Читать книгу Emotion-image therapy (EIT) [analytical and effective] - Nikolay Linde - Страница 9

To understand the logic of EIT it is necessary to keep in mind that emotions are not just the immediate energy source for actions but the basis for a particular form of behavior and thinking too. Emotional states constitute the basis of behavioral reactions, thoughts and feelings. Every emotional state determines the selections of actions and circumstances which a person faces. Being in a certain state people don’t notice any delightful events around them, in another state they don’t notice difficulties, in a third they invariably find some reasons for fear and worries and in fourth – find some pretext to enjoy oneself and so on.

Every emotional state makes it possible to pull to the fore some forms of behavior which are potentially possible but cannot be elicited if a person is in a different state. In other words, earlier existing emotional states determine a possible choice of actions and thoughts which can be realized by a person proceeding from these states. Thus, if a person is in the state of fear, this state will not let appear the reaction of joyful laughter or thoughts about your successes. Anger lets attack, behave aggressively. Joy lets laugh and have fun, socialize in a friendly way. Sadness lets complain, cry, avoid socializing, pity oneself and so on. It is difficult to imagine a situation when a person in anger would express joyful and kind reactions. Such behavior would be insincere, and everybody will see it, even if he manages to successfully imitate another state. But in case a positive emotional state comes the needed reactions will come by themselves, without any additional instruction. Though sometimes additional instruction is necessary.

One of the most frequent complaints that makes a client turn to a psychologist for help is about poignant, irrational and uncontrollable negative emotions, which they would like to get rid of. Just take obsessive fears which are absolutely groundless, and yet they may sometimes destroy a person’s life. For example, the fear of closed up spaces [claustrophobia] may lead to the situation when a person can’t not only go up and down in a lift but even enter a toilet in the office and working becomes impossible.

Phobias and worries, depressions and sorrows, anger and guilt, grief and a psychological trauma, emotional dependence or “absence” of any emotions, inability to understand emotions [alexithymia] – all this may be the reason to go to a psychologist. Emotional disorders [the last word reminds of a hospital, of diseases diagnoses and medicines for that reason in future I’ll avoid such terms] are numerous and various. They cause many additional life problems. But therapy through emotions and images deals not only with such problems.

From our point of view all psychological and psychosomatic problems are caused by some chronic fixed negative emotions which at present may be quite groundless. As soon as you remove this fixed pathogenic emotion, all problems that have grown like shells on the initial ground will disappear. It is this that can explain such “miracles” made with the help of EIT as immediate cure if the right method is applied. The best illustration is the correction of psychosomatic problems. When fixation is removed, the pain goes away, breathing becomes free, complete relaxation comes, and the client feels an unusual surge of energy. But in order to apply the method correctly it is necessary to find the right point for applying it first that means the initial fixation point. You will read about it later. Now, however, we will give one example of such quick cure, though there will be many such examples ahead.

Example 2. “A spider on the back”

At one of the seminars I asked my students to show their work. One student asked to solve her psychosomatic problem. For two months, she has been suffering from constant pain in the back, which didn’t let her sleep well, the back hurt in any position of her body. She went to doctors but they failed to help her.

I asked her to make an image of this pain. She saw it as a very big spider sitting on her back. As a spider is usually the symbol of a man, I supposed that she had a serious problem with a man. It turned out that her friend is a drug addict and she keeps trying to save him from this addiction, but in vain. She tries to break up their relations but for some reason can’t get rid of him. We tried different methods to free her from the presence of the spider on her back but nothing helped to save her from the harmful emotional dependence.

She realized that she would not be able to save him that she sacrifices her health and her life, but for some reason she couldn’t let him go. Then I offered her to imagine that the spider is sitting on a chair, sit on this chair and become this spider in her mind after that on his behalf answer the question: “Does he want to be saved and brought on the back to some place where he doesn’t intend to go?”

“I don’t want to get where she is dragging me, what has she taken into her head?”– replied the girl with somewhat rough male intonations. Replying as the spider the girl understood that in actual fact he didn’t want to be saved that’s why he resisted. At this very moment she could let the spider do to be more exact it disappeared from her back by itself, and the pain in the back went away too. That evening she broke up with this narcomaniac. In some time, she met another man married him a child was born she is happy. Since that time, her back didn’t hurt [at least during four following years]. But she still remembers the main question that I asked her. She told me this story four years after the séance which I had forgotten already. The séance lasted not more than 20 minutes.

COMMENTARY. It is clear that the student couldn’t cut agonizing relationship because of the wrongly understood feeling of responsibility toward the young man, she hoped for a miracle didn’t want to be accountable for his further degradation. That is why she sincerely didn’t make use of the methods offered her earlier. After speaking on behalf of the spider she understood that he didn’t want to saved and his further degradation is determined by his own will and she is not responsible. She realized that she was carrying him on her back against his will.

This direct realization which couldn’t be achieved before by any arguments of a physician, made it possible for her to let this man go and stop straining her back to save him. That’s why the pain in the back passed at once and never came back. She could part with this man, get rid of emotional dependence, truly refuse from the wrong feeling of duty which fixed the problem situation and caused the pain in the back to be more exact in the shoulder girdle. We can refer this problem both to the area of psychosomatics and to the area of emotional dependence. Both problems are difficult tasks for traditional therapy.

If we can change the state with the help of EIT the needed reactions come by themselves. This is such a great surprise for some clients that they begin to suspect that they were hypnotized. After a week of successful séance one of my clients started to ask me with some prejudice why in a relevant critical situation he behaved not in his usual way but in a new way, which surprised him and troubled. I explained that his initial state had changed, so he himself produces new reactions and if he was pleased with them. Yes, these reactions pleased him, but he was surprised that they were produced as if by themselves, not by his deliberate choice and not after some thinking but just by themselves. I explained again that sincere reactions meant that he had really changed, and that was good, but I am afraid he didn’t understand this logic and wasn’t pleased.

So you can and should work with the emotional state itself helping not only understand what caused it but transforming it into a positive form.