Alternative Cognition Article
Alternative Cognition or ‘Don’t Pick the Scab’
by
Michael Noël - SQHP
(First published Autumn 2008 in Fidelity - The Journal for the National Council of Psychotherapists)
THE LIFE ENTITLEMENT DOCTRINE
"Problems may have changed my life, but I was not born with them and I can change my life back to how I want it to be.
My past experiences cannot be altered, but I can alter how I cope with them. They do not have to affect my current or future existence.
I have choices. I can choose to change that which I am unhappy with. I am an individual in my own right and I deserve to live a happy and satisfying life. I am more than a body. I am a source of unique power. I am special. I am ME."
It was largely due to the fact that I was receiving more new clients who had previously been to other therapists and psychologists without gaining results, but who appeared to receive benefit from my own sessions, that caused me to begin to query ‘why?’ What was I doing differently to those other professionals?
Permit me to give just two actual examples. Admittedly they’re anecdotal, but they are part of my personal experience and therefore, I think, relevant. Some of the specifics have been changed for confidentiality purposes.
One of my first clients had been referred by his GP for agoraphobia which he had suffered for a number of years. He had been under a psychologist for over two years and came to me with his wife. The effort to leave his house had been quite tremendous and we initially spoke for a good hour during which time I taught him a simple relaxation technique and emphasised the fact that his past problems had no right to interfere with his current life. I then asked if he’d come for a walk with me along the busy road outside my office. He nervously agreed and, leaving the wife behind, we went over three hundred yards up the road before he began to feel a panic attack start to take hold. Using the relaxation technique I’d taught him during the previous hour we were able to safely turn around and return to the office without a full panic developing.
Asked how he felt, he replied, ‘I’ve achieved more in one session with you than I have in two years with the psychologist.’ I naturally felt pleased with this report, but considered that on this occasion, I’d just been lucky.
On another occasion, I received a phone call from a gentleman about his wife who, for sixteen years, had been suffering from an irrational fear of going to places, events, even friends’ houses. She was fine when she arrived there, but had severe anxiety attacks at the build-up to going. This was causing a great strain on her marriage and with the rest of her family.
During the medical note taking, she told me that she had had, over the years, a number of sessions with different hypnotherapists (some private, some state employed), psychiatrists and psychologists. All to no avail. Again, as in the previous example, I taught her a simple relaxation technique and explained that, from my perspective, what caused her problems in the past should not be allowed to affect her present or future life.
We did a hypnosis session based on this premise and booked a second appointment for the following week. When she came to pay, she explained that she couldn’t write out cheques and that she hadn’t been able to do this for over three years. Her husband, who had brought her and attended the session, confirmed this and gave me their cheque for the required amount.
When Jane (not her real name), came the following week, I was surprised and delighted to see that she was on her own. At the end of the session, I was again pleased to see that she could now write out her own cheque and she said that for sixteen years her life had been hell and was now completely changed. She requested a third session but asked for it to be left for four weeks, so that she could really ‘put what she’d learnt to the test as she had a number of social events she wanted to go to between now and then.’ At this third meeting, Jane came bouncing in smiling all over her face. She was now socialising as she used to, she was happily writing the household cheques and had found the whole experience quite ‘unbelievable’. No other appointments were booked.
Two anecdotal stories, admittedly, but they were the ones that caused me to ponder and question what I’d learnt about regression and to say that there just could be another way to change the thinking of a person with a problem.
It took some research through my records to realise that I was working to my ‘Life Entitlement Doctrine’ without realising it. What I was doing was assisting the client to accept their past problems, and then to begin to think differently about them WITHOUT the need to regress back to the time when that particular problem had first occurred. To me it didn’t matter. What mattered was how they viewed that problem now, today.
I had often used the example of the mother telling her young child who’d cut or grazed themselves, ‘Don’t pick the scab. If you do, it will get infected.’ And I began to ask myself, why this same situation couldn’t occur within the mental as well as within the physical body. Was it really necessary to go back to the original event or could I help the client accept that event in such a manner that it didn’t cause them any more problems?
I had already experienced what I now call ‘Alternative Cognition’(AC) in my own family arena. For reasons that have never been explained to me, my wife or our son, our daughter hasn’t had anything to do with us, or her extended family of aunt’s, uncles and cousins for over 25 years. We needed to find a way of coping with this terrible loss, the grief of a death without a death if you see what I mean. And the first thing we had to do was to accept that, for whatever reason, what had happened could not be changed. It was in the past and that past had no right to affect our current or future lives. We were able, by ‘alternative cognition’, to reduce the intense emotional pain to that of an acceptable sadness and thereby continue with our lives. We didn’t need to ‘pick the scab.’
In June 2008 the BBC reported a study from the University of Buffalo where they compared the progress of 3,000 people who took different approaches over two years following the 9/11 attacks. Dr Mark Seery discovered that those people who chose not to talk about their feelings after this event appeared to be better off psychologically over time than those who did talk about their trauma. This seemed to substantiate my own findings and is why I no longer regularly regress clients back to relive the incident behind their problems.
In alternative cognition the client first accepts that ‘the problem has changed their life.’ They already know this, but by re-iterating it back to them, the therapist encourages the empathy that is so necessary for alternative cognition to work. This is all done before any therapy begins. It is part of my initial pre-talk.
I then continue by getting them to accept that ‘they were not born with this problem’ and therefore ‘they can change their life back to how they want it to be.’
The most important part of alternative cognition is in the third line of my Life Entitlement Doctrine. It is for the client to realise that ‘their past experiences cannot be altered.’ But what can be altered is ‘how they cope with them,’ and that ‘their problems do not have to affect their current or future existence.’
By what right must a past problem, which we can do nothing about because it is in the past and the past cannot be changed, affect our present or future life? It does, but that’s because of the way the subconscious dealt with the problem in the first place. It reacted in a manner which it believed was for our own benefit at that time, instinctively, a knee jerk reaction, a quick fix. But that quick fix had other repercussions which the subconscious mind at that time wasn’t aware of. It caused an ongoing problem which, from that moment affected how we viewed our world. Our outlook changed. It changed because of how the subconscious originally dealt with the event.
We can’t change that event or how the subconscious reacted to it, because it has already happened, but we can change how we look on that event now, today. We can do this in many ways, by hypnotic regression, cognitive behavioural therapy, counselling or alternative cognition.
I stopped using hypnotic regression on a regular basis, even though I’ve successfully trained in the Cal Banyan 5 Path Method, because on those occasions when a client was unable to discover any relevant happening in the past which might have caused the problem, their confidence became lowered and full recovery suffered. I also needed to develop a new approach when I had to deal with clients who had had similar unsuccessful age regression experiences with other therapists.
Of the therapies mentioned above, cognitive behavioural therapy now has the backing of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) with the UK government putting aside some £173m to increase the number of CBT therapists in the NHS.
Professor Mick Cooper of the University of Strathclyde recently told a counselling conference at the University of East Anglia that ‘whilst accepting that this therapy has had more studies into it than many others, this does not mean that it is more effective than other types of therapy.’ I believe Professor Cooper is quite correct. I also believe that, generally, hypnotherapy is speedier than both CBT and counselling due to the fact that the hypnotist bypasses the defence mechanisms of the Critical Factor, something which these other two practices often find extremely difficult to achieve.
When using alternative cognition, we focus entirely on the ‘here and now, and the future’, accepting that which has happened in the past as an experience in the life of the client to be looked back upon in a new and more healthy way.
Everything about alternative cognition is in the positive. No ‘buts’, ‘ifs’, ‘howevers’ are allowed. When I ask a client how they’ve been coping since their last session, if they say, ‘I’ve been very good, but....’ I stop them at the ‘but’ and ask them to enlarge on the ‘very good’ bit. I then suggest that, if the technique had any downside, what would that be? This then gives the client the opportunity to put their ‘but’ bit in, but in such a way that they feel the ‘but’ is due to something other than any failing on their part. This keeps them in the positive phase and I can then rearrange the technique or therapy of that session to take their ‘but’ bit into consideration.
A structured session would normally consist of the following:
1. Initial taking of personal details and medical history.
2. Take the client through a simple relaxation awake hypnosis (EFT) routine for ‘Even though I have some constricted breathing.....’ This proves to them that the technique has a physical de-stressing effect on the body and builds up their of confidence in it.
3. Have client discuss what effect the problem is having on them. NOT the problem in detail.
4. Show them ‘Life Entitlement Doctrine’ Card and explain that this is the formula you wish to follow. Do they have any questions about it?
5. Take them slowly into hypnosis, if they haven’t experienced it before, and present again the Life Entitlement Doctrine to them with other suitable arguments and suggestions gained from their initial ‘problem effect’ discussion(3).
6. Reinforce with post hypnotic suggestion for colour red as their calming colour.
7.Terminate session with continued positive suggestions tagged on to feelings of wellbeing etc, during final count-up to full awareness.
8. In my clinic, I hand the client details of the awake hypnosis technique and my Relaxed Awareness CD (based on the principles of Autogenic Training) for them to practice daily in between appointments. (NB. I only ever insist on two appointments, basically so that I can have feedback after the initial session. All other appointments are governed by the client’s own requirements.)
In all of my work, the emphasis is always on the fact that past experiences have no right to affect the client’s ‘today’ experiences - and by highlighting this continually through careful wording, persuasive argument and beneficial suggestion, alternative cognition normally brings results in just three or four sessions.
I’m not academically or technically minded. When asked, ‘Do you know how a car engine works?’ I reply, ‘Yes, I turn the key.’ So it is with alternative cognition. I don’t know how it works, but I do know that I’m achieving results with it, quickly and effectively.
This doesn’t make me a lot of money, but it gives me great satisfaction.
Gift Vouchers Now Available
Unlimited Smoking Cessation Programme
New For 2010
(Click the appropriate Star)
Change Your Mood - Change Your Life
Help with:
Emotional Problems
Self Esteem
Anxiety
Abuse
Fear
Rejection
Motivation
Stress
Smoking Cessation
Weight Control
Behavioural Problems
Anger Management
Cravings
Relationships
Phobias
Painful Memories
Exam Performance
Sports Focus
Public Speaking
Communication
Goal Setting
Pain Control
Personal Growth
Releasing the Past
