Don't Pick The Scab

Many people believe that you need to re-open a past wound before you can progress forward in your life. 'You must go through the experience again in order to cope with it now.' And I ask them, why? Why must I bring up your pain from a past experience, to re-live it, to focus your present day mind on it and to give yourself additional distress? Surely the fact that you are already distressed is enough to say, 'Hang on, let's look at this problem from another perspective, one that is less painful and less emotionally intense.'

How many times, when you were a child and you'd cut yourself, did your mother say, 'If you keep picking at that scab, it'll never heal. In fact you might well cause it to become infected and create even bigger problems for yourself.'

So if we don't pick at the scab when we have a physical wound, why pick at the scab when we have an emotional wound? It doesn't make sense.

It is for this reason that I very rarely use regression to take a person back to where their problems began. In the majority of cases it doesn't matter. What matters is how you react to the distressing episode NOW. React to it differently and you will be able to handle it differently. THAT'S how successful sessions come about. I call this technique "alternative cognition".

I teach you to look at the past events differently. The result is a new road for your subconscious mind to follow and a new insight into your presenting problems. A truly win-win situation.

Does this sound too good to be true? Well, in a study undertaken by Dr Mark Seery of the University Of Buffalo in 2008 involving 3,000 people, his research appears to substantiate my own findings. Dr Seery discovered that those who didn't talk about their trauma appeared to be in better psychological shape years later than those who did. People 'can cope quite successfully and, according to our results, are likely to be better off than someone who does want to express his or her feelings,' he says. So, why pick the scab? Use "alternative cognition" instead. Click http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7427532.stm for the full article.

Alternatively, you can read my own full article on 'Alternative Cognition' which was published in the autumn 2008 issue of Fidelity, the Journal for the National Council of Psychotherapists. Click here.