5447700 achieving emotional control by psycholex

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HOW TO ACHIEVE EMOTIONAL CONTROL

By Psycholex

INTRODUCTION

In this report, I will present some of the most powerful ways to gain control over your

own emotions. For most of us, our emotions seem to take over automatically,

influencing how we think and how we behave, and consequently, how we conduct our

lives. You can vastly increase your personal power by imposing more and more

conscious control over your emotional states. Furthermore, your personal power tends

to decrease to the extent that you indulge in negative emotions. Negative emotions,

which have a biological usefulness, are largely destructive in modern humans living

in our artificially enhanced environments. I might also add that many of us habitually

abdicate control of our negative emotions without ever realizing that doing so

amounts to a tremendous waste of our lives.

OVERVIEW

The following is a brief overview of the main elements of emotional control covered

in this report. By integrating and implementing this material you can profoundly

increase your control over your own emotions.

Brain physiology. Learning how your brain works is an important aspect of

emotional control. Once you realize that emotions are largely an automatic function of

the human brain, it is much easier to learn how to begin controlling them. Personal

growth and evolution is mostly a matter of exerting more control over our reflexes.

Reading this report will give you a rudimentary understanding of the physiologicalorigins of emotions.

Inappropriate diet and hormonal imbalances may affect your emotions adversely.

Automatic thoughts. In many instances our negative emotional responses are directly

preceded by automatic thoughts. These automatic thoughts remain hidden for most

people. Unless you train yourself to look for these thoughts, you will probably be

unaware of them. This report contains instructions for learning how to monitor your

automatic thoughts.

Identification. When we identify ourselves with our negative emotional states, it isdifficult to control them. By identifying with our negative emotions, we open up the

possibility (and likelihood) that we will become dominated by them. Emotional

control is essentially a matter of disidentifying with or detaching ourselves from our

negative emotions.

Emotional control techniques and therapies. Freeze-framing is a simple yet powerful

technique for disengaging from negative emotions. When you freeze-frame, you shift

out of gear and into neutral.

Thought field therapy enables you to access the deepest, most fundamental underlyingcause of all negative emotions. Major debilitating emotions such as depression,


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anxiety and phobias can be quickly eliminated by

correcting the problem at the fundamental level.

Idenics is a self-development technology which enables

you to rid yourself of unwanted mental or emotional

conditions.

At the end of this report I suggest specific steps for

beginning to achieve emotional control.

THE TRIUNE BRAIN

In order to increase your control over your emotions, it is helpful to understand

emotions from the viewpoint of a brain specialist. This will help you to understand the

origins of our emotions and why we have them. The advantage of this is the same of

any type of self-knowledge: the more you become aware of the mechanical or

automatic aspects of yourself, the more you are able to increase your control over

them.

Although we often refer to our brains as a single, solid unit, it is clear that this is not

an accurate description. Rather, our brains consist of a conglomerate of various sub-

brains and sections, all interconnected. Dr. Paul D. MacLean, a prominent brain

researcher, has developed a model of brain structure which he calls the "triune brain."

In other words, humans have not one brain but three. (Actually, even this is an

oversimplification; but this model has the advantage of displaying our evolutionary

heritage.) MacLean states that the human brain "amounts to three interconnected

biological computers," with each biocomputer having "its own special intelligence, its

own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space, its own memory, motor, and other

functions." Each of the three brains corresponds to a major evolutionary development

and are categorized as follows: the reptilian brain, the old mammalian brain and the

new mammalian brain. MacLean illustrates this point facetiously when he points out

that when a psychiatrist asks his patient to lie down on the couch, he is asking him to

stretch alongside a horse and a crocodile.

According to the triune model of the brain, evolution has simply added new sub-

brains to preexisting ones like a man who keeps building additional structures onto an

old house. However, to continue with the analogy, with each new addition to the

house the physical structure of the older components were altered or modified to some

extent. In other words, the reptile brain in humans is not exactly the same as the brainof a lizard. That is not to say we havent retained any reptilian functions in our brains;

we most certainly have. MacLean has shown that our reptile brains play a major role

in our aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual and social hierarchies.

In The Dragons of Eden, after describing the characteristic behaviors of the reptile

brain which Ive just listed above, Carl Sagan says, "This seems to me to characterize

a great deal of modern human bureaucratic and political behavior." Bureaucratic

behavior is "controlled at its core" by the reptilian brain, hence we observe coercion

and physical violence, territorial and jurisdictional claims, political rituals such as the

presidential motorcade, and the social hierarchies for which bureaucratic

organizations are notorious. Sagan does, however, believe there is hope for the human


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Now, it is important to keep in mind that in humans, although our reptile brains are

fully functional, the various parts of the brain are all interconnected and,

consequently, influence one another. Next, we take a look at the old mammalian brain,

also known as the limbic system.

The Limbic SystemThe old mammalian brain, or the limbic system, is sandwiched between the R-

complex and the new mammalian brain. (See diagram above.) This brain is about 60

million years old and is far more sensitive and sophisticated than the R-complex.

The limbic system is much concerned with the emotions. Brain physiologists have

discovered that the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure located in the limbic

system, plays a major role in both aggression and fear. When the amygdala of a placid

domestic animal is stimulated electrically, the animal is roused into a high degree of

fear or frenzy. Conversely, if the amygdala of a naturally ferocious animal is

surgically removed, it becomes docile and will even tolerate being petted.

The limbic system also seems to be the origin of altruistic behaviors.

Says Carl Sagan, "Much in animal behavior substantiates the notion that strong

emotions evolved chiefly in mammals and to a lesser extent in birds. The attachment

of domestic animals to humans is, I think, beyond question. The apparent sorrowful

behavior of many mammalian mothers when their young are removed is well-known.

One wonders just how far such emotions go. Do horses on occasion have glimmerings

of patriotic fervor? Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy?

What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate

with us?"

As a biocomputer, the old mammalian brain contains a much greater number of

programs than its predecessor, allowing it a far wider range of response. In addition,

the limbic system plays a major part in the generation of our emotions; in fact, we

could call it our "emotion brain."

The Neocortex

The newest brain, the neocortex or new mammalian brain, has only been around for a

few million years. In humans the neocortex is also the largest of the three brains

accounting for about five-sixths of the entire brain.

In order to see what role the neocortex plays in our emotional responses we need to

back up a little. The R-complex is essentially a survival brain; it is capable of only a

handful of behaviors. The limbic system is capable of a much wider range of

behaviors, especially those concerning the emotions. As we have already seen, a

component of the limbic system, the amygdala, plays a major role in fear and rage.

The limbic system is largely responsible for the resetting of various bodily systems

during our emotional reactions.

But in order for me to react to something with fear, I need to perceive or interpretthatsituation as warranting a fearful response. A part of my brain needs to say: "If youve

ever had the need to be afraid, it is right now!" If I am walking along the street andsuddenly encounter a street gang wielding baseball bats, before I can feel afraid, I


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need to interpret this situation as a threat. By the same token, if I had been informed

by someone that I would come across life-sized puppets in the form of a street gang, I

would feel no fear at all; for I now interpret the situation as non-threatening. It is the

job of the neocortex to detect patterns and interpret the "meanings" of situations.

The importance of this interpretation process will be discussed further in a latersection on cognitive psychology. There we will see that many of us make the mistake

in assuming that events and circumstances directly cause our emotional states. We

forget about the cognitive process of interpretation which comes between the event

and the emotion.

Shifting Down to Our Lower Brains

According to Hart, it is the process of resetting the biases and preparing the organism

for a change in activity which constitutes emotion. For the most part this is obviously

true. If I suddenly find myself face-to-face with a wild bear, in order to escape, I need

to instantaneously reset various bodily systems and put myself into the "emergency,

run like hell!" mode.

Says Hart: "Emotions involve the human brain at all levels. To oversimplify, the

oldest brain does the body resetting, the middle brain gives the orders, and the new

brain provides complex and detailed analysis of the situation and gives permission for

or inhibits the emotion. But the new brain, the cerebral cortex and its associated

pathways, does not always win. It can be temporarily shunted out of the decision

making as older, simpler circuits take over. A suitable term for this is downshifting."

When we downshift, full use of our new brains is suspended and more control is given

to our lower brains. One can readily see how this can become problematic. When we

become upset or are in a negative emotional state, we turn over the controls to our

lower brains and the consequence is something weve all experienced many times: we

cant think clearly, our thinking becomes muddled, as if someone has thrown a bucket

of mud on the windshield of our car.

Under any kind of threat we tend to downshift. The reason for this should be clear: in

many serious, threatening situations we are required to take immediate action. We

confront a wild bear and we make an instantaneous decision to run. The lower brains

work well in these kinds of situations; they were designed to make quick decisions.

So downshifting is an automatic protection mechanism. It enables us to shift to more

primitive and dependable response patterns.

Unfortunately, downshifting has an obvious downside. When we downshift, we lose

full use of our new brain, the neo-cortex. Our ability to think straight seems to vanish.

The problem is that we continue to downshift even when it is not necessary or even

beneficial to do so.

By learning how to counteract or prevent ourselves from downshifting, we can greatly

increase our personal power and our control over our emotions. An effective method

for doing exactly this is the freeze-frame technique discussed below.

ON HUMAN STUPIDITYDownshifting is actually one aspect of a much greater problem. Recall that when we


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downshift, we turn over the controls, so to speak, to our lower brains we revert to

older and more primitive response patterns and programs. In addition, we tend to lose

our ability to think straight.

However, even when we are not actually downshifting, we are strongly influenced by

our reptilian and old mammalian brains.

Consider the following passage from Robert Anton WilsonsIlluminati Papers: "The

great genetic portion of stupidity is programmed into all of us and consists of typical

mammalian behavior. That is, a great deal of the human nervous system is on auto

pilot, like the closely related chimpanzee nervous system and the more distantly

related cow nervous system. The programs of territoriality, pack hierarchy, etc., are

evolutionary stable strategies and hence workmechanically, without conscious

thought. These evolutionary relative successes became genetic programs because they

work well enough for the ordinary mammal in ordinary mammalian affairs. They only

become stupidities in human beings, where higher cortical centers have been

developed as monitoring systems to feed back more sophisticated survival techniquesand correct these stereotyped programs with more flexible ones.

"In short, to the extent that a human follows the genetic primate-pack patterns,

without feeding back from the cortex, that human is still acting like an ape, and hasnt

acquired facility in using the New Brain."

This goes to the heart of the problem of emotional control. Getting a handle on our

emotions is a matter of gaining more conscious control over those behaviors which

ordinarily swing in automatically without conscious thought. Now, many of our

"typical mammalian behaviors" are quite useful, as when a mother responds

automatically to the needs of her newborn child. It is when we allow ourselves to be

controlled by these automatic (genetically programmed) functions without feedback

from the new brain that we run into problems. For example, suppose my mammalian

programming prods me to lash out at someone who I feel is challenging my position

in a social hierarchy. If I were to pause and consciously consider the situation, I would

probably come up with a much more effective strategy or course of action. But its

more than that. For, as long as I continue to think and behave automatically, it is my

programming which is running the show, not me. And the whole idea behind

emotional control is thatI am the one in control, not my programming nor my

emotions.

MULTIMINDED

Not only do we have more than one brain, but it could also be argued that we have

more than one mind. Our minds are not a single unit. Rather, various "small minds"

are constantly wheeling in and out and taking control at different moments. For

example, you are driving to work and someone cuts you off. Suddenly your anger

routine (one of your small minds) automatically swings to the forefront of your

consciousness and takes over the controls. You find yourself yelling and cursing. A

few minutes later, your anger routine subsides and you calm down.

Most of us seem to have all sorts of small minds which swing in and out, taking

control of our consciousness. In order to develop more emotional control, you need to


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develop your ability to control the various small minds which tend to wheel in

automatically. Says Robert Ornstein in his book, Multimind:

"It is a question of who is running the show. In most people, at most times, the

automatic system of the [mental operating system] organizes which small mind gets

wheeled in, most likely on that automatic basis of blind habit. But there is a pointwhen a person can become conscious of the multiminds and begin to run them

rather than hopelessly watch anger wheel in once again" [my emphasis]

And how do you begin running your own show? By practicing self-observation.

Develop your ability to stand back and observe your own mental and emotional

functioning as if you were a zoologist studying the living habits of animals. Describe

what you see and take notes. Ornstein states, "Under the stimulus of self-observation,

the [mental operating system] seems to begin to change and the fixed links between

action and reaction are loosened, leaving room for some serious choices and

redirection of the mind."

The multimind metaphor is also useful for increasing your ability to deal with other

peoples emotional reactions. This is important when trying to avoid getting caught up

in a process of knee-jerk emotional reactions with other people. In this scenario,

someone says something which sets you off and you automatically react by saying

something which irritates the other person, and on and on like a pendulum swinging

back and forth. If, instead, you simply remain calm and say to yourself, "There goes

one of her small minds again; I will not get dragged into this," you can avoid such a

confrontation.

I highly recommend reading Multimind. It contains important information onemotional control.

IMPROVING DIET AND HORMONAL BALANCE

The first thing for some people to do about improving emotional control may be to

read the book 'Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Rebalance Your Emotional

Chemistry and Rediscover Your Natural Sense of Well-Being' by Julia Ross, M.A. See

"About the Mood Cure" for a desciption of the book. The on-line "Four Part Mood-

Type Questionnaire" may reveal some important things to you. (See also The Diet

Cure and the "Quick Symptom Questionnaire.")

TAPPING INTO YOUR AUTOMATIC THOUGHTSOne of the most critical aspects of gaining more emotional control is to learn how to

identify your automatic thoughts. In most instances, our negative emotional responses

are directly preceded by automatic thoughts. These automatic thoughts remain hidden

for most of us. Unless you train yourself to look for these thoughts, you will probably

not be aware of them. But once you do learn how to catch hold of your automatic

thoughts, you will not only become aware of them, but you also learn how to control

them.

An excellent source of information on automatic thoughts is Aaron T. Becks

Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. You may also want to look into

Renaeu Z. PeurifoysAnxiety, Phobias & Panic. Although both of these books arelargely concerned with various emotional disorders, they contain valuable information
http://www.moodcure.com/mainpage.htmlhttp://www.moodcure.com/Questionnaire.htmlhttp://www.moodcure.com/Questionnaire.htmlhttp://www.dietcure.com/http://www.dietcure.com/http://www.dietcure.com/Questionnairea.htmlhttp://www.moodcure.com/Questionnaire.htmlhttp://www.moodcure.com/Questionnaire.htmlhttp://www.dietcure.com/http://www.dietcure.com/http://www.dietcure.com/Questionnairea.htmlhttp://www.moodcure.com/mainpage.html


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on the topic of emotional control in general. They

are both worth reading even if you dont have any

"emotional disorders."

Assigning Meaning to Events

The basic idea behind cognitive therapy is that bychanging the way you think, you can change the

way you feel and act. The process of changing the

way you think consists of restructuring your thought

processes; in fact, in cognitive therapy this is

referred to as "cognitive restructuring." If you dont

like the way you are feeling or acting, you simply

make changes in the way you think, hence the term

"cognitive therapy."

It is not surprising then, that cognitive therapists

argue that most of our emotions are a result of the interpretations we make of theevents around us. This is quite different from the way we normally think about our

emotional states. Usually, we tend to regard our emotional responses as being directly

caused by outside events and situations. This view is reflected in the way we talk. For

example, an angry man says of his wife, "She made me so mad!" Or, a gloomy

woman says of her co-worker, "He made me sad." But, according to the cognitive

approach, events and situations do not cause emotional reactions, as pulling back a

rubber-band and releasing it causes it to snap back. Rather, it is our interpretation of

the event which triggers the emotional response. Once we grasp this, we can see that

it is of enormous importance for emotional control. Diagram #2 illustrates the

cognitive explanation of emotional response.

For the most part, we are unaware of this process of interpretation or assigning

meaning to events and situations because it happens automatically and very rapidly. A

good example of this is driving a car. When I am driving, I am constantly making all

sorts of judgments, evaluations and interpretations. I need to decide what the actions

of the other drivers and pedestrians mean. I need to know what it means when I

approach an intersection and I see a red light. I need to assign meanings to all of the

events happening around me. And during the entire time that I am driving, the process

of assigning meaning goes on automatically and unconsciously. If I could not make

immediate, automatic interpretations, I would not be able to drive.

"The minds ability to interpret events quickly and automatically," says Peurifoy, "has

led to the widespread misconception that people and events generate emotions. Most

people dont realize that it is the meaning they assign to people and events that

actually generates emotions. Commonly used statements such as, He made me mad,

She made me sad, or That really made me happy, not only reflect this mistaken

belief but actually reinforce it." Peurifoy goes on to say that if this mistaken idea were

true, any given event or situation would generate the same emotional response in

everyone encountering or experiencing it. This should be obvious to just about

everyone. Weve all noticed how an identical event or circumstance on different

occasions results in different emotional responses in ourselves. For example,

sometimes I feel a minor surge of irritation when another driver cuts me off on theroad; on other occasions, the same event being cut off does not bother me in the


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least. Or, you may have noticed that some people tend to become depressed during a

rainstorm, while others may become elated and full of energy. So even our own

everyday experiences demonstrate the error in the notion that external events and

other people directly cause our emotional reactions.

What Are Automatic Thoughts?In Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, Beck gives the following

examples:

During a walk, a woman immediately feels faint after suddenly realizing that she is

three blocks away from her home.

Each time he drove his car through a tunnel, a professional athlete felt his heart pound

and his chest constrict; and each time he would start to gasp for air and have thoughts

that he was dying.

When he received compliments for his work, a successful novelist would cry bitterly.

At first, these reactions may seem quite puzzling. However, when given specific

directions to do so, each of these people observed a sequence of thoughts and images

that intervened between the event and the negative or unpleasant emotional reaction.

Beck calls this "tapping into your internal communication system." Once the internal

communication system is accessed and the stream of automatic thoughts uncovered,

the emotional reactions of these individuals is much more understandable. With

training, we can learn how to monitor and become aware of the rapid, automatic

thoughts which occur between the event and our emotional response.

The woman in the above example was able to observe the sequence of automatic

thoughts which entered her mind immediately before experiencing her anxiety. She

found herself thinking, "I am really far away from home. If something happened to

me now, I couldnt get back in time to get help. If I fell down on the street here,

people would just walk by they wouldnt know me. Nobody would help me."

Similarly, the athlete who experienced fear and panic whenever he would drive

through a tunnel also found his mind filled thoughts having to do with a sense of

danger. When entering a tunnel, he found himself thinking, "This tunnel could

collapse and I would suffocate." This was followed by a visual image of the tunnel

collapsing around him, and immediately his chest began to tighten. He theninterpreted the tension he felt in his chest to be a sign that he was suffocating. These

thoughts of suffocation lead even more anxiety and other physical symptoms such as

an increased pulse rate and shortness of breath.

In reaction to the compliments he received for his writing, the novelist experienced

this automatic thought: "People wont be honest with me. They know Im mediocre.

They just wont accept me as I really am. They keep giving me phony compliments."

Once these thoughts were uncovered, his emotional reaction was much more

understandable. He regarded his own work as inferior, therefore, he interpreted any

compliments from other people as being insincere. In turn, his depression was further

reinforced by his mistaken conclusion that other people were not honest and up frontwith him.


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What is common to each of these three cases is that there was a more or less

conscious thought between an external event and the individuals specific emotional

reaction. I say "more or less" because although these thoughts are directly accessible

in our consciousness, we tend to be unaware of them unless we intentionally train

ourselves to monitor them. At least part of the reason we tend not to notice them is

they appear automatically and rapidly. It is analogous to wearing glasses. Afterwearing glasses for a while, we forget that we are wearing them. Yet they remain a

part of our experience and perceptions (in fact they play an active part) even though

we have forgotten about them. Training ourselves to track our automatic thoughts is

like remembering that you are wearing glasses. And not only that. Its like taking them

off and examining them.

Once you learn that your emotional responses are preceded by automatic thoughts, it

is not difficult to train yourself to focus your attention on them during various events

and circumstances. You then begin to see for yourself that thoughts and images link or

come between external events and our emotional responses. Try it the next time you

experience an emotion like fear. For example, you may notice that after walking past adark alleyway, you suddenly feel afraid. Turn your attention inward and ask yourself

what you were thinking immediately prior to feeling the fear. You may find out that an

image of being attacked with a knife appeared in your mind. You may even have told

yourself something like, "If I were suddenly attacked, I would not be capable of

defending myself. I could end up bleeding to death on this sidewalk" even without

being consciously aware of saying this to yourself.

We can also experience an emotion without an accompanying external event. In this

case, by tracking down our thought processes, we will most likely find an automatic

thought which preceded our emotional reaction.

Monitoring Your Automatic Thoughts

Learning how to monitor your automatic thoughts is not difficult. It is simply a matter

of turning your attention inward and tracing back the series of thoughts which ran

through your head just prior to experiencing the emotion. Since most people tend not

to be aware of their automatic thoughts, the most important step is to know that you

need to start looking for those thoughts.

It may also help to start practicing the skill of recalling the images and ideas which

floated through your stream of consciousness during the last few moments. To do this,

sit quietly and allow your mind to wander. After a minute or so, ask yourself what youare currently thinking about. Once youve identified that, ask yourself what led you to

start thinking about what you were thinking about. Continue tracing your thought

stream back as far as you can. Usually there is some connecting factor between each

set of thoughts. For example, you may discover that you were just thinking about your

Apple Macintosh computer. What brought up that topic in your mind? Well, just

before that, you were thinking about how your neighbor wanted some advise on

purchasing a computer. And what led you to start thinking about your neighbor? The

fence between your house and your neighbors driveway needs to be repainted... You

get the idea. You can then apply this skill to tapping your automatic thoughts.

Another thing which may help you learn to track your automatic thoughts is to studythe examples provided in books like Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders


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andAnxiety Disorders and Phobias (see the bibliography at the end of this report for

more information on these books). The following example comes from Cognitive

Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. A man became frightened whenever he came

close to a dog even when there was no chance of being bitten or attacked by the

animal. He would even feel nervous when passing a dog which was chained or fenced

in or too small to harm him. The man was asked to try focusing on the thoughts whichentered his mind the next time he saw a dog. He reported something which escaped

his notice before; each time he saw a dog, he had the following thought: "Its going to

bite me." By focusing on his automatic thoughts, the man was able to understand why

he felt anxious whenever he saw a dog. By repeatedly recognizing his automatic

thoughts when exposed to dogs, the man was able to overcome his anxiety and long-

standing fear.

Command Phrases

In a book calledDictionary of Typical Command Phrases, Richard W. Wetherill

describes what he refers to as "command phrases," which are essentially automatic

thoughts. Wetherills basic idea is this: when we are emotionally upset, we programour brains with faulty and self-destructive programming. When in a state of emotional

upset we say things like, "If he ever crosses me again, Ill teach him a lesson!" Or,

"Ill never make anything out of myself!" These sentences then become "command

phrases" which are installed in our unconscious minds where they continue to exert a

powerful and destructive affect on us even after the emotional upset subsides.

Says Wetherill in his bookHow to Solve Problems and Prevent Trouble, "Whathappens is that in an outburst of emotional thinking the individual substitutes

unreality for reality on the subject of the emotion. For him, the unreality thereafter

tends to control." [my emphasis] And that, claims Wetherill, is the main source of our

troubles and problems this process of creating distortions of logic during emotional

upsets and having the distortions remain even after we are no longer upset.

This entire process is a kind of negative brain programming. The command phrases

which you install in your brain during emotional upset thereafter become unconscious

premises which are incorporated into your everyday thinking. For example, if in an

emotional outburst you exclaim to yourself, "Ill always be a loser," that sentence

becomes a command phrase which influences your thinking so that you find yourself

behaving as a loser.

According to Wetherill, the procedure for ridding yourself of command phrases issimple. All you need to do is think about each command phrase in an unemotional

state of mind; the command phrase then loses its control over you.

In hisDictionary of Typical Command Phrases, Wetherill lists examples of command

phrases in 1008 different categories. You may want to purchase a copy of that book

and begin to systematically rid yourself of command phrases. It is also important to

learn how to achieve emotional control so that you cease creating new command

phrases. And that is what this report is all about...

To find out more about Wetherill's books, see The Alpha House Publishing website.
http://www.alphapub.com/http://www.alphapub.com/


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The Reactive-Responsive Orientation

Since Ive pointed out that most of us tend to believe that our emotions are generated

by external events and circumstances, it is worth mentioning Robert Fritzs idea of the

reactive-responsive orientation. In The Path of Least Resistance, Fritz states that mostpeople believe circumstances are the driving force of their lives. In other words, in

such an orientation, you are forced to either respond to or react against thecircumstances; you tend not to believe that you can make choices independent of the

circumstances. This, it seems to me, is how most people live with regard to their

emotions.

The reactive-responsive orientation is based on the premise that you are powerless; it

is the external circumstances which hold the power, not you. Your life is simply a

series or reactions against or responses to the circumstances you encounter.

In order to regain your power, you need to switch to what Fritz calls the "orientation

of the creative." The individual who lives out his or her life in the creative orientation

believes that he or she can make choices independent of the circumstances.

It is clear to me that the problem of emotional control reflects the problem of human

beings in general: we tend to live as if our lives are determined by circumstance, by

factors beyond our control. This essentially passive orientation towards life leads to

the feeling that we are victims of circumstance or fate. We tend to get so used to

things happening to us that we forget that we can control our own lives. This is

especially relevant to our emotions: we dont need to be at the mercy of our moods

and feelings; instead, we can begin to learn to control them. And that is what this

report is all about.

IDENTIFYING WITH YOUR EMOTIONS

In Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, Beck illustrates what he calls the"personal domain" with the following example:

"A man was shown a picture of a coat of arms by a friend. He was indifferent to it

until he was persuaded that it was actually a picture of his own familys coat of arms.

From then on, he prized the picture, was excited in showing it to other people, and

was hurt when they seemed uninterested. He reacted to the illustration on the piece of

paper as though it were an extension of himself."

This is also what is known as "identification." The man in the example has identifiedhimself with the coat of arms. When we identify ourselves with something no

matter what it is we are unable to step back and view it objectively. Humans can

identify themselves with just about anything, including their emotions. I should say:

especially their emotions.

Now, when we identify with our emotions, it is very difficult to control them; when

we are immersed in our emotions, we are controlled by them. The secret of emotional

control is to disengage yourself from them, to pull back and cease identifying with

your feelings and moods. (The "freeze-frame" technique discussed below is a

powerful tool for learning how to disengage or detach yourself from your negative

emotions.)


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Neil Diamond Sings the Blues

Neil Diamond has a song called "Song Sung Blue," in which he describes how the

process of writing a song about depression can be a form of catharsis. Singing about

his low feelings has the effect of relieving him from his state of despondency. The

song goes like this:

Song sung blue

Everybody knows one

Song sung blue

Every garden grows one

Me and you are subject to

The blues now and then

But when you take the blues

And make a song

You sing them out again

You sing em out again

Song sung blueWeeping like a willow

Song sung blue

Sleeping on my pillow

Funny thing but you can sing it

With a cry in your voice

And before you know

It gets you feeling good

You simply got no choice

The song claims that when you sit down and write a song about your depression, you

automatically start feeling good. In fact, says Diamond, you cannot help but start to

feel good.

Why is this so? Why does the simple act of writing a song about ones depression

automatically lift the depression? What mental mechanism is at work here? The

answer to these questions leads us to major increases in emotional control.

We can glimpse the answer if we examine what is going on in the songwriters

consciousness. Lets suppose that I am depressed; I take Neil Diamonds advice and

decide to write a song about my depression. So I sit down with pen and paper and

attempt to convert my emotional experience into words I start describing how Ifeel. It is this act of describing my feelings which leads directly to my depression

being lifted. For in order to describe how I feel, I need to detach myself from my

feelings. The process of describing how I feel forces me to separate myself from my

own emotions. There is a kind of internal split; I separate myself from an aspect of my

own consciousness in order to examine and describe it. As a result, I am no longer

identified with that aspect of my consciousness my depression is automatically

lifted.

This process works not only with songs, but also with activities like writing poems,

letters and daily journal entries just about any activity which involves examining

your emotional state and describing it with words. An effective way to pull yourselfout of an emotional slump, like a mild depression, is to describe your emotional state


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out loud or in writing. When you do this, try to describe yourself as if you were

another person.

Observing Yourself As If You Were Another Person

This type of self-observation is to be distinguished from ordinary introspection. The

trouble with introspection is that we attempt to explain why we behaved in a certainway or thought a certain thought. We try to rationalize or justify our thoughts and

behaviors.

When you observe yourself as if you were another person, you simply record what

you thought and what you did, as if you were taking a snapshot of the contents of your

mind and another snapshot of your overt behavior.

FREEZE-FRAMING

A simple, yet highly powerful technique for gaining immediate emotional control is

something called "freeze-framing." The term "freeze-frame" comes from the image of

a movie projector projecting a movie onto a screen. Many of us tend to get so caughtup in the movie (what is going on in to present moment) that we become a kind of

ping-pong ball which simply bounces around and merely reacts to the environment.

Someone interrupts us while we are on the phone and we automatically react with

irritation. We get held up in traffic and we automatically experience frustration. What

is wrong with all of this is that we mechanically and unthinkingly indulge in our

emotional responses. And furthermore, our emotional "indulgences" and all

emotional responses amount to self-indulgence color our perceptions and influence

our choices and actions. How many times have you found yourself swept up in a tide

of emotion, only later to wish you had called a time-out before you made a decision or

took a certain action?

Well, with freeze-framing, you can. You can call a time-out and momentarily slow

down the movie projector. This enables you to maintain a clear, level-headed

perspective even in the midst of all your stress and frustrations. Weve all noticed how

easy it is to help others to regain their emotional poise. But when it comes to our own

stress and strain, it is as if we were powerless to keep ourselves from being swept up

by our own emotions. And to further exacerbate the problem, when we find ourselves

caught up in negative emotional reactions, we tend to feel such a response is perfectly

acceptable and warranted. Freeze-framing enables you to call a time-out and get a

clearer perspective of what is happening on the screen.

Doc Lew Childre, the inventor of freeze-framing, describes it as "...a technology that

gives you the conscious ability to self-manage your reactions, gain clarity and have

more quality, fun and well-being in the moment. You gain the power to make better

choices and decisions and not be victimized by your reactions to people, places and

situations" [my italics]. That last phrase is of critical importance: "not be victimized

by your own reactions to people, places and situations." To what extent do we create

our own problems and miseries by the way in which we automatically and

emotionally react to the world around us?

Freeze-framing is essentially a tool for handling stress. Most us find ourselves

automatically slipping into various emotional responses when we are under pressure,and in doing so, we loose our ability to keep a level-headed perspective. When we


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freeze-frame, we shift ourselves into neutral; we maintain a high level of clarity and

insight even when we are in the middle of the stressful moment.

Personal Power, Control and Stress

Freeze-framing helps you release stress by increasing your personal power. Childre

points out that a San Francisco-based, stress-research consulting firm called EssiSystems has discovered important new information regarding personal power and

stress. Essi Systems has found out that what is taught in usual stress-reduction

programs diet, physical fitness, weight control, etc. has only a minimal effect on

a persons ability to deal with pressure, rapid change, and other sources of stress. The

only factor which does have a significant impact on a persons ability to handle stress

particularly work pressure is personal power, i. e., control over your time,

resources, information and other elements connected with work. Says Esther Orioli,

the founder of Essi Systems, "Our testing revealed that out of 21 stress-related factors

we examined, personal power was the only factor that could predict who got sick and

who stayed healthy in work situations with high amounts of pressure. Conversely,

people without this sense of personal power tended to feel victimizedand were unableto cope with high amounts of pressure in similar situations" [my italics].

How to Freeze-Frame

The following are the five steps of the freeze-frame technique:

1) Recognize your stressful feelings and make the decision to freeze-frame (call a

time-out). The key skill in this first step is to realize that you are feeling stressed and

that you need to disengage before you get swept up in the situation and allow your

emotions to take control of you. In this sense, the first step of the freeze-frame

technique is like pressing the pause button on a VCR. The key is to begin pressing the

pause button at the moment the stress starts to build up. You may find that your

emotions take control so quickly and automatically that you are unable to recognize

your need to freeze-frame until after the fact. In that case, you simply need more

practice. Eventually you will reach a point where you are able to take a time-out while

feeling stressed.

2) Shift your focus away from your racing thoughts and emotions. Focus your

attention instead on the area around your heart and for about ten seconds or so,

pretend you are breathing through your heart. Since the purpose of this technique is to

disengage yourself from your disturbed emotions, it is essential that you move your

attention away from your thoughts and emotions. This enables you to quickly gain amore clear-headed perspective, which in turn allows you to consider more effective

ways of handling your current situation. In doing so, you will experience a major

increase in your personal power. You remain in control, rather than allowing your

emotions to take over. The reason why your personal power increases is because you

are able to immediately step back and get a more objective view of the situation. It is

like soothing a worried friend. Since you are not caught up in your friends emotional

state, you are able to see the situation with much more clarity.

The benefits of step #2 are analogous to making a movie. The actors in the movie are

necessarily caught up in the middle of the movie-making process. Consequently, their

viewpoints are quite limited. But the director needs to stand outside of the entireprocess; he has a much wider and clearer perspective. Says Childre, "If you want to be


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the director of your own movie, you have to stop being just one of the characters and

step back to see the whole picture."

3) Think about a fun time in your life, a time in which you felt positive. Try to re-

experience that moment in your mind. The importance of this step is that it helps to

neutralize your negative reaction. When you shift into neutral, you are better able tosee the options available to you in the present moment.

4) Ask your heart for a more efficient and effective response to the situation you are

freeze-framing. The answer will come from your intuition or source of common

sense. As you practice the freeze-frame technique, your ability to both access and

recognize answers from your source of common sense or intuition will improve. It is

also helpful to develop a sense of confidence in your own ability to give yourself an

answer. We are all in possession of vast sources of intelligence and creativity; we need

only open ourselves up to them.

5) Open yourself up and listen to the answer your heart gives you. As you practice thefreeze-frame technique, it starts to become second nature to you. After a while you

will no longer need to think about the steps involved. You will start to do them

automatically.

Here is a shortened version of the five steps for quick reference:

1) Recognize your stressful feelings and make the decision to freeze-frame (call a

time-out).

2) Shift your focus away from your racing thoughts and emotions. Focus yourattention instead on the area around your heart and for about ten seconds or so,

pretend you are breathing through your heart.

3) Think about a fun time in your life, a time in which you felt positive. Try to re-

experience that moment in your mind. (Note: freeze-framing can be much more

effective if you decide beforehand what experience to focus on.)

4) Ask your heart for a more efficient and effective response to the situation you are

freeze-framing. The answer will come from your intuition or source of common

sense.

5) Open yourself up and listen to the answer your heart gives you.

The Benefits of Freeze-Framing

The following is a list of some of the main benefits of using the freeze-frame

technique. This list is not comprehensive, and I highly recommend readingFreeze-

Frame to get a more complete sense of the benefits of this tool.

Increased emotional control. Freeze-framing enables you to shift into neutral by

stepping away from uncontrolled (particularly negative) emotional reactions. It is

important to note the difference between suppressing your emotions and neutralizing

them. When you suppress your emotions, you dont necessarily rid yourself of them;in a sense, you are just pushing them away, like a gardener pushing seeds into the


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ground; although you cant see it, the seed is still there. Neutralizing your emotions

freeze-framing is a matter of disengaging your emotions, like pressing the clutch

and taking your manual transmission out of gear. Also, when something is neutralized,

it disappears; a neutralized emotion vanishes and no longer has the ability to influence

you and your perceptions.

More productive at work. Using the freeze-frame technique at work can bring you

numerous benefits, including most of the other benefits listed here. One specific

benefit is that it may help you in dealing with difficult people. By taking a time out

when interacting with difficult people, you improve your mental clarity and cease to

identify with any negative reactions. You then become more sensitive to that other

persons needs by paying attention and listening more. If this difficult person happens

to be a client, for example, you may boost your potential of closing a sale. Once you

realize just how robotic and mechanical most of us operate, you will realize how

ridiculous much of the fiction and negativity between individuals really is and that it

could be easily avoided.

Gives your mind more clarity. This goes to the heart of the freeze-frame technique:

maintaining inner poise, emotional control and mental clarity in the face of stress and

strain.

Bring more quality to your relationships. The freeze-frame technique will help to

minimize or even eliminate knee-jerk negativity in your personal and professional

relationships. (See below for additional information on knee-jerk negativity.)

Using this technique could also help you to form new powerful and positive

relationships. One of the areas of our lives where we experience a significant amount

of pressure and stress is the area of personal relationships. To the extent that you can

help keep the relationship positive and healthy, you will benefit both yourself and the

other person. Such a relationship is mutually enhancing, enables both individuals to

move toward actualizing their innate potential, and increases personal power. (For

more information on positive and healthy relationships, see my article "Plus and

Minus Relationships," in Terra Libra News #10.)

Help eliminate the victim mentality. Using the freeze-frame technique enables you

to feel more in control of your life rather than feeling a victim of circumstance or fate.

This is especially true when it comes to our emotions. Many of us tend to behave as if

circumstance and other external factors directly cause our emotional responses.Someone forgets to unlock the door and we feel we cant help but become angry. But

this is clearly not the case. By practicing the technique of freeze-framing and

increasing your emotional control, you will quickly begin to see just how much choice

and control you have in your own life.

Help you to take back control of your life. This is closely related to what I just said

about eliminating the victim mentality. Not only does freeze-framing enable you to

gain more control over your emotions, but it gives you more control over your life in

general by helping you to think more clearly and reducing your automatic reactions.

When you step back from your own emotions, a kind of mental black cloud lifts and

you can readily see all of the options available to you, including perhaps, a muchmore effective way of responding to any given situation.


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Maintain emotional and inner poise. We are all aware of the ebb and tide of our

emotions from day to day and even moment to moment. Your mechanic tells you your

engine needs to be overhauled and suddenly the world caves in; youve got another

major problem on your hands. Half an hour later, an old friend who you havent seen

for years drops by your office to say hello and the two of you laugh over old times;

suddenly the world is not such a bad place after all. But 20 minutes after your friendleaves, you hear the latest crisis on the news and your pleasant mood evaporates into a

bitter cynicism... According to Childre, "Freeze-frame is an opportunity to make on-

the-spot attitude adjustments so life doesnt entrap you in an emotional roller coaster."

Gain more strength, flexibility and common sense in dealing with whatever you

encounter in your life. The ability to maintain emotional poise increases your general

level of personal power. It also enables you to become a more effective decision-

maker, which enhances your probability of success.

Eliminate knee-jerk negativity. Many of us who have not yet taken the time to

become aware of and even resist our automatic reactions may find ourselves indulgingin knee-jerk negativity. For example, your wife comes home from work in a crabby

mood and complains that you didnt fix supper. You immediately and without prior

thought, lash back out at her telling her that you are tired of always being the one who

has to be responsible for dinner. And then she fires back and the conflict begins to

escalate rapidly. Before long, you dont even know what you are really fighting about.

All that is happening is a process of knee-jerk negativity where one person slanders

the other and is slandered in return, and on and on. Freeze-framing enables you to

side-step this entire process. You can look on and respond to someone elses

negativity with a calm detachment. (For those who are familiar with report #TL05B:

Freedom Steps, it is interesting to note that freedom step #16 is "confront compulsive

knee-jerk negativity without reacting in like fashion." For more information on the

effects of compulsive knee-jerk negativity on personal freedom and power, consult the

freedom steps report.)

Enhance your decision-making abilities. An important factor in good decision-

making is being aware of the options available to you in any given situation. When we

get pulled into a storm of negative emotions, we loose our ability to think clearly and

therefore do not readily see the array of options at our disposal. Furthermore, when

our emotions take over, we are no longer calling the shots. In such a position, our

options drop down to zero.

In addition, the freeze-frame technique can assist you in making your decisions more

consciously. This technique gives you the "conscious ability to self-manage your

reactions."

Greatly improve your ability to communicate with others. Since so many of our

responses are purely mechanical and robotic, especially those involving a strong

emotional charge, we can vastly improve our ability to communicate with other

people by using the freeze-frame technique and taking a time-out. When you

approach someone in a strong, negative emotional state of mind, their automatic

response is likely to be some sort of defensive stance. By taking a time-out and

pulling back from your emotions, you can find a much better response to the situation.
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Begin handling situations more efficiently and effectively. To the extent that you can

remain calm and clear-headed under pressure or stress, you will find yourself

handling all types of situations much more efficiently and effectively. Whenever there

is some sort of emergency situation such as a collapsed building or a tornado strike,

there are always a few individuals involved who remain calm and confident while

everyone else panics. (In fact, those who panic are downshifting; see the abovesection on brain physiology.) When we prevent our emotions from taking over even in

emergency situations, we increase our power and efficiency, and consequently, our

chances of survival.

Physical benefits of freeze-framing. The freeze-frame tool can go a long way

towards improving your physical health and preventing any further damage from

emotional stress. With this tool you can: improve the health of your heart, improve

your immune system, and even help slow the aging process. Consult chapter 4, "The

Scientific Basis of the Freeze-Frame Technology," inFreeze-Frame for a detailed

discussion of how this tool can enhance your physical well-being.

EMOTIONAL CONTAGION

An important aspect of emotional control is the ability to handle emotional contagion.

We can become "infected" by the emotions and moods of others. You can catch both

negative and positive emotions alike, such as euphoria, elation, sadness, depression,

anger, grief, etc. Weve all had the experience of feeling rather solemn and serious and

then encountering someone who is in a cheerful and bubbly mood. Usually, that other

persons mood rubs off onto us; we soon find ourselves feeling elated.

The following information is relevant to the topic of emotional contagion.

Emotional contagion happens quickly; you can almost instantly catch someone

elses mood.

You are especially likely to catch the moods of the people who are closest to

you; for example, spouses, parents, children and close friends.

A recent study found that depression was highly contagious among college

roommates.

People who are considered extroverts and who are more emotional expressive

tend to transmit their feelings more powerfully.

Introverts and highly sensitive individuals tend to be more susceptible to the

moods of others.

Women may be inclined to catch someone elses mood because they are betterable to read other peoples emotional states and body language.

So emotional control is not only a matter of managing your own emotions, but also

dealing with other peoples contagious moods. Now, of course, if you find yourself

being swept up in someones excitement and euphoria, by all means allow yourself to

catch that infectious mood. Negative emotions, however, are a different matter. And

you can learn how to inoculate yourself from other peoples negativity while keeping

yourself open to catching their positive moods.

Here are some steps for protecting yourself from the negative emotions of others:


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Begin paying attention to how you feel around different people. Do you feel

sad around some people and happy around others?

Become aware of and label your emotional responses. For example, "I felt

elated while having dinner with my wife." Or, "I feel sad and pessimistic

whenever Im around my landlord."

Examine your emotional responses. Ask yourself whether the feeling is yourown or did you catch it from someone else. By observing how you feel before

and after interacting with various people, you will begin to see how other

peoples emotions spread to you.

Simply recognizing that an emotion actually belongs to (originated with)

someone else may be enough to prevent the mood from spreading to you.

Basically, protecting yourself from emotional contagion is a matter of

monitoring your own floodgates and not allowing yourself to become

contaminated with other peoples negativity.

The Mood Infection Quiz

To find out how easily someone elses mood can infect you, take the following quiz

designed by Dr. William Doherty at the University of Hawaii. Read each statement

and rate yourself as follows: 1. Never; 2. Rarely; 3. Sometimes; 4. Often; or 5.

Always.

"1. Im good at sensing others moods.

2. If someone Im talking with cries, my eyes well up too.

3. Spending time with an upbeat friend lifts up my mood.

4. I feel sad when people talk about the death of a loved one.

5. Seeing a mother and child hugging makes me feel tender.

6. Im irritated around angry people.

7. When someone smiles warmly at me, I smile back and feel happy.

8. I get uptight when Im around people who are stressed out.

9. I notice how people say things in addition to what they say.

10. If I overhear a quarrel, my body is likely to tense up.

11. When someone I love touches me, my body tingles with excitement.

12. When someone paces, it makes me nervous.

To find your Mood Infection Index, add up your answers to the quiz:

If you scored 12-27: You have mood immunity. Maybe you are in touch with your

own moods, but you can only guess what other people are feeling.


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28-41: Youve achieved emotional equilibrium. Youre able to understand and

experience other peoples feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them. If you

try, you can pick and choose your susceptibility letting yourself absorb their joy,

for example, while shielding yourself from their fear, anger or sadness.

42-60: Youre on an emotional roller coaster. Because youre easily swept away bythe joys and sorrows of other people, you be in may need of emotional rescue

yourself."

[This section was based on material from an article in the May 5, 1996 edition of the

Arizona Republic.]

Emotional Contagion at Large

Cultural influences are another aspect of emotional contagion, only on a larger scale.

The phrases "whats in vogue" and "the latest rage" are indicators of contagion

occurring within society. The fashion and music industry bank on this phenomenon

working its magic over the minds and emotions of the public. Its possibly moreimportant to be aware of larger scale influences because they can operate on your

consciousness more subtlety. The dangers of unchecked cultural influences becomes

morbidity apparent in light of World War II and Hitlers mastery at engaging the

minds and emotions of the German people.

Each generation of youth in any given society seem to have a collective movement

that defines the ideology of that specific group. Separate cultures of people frequently

operate in this collective fashion. The important thing, if you wish to operate as a self

directed individual in control of your own thought processes and emotions, is to

identify specifically what an ideology entails before you adhere to it and follow the

trend. Does the "mood of the day" apply to you, or are your values incongruent to it.

Recognizing and becoming aware of emotional contagion is critical if you wish to

gain emotional control in your own life and be determinate in the direction it follows.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

InEmotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman argues that the conventional view ofhuman intelligence is far too narrow in that it does not take into account an aspect of

our lives which plays an important role in the success or failure of just about

everything we do.

Goleman describes the five major components of emotional intelligence:

"1. Knowing ones emotions.Self-awareness recognizing a feeling as it happens

is the keystone of emotional intelligence. ...[T]he ability to monitor feelings from

moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An

inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater

certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of

how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take.

2. Managing emotions.Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability thatbuilds on self-awareness. ...People who are poor in [the ability to soothe oneself, to

shake off rampant anxiety, gloom , or irritability] are constantly battling feelings


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of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from

lifes setbacks and upsets.

3. Motivating oneself. [M]arshalling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for

paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-

control delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness underliesaccomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the "flow" state enables

outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more

highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake.

4.Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional

self-awareness, is the fundamental "people skill." People who are empathic are more

attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes

them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and

management.

5.Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, a skill in managingemotions in others. ...These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and

interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that

relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars." [my emphasis]

I highly recommend studying GolemansEmotional Intelligence (see the bibliographyfor publisher information) and applying its insights to increase your emotional IQ.

LEARNED OPTIMISM

Pessimism is essentially a bad habit or bad programming that was developed from

being exposed to poor examples from parents, teachers or others who provided major

influences during the formative years of our lives. Many of the negative command

phrases that create the ill effects on our lives today were exactly the ones we heard

verbalized by the influential people in our past. Thinking patterns were developed and

reinforced by repetitious example. By the time we reach adulthood these patterns have

become deeply entrenched and woven into the fiber of our personalities, values and

concepts. Rather than seeing the true nature of an uncomfortable situation, these

patterns superimpose themselves onto our perception of reality, like Pavlovian

conditioning and we may react as though we are powerless to change the outcome.

This programming is used very successfully in training animals that can easily

overpower their master, but it is disastrous as a problem solving mechanism for

individuals in the throws of daily existence. The manner in which you explain (selftalk) how and why any unpleasant situation came about determines whether you are

operating from the vantage point of helplessness or power and optimism.

In light of this knowledge it is then apparent that what is necessary for us to do is to

unlearn the poor programming and reinstall more positive and productive patterns.

Essentially, you must learn optimism. This begins with identifying your automatic

thoughts, becoming aware of how they influence your moods and behaviors. Once

identified they can be uprooted and replaced with the programming of your own

choice. This gives you the freedom to propel your life in the direction that you choose

rather than the direction chosen by unfortunate circumstances and influences of the

past.


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For a more in-depth study of this subject you may refer to a powerful book written by

Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., entitled appropriately,Learned Optimism. You can finddetails about the publisher at the end of this report.

THOUGHT FIELD THERAPY

Dr. Roger Callahan has pioneered a remarkable form of psychotherapy called"Thought Field Therapy." Originally Dr. Callahan had developed thought field

therapy to help his clients eliminate their fears and phobias. To his astonishment, he

found he could rid a patients phobia in a matter of minutes, rather than years, as is

usually required by traditional methods.

Now, Dr. Callahan is finding out that his methods work on an array of psychological

problems, including: panic, phobias, drug addictions, depression, irrational guilt,

public speaking fears, rape trauma, obsessions, self-sabotage, post traumatic stress,

anxiety, food addiction, alcoholism, chronic anger, child abuse victims, sex problems,

rejection, smoking, general stress, love pain and physical pain.

The Callahan techniques could be the most rapid and effective methods for handling

psychological problems ever devised. The reason these techniques produce such quick

and effective results is that they address the deepest, most fundamental underlying

cause of all negative emotions: blockages in the bodys energy system. Dr. Callahan

refers to these blockages as "perturbations," and says:

"Perturbations in the thought field contain the active information which...triggers and

forms the sequence of activities neurological, chemical, hormonal and cognitive

which result in the experience of a negative emotion such as fear, depression, anger,

etc. In TFTs [Thought Field Therapy] unique diagnostic procedure the perturbations

are revealed and quickly subsumed."

What Dr. Callahan is saying is that the cause of negative emotions is even "deeper"

than the physiological and cognitive components. By going straight to this underlying

cause, thought field therapy can swiftly and effectively eliminate the psychological

problems involving negative emotions.

The implications of thought field therapy are profound. Our lives can be extremely

limited to the extent that we suffer from any of the psychological problems listed

above. And this reflects one of the chief problems of human beings in general: we still

have not acquired the knack of eliminating to any significant degree, the negativity inour lives. We still manage to get ourselves tangled up in problems and negativities

which have the potential to more or less destroy our lives. And the realistic, yet sad,

fact is that most of it is completely unnecessary. Humans have got to reach a point in

their development where such things as depression, anxiety, addictions, obsessions,

etc., are laughable absurdities.

A WORD ABOUT IDENICS

If you are serious about furthering your emotional maturity and development, I

recommend looking into something called "Idenics." Idenics is basically a

methodology by which you rid yourself of unwanted mental or emotional conditions.

Because of the unique approach of Idenics, you may experience much more rapid andpowerful (and permanent) changes than traditional approaches such as ordinary
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psychotherapy. In fact, Idenics is so different from most other methodologies that it is

probably unfair to compare it to them.

The basic working idea behind Idenics is that we tend to get stuck in various

unwanted mental or emotional conditions; we automatically slip into certain

perspectives and response patterns which at one time may have been quite useful, butnow cause us trouble, limit us or hold us back. The problem is not so much the

perspective itself as the fact that we seem to be stuck in it and unable to see beyond it.

Recently, about half of the Terra Libra staff underwent sessions of Idenics. One staff

member had this to say about his experience with Idenics:

"Idenics allows you to shift your perspectives and hence your attitudes towards

the impact of the metaphors by which you structure your perceptions. This creates a

change in the way these basic paradigms lock, limit, or tint ones experience of reality.

Distortions due to viewpoints are unmasked, and productive movement and growth of

the psyche is thereby encouraged.

"For me, the Idenics processing was a way of confronting issues related to my

identity, and it offered a set of alternative viewpoints with respect to coping with

deeper unwanted conditions. Through accessing what were for me previously

unknown aspects of my understanding of events, I was able to forge an expanding set

of relations with troublesome or worrisome life issues. Idenics provides a

functional methodology for value enhancement and clarification."

For more information on Idenics call Mike Goldstein at 1-800-IDENICS or visit the

Idenics website. Mike Goldstein spoke about Idenics at the Terra Libra Houston

Practical Freedom Seminar (June 1995).

EMOTIONAL MATURITY AND HUMAN POTENTIAL

In a book called The Fifth Discipline (by Peter M. Senge), Ive come across a passage

containing a highly important idea, the significance of which has probably been

largely overlooked. Senge quotes an article called "Advanced Maturity," by B.

OBrien:

"Whatever the reasons, we do not pursue emotional development with the same

intensity with which we pursue physical and intellectual development. This is all the

more unfortunate because full emotional development offers the greatest degree ofleverage in attaining our full potential" [my emphasis].

It is the idea of emotional development as providing the greatest leverage in

actualizing our full potential which strikes me as being of great significance. For,

most all adult humans are quite immature when it comes to their emotions. Its as if,

emotionally speaking, they stopped growing at about the age of ten or eleven. And

some of us have not even reached that far. I say this in all seriousness. The vast

majority of us are grossly immature when it comes to our emotions.

And if that is indeed the case, then how can we expect to attain our full potential to

any significant degree? At most we could expect a lop-sided development: for
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example, we may have acquired advanced thinking skills yet remain an emotional

child.

It is clear that part of the task of the Personal Power Institute needs to be to teach

people how to continue developing their emotional maturity.

STEPS TO EMOTIONAL CONTROL

The following is an outline of a plan for implementing the information contained in

this report. The order in which you take these steps is not important. If you tackle the

items on this list with sincerity and seriousness, you will be well on your way to

achieving emotional control.

Continue to study this report. Make notes and add anything it might be

missing. (If you see that it is missing something, please inform me!)

Acquire and study the following books: Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional

Disorders, Freeze-Frame, Multimind, and The Path of Least Resistance. I

consider these required reading. The other books listed in the bibliographysection of this report are optional.

Consider keeping a daily journal tracking your emotional states. You could

also include the following: automatic thoughts, command phrases and mood

contagion. Journaling is also a good tool for flushing out emotional garbage;

when you write about your negative feelings and moods, you externalize them.

Begin implementing the ideas in this report and the books listed above.

Begin ridding yourself of your command phrases the destructive

unconscious programs installed in your brain during moments of emotional

upset. Read the books by Wetherill listed in the bibliography.

Begin monitoring your automatic thoughts. Observe the identification process in yourself, especially when you identify

with your negative emotions.

Start monitoring yourself for mood contagion.

Begin practicing the freeze-frame technique.

Continue to strengthen and expand your self-control and personal freedom.

FREEDOM AND EMOTIONAL CONTROL

At this point, it is worth asking what emotional control has to do with personal

freedom.

I would start off by saying that Rose Wilder Lane was right when she defined freedomas self-control. Freedom is essentially a matter of achieving more and more control

over ones own self.

When I allow my emotions to swing in automatically, I relinquish some of my control.

When I give way to my anger or sadness, I am no longer running the show. Instead,

my emotions are now calling the shots. Furthermore, I tend to loose my ability to

think clearly when my consciousness is flooded with emotions. And I find that I am

most in control when my head is clear and devoid of negative emotions.

There is another important connection between emotional control and freedom that

has to do with human potential and self-actualization. Since I feel this is such animportant insight, I will attempt to express it as clearly as possible. At least since
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William James, we have been aware that humans typically use only a tiny fraction of

their potential. The trouble is that we waste so much of our time getting bogged down

by our own emotions. We encounter various problems and difficulties and find

ourselves shrinking away from life like a pill bug which curls up into a tiny ball when

threatened with danger. Somewhere, the writer Colin Wilson has written:

"We habitually exaggerate the importance of present difficulties. We seldom feel

relaxed and healthy enough to take a clear, objective view of our own lives. The

consequence is that we are always working below our maximum level of efficiency.

And only fairly unusual people possess the power to call the bluff of their emotions

and restore a state of objectivity."

This, it seems to me, cuts right to the heart of the matter. Most us have experienced

moments when we felt relaxed and healthy and were able to step back and see our

own lives from a birds-eye view. It is the same feeling we get when we climb to the

top of a mountain and take in the vast panorama below. But so much of our time is

spent getting caught up in a subjective world of negative emotions that we lose thismore objective, birds-eye view. The consequence, as Colin Wilson points out, is that

we are always working below our maximum level of efficiency.

By taking control of our emotions and minimizing the degree to which we indulge in

negative emotions (and all negative emotions are basically a form of self-indulgence),

we not only increase our personal freedom, but we also become vastly more effective

and efficient human beings.

APENDIX A

[The following story was recently posted to an e-mail discussion list. It illustrates the

importance of attitude to emotional control.]

Attitude Is Everything

By Francie Baltazar-Schwartz

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always

had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he

would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!"

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him

around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry wasbecause of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad

day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the

situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him,

"I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?" Jerry

replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices

today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.' I

choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a

victim or I can choose to learn from it.


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I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose

to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the

positive side of life."

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk,

every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how

people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The

bottom line: It's your choice how you live life."

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my

own business. We lost touch, but often thought about him when I made a choice about

life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a

restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up atgunpoint by three armed robbers.

While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the

combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively

quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the

hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about six months

after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied "If I were any better, I'd

be twins. Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the

robbery took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have

locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I

had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.

Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be

fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions

on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's adead man.' I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if

I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied.

The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply... I took a deep

breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live.

Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."


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Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I

learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is

everything.

You have 2 choices now:

1. save or delete this mail from your mail box.

2. forward it to your dear ones and choose to pass this on

I hope you will choose choice 2.

5447700 achieving emotional control by psycholex

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