I’ve Tried It, Too

For over four decades, psychotherapy has been my bailiwick. I’ve done years of talk therapy (some of it—as I like to quip—with other patients). I’ve also been trained in and have practiced numerous forms and variants of psychodynamic analysis, behavior therapies, energy therapies, and radical transformation techniques.

For the last three decades, I’ve narrowed my approach to combinations of EEG neurofeedback (brainwave training), Voice Technology (Thought Field Therapy), and a very focused type of psychotherapy based upon the challenge model (described in my book, Living Intact: Challenge and Choice in Tough Times).

I do counsel patients. In the milieu of the trusting, private, and confidential relationship that must be developed, I help people explore and expand who they are and what choices are available to them, and to confront and manage realistic expectations and the probabilities of consequences.

However, I learned long ago (to my prideful chagrin and at the expense of many hopeful patients) that words of wise advice or imploration do not help or make people change their maladaptive behaviors. Is this shocking? Imagine: your kids won’t listen, your partner brushes you off, and perhaps you cannot even quit the addiction or foul feelings, even with repeatedly sage advice you may believe is true.

Meaningful and lasting change must come from sources others other than advice, insight, imploration, fear, or pressure.

The evidence of these discoveries led me, over time, to learn, acquire, and practice techniques that truly help the majority of people achieve enduring change. For decades, I’ve seen the consistent evidence that when people change the ways their brain manages neurotransmission, they are able to take better control, and their lives improve.

Ironically, I share a common platform with the medical view that psychological symptoms are based upon organic anomalies and biochemical imbalances that require correction and as much normalization as possible. However, I view pharmacological management as partial, risky, and insufficient to free people from debilitating anguish and allow them to take charge of themselves.

The organic approach I use successfully addresses biochemical imbalances, brain and nervous system dysfunction, and the maladaptive habits and self-sabotage that entrench people in their distasteful conditions. My approach is natural, drug-free, and long lasting.

The powerful, natural, and non-invasive methods of EEG neurofeedback and Voice Technology can be used along with pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy. I’ve found over the years that EEG neurofeedback and Voice Technology helps patients reduce and, in many cases, eliminate medications (prescribed and recreational or self-medications).

When patients are stabilized, able to focus, sleep well, and attend to critical detail, they function better and are much more receptive to advice and insight. In crises, people tend to subsist in fight-or-flight mode, and are consequently unreceptive to exhortation and fear-based recommendations. When calmness and self-regulation prevail, it’s more likely that adaptive changes can be made.

I look at it this way: in order to play hockey, a person needs to be able to skate well. Without that baseline skill, all the coaching and playmaking is for naught. Similarly, the automatic and proficient “skating” in my metaphor refers to the brain self-regulating and governing itself flexibly on an automatic and routine basis. This is what effective intervention requires and accomplishes. The person who is calm, self-regulated, neurologically balanced, and properly equipped with self-soothing mechanisms is much more able to reason, plan, evaluate, compromise, try new behaviors, and adapt—the typical goals of psychotherapy.

Training, Tapping, and Talking Modalities

With these premises in mind, let’s turn our attention to the integration of modalities to best help patients emerge from their distress.

EEG neurofeedback is an exercise for the brain that operates by providing feedback to patients on their neural networking patterns—the manner and habits by which their nerve cells fire and manage transmission in the brain and nervous system. Following established principles in physical exercise and physiological conditioning, the biological “system” is subjected to structured challenges; through practice, it becomes stronger, more durable, and more flexible. This model is also true for the brain. (I call it Mental Fitness Training.) Through practice in observing one’s own EEG, the brain makes subtle improvements and normalizations in neural transmission. Thus, it is an exercise—like “going to the gym” for your brain. Brain training—much more efficient and long lasting than physical exercise—allows the brain to access information and patterns it already knows, but is less able to access without the aid of a vehicle for internal observation. Thus, the person doing neurofeedback is a witness to his own internal neurological processing. Because it requires repetition and practice, we call it a training. Though conversation, reports and adjustment by the therapist are important, the process transpires between the person training and his own brain—no cognitive problem-solving or explanation is necessary. With time and practice, the brain resets toward greater normalization, thus improving functioning and flexibility while greatly reducing symptoms and disregulation.

With Voice Technology (the highest level of Thought Field Therapy), the treatment is administered through finger tapping on the patient’s body—self-administered under the guidance of the practitioner’s instructions, gleaned from analysis of the patient’s voice. This scientific technology uses the voice to detect and project where the person is storing perturbations—disruptive cellular information that codes and connects thought fields with negative emotions. By tapping on neural pathways in precise sequences, the perturbations are collapsed and the connections between the thoughts and negative feelings are severed. You can think of it this way: when we experience distress, an “alarm” is set off in our body. The painful emotional (or physical) symptom is paired with a consciousness of thought bound up with that emotional experience. By tapping in the correct sequences, the alarm is turned off and the person no longer experiences distress connected with those thoughts. By precise tapping, we are punching in a code to turn off the internal alarm.

Despite its unconventional, nonrational, and nonlinear attributes, Voice Technology results in a success rate of at least 95%. This empirical evidence flies in the face of conventional beliefs. However, it is reliable, replicable, and indeed scientific. Traumas, phobias, and persistent, negative, “encapsulated” emotions are typically eliminated within minutes!

These training and tapping technologies do the burden of work in relieving emotional distress. Like precise and dedicated tools, they go where the rational mind (of the patient and the therapist) cannot enter. They are able to clean house and restore increasing degrees of normalcy.

Where, then, are the places for talking as a modality in psychotherapeutic healing?

Values of Talk in Talk Therapy

I am convinced that talk therapy is ineffective and inappropriate as the main modality in attempting to relieve negative emotional states—anxiety, fear, panic, trauma, etc. Unfortunately, this is the modality used by most psychotherapists in treating a plethora of ailments for which patients seek help. Modern techniques in psychotherapy are almost always variants of cognitive behavior modification (CBM or CBT) in which the objective is to give patients tools to “reframe” or “think differently” about an upsetting feeling or problem, thereby reducing its power or control over the patient. This method is severely flawed because the rational mind is ineffective at subduing or eradicating emotional anguish that actually arises from the visceral areas of the brain and biochemical system. We simply can’t think our way out of fear. We can suck it up, persevere, and prove ourselves more stoic and confident through exposure—but that is far different from and inferior to eliminating the problem (easily and quickly accomplished through the techniques previously described).

As mentioned, when people are stabilized, able to focus, sleep well, and attend to critical detail, they function better and are much more receptive to advice and insight. Then, meaningful interchange can occur between patient and therapist that can help the patient make sensible evaluations, choices, and adaptations.

Here are some of the key areas in which psychotherapeutic intervention can be helpful:

• Validation
  We all want to be validated and supported. That is, we want verification that what we think, feel, and believe are legitimate; that someone understands and “has our back.” While consensus and agreement do not prove that we are right, they provide comfort and lend credence to our experiences—particularly the experiences of suffering, feeling wronged, misunderstood, rejected, etc.
  A consoling therapist can validate experience, make us feel accepted, and provide support that we are cared for, perhaps mistreated, and “not crazy.” Therapists can help build confidence, provide a safety net, and make us feel valuable and wanted.
  The downside of this interactive relationship is that some people are habitually self-pitying, comfortable in the victim role, and avoidant of facing reality and the need to change.
• Reality-testing
  Sometimes, people are a little “crazy,” or, more benignly, a bit “off.” This can range from delusional or psychotic to distortions in thinking, reasoning, and perceptions that are out of line with facts, evidence, and the perceptions and experiences of those around them.
  Severely mentally ill people rely on those around them (and notably professionals) to determine when they are “off-line” with reality and maybe even dangerous to themselves or others. For these folks, long-term intermittent care is often useful in monitoring, anchoring, and providing a safety net and occasional rescue from the ravages of hallucinations or paranoid ideation. These types of patients become particularly vulnerable when they stop taking medications that, in their circumstances, are their only means of tethering their brains to regulation and reality.
  For less disturbed people, who nonetheless become embroiled in conflict and dysfunction magnified by their distorted and iconoclastic thinking, therapists can act as a reality-check, gently and craftily challenging patients’ perceptions and/or overreactions to the actions and motivations of others. Good psychotherapy serves as a milieu for challenging ideas about the world and deriving alternative perceptions and strategies to work around “they’re out to get me” notions.
• Perceptual considerations
  Along with challenging patients’ questionable ideas about their circumstances, a trusted therapist can develop inroads and shape skills in patients’ abilities to see other potential points of view and situations which include others’ needs.
  When presented with someone’s stubborn, narrow, and often distorted ideas, I will typically respond, “Yes, I understand how you see it this way… but, tell me, is it possible that there is any other point of view that someone else may have about this?” Just opening the door to the domain of possibility permits patients to allow that there are other perceptions (even if they adamantly defend their own as the right ones). Alignment precedes flexibility and insight.
  Still, the use of reason and logic will only go so far; and it usually falls flat when someone is tied up emotionally and habitually invested in justifying a shackled condition from which he cannot break free.
  There is the story about the patient brought to a psychiatrist by a family member because of his delusion that he was dead. The psychiatrist established rapport, and then began to appeal to the intelligent patient’s intellect. Asked the psychiatrist, “Can a dead person bleed?” The patient scoffed and replied, “Doctor, I’m surprised a man of medicine would ask such a silly question. Of course dead people cannot bleed. A short time after death, rigor mortis sets in and…” whereupon the psychiatrist stabbed the patient in the wrist with a pair of scissors. The patient calmly watched blood spurt from his arm and said in wonder, “Well, I’ll be darned—I guess dead people can bleed, after all!”
• Predicting outcomes—probability
  Survival as a human requires constant planning, evaluation, adjustment, and prediction. Moreover, we must cull and distill from events the meanings and essential organizing principles central to what we experience and learn to respond in ways that give us reward and advantage. Such abstracting and generalizing from essential organizing principles allows us to recognize core dynamics, anticipate cause and effect, and avoid making harmful mistakes. We learn from experience; the more rapidly and efficiently we learn, the better our chances of thriving.
  Of course, you need a brain in good working order to do this. The brain in constant panic, overexcitement, or torpor is unable to respond effectively to life’s changing circumstances and demands. That’s why it’s imperative to first liberate the brain from dysfunction in order to prepare it to learn effectively.
  Once the brain is able to attend, to filter and process information accurately, learning from experience and predicting outcomes that lead to success become more attainable. This is where a keen and savvy therapist can educate and coach patients to look ahead, connect past experience with cause and effect, and make smart choices based on informed predictions. This is the wise use of behavioral probability: playing the odds in your favor.
  You know the old saying: if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re gonna get more of what you’ve already gotten.
• Communication styles
  People have different styles, temperaments, verbal abilities, needs, and pressures that affect and constrain how they “hear” others and express themselves. Surely, you’ve felt the frustration of not getting through to someone when you’ve carefully and clearly stated your case. Despite the abundance of “noise” in human communication, there are easily apprehended ground rules for understanding, revisiting, and appreciating what the other person is expressing and meaning.
  Psychotherapeutic time is often spent on teaching communication skills. In my view, this doesn’t take long. Most people cue in quickly, once presented with the tools and given some rehearsal and practice. Still, the therapist can play a valuable role in reading patient perceptions and offering alternative interpretations of interactions in patients’ lives that can empower them to exchange communications more effectively and with less turmoil or conflict.
  Patients can learn skills of validation and de-escalations, strategies to promote engagement and disengagement (as appropriate), and techniques to persuade and impart their opinions and feelings without threatening the other party.
• Addressing and redressing grievances
  Those familiar with my models of how the mind works will recognize the basic importance of resolving traumas and grievances in conflicts and relationships.
  Disagreements and disputes that escalate into brittle conflicts contain, at core, two elements: traumas and grievances.
  The trauma portion is the emotional reactivity to a situation. Traumas are triggered and re-stimulated by people and events where issues are perceived to cause harm and have not been settled. When someone’s position, attitude, or action bugs you, it’s because you’ve not emotionally come to terms with your sense of injustice. Even though you believe you are “right,” the lingering distress contaminates the merit of the grievance and often may inhibit its resolution.
  A grievance is a belief, allegation, or petition that some situation or action against you causes or has caused harm and has made or continues to make you less whole. You owe me money because… You never listen to me, side with me… You spend too much… Not enough sex… Don’t help out…
  Whereas traumas are resolved by emotional healing (as with the techniques outlined previously), grievances must be addressed and resolved based on the merit and evidence in the case. To reiterate: emotions are not brought under control by logic and reasoning. Once control is established through effective methods, it is logic, analysis, and reasoning that are needed to settle differences.
  You cannot reason with or persuade a person who is up in arms and overreactive emotionally (reacting—usually subconsciously—to trauma) or emotionally invested in a delusion. The trauma must be resolved before headway can be made in dealing with the merits of the grievance. Only then can examination and rational analysis lead to settlement, compromise, and resolution.
  Also, there are skills needed to proceed along the path of addressing and redressing grievances. Wrongs and injustices exist beyond the feelings each party may have about them and their legitimacy. Our legal system deals with grievances through facts, evidentiary procedures, and rules of presentation and precedent. Legal proceedings are formal extrapolations of resolving differences between people based upon establishment of and consensus about facts.
  Psychotherapists can be instrumental in teaching patients how to separate feelings from facts and deal with each accordingly in themselves and others, adopting sensitivity, compassion, patience, and persuasive communication.
  Sticking to your guns and gaining vindication is not so much a matter of confidence and assertiveness as it is dependent upon calm self-control and the skillful application of people skills, effective communication, and the sensitive awareness of and appeal to how the other person operates.
  When you are over the trauma of feeling abused or taken advantage of, you’re ready to learn how to stand up for yourself adroitly by presenting empirical facts.
• Rehearsal and feedback
  Psychotherapy can be an excellent milieu for teaching, rehearsal, and practice—specifically, trying out new communications and interpersonal approaches. It’s one thing to have an idea about voicing your feelings, standing up for yourself, or expressing compassion; it’s another matter to develop and refine the skills involve in so doing, along with the courage and support to follow through.
  A skilled therapist can provide mentoring, feedback, and opportunities for patients to rehearse and practice new approaches before venturing out into the world with them. The therapist can give objective feedback and coaching to help patients develop needed skills. As patients try new behaviors and communications in their environment, they can report back to the therapist how things worked. Together, therapist and patient can evaluate and refine these newer behaviors.
• Adjusting expectations
  Though my primary obligation as a therapist is to relieve the anguish and symptoms that patients seek, I have another mission to help people develop better adjustment and peace. Briefly stated, that is to help people adjust to life the way it is, rather than their inflated or mistaken expectations about the way things should be. We are imperfect human beings, living in an imperfect world, a universe that simply does not bend to our wishes or give us what we want much of the time. This truth is hard to accept, much less put into practice amidst the constant vexations that life presents.
  Maturity, acceptance, and peace are developed and achieved gradually. Surely, it is hard to live with pain, oppression, frustration, and the myriad of things that don’t go our way. A skilled therapist can be instrumental in help people adjust to and make the best of life’s realities and limitations. Much of this encompasses what we make of experiences and their relationships to learning and expectations.
  I believe that this process involves not only philosophy, but also the careful science of brain refinement. When the neurology is functioning within reasonable bounds, then human connection, mentoring, and leadership can pay large dividends in the investment of learning to live life with its precious rewards and daunting limitations.

When to Train, When to Tap, When to Talk

In my view, the training, tapping, and talking modalities each have unique and additive value in the healing professions. However, I believe that training and tapping are indispensable and take precedence before talk therapy can make an empowering and lasting impact. I know this may ruffle some feathers, though that is not my intention. Yet, I have walked the walk for forty years, so I’m confident in talking the talk.

To wit: in order to play hockey, a person needs to be able to skate well. Without that baseline skill, all the coaching and playmaking is for naught. In order to develop insight and make good choices and modifications, the brain and person must be calm, self-regulated, neurologically balanced, and properly equipped with self-soothing mechanisms in order to reason, plan, evaluate, compromise, try new behaviors, and adapt—those outcomes toward which psychotherapists strive with their patients.

Patients need to trust their therapists. Despite sufferers’ inherent skepticism, negativity, and previous bad experiences, somehow the hope and faith in their future must be infused into the relationship between therapist and patient. Oftentimes, this involves listening patiently to the repetitive “story” that patients compulsively narrate (even when I know that a few minutes of tapping will eliminate much of the problem, thus bypassing the need for compulsive venting). At strategic points, I must sensitively interrupt my patients’ reinforcement of the pain (describing and picking at the wound incessantly—because this is what happens inside them, and they desperately want someone to share it and participate in it). It’s my duty to enlighten and redirect therapeutic efforts toward palpable healing and progress. Yet, I must give patients the sense that they are validated, cared for, and that their experience and feelings are of utmost importance. These dynamics always require human interaction. So, talk will necessarily be endemic to the process. I need to be there for my patients, to respond and support them in periods of crisis, to validate their suffering, provide hope, and commend their importance.

Yet, someone needs to lead them out of the woods. Training and tapping are the rescue squad and first responders. When triage abounds, we don’t just want to talk about it. In the aftermath—when safety and equanimity are established—stitching together and integrating the pieces of the whole person constitutes the noble art and science of psychotherapy.