Presuppositions.....

[Nigel H]

Hi folks

I was just watching a prog on TV relating to drug addicts and the phrase that is often used in such addiction related material is ...

".... I am a drug addict ..... in recovery..."

This phrase was used by a woman whom appeared very together and in tune with things and had reportedly not 'used' for 2 years or so and was helping other addicts turn their lives around again.

My thought related to the presuppositions here of 'am' a drug addict and 'in recovery' - both being present tense, making it still very much an on-going issue.

So, how long does someone have to be off their addiction - whether this be drugs, alcohol or anything else - before they 'were' and addict or 'used to be' an addict??

When are they allowed to be 'recovered'??

In other words, they are using language patterns about something that 'is' rather than that 'was'.

Is this simply to keep them focussed that they cannot touch the stuff again, or they will go right back in to it?

It makes no sense to me to use such language patterns, whereby if they truly do deal with whatever they need to, to prevent them using again, they should expect to talk about such stuff in the past tense....

SO - here's throwing the topic out there for discussion and I would be very interested to hear other common language patterns, or presuppositions that you folk think potentially hold people back!

Thanks all

Nig

[Terry]

OK I will bite...:) Words are just squiggles on paper, or sounds we make or hear. There value is based purely on the conotations that the speaker, writer, listener or reader places on them, and often the speaker means one thing, and the listener accepts another meaning. Hence discussion can lead to total confusion unless both are in agreement.
An alcoholic will speak of themselves as being a "Recovering Alcoholic", and there may well be many reasons for that. First, they value the group they meet during recovery, and wish to have a reason to continue to meet with now valued friends. Again, they may believe that if they ever take a drink of alcohol again they will be hooked once more, and of course who are we to argue that that is not so. I know of some who can now drink responsibly, but will still reffer to themselves as a recovering alcoholic, but if such does not interfer with their lives in a negative manner, who am I to argue the point?
Any condition which has been changed but could easily become the norm again would in my opinion deserve the term "recovering" if the speaker intended to infer that such a danger existed.
To acertain fact, one would need to consult with the person who used the term, since it is their conotation that is important. and not yours.

[Merlin]

".... I am a drug addict ..... in recovery..."

We have discussed word usage here before and the value of calibration to the subject.

I would use the past tense for any presenting problem. (is that tense enough <he he>)
Why suggest a person have a problem?

Sometimes, just referring to an issue in the past tense is enough.
".... I am no longer a drug addict ....."
or ".... I was a drug addict ..... "
Even 'in recovery' can imply ongoing issues.

[Connie]

I was working with a client yesterday who presented a drinking problem...he kept referring to it as "an addiction." I attempted to reframe it for him as a habit, he clearly makes choices as to when and where and what to drink (beer and wine), and it's not every day...it's something he can control (and does). He resisted the word habit or discussing it as a behavioral choice, kept referring to it as "an addiction." Turns out he's not a native English speaker, and what he means by addiction really means "habit." So, Terry is right on! (again). It's what the words mean to the client. I let him keep the evil A-word in mind, but let him know hypnosis is a powerful tool for changing it. We did parts therapy, and trance work with submodality shifts, and lots of good suggestion pumped in there. I future paced him, and it looks good! :) I have to admit I was a little freaked initally when he kept clinging to that word "addict."

[pmdigi]

"abreact" - to live through - to experience something - say a traumatic experience again - I guess to release the emotions involved - I was told to speak in the present tense and that if I was using the past tense I was just remembering and not experiencing and releasing.

[Connie]

That sounds odd to me. Experiencing the emotion does not equal releasing the emotion. Look at all these talk therapies--churn it up, and churn it up, nothing there about releasing the emotion or "fixing" the causes. I was taught to get the client disassociated from the abreaction--have them step off the timeline, for instance and see themselves as separate. "See Joe over there?? He's not having a good day, is he?"

[Merlin]

abreaction therapy is a wellknown tool.
Relive experience & reframe.

[Poodle]

Has anyone heard of abreaction therapy in NLP? I just heard about some Master Pracs doing it and it was such a "carthodic release" according to the client. Pood

[MrDigital]

He uses abreaction to erase Intense fear from a lady who had a small tumour removed years earlier.. Do you have the book YET poodle ;)

MrD

[Nigel H]

Why would anyone want to 're-live' a negative event in order to let the emotions go - surely once was enough??!! There are ways that avoid such 'abreaction' and it makes sense to use them unless anyone can actually give me a benefit in going through the event again - I can't think of any !?!?

Nig

[Terry]

Nigel, nobody knows everything, and if you know how to purge a client from say "Fear of Flying" without such abreaction, I would be happy to listen to it and learn. The only method I know of is to burn out the feelings by repetition until the client is comfortable with entering the aircraft and staying in their seat feeling comfortable as the aircraft takes off...
To date, nobody in my field of contacts uses any other method, though in fairness I have been inactive for several years except to my research and could be out of touch....

[Merlin]

Pood,
I believe the idea dates back to Sickman Fraud.
There are much better ways today, but many still do things the old-fashioned way.
It's a kind of desensitization by repetition. <shudder>.

Even NLPers can do things the old way. http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c344/Myhrrhleine2/smilies/LOL.gif

[Don]

TLT seems to work quite well for this, Terry. It insists on avoiding abreactions.

[Terry]

TLT seems to work quite well for this, Terry. It insists on avoiding abreactions. Thanks Don, I will look into that just for my own interest.

[Merlin]

Now Don,
Using TLT the client can wallow in their sh** if they insist.
TLT allows it.

[Soren K (existing)]

Why would anyone want to 're-live' a negative event in order to let the emotions go - surely once was enough??!! There are ways that avoid such 'abreaction' and it makes sense to use them unless anyone can actually give me a benefit in going through the event again - I can't think of any !?!?

Nig


Truly negative events repeat themselves over and over (for a while at least) irrespective of whether they are chosen to be 'relived' for many people. I don't know what precisely is meant by 'reliving' a negative event, but if it is imagined as being a matter of paying attention to the series of traumatic happenings re-interpreting it devoid of value judgements, then relived again (perhaps a nu0mber of times) in this way has the consequence of ejecting the emotional content and therefore the 'negativity'.

Soren

[Poodle]

Yes, I have it and read it a couple of times. Re: The brain tumor was not an abreaction as the patient already had the belief she was going to die. He did timeline work and "change personal history", neither of which are abreactions. Also the patient had passed the "threshold" meaning the last straw.

What did you see that I did not?

Stay well,
Pood :)

[skip]

Terry,

NLP's new behavior generator does this very nicely without ever entering back into the original behavior.

skip

[pmdigi]

Why would anyone want to 're-live' a negative event in order to let the emotions go - surely once was enough??!! There are ways that avoid such 'abreaction' and it makes sense to use them unless anyone can actually give me a benefit in going through the event again - I can't think of any !?!?

Nig
I see value in not abreacting as in TLT, and sometimes in abreaction. Since I'm not an expert I'll quote Kevin Hogan who wrote Miracles of Hypnosis and New Hypnotherapy Handbook among other books: "Abreaction Therapy: There is no question as to the value of abreaction or cartharsis when working with clients. One significant cause of physical and emotional illness is the lack of emotional release (usually in the form of tears and/or grieving) from traumatic events. When the client is in trance, you can allow an ego state to abreact, or, the whole self as seems appropriate. Experience is the best guide and defining rules in a limited article is difficult and un-wise. The key point to remember is that the repressed feelings of grief, guilt, shame or anger have caused emotional or physical illness and we must allow the individual or his ego state(s) to experience the release of these "negative" emotions once and for all. The client should be allowed to get all of his emotional repression vented. Once the tears have flowed, the anger has been vented, and the repression has been lifted, the ego state that has been influencing present time health often re-integrates with other parts and healing begins. The client must learn that the victimization he experiences was not of his own doing. He was a victim , plain and simple. As the client re-experiences these traumatic events he begins to release the negative emotions. As the events are re-examined a desensitization to the event and the experience begins to occur draining the negative emotional energy from the ISE or engram. I have discussed this form of therapeutic intervention at length in previous issues of The Journal of Hypnotism......."

[Nigel H]

Hi pmdigi - ........ "The key point to remember is that the repressed feelings of grief, guilt, shame or anger have caused emotional or physical illness and we must allow the individual or his ego state(s) to experience the release of these "negative" emotions once and for all. The client should be allowed to get all of his emotional repression vented. Once the tears have flowed, the anger has been vented, and the repression has been lifted, the ego state that has been influencing present time health often re-integrates with other parts and healing begins"

** This is the relevant point - the client should be able to achieve this and TLT allows them to do it WITHOUT having to actually relive the event and re-experience all that negative emotion. They remain disassociated from it for the majority of the intervention by remaining above their timeline. They will re-enter the event for a moment before the therapist brings them back to before the event, from above, at which point they realise that the emotion has actually GONE - because by definition at that moment they have not experienced it yet, so it cannot and does not exist.

The differential between noticing it and taking them to before the event where it disappears is a strong convincer also.

The quote above mentions 'once the tears have flowed' and 'anger has been vented' ...... which the TLT model deems as not necessary to allow the release of the emotion. It is much more comfortable for the client as well as being highly effective and really pretty fast too.

Although the method has been refined somewhat since, Tad James' book "Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality" is a good read and explains the theory and practice involved, all be it not as detailed as a formal training can allow. [Terry - noting your message, this may be an interesting read for you if you wish!]

I like the fact that TLT avoids the 'wailing and knashing of teeth and boxes of tissues' approach!!

As Merlin rightly mentions - the client is welcome to go through all of this "if they insist" and we generally advise them to avoid it!! It is not a requirement to achieve the result.

Terry - something such as a 'fear of flying' may have various causes as you will be well aware, I am sure. It could be treated like a phobia with the NLP Fast Phobia model, or instead break-down the structure of the problem using the 'logical levels of therapy' which affects and scrambles the submodalities of how they 'do' the problem, then followed by TLT to remove the fear (or anxiety), or they may create the problem through limiting beliefs which can also be effectively removed with TLT also.

I imagine others here will have other methods also - whatever works! Again I simply like the methods that allow the client to remain as comfortable as possible, whilst letting it go!

Cheers

Nig

[pmdigi]

I'll be sure to read the timeline book.

[Poodle]

are something I avoid like the plague in hypnosis and I would never dream of one in NLP.

Amen Merlin!! Pood :)

[Don]

Merlyn, the way I was taught by Tad and Adrianna, we are supposed to avoid abreactions. If they begin to occur we were taught how to immediately stop it.

I imagine there are other TLT systems that use abreactions, so I'm sure you are correct and that other ones allow them. But the one with the ® after it avoids them.

[Merlin]

I must agree.
There is a method of releasing emotions without reliving the event in one's mind.

[Merlin]

Hi Don,
I have Tad's training tapes where he clearly states a client can waste time in their s*** if they wish.
He encourages avoiding it. Nevertheless it is possible.
Maybe he's changed his mind?

[Terry]

Thanks Nigel, I will certainly read the book. TLT was not something taught during my active days. At least I never heard of it, but certainly this old dog is quite capable of learning new tricks if they improve my knowledge or skills.

[Henrik]

Another book that might be of interest, concerning time-lines, is "Adventures with Time Lines" (1998) by Bob G. Bodenhamer & L. Michael Hall. The foreword is by Tad James and preface is by Wyatt Woodsmall. Tad and James were of course those who wrote "Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality" (1988).

Actually think I'll re-read that book tonight.

Henrik

[Henrik]

Tad and James were of course those who wrote "Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality" (1988).

I meant Tad and Wyatt.

[MrDigital]

when I first encountered time-line therapy it was under the James organisation. I could not help thinking that although I had definitely been privy to some change work there was something missing.

Discovery of new pastures led me to different theories and freedom when it came to Time-line work. The utilisation of the past as a metaphor and the ability to allow my unconscious to give me my representation rather than selecting a root cause, allowed me the freedom to associate to my unconscious's representation.

This, to me, made the process more of an unconscious representation that I could associate to without abreaction as my unconscious had selected it for me as something I was well capable of dealing with.

however, this is from a personal point of view and my way of gauging my own reactions to emotional charge that exists in a past representation.

Regards MrD.

[Don]

Merlyn, I have no doubt that you have Tad's training tapes and I am also sure that you are correctly expressing what you heard on the tapes. I am only going by what he taught in the workshop.

[Nigel H]

Don/merlin - you both agree, as do I !!

The point is that they are welcome to wallow in their SH** IF THEY WISH and we do actively suggest that they DO NOT GO THERE in that way ....

[skip]

Any,

I would make a distinction between abreaction and **** wallowing.

To me, both take the individual further into the unwanted trance, but abreaction is generally 'unexpected' and very rare.

Or so it is in my world.

My tendency is to take people out of their unwanted trances not to lead them further in.

BUT!

Do not many theraputic protocols call for 'catharthic responses'?

What is the value in **** wallowing?

And if any, when (and/or why) would you recommend it theraputically?

skip

[Merlin]

Quoting meself, Quote:
Pood,
I believe the idea dates back to Sickman Fraud.
There are much better ways today, but many still do things the old-fashioned way.
It's a kind of desensitization by repetition. <shudder>.

Even NLPers can do things the old way.

[Terry]

I see value in expanding my knowledge in any way I can, and intend to do so, but as regards Skip's valid question. I see catharsis in dealing with a phobia as being of value to the clients belief that based on the idea of "no gain without pain" the client can feel that the problem has been dealt with permanently because they went through the pain.:)
Unfortunately, it means one more time when the therapist must decide based on their reading of the client, which method is best for that client. After all, we all agree I believe that a malible practitioner achieves more success than one limited to a single method, so I will expand my skills, and hope that others still remember that the "old" mthods got results also, and should not be ignored simply because another method is found. The client has not changed, they are still human, easily guided by a skilled practitioner, and open to any method which attracts their attention as being sensible.

[pmdigi]

I hate to admit it , but the cathartic abreaction I recentlly went through with my hypnotherapist seems to have helped me quite a bit. I'll have to ask her if she knows time-line therapy.

[Poodle]

Looks as if my textbook is old as it is from 1987-1995.

Don - is it still divided up into TLT and Master TLT? I believe it's a three day training to go from learning to teaching. I don't teach it as I teach Bandler's time line work. Pood

[Don]

With Tad it was a 2 day training for 1 year of certification. You would have to go through his NLP training for further certification. I believe he's blended it in with his NLP stuff now.