Stress & Healing: Self Help

Reprocessing as an Advanced Self-Care Method

Cut stress and enjoy life more by turning on the natural system that processes our experiences, heals our traumas, and opens our lives to greater meaning. You will never see a personal challenge quite the same way again. the art of

Robert A. Yourell, LMFT

What didn't you learn from meditation, stress management and your therapist? The art of reprocessing--it isn't about taking a break or changing your mind, it's about getting there from here.

Why do dramatic cures of long-standing psychological or even physical symptoms take place? How can a major personal obstacle dissolve in short time, opening the way to new joy and achievements? I've seen it happen many times. In this article, I'll explain how your mind is designed to make this happen, how it get's stuck, and a formula that has helped many people not only get moving again, but exceed their own expectations.

They say time heals all wounds. But is it time? Grief, psychological trauma, personal hurts tend to heal with time. Our bodies must have many ways to heal our pain with time, and science has barely begun to tell us how we do this. But, based on a great deal of experience built up by psychotherapists, people pursuing spiritual traditions, and some very telling coincidences, I can tell you that we have plenty to go on.

There is a basic formula that can help us with many of our personal challenges. This formula activates our ability to heal the old hurts, tune our motivation, and lessen the tension and stress that we tend to carry around. It can even sharpen our senses and thinking.

If this sounds like a snake oil sales pitch, I believe you'll see it differently shortly because I will describe limits, safety considerations, background information, and some real-life experiences that don't come with snake oil.

Processing Keeps You In the Flow

With some time and life experience, the following challenges may just seem to take care of themselves: anxiety or depression from a psychological trauma, a chronic skin rash, or old self-destructive patterns. But many of us are stuck with a problem such as this that just hangs on.

Somehow, our bodies are able to take life experiences, mentally and emotionally digest them, and move on--with bonus points for making us not just older, but wiser. However, when those experiences are too extreme, things don't go so smoothly.

I use the word "processing" to describe what we do with life experience in order to stay in the flow. The psychotherapy field uses it in more-or-less the same way, but usually from the point of view of talk therapy. In the cognitive school of therapy, people process with words, a therapist, and maybe more experiences.

As psychotherapy evolves, it sees psychological healing more and more from a body and mind point of view. Somatic (body mind) therapists and EMDR therapists tend to include the physical aspect, and want to refine the art of engaging our natural powers to process our experiences, heal our traumas, and open our lives to greater meaning.

We are finding even more benefits, helping people excel in sports, relationships, sales, and other areas collectively called "personal excellence" or "high performance."

When Processing Gets Overwhelmed

Most of us handle a good deal of stress without becoming unable to sleep. We take on challenges with out panic attacks. We work our way back into full living despite the loss of a loved one. But, like a shock absorber damaged by a large pothole, these natural processes can get stuck and stop working.

Many of us have experienced stress or trauma too early in life to make sense of. Unprocessed experienced from early in life can run our lives as adults, and the psychological defenses of childhood can prevent us from processing those experiences. The result can be a life spent repeating the same mistakes, avoiding valuable sources of love or growth, and suffering from emotional problems.

A failure of processing is not the only cause of psychological ills or limited behavior. But even when there are other causes, processing can help clear the way to better coping and larger living.

Processing Defined & Experienced

I think of processing as "body, mind and community, making sense of life." Science and speculation have already made processing a deep subject, but I believe that decades from now, this handy definition will still sum it up.

Shall we expand this just a bit?

Body (the adaptive biological processes that promote recovery from psychological effects of change) mind (as reflected in our mental functioning, and influenced by our thoughts and healing practices) and community (our effect on our communities, and our cultural climate affecting these biological processes) making sense (organizing biological information into patterns that help us succeed) of life (the meaning to us of our experiences).

If you string together the black text, you get: Biological processes, thoughts, healing practices, and cultural climate organizing meaning.

When therapy helps people restore their functioning or get rid of symptoms through reprocessing, they usually say the process feels natural, although amplified or sped up. Those who are experienced with some form of deep relaxation find reprocessing to be even more familiar and easy to participate in. I think this is because people who deeply relax experience a state that has some overlap with reprocessing. This state is part of the reprocessing formula, as you'll see.

When a therapist helps a client connect with traumatic memories the client has been unable to reprocess, and they are unsuccessful in reprocessing them, they can feel a lot worse. This is called retraumatizing the client. Fortunately, therapists are getting better at tapping into reprocessing and other means to prevent this.

Reprocessing: Amplifying and Guiding a Natural Response

Dramatic cures of stuck symptoms have been documented for a very long time. The addition of "body mind" modalities that include body awareness work, imagery work, and related processes appears to have made these cures somewhat more likely to occur, particularly when the therapist is savvy about the subconscious dynamics that are part of the picture. (The past bestseller on the work of Milton Erickson, called Uncommon Therapy is a great example, stressing work with the unconscious.)

Now another change is taking place. A new generation of methods, such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and TFT (Thought Field Therapy) are producing more consistent and rapid results with a number of psychological and even physical problems. (Background on these rapid-acting therapies.)

My exposure to EMDR led to me getting a grip on the idea of reprocessing. This type of therapy often produces speeded up change in deeply held emotional not-very-conscious beliefs, and also often rapidly eliminates symptoms of psychological trauma and other problems.

Of course, it doesn't always work, and doesn't always work quickly. Especially for people with severe repeated childhood psychological trauma, it may not even be appropriate to use, or may be just a part of a more comprehensive treatment. For some people, it can be hard work involving intense emotions.

I noticed that with talk or body mind or EMDR therapy, when people get into this healing state, they usually show that both sides of their brain are working together in a certain way.

When people are mainly using left brain functions, they are more logical, or at least analytical, in a focused way. When their right brain functions are dominant, they are more in touch with emotions, more intuitive and creative. With stimulation that promotes a "whole brain state," people show both of these traits at once.

It is unusual to see this. In Ericksonian hypnosis, the therapist often distracts or zones out the left (verbal, logical) brain hemisphere functions so they can work with the right brain. This way, the person is in a trance, and therapy is very abstract or metaphorical. With both sides turned on, however, the person shows both traits at once, and participates much more fully in the session.

When I first encountered this, I was surprised to see client doing very symbolic imagery work, while able to comment on it very logically without losing the right brain effect. It felt like I was working with unusually gifted people, even though they were normal folks. Having received this type of therapy I can say it feels normal, but special at the same time when I'm in that state.

There are numerous therapy methods that help get this "whole brain" effect. Eugene Gendlin's Focusing and Interactive Guided Imagery (books) are great examples. But EMDR produces this effect surprisingly consistently and strongly.

Although EMDR is a big subject, and it has several aspects, I want to point out two things in particular. First, it uses patterns of eye movement, sound or tapping that shifts the client's awareness from side to side, mainly left and right in certain ways. Second, it follows the formula I'll describe later which applies to many treatments and not just western psychotherapies.

Activating Our Reprocessing Resources

In psychotherapy, there are many parts that promote improvement. Below, I describe the steps that appear to most consistently evoke the natural resources for processing. It is not, in itself, a description of therapy, although there are many people who can experience improvement as described just from these steps.

Caution: These steps can cause increased relaxation and awareness. If you have not had positive experiences with relaxation or awareness work, or if you have been traumatized or have a mental illness, then you should work with a therapist and discuss this before exploring it.

1) Exposing: The person's "miss-coded" issue (such as a traumatic memory) is "brought within range" of their "innate healing dynamic" (that dynamic usually is awareness, especially with psychological issues, so this could mean bringing a traumatic memory into awareness.)

2) Connecting: The person experiences a state of "increased intercommunication" (like that left-right "whole brain" state we discussed. Here's a physical version: inflammation in infected tissues that allow white blood cells to move into position to fight the infection.)

3) Structuring: Guidance is provided as needed for "rearranging connections." (In EMDR, that's the work on subconscious beliefs. Therapists call such work "cognitive restructuring.") Often it pertains to the way things are symbolically connected in our minds. (More on that later.)

Let's summarize the big picture, then I'll give an example.

I see reprocessing as a natural process.

I believe it can be amplified, and that the steps above are an excellent way to do this for many people.

I believe therapy is becoming more effective in treating the problems reprocessing applies to, because we're learning more about step two, (connecting) and step three (structuring).

Example of Reprocessing using EMDR

Let's say Mr. A was scared by the way his mom and dad fought when he was little. They even came to blows when they were drinking. Although he did pretty well in life up until age 22, Mr. A found his new job and boss to be awfully stressful. He can't understand why he can't sleep and is feeling anxious and sometimes raging at his girlfriend, who has started talking about breaking up. He says, "I've been through worse, why am I losing it now?

In therapy, he focuses his awareness (while in the EMDR state) on his job and boss. His stress about them eases off, but his mind jumps back to his parents. The therapist helps him unearth an irrational, childhood belief that he didn't even know he had--but which seemed so familiar when he put it into words: "I am responsible for preventing emotional chaos. If I fail, I'll die."

He realized that this deep, unconscious belief had been causing him to carry around unnecessary stress for a long time. After the session, he commented on how much clearer he was on how his current life, his past and his behavior were connected, and that his boss had triggered his memories of his father, and that he was handling stress at work in a style he had adopted as a child and needed to change. His symptoms disappeared and he started handling his relationship and work more effectively with coaching from the therapist.

So far this is about therapy, what about other types of healing?

Fair enough. Let's apply the reprocessing template to Shamanic soul retrieval and see if we analyze it without necessarily having to believe in the metaphysics (not that I don't have an open mind, I just don't like things attributed to spirits when there is a psychological explanation.)

By reading materials such as the book Soul Retrieval and through discussion with a Shamanic counselor who is also a psychologist with ample experience in the field, I came to see soul retrieval as following the reprocessing formula:

1) Exposing: The person thinks of the way they allegedly lost their soul (or at least is likely to experience distress over it.)

2) Connecting: Methods such as visualization and rhythmic drumming (in the low theta frequency range, which contributes to whole brain processing) are used that create the interconnected state that appears to enhance reprocessing.

3) Structuring: In soul retrieval, it doesn't appear that this step is as sophisticated as cognitive restructuring in psychotherapy. Nevertheless, the meaning of the symptoms has been changed, a belief in healing was probably fostered, and the significance of the treatment was amplified by the trappings and what appears to be a psychic understanding by the shaman. (For example, the shaman may tell the person something the shaman should not be able to know about the nature of the trauma. This is the stuff that makes me keep an open mind.)

With these steps in mind, and remembering that the actual issue does not necessarily need to be fully conscious during reprocessing, it may be possible that one could do past life therapy on past lives one never had, and still improve. (I like the story of the woman who had a rebirthing therapy experience in which she relived her birth trauma. Her mom was amused when she was told this, because her daughter was born by cesarean section.)

Now that we've looked at the reprocessing formula, how does Thought Field Therapy, that supposedly works with energy, fit in?

First of all, Thought Field Therapy is a treatment that is gaining increasing accepting among licensed therapists, and was even mentioned positively in Family Therapy Networker. It comes out of an approach to healing that is based, in part, on the ancient Chinese medical belief in energy meridians (the ones acupuncturists stick their needles into.)

Even Thought Field Therapy treatments often follow the three steps of the reprocessing formula, but emphasize physical intervention. It seems to emphasize the third phase (structuring) in a way that appears to reduce the need for step two (connecting).

But what do you "connect" with ?

Ah! I love this part. I think it's the most essential reprocessing concept.

Think of a stimulus (say, a job interview), and a stress response (sweaty palms, IQ drops ten points, you say something stupid.) What's in between the stimulus and response that we can "fix" to get a different response? (Calm, witty, charismatic, the way you want to be in a job interview!)

Think of that "in-between" as a symbolic link. How did the job interview become a symbol that the body mind would react to as if it were strapped down in a torture chamber with a guy named the Count? Maybe our interviewee was mistreated by an authority figure.

But what if we don't need to reprocess "the cause" (say, a traumatic memory) from a psychological trauma point of view (like you would expect a therapist to do, say, by directly working on the authority issues or traumatic memories, or faulty beliefs such as those we discussed earlier.)

Work such as Thought Field Therapy implies to me that a more technically incisive approach allows us to more directly link the right state (calm, charismatic) with the situation (job interview). In other words, the client focuses on the situation, memory or disturbing state, then is helped to very quickly go into a positive state. This way step one (exposure) zaps through step two (interconnections) straight into step three (restructuring.)

The theory behind this is that activation of acupuncture meridians (and other features of the method) is a quick way for many people to shift into a positive state. Whether the theory holds water or not, the direct connection between state (confident) and stimulus (interview) is a very focused new structure that was persuasive enough to the body that it did not require the typical work on beliefs or memories that therapists commonly provide.

The positive state in connection with the previously troublesome memory or other material becomes a persuasive body memory. And bodies tend to choose the more efficient, life-enhancing option so long as it isn't blocked. Perhaps the reason for the durability of gains made through EMDR, TFT and other rapid therapies is that the body is given a choice. This is rather different from saying there is a certain amount of trauma (perhaps five kilograms?) to be processed or digested through therapy. It side steps processing completely in many cases, and goes directly to creating a positive choice the body eagerly takes from then on.

To top it off, this new structure tends to give rise spontaneously to improved beliefs, apparently because they come with the state. It is well-known that physical changes will alter the beliefs that one is on touch with (specific proteins have been shown to give rise to specific phobias, low self esteem runs rampant when people experience depression--not just the other way around.)

Spontaneous belief change is also seen in EMDR. I believe this is because the reprocessing in EMDR begins a state change fairly early in the session, so new beliefs sometimes flow from that. The savvy EMDR therapist uses this to improve the speed and effectiveness of treatment.

This leaves one last point.

Physical Change and Reprocessing

Everybody's heard that reducing psychological stress can sometimes improve health conditions, especially the ones the mind seems to have the biggest effect on (such as digestion or ulcers, skin rashes, heart conditions.)

But it goes farther than that. Here's why. There is no clear dividing line between beliefs or symbols (like a job interview seeming like a life-or-death situation) and the chemicals that pervade our bodies. The immune system works a lot like our memories (see Ernest Rossi's the Psychobiology of Mind-Body Healing.) For example, the mind has been shown to influence the immune system, which functions a lot like memory. With this in mind, let's apply the reprocessing formula to physical health.

Here is an acupuncture treatment for allergies that looks like the reprocessing formula:

1) Exposing: Expose the patient to the allergen.

2) Connecting: This one is skimpy, just like Thought Field Therapy (which, you'll recall, is partly inspired by Chinese medicine.)

3) Structuring: The weakest meridian is strengthened, then an overall feel-good balancing treatment is provided.

Remember we were talking about the importance of linking the situation or stimulus with the desired response. In this acupuncture treatment, a balanced state was linked with the allergen. Linking can also be done with what we might call symbols. Scents have been used to partly substitute for drugs by exposing the patient to the scent at the same time as they take the drug. Eventually, the scent may be used to elicit some of the drug effect without actually using the drug. This allows for some improvement in the condition (lupus is an example described by Bill Moyers in Healing and the Mind) without the drug's side effects. In this example, the scent served as a "symbol" to link the state (positive effect of a drug) with the situation (lupus.)

Making connections between healing systems is very exciting. It helps us think about healing across disciplines and even cultures. I realize this tour through the reprocessing perspective is breezy, but I hope I've achieved my main goal of providing a way of looking at healing and personal development that will help you make decisions about your own well being and explore these modalities.

Note: The home pages (side bar) have various resources related to this subject.

Helpful Reading and Listening

Personal Journey is recording with instructions for body awareness, visualization and relaxation processes. The tape supports these processes with sound only.

Focusing, by E. Gendlin, 1980, New York: Plenum. Trains the public on linking left and right functions for reducing distress and for problem solving using a simple body mind exercise.

Spiritual Dimensions of Healing: From Native Shamanism to Contemporary Health Care, by S. Krippner & P. Welch, 1992, New York: Irvington. Describes remarkable healing practices from several perspectives.

The Psychophysiology of Mind-Body Healing, E. Rossi, 1986, New York: Norton. Gets technical, but shows how our bodies and minds are linked to be able to use mental methods for healing.

Getting Well Again by C. Simonton, 1978, Los Angeles: Tarcher. One of the first books on imagination and healing. Practical information for the general public. It describes the famous cancer work by the Simontons.

Health Psychology, S. Taylor, 1986, New York: Random House. There are many books that give an overview of the subject. This one is more of an undergraduate text book, so it avoids the fuzziness and exaggeration you can get from some sources.

Imagination and Healing, A. Siekh, 1984, Farmindale, New York: Baywood. This one's more for therapists, but if you want to get the details, they're here.