This page relates to an article I (Ian W) wrote for International Wellbeing Magazine. It echoes my strong concern for the table of expectations that commonly exists when people "do therapy" or commit to self-improvement programs such as those based in the affectology milieu.. I commonly send this document to in-clinic clients and the reports are that this has been "the most helpful of all the information."

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"Gentle Healing
– Avoiding avoidance and Self-sabotage"

What is it about this business of “getting better” that seems so easy at first glance, but turns out to be a long drawn-out process of ups and downs, better and worse, gains and relapses? When a few sufferers seem to get immediate and long term relief from their depression, stress, anger, and any number of mental and emotional ills, why do most of us tend to struggle, either getting no result from the therapist’s best efforts, or getting early positive results, only to be disappointed as we experience the tug-of-war with our emotions as we see ourselves sinking back into the same old place as before? All too often, our endeavours seem to be drawn into some sort of black hole that “vanishes” every bit of therapy that we expose ourselves to, either immediately or piecemeal over time. Our wellbeing should not be as elusive as it is, but we often seem to be so skilled at avoiding and sabotaging the emotional life changes that we seek.

Most of us have seen, either at first hand, or on television, examples of sudden and sensational healing acts that are part of ceremonies, rituals and “laying on of hands” procedures. These episodes are often the result of religious belief structures of one kind or another, and whether we believe what we are seeing as being authentic healing or not, there are not too many of us who don’t privately question the longevity of the miracle of healing that we witness. Anyone who has seen Steve Martin’s movie “Leap of Faith” will know exactly what I mean. It’s not for me or anyone else to question or deride true positive change brought about as a result of these practices, but what we want to address is the question, “if it’s authentic, but it doesn’t last, then what’s going on? Why doesn’t it last?

To take a step back from the episodes of sensational healing that result from spiritual experiences and beliefs, let’s not ignore the fact that the positive changes that are brought about by more conventional forms of counseling and psychotherapy, often don’t last either. So what gets in the way of permanence in our desire to “get better?”

But, before we go much further in this fascinating subject, it’s useful to determine some sort of a frame of reference for this article. First and foremost, we are specifically talking about unconscious processes that are a part of any therapeutic change. And, frankly, are also part of any unconscious mechanisms that prevent us from making life changes for the better. So, we are addressing here,

1.     those aspects of self that are unconscious – or subconscious, if you prefer,

2.     those unconscious parts that avoid and sabotage change,

3.     just what “healing” means, and

4.     what “gentle” means in its reference to healing.

We also want to have a glimpse at the aspects of approach of the new affectology movement and therapy designed to acknowledge and respect those avoidance parts and avoid the avoidance manoeuvrings that we are all so skilled at.

BELOW AWARENESS

If the business of manifesting change in our mental and emotional lives were as simple as making rational and willful decisions to do so, and then setting our conscious minds the task of following those decisions, then this article would be redundant; – no such thing as avoiding or sabotaging. We’d just simply “change.” As a matter of fact, if that were the case, there’d be no need for therapists either; there’d be no mental or emotional discomforts at all. Our conscious rational minds would be in complete control of our wellbeing and our lives. So, obviously the landscape to which our discussion here refers is the hidden territory of the mind – the subconscious, or the unconscious mind. After all, any habitual thought, feeling, emotion, attitude or non-elective reaction or response is generated from this “invisible self” – the unconscious mind.

Much is written, spoken and debated about the “subconscious,” but in relation to the subject at hand here, we are most interested in the two properties of the unconscious mind that have a huge bearing on our seemingly intractable capacity for avoidance and self-sabotage. Inarguably, the subconscious serves as the repository of all our memory, and to be specific, we’re referring here to non-conscious memory of learned responses and reactions rather than conscious episodic memory. Neuroscience – and particularly “affective neuroscience,” the study of infant, pre-verbal emotional learning – offers us the facts about this immense storage capacity of the brain/mind complex, in its reference to “neuroencodings” and early life imprinting. But it’s enough to realize that our non-conscious minds store every bit of information, every thought, feeling, experience and learned response of our whole lives. This is the invisible territory where our avoidance and sabotage drives reside.

But the capacity for our brain/minds to hold and remember that immense quantity of material, both episodic and abstract, would merely be an interesting piece of data if it were not for the fact that a great amount of that stored learned material is constantly accessed and used. When the unconscious mind stores (encodes) the memory of a learned response or task that has any positive outcome – in other words, “works for us” – that response or task doesn’t simply remain dormant. As time goes on, there’s a constant dynamic that leads us back to the memory of the tasks and reactions that worked for us in the first place, and were encoded (remembered) as stored material. This dynamic is called trace-bridging, and it is truly unconscious. It’s the dynamic that creates and feeds the habits that we call parts drivers and task drivers.

  PARTS AND TASK DRIVERS

Psychology is fond of talking up the idea of sub-personalities as though these are aspects of our subconscious selves that have some sort of complex idiosyncrasies and lead us to examine ourselves as though we have a set of intricate and confusing multiple selves. We are indeed intricate and interesting beings, but the view of affectology and clinical affectology is that each of us has a vast array, a layering, of simple tasks and reactions that we have learned at some time in our early existence. And these tasks are basic and quite easy to understand once we view them in a different light – a light that I want to switch you on to here. Affectology practitioners of any style are trained to consider the roles of parts drivers and task drivers in the development and maintenance of any issue or condition for which people seek therapeutic help, but because this is about avoidance and self-sabotage, we’ll not address those parts drivers responsible for long-term depression, anger, stress, procrastination, lack of confidence, and the like and focus on the task drivers that create the problems of dodging change and therapeutic “slip-back.”

A task driver may be defined as the dynamic that develops all our habitual unconscious actions and reactions. As we’ve pointed out earlier, in order to come into existence, a task has to be learned and has to be accessed through trace-bridging whenever it’s needed. So, from a very early age, we learn certain tasks that are vital to our comfort and existence, these are encoded, and we repeat these tasks and responses because they served to get our needs met at the time of learning. I’m sure we’ve all heard ourselves quietly say something like, “there’s a part of me that seems to want to do this,” or “there’s a part of me that makes me do that, and I don’t know why.” These little utterings signify the presence of parts drivers. And they “drive” our life.

Now that we’ve established a basic understanding of their presence, let’s look at how we learn to avoid change, and why we continue to do so.

Early in our infancy, we learn that change, in and of itself, is not a productive or comfortable thing. We learn that in order to be able to live a stable life, we must avoid change at all costs. If we did not do that, our lives would be utter chaos, never remaining stable and having no direction.
 
This, then, grows into an habitual task that the unconscious mind carries out for us and plays havoc with any attempts to bring about therapeutic change. Now, I remind you that we are obviously referring to true unconscious processes here. No-one goes along to therapy with a conscious decision to avoid change. But there are two interesting aspects of our “avoidance of change” task drivers. Firstly, our mechanisms and manoeuvres for avoiding change are legion. This unconscious dynamic wins out on almost all counts, whether it be before therapy sessions or during session work. And secondly, and much more importantly, this dynamic has positive intention! Its job is to keep us on track and not allow us to go spinning off into uncharted territory. As a personal exercise, just think of what life would be like for you if you did not have an unconscious driver that prevented change away from set patterns of behaviour, emotion and feeling.

The affectology approach to emotion therapy acknowledges, honours and respects the existence of avoidance task drivers in all of us and seeks to manoeuvre session work in accordance with what is an incredibly interesting aspect of the human subconscious. While our avoidance of change task drivers seem to operate peri-therapeutically – that is, during and around the therapeutic exchange – our sabotage of change task drivers operate post-therapeutically, or at a later time. The interesting thing is that they are identical dynamics, serving the same purpose, but are different only in that sabotage drivers begin to operate after a change has started to take place.

Many people who have undergone therapy, started to make changes for the better, and have seemed to then slip backward, are familiar with the little bit of self-talk that sounds something like, “there’s obviously a part of me that wants to sabotage all my good work.” This is the sabotage task driver at work, and doing a great job “saving the day.”

So we can see the complexity of a path to healing and wellbeing when it seems there’s almost always something going on at unconscious level that will prevent us from changing for the better, and to compound the issue, there’s something unconsciously going on that might make sure we don’t maintain any change we’re able to bring about anyway!

HEALING

Let’s go back a little and look at what we might call “exhilarative healing;” or in more technical terms, a “hectic catalytic flush.”  This term refers to those experiences where positive change seems to be immediate and exciting – the epiphanous realization – the lightning strike of healing – the flush and rush of that light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve already said that if these experiences are authentic and permanent, I’m the first person to applaud them, but that I’m interested in what’s going on when these experiences don’t bring about change anyway, or any resulting change is not lasting.

Over decades, our culture has grown to expect instant gratification. We most often pay good money for therapy, work hard to understand and bring about change, so why shouldn’t we get results when we want them – namely, “now!” Unfortunately, quality therapy doesn’t operate under any fast food franchise, and it’s all too often our expectations of immediacy in healing that produce immediacy in disappointment and negative outcomes. It wasn’t that long ago that the term healing applied only to physical and biological improvement. We were healed from physical sickness, cuts and broken bones, and this process was inevitably slow. We now use the term healing to describe positive change to mental, emotional, habitual and attitudinal issues and problems in our lives as well, yet we seem to have an expectation that this healing should be immediate, exhilarating and even sensational.

Another form of exhilarative healing is that which encourages some form of emotional “release” as part of the therapeutic episode or exchange – the “in-session release,” as it were. I wonder how many people have stopped and given any thought to just how it might be that an “emotional release” happens. Granted, we may come to realizations that might “feel” as though we’ve released something, or we may even get a quasi-physical feeling of a weight being lifted, but these episodes are no more than signals that a process has started rather than finished. In the clinical affectology approach, any reference to “release” applies to the ongoing process of our gradual freeing from old patterns, behaviours and feelings.

So, in any therapeutic context, the process of “healing” can only be experienced over time, with the therapeutic process serving as the kick-off, like the yeast starter in the longer process of bread-making.

When we apply our knowledge of the existence of unconscious “avoidance of change” task drivers to this business of exhilarative healing, can we not see just what fertile ground that would be for avoidance? To add fuel to the debate, it could be interesting to note that all affectologists believe that it’s possible for our unconscious minds to be so tricky as to utilize “exhilarative healing episodes” themselves as avoidance manoeuvres. This lends weight to the tendency for clinical affectology approaches to downplay any expectations of experiencing “release” during session work. Good therapy seeks subtle change that is experienced as ongoing improvement in how we live our lives, and as a gentle rebalancing of emotions and behaviours previously “stuck” in an uncomfortable place.
 
GENTLE & SUBTLE

In therapy, I most often encourage people to look forward to “subtle and gentle change for the better.” It’s a delicate balancing point, because some people just might experience change in an immediate, profound and long-lasting way, and we don’t want to discourage that, but we must swing the pendulum at least partway in the other direction from the “immediacy” and “exhilarative” expectations that our society seems to encourage. All quality psychotherapy is about planting a seed for change. The seed is planted in session. The plant grows of its own accord. Most often, that takes time for (what we refer to as) the life markers to be witnessed and experienced.

Let’s assume that a client has indeed experienced an “exhilarative healing release” during (or soon after) therapeutic session work. This would be an experience that signals the mind on all levels, that significant change is taking place. Enter stage left, the player called “the sabotage change task driver.” Not only has that part been bolted into action, the problem is compounded by the fact that it has positive intention and serves only to maintain the status quo in the business of survival of the organism in a non-chaotic way.

On the other hand, if an immediate and profound “release” has not been experienced, yet the seed of change has been planted and we are encouraged to allow change to take place at its own pace, then the probability of stimulating either the avoidance or sabotage mechanisms is greatly reduced. My own comment in session work is that “when changes are subtle and gentle, those changes seem to slip between the cracks and grow, without being spotted by our sabotage mechanisms.” When we reduce our expectation of immediacy in healing, and settle into a more comfortable anticipation of gentle and progressive healing, we are much more likely to bypass the effects of our avoidance and sabotage task drivers.

  PAYOFFS & ATTITUDES

We can’t ever discuss the issue of healing or therapeutic change without looking at another culprit – our “payoffs.” Technically, these are called epinotic gains, and it’s no surprise that nobody really wants to acknowledge their existence. Nobody wants to hear that their problem, their “issue,” their unwellness carries with it some sort of payoff.

But it is a fact that we do not maintain any habitual action, reaction or response without getting something out of it. As much as this is unpleasant to consider, it must be said that this is a truly unconscious dynamic.

Payoffs may be simple or complex, single or multiple, but they are always fuel that might ignite the good old sabotage mechanism. If, at unconscious level, we have become habituated to get attention as a result of our problem, get love, get looked after, get power or control, feel wanted or worthwhile, or even get revenge, then when we start to lose those payoffs as a result of healing (getting better) there’s always a part of us that seeks to reject that loss.

Result; sabotage. We are likely to revert to original status quo in order to regain “payoff lost.” This then, is another argument for the process of healing to be a subtle, gentle and ‘quiet’ business.


Our last look is at the issue of ‘attitude’. We enter again into the territory of the subconscious, because it’s highly unlikely for any of us to go along to therapy sporting a conscious knowledge that our life attitude may prevent change. So, at an unconscious level, it just may be that our attitude to others – our personality style – can play a part in the sabotage process.

Attitudes have payoffs. They are subject to epinotic gains. As a simple example, take the person who has a feisty, argumentative and recalcitrant “nature;” perhaps even “mean.” From an affectological perspective – that is, considering emotional issues – the likelihood exists that payoffs such as control and attention exist. And there again is fuel for sabotage mechanisms to react to the perceived loss of control of others.

AVOIDING AVOIDANCE & AFFECT-BASED APPROACHES

What on Earth do we do with all these larrikin parts of ourselves? Parts drivers, task drivers, payoffs, attitudes and the multitude of unconscious “stuff” that seems to be fuelling avoidance and sabotage.

All is not lost. Much of the power of these unconscious processes is invested in the fact that we don’t realize they exist. Or, at least we haven’t taken them into account in this process that we call healing. A common and all-so-true adage in psychology is that “you can’t change that which you do not acknowledge.”

Particularly, when it comes to our emotional selves, the act of observation almost always starts a process of change to that which is observed.

In the human experience, knowledge is power. To “know” of the existence of avoidance and sabotage task drivers, and to observe their efforts with interest can go a long way toward divesting those drivers of their efficacy. To “observe them with interest,” to not fear them and to realize that they have been learned and operate in our best interests will almost always create a more conducive mind environment for healing to continue unchallenged.

Clients of any of the affectology approaches take with them, after session or program  work is completed, the knowledge of the tricks of the subconscious and are encouraged to allow for the “gentle healing” that this change paradigm promotes. Affectology practitioners and any programs aim to assist, not in the process of exhilarative release experience, but in the subtle and gentle process of encouraging a “re-modulation” of those parts of us that are creating mental, emotional and physical disorder.