State Alignment: A Useful Perspective in Psychotherapy

This article is intended for mental health professionals interested in psychotherapy innovations and how they may be integrated into the therapists existing skills. The article explains the author's use of "states" by describing and exemplifying several practical categories of states. They include Energy Balance and Mastery, Technical Gateways with Processes, Immediate Applications, and Spiritual Pathways. This terminology is used because it is so well-suited to the purpose of teaching a practical understanding of state management.

Immediate Applications: Task Based

Immediate Applications are methods allowing a ready experience of a state for an immediate purpose. The most common example is relaxation used in stress management. Deep relaxation is considered a skill that can be learned. The purpose of relaxation methods in stress management is to learn to maintain a more relaxed state and experience resulting benefits such as improved health or work habits.

Unfortunately, many people who meditate or do other forms of deep relaxation complain thatas soon as they enter certain stressful situations, the relaxation seems to evaporate and they're back in their familiar tension. This is probably because they have not adequately "processed" the triggers in the situation and because they have psychological defenses which manifest as tension and block processing of the triggers. Gateway States with Processes are helpful in resolving these chronic patterns of tension and reactivity that can defeat stress management practices.

Brainwave entrainment(the use of stimuli such as light and sound to elicit brainwave frequencies and related states) is a particularly quick and easy way to experience an Immediate Application. There are numerous recordings as well as light and sound machines available for this purpose. For examples of such of recordings, see the products site. Brainwave entrainment is best known as a method for producing a light or deep meditative state. It works by providing a frequency which the brain tends to follow (the "frequency following response"), which matches a brainwave frequency corresponding to the desired state of relaxation. There are other uses for entrainment as well. It can produce heightened mental clarity and motivation in many users by using a faster frequency. Books by Michael Hutchinson go into much detail on brainwave entrainment.

Immediate Applications: Joy Based

Joy Based applications do not have to have a purpose such as enhancing health. Of course, a task based application such as relaxation is a joy based one as well if your have a good relaxation experience. Joy Based Applications often have other optional (or even unavoidable) task purposes as well (such as improved health.) In any case, tantric sexual practices, practices for savoring experiences in nature, body awareness applications, and free-form consciousness journeying can be just for pleasure.

Gateway States and Related Processes

Technical Gateways are states used to get to another long-term state.Technical Gateways usually require processes involving various steps or exercises in order to make full use of them. Hypnosis, visualization, body psychology methods and EMDR use gateway states.

Sometimes a gateway state does not require additional processes to be facilitated by the therapists. Instead, the state seems to take off on its own and allow the person experiencing it to benefit from its long-term purpose. That is because all states elicited through state management as discussed in this site are natural states. Additional processes are often necessary, however, because the person's ability to spontaneously experience the natural process has been blocked through trauma or social conditioning. PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is a good example of this, as its symptoms can continue or worsen without intervention, even though the person with the disorder has no congenital problem contributing to the symptoms.

Consider EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.) Using stimuli such as eye movement, sound or tapping, the therapist elicits a state and adds processes such as focused awareness and ways of improving one's beliefs. These combine with the state to produce a healing effect. EMDR has been shown to be a dramatic improvement in treating various problems, most notably PTSD.

But  need we talk about a state? Isn't it enough to draw from models of memory,desensitization, and cognitive reprocessing? Not for me. That's because it is so easy to use the bilateral stimulation and targeting of EMDR to assist in producing deep relaxation, body awareness, and visualization practices such as mental rehearsal. Therapists are discovering that using sound or a kinesthetic stimulus such as tapping free the user to experience the processes without distraction. This can create additional opportunities for treatment methods, such as greater interactivity between therapist and client, and more flexibility when using visualization.

Spiritual Pathways

Spiritual Pathways such as mystical traditions and Zen meditation use various practices to induce useful states. These states may have various earthly uses, but are often intended to achieve a metaphysical objective. There is an aspect of spiritual pathways that is especially important for psychotherapists, even if they do not include spiritual issues in their practice, particularly if they integrate methods such as EMDR. The article onlevels of consciousness in therapy is helpful here.

In brief, rapid acting therapy methods, or those involving altered states (even if this just means deep relaxation) tend to connect clients with whatever is holding them at a given level of consciousness, and it can be experienced as discomfort of some kind. Therapy approaches which can rapidly dissolve such distress can allow the client to experience another level of consciousness. Clients often feel that this is a spiritual experience.

It is important for the therapist to have enough facility with levels of consciousness to be able to validate and interpret such experiences for the client in such a way as to enhance their motivation for continued pursuit of therapeutic objectives.

Energy Balance and Mastery

I don't subscribe to traditional beliefs about chi or energy, but I think a lot can be gained from using some of the techniques. I hope this section helps to explain this. Energy Balance and Mastery practices can accomplish many things, including mastery over one's state for improved performance and peace of mind, and evoking spiritual experiences as perceived by the tradition. Consider the Tantric Yoga Practices taught by Mantak Chia. These practices teach control over what participants experience as energy. It believes that the energy meridians taught by Asian medical philosophy can be managed by the mind and by physical practices. Tai Chi and Chi Kung are better known examples of this type of work. Persons using such practices report impressive improvement in their ability to experience a sense of balance and increased energy and mental clarity, as well as improvements in judgement and attitude that they experience as spiritual.

Energy psychology practices such as TFT (Thought Field Therapy, Roger Callahan), EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques, Gary Craig) and EDxTM (Energy Diagnosis and Treatment Method, Fred Gallo) claim results somewhat similar to EMDR, but claim to work primarily through the body's energy system. They use practices derived from Applied Kinesiology. Practitioners report that these practices can often gain symptom resolution more rapidly than EMDR and with much less risk of abreaction. All of these practices have relative strengths and weaknesses. Therapists who have learned more than one of these procedures report that they develop the ability to select which procedure a given client is likely to respond well to, and to integrate aspects of these methods to enhance the therapist's flexibility and effectiveness. While these methods often result in substantial spontaneous cognitive restructuring (improvements in beliefs, values and attitudes), some methods, such as EMDR and EDxTM emphasize cognitive restructuring in order to enhance treatment.

A dramatic example of using energy psychology drawn from Asian approaches occurred in the case of a client with OCD who was becoming destabilized as a result of circumstances in his life going out of control. The client was very jumpy, distracted and difficulty to communicate with. I often ask clients to use points or energy patterns from energy-based systems, with gratifying results. This often reduces the number of sessions required and gives the client a sense of control over their state, much as reframing does for cognition.This sense of control can greatly enhance a client's motivation for treatment and sense of hope and efficacy.

I asked the client to try an experiment by paying attention to the "ming men" point which is said to draw excess energy out of the heart and head (which people in crisis tend to have), and into this point. (It is roughly in the center of the low back, where the spine intersects with a line perpendicular to the body and intersecting with a point three thumb widths below the navel.) The backs of the knees can also be used for this purpose. He immediately calmed, and was so shocked by this that he went directly to the bookstore to get the book that described this technique (Mantak Chia, Healing Energy and the Tao.) On his return the following week, he and his wife described him as having much more control over his behavior, and feeling much more independent. Although I don't subscribe to the beliefs of energy systems such as Chia's, I believe that there are down-to-earth reasons that the work they do is compelling and has relevance in psychotherapy.

Repeated experiences such as these increased my fuse of energy psychology practices over the years. The Guide to Inner Work Methods provides some self use ideas along these lines.

I first wrote this in 1998. I reviewed it with minor editing in 2010. The concepts are still useful and can be integrated into many approaches to psychotherapy and self-help.