DAN ELLIOTT DipCH MEHA of GLADSTONE AUSTRALIA
(Email ~
elliott_danny@hotmail.com)
Imagine our ineptitude, if at every turn we were obliged to look, feel, smell
or see an object or situation as if it were for the very first time that we were
looking, feeling, smelling or seeing it: we would obviously tie up much mental
energy, waste valuable time and, above all, incur the inevitable
waste of repeating the same mistakes over and over again by selecting behaviour
that, on some similar and previous occasion, had already proven to be
inadequate.
Fortunately, our brain has the capacity to remember
sensations, to recall situations, we are able to reason in conjunction with our
memory about what we should best do and then retain a knowledge of whether our
resulting reaction should be judged, in hindsight, as being satisfactory or
inappropriate. This capacity to review is at once the spur and the rein of
action. We can do all of this mental process in a fraction of a second as if by
intuition or, in less urgent circumstances, over a period of time by a process
variously known as contemplation or as worry.
Acquired memories, intricately interwoven, assert themselves
as patterns of behaviour. As much as seventy to eighty percent of our waking
activities are pattern driven. Such patterns of behaviour, or rehearsed
responses as they might just as well be called, may be created in an instant or
can be the result of protracted training.
As an animal, and thanks entirely to our enhanced brain power,
our supreme survival specialisation is not to be specialised at all! It is our
one great strength. We can survive in practically any and every extreme habitat
on earth. The reason so many other creatures are being threatened or have
already succumbed to extinction is that they are so finely and completely
adapted to their environments that, when their accustomed behaviours are denied,
they are simply unable to sustain their fixed patterns of existence. We are
different. We have, of course, human instincts in just the same way as, say,
ants have ant instincts but the difference lies in the fact that we have
additional brain facilities to which ants have no recourse.
We are infinitely flexible, flagrantly unspecialized and can
thus modify our behaviour to suit ever changing circumstances: perhaps not so
fast as we would like to believe, but change we can and change we do.
Our brain is a wonderfully complex and capable instrument.
There is ample mechanism built into it to acquire and update learned behaviour
and we do in fact access this facility all the time whether it be to cope with a
new supermarket layout or a change of spouse. Nothing is forgotten but, instead,
is overlaid and seemingly replaced by new information and attitudes. Some
internal conflict can arise, however, when a deep rooted pattern is, in spite of
altered external demands, protectively retained by a brain just not willing to
lightly throw it away on the flimsy evidence of new, and possibly transient,
changes going on about us.
However, when we are faced with something which we know we
really must come to terms with, then we are able to construct an attitude or
action that seems best to cope with it. When making such a decision we have easy
call upon a vast reserve of memories and learned behaviors not only from our
own past but also, through tuition. from the pasts of others too. Obviously, the
younger or more innocent the individual the smaller the reserve of helpful
memory and the stronger therefore the influence of what little there is.
So what do they actually do for us, these learned patterns?
Put simply, they precondition what we learn and what we do. They become a screen
through which both incoming stimuli and outgoing response are filtered and
contained. The things that we see, or indeed sense in any way at all, are not
permitted to impinge directly upon our consciousness without first being
screened, sorted and interpreted. In many instances, as for example in vision,
the sensing nerves themselves transliterate information prior to passing on the
perceived messages.
Whatever the source, all incoming information is alike
promptly fielded by processes within our brain and is minutely compared with and
contrasted to all of our in-house knowledge, memories, fears and expectations.
Significantly, in this process of cross referencing the individual pattern
pieces may be completely severed from any association with either the age or the
origin of the memories being so freely yet unconsciously called into play.
Again, all this before the information gets to be the subject of any conscious
discrimination.
This screening provides a powerful editing function that
ensures a necessary stability and continuity of behaviour. A common interest
fostered by communal contact, allows much of our mental screening to be in
sympathy with that of fellow group members and this, indeed, is very much what
it is meant to achieve for us. We are, after all, social animals. Unfortunately,
this same screening process also reinforces prejudice by removing much of the
innocence from new experiences.
The filters that we create for ourselves continually and
consistently delete, generalise, distort, interpret and indeed may even enhance
the information that we eventually consciously process and subsequently act
upon. When further converted by internal mental representation and tempered by
physiological condition, our behaviour is likely to be very far removed indeed
from being a naive response to stimuli but is, instead, rather more an
expression of our values, beliefs, past decisions and associations.
We do, of course, get very attached to these learned patterns
for in a very real sense they are us !! We can feel uncomfortable or even
downright miserable when our accustomed behaviour is thwarted, questioned or
changed for us. Moving house, losing a job, leaving friends behind - all these
things upset us because our familiar and trusted ways of doing things are
brutally confronted with change.
Do not forget that all such learned patterns are logical
groupings of recognition, of process or action that have actually worked for us
in a previous, given set of circumstances. They are perfectly valid reactions in
a particular context. But circumstances do always change and sometimes they
change in ways that are too slow, too subtle or alternatively too fast and
threatening as will allow us to efficiently modify a behaviour that we have
hitherto had good cause to rely upon.
When we do need to change, however, the process of reform can
be a little troublesome. Since nothing is forgotten, the slate is never
completely rubbed clean. Old memories can remain hidden beneath the chain of our
perception either because they simply have not been sufficiently invalidated for
all occasions or, more often, because they have been knit into a complex pattern
that, overall, is still valid for us. For this reason it is important to
recognise that our reactive behaviours are not simply educated reflex actions
but are highly convoluted interactions involving massive amounts of stored and
unconsciously accessed information. If a whole pattern "works" for us then the
presence of a disturbing, albeit formative, piece within that whole is likely to
survive and cause contradiction, confusion and hurt. Herein lies the strength of
therapeutic hypnosis, by confronting these anomalies it produces results that
can seem almost miraculous.
As with any kind of filter, a good clean out is a useful part
of any on-going, healthy maintenance program. Our inappropriate patterns need to
be exposed and put aside from the critical path of decision making. Of course,
to remove all our learned patterns would leave us once again infant-like. Each
of us has, however, many residual patterns that we would be better off
discarding and perhaps others that are actually detrimental to our present
health and happiness. Getting rid of these is called therapy.
Dan Elliott is a
Hypnotherapist in Queensland, Australia. He is also the 'Pacific Rim
Representative' for Hypnotic World, as such he would be pleased to answer
questions, by email or telephone if necessary, from anyone within his quarter of
the globe relating to Hypnotic World data and courses. His telephone number and
email address may be located at
www.cqhypnosis.com
Learn the full techniques of IMR and much, much more in David Cheek's
excellent book
Mind-body Therapy. or go to
recommended books for a full review of Mind-body Therapy.
