Here’s a very simple example: There are people who have a habit of shrugging their shoulders a lot. An extreme example would include holding the arms close to the body, raising the forearms, and turning the palms upward. That is a very common expression of, I’m not responsible. It says, It’s not my fault. I don’t know anything about it.
Suppose you ask someone, “How’d you like the movie?” If you ask the question in an email and they message back, “I liked it”, that would be quite different from asking them in person and them saying “I liked it” and at the same time, shrugging their shoulders. The words say one thing and the shoulders are saying, “But not that much.” In the first case, you are getting the story. In the second, you are getting the experience.
Here’s another example: There are people who almost never look straight at you. They tilt their heads to one side or they turn it slightly away and they look at you from a slight angle. This is also a very common expression. It says, I don’t quite believe you. Or, I don’t quite trust you.
From habits like that, we can make some guesses about what environment made it useful and what kind of belief about self and world makes sense of it. And, most important, we can guess what kind of experiences do those habits create or prevent. We are trying to help our clients have better, more nourishing experiences and fewer experiences that entail unnecessary suffering. We want to help our clients discover the beliefs that control their behavior and to change those beliefs where they do harm.
If you work this way with many different people over a number of years, you will build up a lot of experience with this kind of guessing and, as a result, you will become very good at understanding people. However, it is not just guessing that does this, it is what we do with our guesses that make this method unique. From the indicators we notice, we create experiments that confirm or disconfirm our guesses.
So, we have to think backwards about habits like these. What history makes sense of shrugging one’s shoulders? If the person habitually has to express a need to minimize their responsibility, you can imagine a scenario where deflecting the blame was useful. Maybe there was a significant person who had a habit of trying to make the person feel guilty.
The method is based on the idea that the deepest beliefs—we call them core beliefs—are not usually conscious. They are implicit. They are implied by habitual behaviors. For the most part those behaviors were procedurally learned and have become generalized ways of being. A person’s habits tell us in this pantomimic way, what kind of world the person is imagining they are living in.
The goal of working with someone is to enhance their well being and reduce their unnecessary suffering. Much suffering is the result of over-generalized core beliefs. The world is not the way the client is imagining it. For example: a person could be afraid of dogs. They have a core belief that all dogs are dangerous and can hurt you. Maybe they were bitten as a young child. That person will never meet a friendly dog. Never feel the pleasure of a dog’s loving, playful company. Not while that belief is unconscious. Or, if the client habitually distrusts people, has an implicit core belief that people will hurt you, they will never have a good relationship. If no one can be trusted, they will never find someone they can trust and that is going to cause a lot of suffering. That will not change until that belief becomes conscious.
Once we have seen an indicator and we have made some guesses about the core belief,what do we do? We create an experiment. Here is what I mean by an experiment: We are deliberately trying to evoke a reaction. In order to enhance the probability that a reaction will occur, we ask the client to be mindful. At this point, we are interacting with the experiencing self, not the remembering self.
Experiments are designed to do some combination of three things.
- evoke re-experiencing of the original experience
- evoke the emotions associated with it
- bring the client’s core belief(s) into consciousness
Experiments are designed to do these things in a very special way, a way that offers the right conditions for healing. The remembering self is sometimes able to re-experience or to recreate the emotions and/or images of a remembered experience. This is especially true of experiences that were very intense originally, experiences that were overwhelming and could not at the time be successfully integrated. The re-experienced event is not just a memory, it has become an experience again, usually a very intense one, as in traumatic flashbacks. Where it does not re-traumatize—something to be very careful to avoid—re-experiencing can be an important part of the healing process. Experiments begin the process of re-experiencing. Experiments not only confirm or disconfirm our guesses. They initiate healing.
How to make habitual behavior conscious: most behavior is habitual and automatic. It is done without conscious planning or deliberation. It is a learned way of doing things: like walking, like speaking with the grammar of your native tongue. You only need to be conscious of habitual behaviors when they fail. You normally walk without planning each step, but if your legs suddenly become weak or numb, then you will become very focused and conscious of using them. Your habit is to just put one foot in front of the other without thinking about it. But, when that fails, when your unconscious prediction about what is supposed to happen fails, you become conscious. Like all habits, clients’ indicators, are based on unconscious predictions about how the world works. We bring those predictions into consciousness by making them fail.
The way to make a person’s predictions fail is to say something or do something that totally runs counter to their implicit beliefs. That is what experiments do. Here is an example: with someone whose indicator is to shrug their shoulders, you could say to them—while they are in a mindful state—“It wasn’t your fault.” If they are unconsciously expecting to be blamed, what you are saying will run completely counter to what they are expecting. That should evoke a reaction. Sometimes, the reaction will be disbelief. They do not believe it is true or they do not believe you mean what you are saying. Sometimes, the reaction will be emotional. They might suddenly feel sadness, sometimes relief. Often, along with the emotions, a memory suddenly come into consciousness. If the therapist and the assistants do the right things when that happens, the client may begin re-experiencing the painful events that were the original source of the client’s habitual behavior.
Any strong emotional reaction will bring with it a need to understand it. That need will call forth the precise memories that make sense of the reaction. The memories help explain—to the client—how those habits and beliefs came to be. During the period of time where this kind of self study is happening, the client’s eyes are usually closed and the client is not speaking. It is best if the therapist stays quiet also. As the painful memories of being mistreated, physically, emotionally or sexually, treated with indifference, being isolated, humiliated, abandoned are arising, therapist and assistants offer support by quiet attention and, if acceptable, comforting touch. The touch is soft and gentle at first, perhaps just a hand on the client’s shoulder.
That kind of support allows the emotions and insights to intensify. If intense enough, the client is re-experiencing the memories and that is when healing becomes possible.
