Indicator Talk, Hollyhock, 6/09
Indicator Talk[1]
Hollyhock June, 2009
We are almost entirely automatic. I mean… if you sit and watch a bunch of people interacting, like I did this morning somewhere… we are in automatic. We don’t have to stop and make decisions about things. Somebody says “Hello” and you say “Hello” right back. And we go about with the illusion (Forgive me!) that we are running our lives, that we are somehow the determiners of ourselves?
There’s another book I want to mention. (Did I mention, Strangers to Ourselves?) There’s another book that’s much more recent, 2007, by a psychologist who did some of the original work with scanning the brain while you are thinking and stuff like that. His name is Chris Frith and he wrote a book called, Making up the mind: How the brain creates our mental world. And I think that especially for Buddhists, this is a wonderful book. You’ll have no trouble giving up the idea that you are a self or a separate self or even an independent creator of yourself, after you read that book.
The brain is doing it all, and it’s not telling you a lot about what it’s doing. Ha, ha! We are the great rationalizers of the planet, you know? We always have a good reason why we are doing something, but often it’s not the real reason. J.P Morgan said this, “All men have two reasons for everything they do. A good reason and the real reason.”
So, since we are in automatic, since… I‘ll give you an example. I had a new client last week. When I sit down with people, I look for indicators. Well, she had one, she had one that was very obvious. Anytime she talked about herself or her situation, she shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t realize it. I mean, that’s not exactly accurate to say she shrugged her shoulders. Let’s say, her shoulders shrugged. And since all this behavior is automatic, we can postulate that there is a part of the mind that’s doing it, a part that she’s not always in touch with. We call that part the adaptive unconscious.
Her adaptive unconscious was always going like this: (shrug) She would say: “Yeah, well I was in a car accident and I got this scar.” (shrug) Well, this was so constant, it was so frequent, it had to have a powerful meaning for her. It had to have. It was doing something for her. This expenditure of energy, it was being reinforced somehow.
And it turns out, she had faced a situation as a child. And in her adult life, too, she had repeated it. She was abused, she couldn’t win, she was overpowered by various people and her only compensation, her only way to modulate the pain was to go (shrug). It was saying to her, “I don’t care! It doesn’t matter! I don’t care!” And that’s what this (shrug) was doing. It was always emphasizing, “I don’t care! I don’t care!
She had no idea she was doing it. I had to point it out to her four or five times before she could catch herself doing it. I could have tried to find out about her life by asking her questions, or letting her talk to me about it, let her explain her behavior. All you had to do was just study this behavior. Just get in touch with that and maybe create an experiment with it. I didn’t even get to that part with her.
There are hundreds of indicators like that. So I think of it as a very quick way of finding materials to experiment with. If you watch people anywhere…
But don’t watch me! Yikes! I saw myself on video yesterday and, oh man, indicators everywhere. I would like to continue this lecture with this clip board in front of my face, if you don’t mind. Oh well, I’ll risk it.
You look at someone’s indicators as an external expression of the person’s adaptive unconscious. They had to adapt. We all have to adept to certain situations. We had to adapt to the language country we grew up in. We had to adapt to the people we grew up with. We had to adapt to the mores’ and customs of our local neighborhoods and our local communities. We’re born with the capacity to learn a language and we learn the language that’s spoken around and to us.
Adaptations can happen without deliberate thought. We learn what to expect from certain people and certain situations very early in life. We don’t so much do the adaptations. It’s more like, they do us! Aristotle famously said, ”You are what you habitually do.” Our adaptations become what we habitually do. Aristotle’s right. When I study what someone habitually does, the person’s indicators, I’m able to make some good guesses about the person’s expectations, beliefs and history, that kind of who-they-are. When I think this way, and work this way, I avoid a lot of unnecessary effort and a lot of talk that keeps the process conversational. I don’t really need to ask the client a lot of questions; the habit is the information I need. Once I have that, I can usually find a way to experiment with it. When we do the experiment, the client gets the information she needs. If shrugging says something, maybe the client will realize that. Maybe she’s trying not to care. Maybe she’s avoiding blame. After the realization, memories will follow and the old hurts with it and healing will begin.
Proceeding this way, through observations and experiment, through noticing an adaptive habit and studying it through mindfulness and experiment, creates a state of mind that’s different from ordinary consciousness. The state has hypnogogic qualities, one of which is ready access to the unconscious mind. [2],[3]
Once you look for habits, you’ll see lots of them. When you notice a habit, you can ask how it serves the person and what situation would require an adaptation like that. Why would someone have a habit like shrugging? It seems obvious, when you think about it. Because it was too painful to care, that is why. Studying indicators is a great way to learn about people. Not only great, it can be a great source of humor and a wonderful aid to honest relationships. And you can practice it just by watching people anywhere.
We’ll work on indicators this weekend. We’ll work on spotting them and we’ll discuss how to get to experiments from them.
I first started working with indicators, because, having read Lowen and been in therapy with John Pierrakos, I had trained myself, with help from John, to look at bodies for psychological information. I took photographs to John’s place and he’d read them and tell me what he was seeing. That’s how I studied character theory. I used it in my work for twenty years. Indicators are just a more general theory, embracing more kinds of information than just body structure and posture. I also knew a little about visual and auditory diagnosing from studying Chinese medicine. As I worked and learned, I began to recognize all kinds of behaviors that indicated adaptations.
At this point, we began questions and answers:
Q – So when we are looking for indicators, is it about something that we’ve adapted to, in a survival way that is kind of pointing to a core belief that’s negative or can it be actually a positive nourishment?
Ron – Positive? Sure, it can be positive. An adaptation is just what worked in a particular situation. If the situation was painful or overwhelming, the adaptations will work to avoid those kinds of situations. And doing so, may also block other, potentially nourishing situations. Think of an adaptation that prevents trusting others. But, if the situation was nourishing, the adaptation to it would be something that enhances the probability that it will happen or continue. If you experienced a loving environment, you’re probably going to be loving yourself. There’s nothing more nourishing for us mammals. An indicator might be simply a genuine smile.
Q – Is there a reason to point that out, so you contact it?
Ron – I wouldn’t talk about “contacting an indicator”. That’s more about microexpressions and present experiences. In general, it’s good to contact changes the client is experiencing that feel good, especially experiences that are the result of what’s happened in the session. But finding an indicator and using it in an experiment is not the same as contacting it.
Q – If you think about the process as assisted self-discovery, then it’s not about looking for anything wrong. It’s about becoming more conscious of how we’re creating ourselves and our experiences. Everything fits with that.
Ron – Yes, but every adaptation doesn’t cause unnecessary suffering. The adaptation is only a problem if it prevents potential nourishment. We’re not just schmoozing. We’re looking for behaviors that imply beliefs systems about things like: nobody can love me, everybody is against me, it’s all my fault, I’m not good enough, adaptations based on beliefs like that. Be those kind cause unnecessary suffering.
We do experiments with indicators in order to evoke reactions. Reactions are always expressions of habitual behaviors. They’re not deliberate. They’re not thought out. Not planned. As far as the conscious mind goes, they just happened. They’re those habits that Aristotle talked about. And they’re indicators of the implicit beliefs and procedures that run those habits. Which means: they’re the actions of the adaptive unconscious.
Working this way — indicators and experiments — makes the work very easy to do. Do it well and the client will have a reaction. The client will begin to realize and remember. If you give them time to be with what they’ve just discovered, memories will arise, emotions will surface. That can be the beginning of a healing process. if you give it the right kind of support.
At this point, I’d like to suggest that you go out to lunch in pairs or threes and watch people and look for their indicators. I’m sure you’ll see them. The indicators are in the way people walk, in their facial expression, especially their unconscious facial expressions, when they’re not interacting with someone else. Look for habitual behaviors, stuff that’s happening over and over again. Like habitual gestures or habitual facial expressions. Then talk about what you noticed and what kind of beliefs and history might have created it.
[1] Thanks to Gabriela Valdés Villarreal and John Hillman for transcribing this talk!
[2] “the barriers between mind and body are relaxed. What the mind ponders, the body enacts. What the body experiences, the mind absorbs.”— Clyde Ford (Ford, C. W. (1989). Where Healing Waters Meet: touching mind and emotion through the body. Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press.)
[3] also check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnogogic