BRIEF THERAPY INSIDE OUT

SL 67 Yeah, and then you will fall for just a second, and you’ll hit the chair where your butt meets your chair with relaxation. And then when you do, I should see your breathing shift so I know you made it. . . . And now when you’ve got to the relaxation, you should be there by now, it’s only a short step. [2-22] And I’m going to ask you to hold on. Don’t move your awareness out of that spot for a couple of minutes because it takes two or three minutes for your awareness to gel on that relaxation. So while you’re doing that I am going to count from ten to 1 backwards so that we can, and then after that I will show you the other way. Ten, and let the relaxation spread up your hips and down towards your knees. Nine, eight, and then over your waist up towards you chest. Seven, and down your knees toward your thighs. Six, five, and then up your shoulders and beginning to go down the top of your arms. Four, and then down your ankles, your feet, and three, and then the rest of the way down your arms, and begin to feel it go up your neck and into your jaw, probably around the back of your head. [2-23] Two, and then around the front of your face. One, now I’ll count forward even though you might just force your eyes open real quick anyway, but two, three, four, five, six. You were pretty relaxed. You really absorbed pretty quickly in that. Now this other way is a slightly more, ah, feeling oriented way sort of visual oriented way. Let’s see which one works best for you. Put your hands about half inch apart, and then not touching anything like you are doing. That’s fine. And hold them there for just a second with your eyes open focusing on your fingers. And as you relax you probably will feel a little tingle or pulsation, some kind of, it almost feels magnetic to some people. You probably should leaves your legs uncrossed too cause that one is going to get real heavy if we succeed. [2-24] And as you relax and start to feel the little tingle in them, let me know. Between the fingertips. As you relax your hands you should feel sort of pulsing or tingling. Do you feel that?

CL 67 I got one of them.

SL 68 Close your eyes as you feel. Maybe that will help. Can you feel more than one of them yet?

CL 68 Yeah.

SL 69 Now this is a real subtle feeling, so I want you to hold onto it and do this with your eyes closed. Move your awareness from the spot where you feel it about a half inch up just towards your palm and all the fingers and just wait there until you feel the feeling kind of catch up with that. [2-25] And then move your awareness another half inch up toward your palm, hold it there, and then wait for a second, and the feeling will catch up with that. It’s kind if like you are shining a flashlight in front of a puppy here or something. It will keep following, your unconscious experience will keep following it. Is that how it’s working out for you?

CL 69 I’m sorry.

SL 72 Go ahead and do that some more. Keep doing that. Either way should work fine, but let’s do the one that works the most profoundly rapidly for you. See if we can catch back up with where you were with that feeling, and I’ll count backwards and also keep giving you some direction about it. If you tune me out, don’t worry about it. Your unconscious will listening will keep you on target. So moving your awareness another half inch and then, or a quarter inch, and then waiting until that pulsation catches up, and if it’s only one or two of the fingers, that’s enough. [2-26] It’s all you need. As your conscious mind focuses on the next spot and you wait, your unconscious begins to catch up with that as well. What you’re actually feeling is probably your, probably your capillary pressure in your fingers, so it’s a normal feeling. You just don’t normally have your awareness tuned that carefully. And then move it up towards the knuckle of your palm, fingers, and palm knuckles and wait until it catches up in your fingers. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, and then feel the back of your palms become flooded with that feeling. Fifteen, fourteen, and let it move around towards your thumbs, and you might, [2-27] I imagine you can as some people can have a sensation of sort of stepping inside that little circle of your fingers and thumb as if that part of your thumb and hand was replaced by your shoulders and neck. And you will feel the pulsation fairly rapidly swoosh over your upper torso. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, or otherwise just let it spread up your wrist and up your arm both side. Ten, nine, and around the back of your neck. Eight, and then let it be kind of a cocoon, Michelle, that sort of embraces all around your upper torso and head. Seven, six, and your hands will just remain floating there weightlessly as you do that. So you can put your attention on other things such as thinking about that positive relationship and some specific aspects of it that might come to mind as I speak. [2-28] I worked with a woman once in West Palm Beach who had, of all the things that had ever gone right or wrong in her life, just the best sense of her relationship with her child that she was able to kindle by thinking about all the photos she’d kept in her wallet. Nine, eight, and let it move on down your hips and down into your thighs and butt. And as she sat there thinking about all the pictures she’d changed in her wallet over the last nine years, places in the back of your mind that have to do with pride, and you couldn’t just say where those are. Bring pride into the foreground. Begin to bring tone to your cheeks and color to your face. And as she did that she had flipped to another picture and another one. [2-29] So gradually and little by little six, five, and let the feeling go on down to your legs and your feet. Four, she began to have experiences of motherhood that you couldn’t put words to. Sacrifices that she made and feelings that she was able to share that she didn’t ever know she’d be able to share that gave her a sense of pride in her own maturity. An identity that inadvertently she had formed for herself through the relationship and a recognition that even though she had taken a great deal by learning that identity, she hadn’t taken away from her son at all. She’d only given. [2-30] Somehow there is no tax on receiving. Five, four, and then notice as you have your own experiences how those give certain shape to the muscle tonus in your cheeks and on your lips and corners of your eyes where a sense of your own balance comes into the foreground, and . . . It’s alright to shift your awareness from time to time to the joy that you feel in just breathing and maybe even feel your heart beating in your chest. So many people fail to take the time to associate their good feelings to their heart. [2-31] They give lip service to it, but they don’t really do it. So while you’re feeling those feelings of pride and joy and being touched, notice the rhythm of your own heartbeat . . . because that brings those feelings to your face and to your shoulders, to your legs, and to your abdomen. Takes those hormones and those chemicals all over your body and increases your . . . immune system functioning simply by taking the time to pay attention to your own joy and your own pride and your own confidence and associate it to your heart. [2-32] And you couldn’t consciously know how you do that, but sooner or later your conscious symbols of doing that create the unconscious experience so that new ideas can be formed in your mind. And one of those ideas can be your conscious efforts to imagine yourself taking another step in your own personal growth. Picture yourself as you will probably look in the next few weeks or months. And while you continue to hold that experience in your heart and in your breathing, and you don’t even need to know whether or not you are succeeding at any particular phase as long as you have those fleeting sensations of imagining and picturing that Michelle as she dresses for the interviews, and she applies to the academy, . . . [2-33] as she drives day after day to day care and to the training, and there’ll be so many things you say hello and goodby to along the way. Your own private life that has to be sacrificed so that you can attend, . . . and the studying that you have to do. But add some other people to that picture while you continue to do what you were doing with your body state. Picture people that you have to say “No I’m sorry, I’m busy.” to. Telling your friends that you have to study. Figuring out how you can retain that same sense of confidence and pride and joy and deep compassion about your own life as you deal with their jokes about your carrying weapons and learning about self defense, law. [2-34] And you might even do well to picture yourself in the room somewhere with friends who are criticizing you, telling you you are too this and that. You’re too blond, you’re too short, you’re too feminine, you’re too old, you’re too something. And watch yourself from beginning to end through those scenarios as you take your maturity and your determination and your sense of centeredness and hold onto that and not be brought off by their criticisms and notice there’s no self criticism going on in your own head. [2-35] Just breathing comfortably, feeling your tears down your cheek, knowing that its partially due to your own self-made womanhood. . . . And one of the things that was really sad about the woman I was describing is that as she pictured her child through those years, she had to relate the fact that her own mother had never seen her, her own mother had never had pictures of her in her wallet because of her death, due to disease. She wasn’t able to reach in pull back into the foreground her own sense of bringing joy to a parent the way her child brought joy to her. . . . [2-36] And the sorrow that she felt that that relationship was gone, the loss of knowing the that the joy she would bring was enough and was great and was appreciated. Some people fail to realize even though they raise children and the joy or having that child has meant so much to their own growth, they don’t realize how as a child they meant that much to their parents. Maybe the parents never told them. Maybe there were so many . . . other outside problems to deal with, the opportunity never arose. [2-37] But that pride works both ways, so as you feel the pride in your own relationship with your son know that it wasn’t there except for something that came from your own heart, your own ability to give. . . . And some people think that you should do this and that and the other thing. But I remember that Cat Stevens song that said “If they were right I’d agree, but it’s them they know, not me.” . . . And it’s great that you know what you want to do or what you want to try even if no one else understands. [2-38] And so many times she wished that she’d have been able to turn to a parent who flashed a smile of joy back at her, but she remembered all those flashes of joy that her own son gave her, and she felt that joy anyway. And picture yourself being criticized by those people but knowing that it’s not affecting your own confidence, and once you’ve seen that picture, Michelle, just for the fun of it change the people in the picture but keep your feelings the same, and let that be that eight and nine year old Michelle that you see out there and watch and listen as she’s criticized but you retain the sense of your worth and your value and your strength while you watch. So that it will change those memories at some level, and when those are kindled by unexpected criticisms and rejections, something new in your mind can be triggered that has to do with the strength you’ve gained by being a mom. [2-39] You don’t even have to know how it works. Your conscious mind can discover that your unconscious is surprising you with a recognition that you’re breathing and you’re enjoying air going in and out, . . . and then project that picture up into the 29 year old Michelle and the 30 year old Michelle and the graduating from the academy Michelle and the officer Michelle and see the graduation and wonder whether or not you will have the capacity to hold as much pride in your face and in your posture as you really deserve for all of that accomplishment. You might as well feel the success of it now. Some people wait until success is over before they feel the pride of having completed it, but you might as well feel it. Even before you do it and take that joy with you. . . . A second book was being written. I decided to imagine with joy the signing of autographs for the book long before I’d ever started it, and then all of the pitfalls along the way weren’t a sign that I was going to fail. They were simply the pitfalls that happen until I succeeded. So imagine a couple of the pitfalls that you might have along the way. Running out of money, illnesses, weather problems, transportation problems, sexism you’ll run into. . . . And you might also picture how you succeeded in overcoming each of those while you are at it. . . . [2-41] And there are some other things you’re going to do after that that you haven’t thought of yet. Maybe there’ll just be a big blank screen trying to find yourself in those pictures. What Michelle’s going to do at 35 and 41, 45, 51. One of my friends in Germany was walking along in the woods just distraught about what he was going to do with a problem, and he fell asleep leaning against a tree, and he had a dream that an older man came walking along the walk and sat down beside him, and they started to talk, and it turns out the older man was him at an older age. His name was Wolf, and [2-42] Wolf talked to the older man and said, “What in the world did I ever do about that problem that I encountered back in the 1990's?” and the older Wolf said, “I don’t remember. What problem do you mean?” He said, “You remember the problem with . . .” and he described all the difficulty in great detail, and the old man said, “Oh yeah. I don’t know. That passed.” And he woke up so happy to realize that what had been troubling him was just an insignificant temporary little worry. [2-43] And somebody that you haven’t been able to see as you look into the future to find the Michelle that your unconscious may fail to form for your conscious mind knows too how you will overcome those experiences, leave them in the past and the guilt will have fallen away, and the self criticism will be laughably forgotten. I wonder what she looks like and when you’ll know her. Sooner or later you will know her. Your conscious mind failing to understand how your unconscious will come to know her won’t prevent it from happening any sooner. And whether or not you just feel better and don’t know why or you actually recognize that you’ve dropped that self criticism and guilt and some confidence remains. It may be a confidence you feel in your breathing, your posture, confidence in your face or feeling you have in your legs, you arms and chest. [2-44] Relaxation somewhere that you can bring back with you as you, two, three, four, five, begin to reorient yourself back into the chair. Six, seven, before you do you might want to imagine again a sense of falling through the funnel down to the bottom of the chair and with that sense of comfort and relaxation and security in the chair imagine yourself walking up to a second story window and looking out with comfort and realizing that that too, that thing about heights is not the same as before either. [2-45] Or maybe make a picture of yourself swimming with your son somewhere and realize that there you’re doing the backstroke and you weren’t even thinking for a second about that old childhood fear, whatever it was that you couldn’t quite bring to mind but you were trying, but you knew it had been there and you just couldn’t remember it. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and just orient yourself back to the room. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. As you do, as you bring some of those feelings back that you want, open your eyes and come back to the room. Your hands can go back down to your lap.

CL 72 I need this.

SL 73 You ended up with the Kleenexes after all. How do you feel?

CL 73 Pretty good. That was a lot.

SL 74 [2-46] What?

CL 74 That was a lot.

SL 75 That was a lot of imagination going on in your mind and a lot of feelings?

CL 75 Oh, yeah. That was a lot. I couldn’t dream that much in one night.

SL 76 So, is it still, let’s see here.

CL 76 No.

SL 77 It’s still a lot but you are not thinking about it, but it’s still going on in the back of your mind isn’t it?

CL 77 You know like when you wake up and you try to remember a dream. Sometimes you can get pieces of it. I was actually still trying to keep up with myself. It was kind of hard.

SL 78 You, you don’t actually remember already what you were thinking?

CL 78 Some of it. Yeah.

SL 79 Do you know how much time you had your eyes closed for?