. The symbols bore the meaning they did because I assigned the symbols and took their meaning they had without my having to formulate it in words, thereby granting each symbol and symbolic act greater bandwidth and greater impact because of that.
Magic.
Good stuff. I approve.
Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry
Interesting. New things keep popping up. Nothing traumatic or world-shaking, but sort of … pervasive.
Apparently, what I’ve done is go to the foundation of many of my behaviors, lifted the edifice, and pulled out the chunk of gravel that was caught under the sill. When you put the building back, it’s the same building, but just that tiny bit more level, more stable, and when you stand on the dining room table and dump out a crate of ping pong balls, they will bounce in slightly different patterns than they used to. And the plumbing is less prone to leaking.
Erm. Perhaps not the most facile metaphor, but one gets the idea.
I had session 2 last night. I noticed just as many — or more — things about the basis of my behaviors, and was more involved in the forward motion (since I understood the process better), but there was nothing … well, nothing world-shaking or traumatic. I think I may have found an awareness of the one or two bits in my head that relate to me going all stupid periodically, and what I have left is the settling of everything that used to rest on those, and the trickle-down effects that will continue to manifest as I, ah, *waves hands about, looking for a word*, re-collate myself.
This sort of business is difficult to relate, I’m finding.
In any case. Beneficial. Useful. Clarifying. Empowering (however much I hate the overcommon usage of that word).
In conclusion (to paraphrase Libby, that darlingest of rock-stars), I have eaten my inner child, I am Iron Man, and my head is a light bulb — all of which, on reflection, makes me wonder if it is the surreal aspect of this approach that makes it so much easier to move forward.
Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry
I’m just going to name anything to do with this sorting-out process related to the hypotherapy “Trilby (variable)”. It’s likely to be highly internally oriented, poorly explained, and easily skippable.
So.
I’m wondering how much of my current amiable aimlessness has to do with the fact that, until recently, the majority of my behaviors were determined by pathological means. Take away the pathology and I can no longer recognize a motivation — that is, I can’t recognize a motivation that doesn’t show up with several unseemly friends, lightly slapping a billy club against its leg while it asks me to come play.
This would seem to be a training issue, if so. I can do that. I’m a fair wonder at learning new patterns.
Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry
Years ago, I decided that anything I wrote about specifically in a bitchy tone on more than three occasions, I had to do something or shut up about. I’ve been okay with me yacking about very closely similar things, if some tiny aspect is different, or if I have tried something – anything – to change the patterns. However, over the years, it has become evident that there are a couple of things that I am stuck on.
I did what I usually do; I wrote about them, I talked about them, I came up with deft syllogisms of emotional health and created plans of breathtaking scope based on them…which work as long as I follow them.
But I don’t follow them.
Something Ain’t Right.
When I’m particularly down on myself, I declare that if, for instance, I sabotage my writing time routinely for years and years, I probably don’t want to write and don’t have the guts to say that. But I’ve been there, and I like it – love it, sometimes. Besides, it isn’t just the writing. It’s the writing. And movies I want to see. And desserts I’d like to have. And sex I’d like to have. And sleep I’d like to have.
Yeah, something’s broken when you are willing to give up on sex and sleep for the pleasure of feeling like hell, and you can only stop for a while — as long as there isn’t a huge emotional backlog that breaks me.
I have honed it down to two things that all other problems are based on:
1. What I want/need does not have the priority to me that what others want/need, and I don’t like that but won’t change it
2. I will, at the drop of a hat, judge me as a bad person who doesn’t deserve Christmas when I fail to meet whatever lofty ideal I’ve set for my behaviors, my thoughts (wait a minute, you can’t always control your –), and my emotions (ALL RIGHT, THAT’S JUST STUPID)
Yeah. Okay. Something is pretty broken in there.
I have been reluctant to take up therapy. I’ve done it before, and it was wonderfully helpful. I have high regard for Vicki, my therapist, and the work that we did. It probably permitted me to change enough to be ecstatically happy in my marriage. But therapy is, in general, talking and thinking and sometimes taking drugs. I’m already doing the first two, and don’t think I have a chemical problem, so don’t want a chemical answer.
What’s that leave? Deus ex machina? Walk it off, soldier, and get back in ranks? Professional floggings?
I chose hypnosis. That was last night.
…
I have decided not to relate everything that took place in 90 minutes of work, not until I’ve fully digested it. I know me, and I tell my stories to the audience I’m in front of…and sometimes cleave unto truthiness rather than fact. I’d rather get full value out of this than talk about myself.
And now we know how badly I want to change. I’m willing to pay $190 and not tell anyone what happened. This might be unprecedented.
It’s a bit early to tell, but initial indicators seem to point toward good things having happened in my head. I shall report in fullness when I have fullness to report.
Crossposted from Epinephrine & Sophistry