Subconscious Synchronization of Love Maps

We are also destined to choose our partner partially based on their abilities and skill at playing the games we know how to play. We make our selection through a subconscious “audition” of sorts — a process I refer to as the subconscious synchronization of compatible neural networks.

An important distinction about relationship mind games needs to be made right up front: There is a type of game that is played in relationships that is NOT a relationship mind game at all — It’s a game consisting of angular transactions called the “Con” game. The initiator of a Con game is fully conscious of their game while their “patsy” is unaware — until they get wise to it or catch the Con red-handed. These are not the games we are concerned with here… That’s for another time and another page.

Relationship mind games are not always a bad thing… For example, early in the courtship stage of a new relationship “flirting” is a fun and satisfying game that does no harm. For some couples in which both partners agree on the boundaries, flirting with others at a party or social gathering is viewed as harmless and acceptable to the partners, then, a mind game is not being played because they are fully aware of it.

But — to the party being flirted with — it may be a relationship mind game called RAPO if that person is not aware that there are boundaries and is being lead to believe it could go further. Some couples even go further than flirting with sex games, which is their choice as consenting adults — but these are NOT relationship mind games because they are consciously discussed and agreed upon by all parties.

Because true intimacy is not always possible in every context (at work with your boss) and with every person (the man on the street) the ability to participate in mind games as valid and necessary. Those who have few true intimacy skills have no choice but to play relationship mind games…or be alone. In these cases, learning the games we play so that we can choose harmless ones and/or develop intimacy skills can do a world of good.

Games that cause pain and wreck relationships are the ones that need to be identified and brought into conscious awareness so they can be stopped and replaced — either by learning true intimacy skills or choosing games that do not cause harm to either party.

A Partial List of Relationship Mind Games

Key Point: In TA and in these pages we use labels to describe games and the roles that people play in these games. These labels are NOT for describing people. We are much more than the roles or the games we are programmed to play. See Eric Berne’s classic book, “Games People Play” for a catalog of games.

The mind games outlined here are in highly general terms adapted from Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis (TA). Everyone is unique and so each plays their favored games in personalized and varied ways.

Below is a partial listing of relationship mind games:

• “If It Weren’t For You…”

• “Now I’ve Got you, you SOB…” and “Kick Me”

• “See what you made me do…”

• “Frigid Woman/Man”

• “Uproar”

• “Courtroom”

Eric Berne, the originator of TA, preferred short phrases to describe games rather than clinical terms. Below is our first example, it was the second couples game identified in a long string of games.

“If It Weren’t For You…” (IWFY)

In a relationship mind game of IWFY a generally insecure or passive person subconsciously chooses a domineering partner who restricts her/his activities….usually the female partner is the one restricted.

Perhaps the player selects a domineering partner because s/he does not like to take risks and try new things, such as taking up photography or going back to school… The domineering partner’s controlling nature keeps the player from getting into frightening situations — perhaps for fear of failure or fear if success — it gives the player an “out” or a way to “save face” and not have to take the risk.

By staying unaware of his or her part in the game, through the use of repression or suppression, the player’s complaints of “If it weren’t for you…” keeps her partner feeling uneasy and gives the player various advantages in the relationship — i.e., a “card to play” in a disagreement etc.

• Possible Payoffs:

  • Confirmation of existential position: “I’m okay, men/women are not okay”

  • Elimination of having to confront personal fears

  • Allows him/her to join in the Pastime of “If it weren’t for her/him…” with family and friends thereby structuring time and obtaining strokes

• Roles — Primarily Victim, Sometimes Persecutor

• Ego States: Child to Parent

“Now I’ve Got you, you SOB…” (NIGYSOB) and “Kick Me”

In a relationship mind game of NIGYSOB, the player selects a partner who frequently plays “Kick Me”… The NIGYSOB player is Externalising contempt and hostility while the partner who plays “Kick Me” Internalizes it. When played by a couple, the game is usually triggered suddenly when — for various possible “reasons” — the NIGYSOB player flips into a fit of rage over a perceived slight made by the “Kick Me” player.

The “Kick Me” player knows from frequent experience what the buttons are that trigger the NIGYSOB player (usually jealousy and/or rage), yet cannot seem to keep from pushing them… It genuinely seems to be an “accident” to the “Kick Me” player because, like all games, it’s a relationship mind game played by the Child ego state at a subconscious level.

For example, The NIGYSOB player is in one of “those moods”, there is silent anger and the air feels thick with tension… The “Kick Me” player chooses the worst moment to ask a “harmless” question such as, “What have I done now?”… to which the NIGYSOB player flies into a 30-minute rage about how “Everything always has to be all about you!! I can’t seem to do anything to your satisfaction!!”

• Possible Payoffs (NIGYSOB):

  • Confirmation of existential position: “I’m okay, men/women are not okay”, “Men/women can’t be trusted”

  • Justification for inability to control rage and abusive behavior. Avoidance of personal issues causing the rage by focusing on the other person

  • Projection of disowned aspects of self Habitual behavioral pattern to create intense stimulation — negative strokes is familiar.

• Roles — Persecutor claiming to be a Victim

• Ego States: Critical Parent, Child

• Possible Payoffs (Kick Me):

  • Confirmation of existential position: “I’m not okay, men/women are not okay”, “I’m not ok, you’re ok.”

  • Reenactment of Parent/Child relationship from childhood — provides stimulation and intensity

  • Initiates another game called “Why does this always happen to me?”Obtains negative strokes through familiar emotional themes of childhood — abandonment, shame, contempt.

• Roles — Victim

• Ego State: Child to Parent

“See what you made me do…” (SWYMD)

In a mild form of the relationship mind game of SWYMD the player, feeling unsociable becomes engrossed in some activity which tends to insulate him/her from people. When a family member interrupts by coming into the room or calling out to ask for something the player’s startle response causes the hammer to slip injuring a thumb, or they hit the wrong button on their keyboard and lose their work, or they spill the fuel they were transferring to another container.

The player responds to any one of the above by angrily crying out “See What You Made Me Do!!” — Of course, it’s the player’s own irritation that causes the slip or mistake. When this pattern happens only very occasionally it is not a game. But if it tends to reoccur frequently then the player’s family learns to leave the player alone when they are engrossed.

In a more intense form, SWYMD can become a way of life rather than merely a protective mechanism. The player may spend more and more time engrossed in work or an activity rather than relating with her/his family.

• Possible Payoffs:

  • Confirmation of existential position: “I’m okay, others are not okay, not safe, not to be trusted, etc.” “I am blameless”

  • Avoidance of connectedness and the risks associated with intimacy”Justifiable” anger offers a good excuse for avoiding sexual relations.

• Roles — Victim, Persecutor

• Ego States: Child to Child

“Frigid Woman/Man”

This is almost always a marital relationship mind game in which the overt player is usually, but not always, the wife, the Husband is usually a covert player. The husband makes advances to his wife that are rejected under the grounds that “all men are selfish — all they ever want is sex and are incapable of loving her for herself”. He backs off for a time and is again rejected on his next attempt.

Eventually, the husband resigns himself and makes no further advances. As time passes, and no attempts are forthcoming, the wife begins to be provocative. She runs around half dressed and “forgets” a clean towel when taking a shower so asks him to bring one to her. If she plays a severe form of the game she may become flirtatious with other men in her husband’s presence. He eventually responds to these provocations and is again repulsed — a game of “Uproar” follows.

The husband redoubles his efforts to resist what he perceives as a trap and does not respond to her provocations. She eventually turns up the heat by beginning to approach him with kisses. He resists until nature takes its course one day whereby she cries — “See what did I tell you! Men are selfish, all I wanted affection, and all you are interested in is sex!”

The husband has selected this person as his mate for a reason … he is just as afraid of sex as she is. This relationship mind game minimizes the danger of overtaxing his disturbed potency, which he can now blame on her.

• Possible Payoffs:

  • Confirmation of existential position: “I am pure, men are dirty” “I’m ok, you’re not ok”

  • Avoidance of sexual relations – There is a history of sexual and/or physical abuse

  • Obtains internal positive strokes by following expressed or implied parental injunctions that “sex is dirty”

• Roles — Victim (Proper wife – Inconsiderate Husband)

• Ego States:

  • Conscious/Social = Parent to Child

  • Subconscious/Psychological = Child to Parent

“Uproar”

This relationship mind game is played by any two people trying to avoid unwelcomed sexual arousal. In the marital pair it’s the end phase of a relationship mind game of Frigid Woman/Man. But the classical game of “Uproar” is a three-handed game usually with a domineering father, teenage daughter, and sexually disinterested/inhibited mother.

NOTE: In order for this to qualify as a game it’s a frequent occurrence, not just an occasional incident…

Course of the game: Father comes home from work and gets into a fight with his daughter. He may have started the fight by criticizing her or she may initiate the fight by being obnoxious or disrespectful…there’s an escalating exchange of angry words that end with the slamming of a bedroom door — by either or both parties. Mother’s role may be as a mediator or referee when she is present.

There is an adjustment period between fathers and daughters when she hits puberty. Sexuality becomes more of a factor. When there is an inhibition of sexual release between mother and father this can pose a problem. Sexual energy runs very deep as it’s part of the survival instinct. The sex drive creates this energy and there must be a healthy outlet for things to proceed well in families. Anger and slamming doors may become the only way some fathers and daughters can live together. The slamming of the bedroom door can subconsciously signify… “I have my bedroom you have yours”.

Many women have experienced a great deal of hurt and confusion when they turned 12 or 13 years old because… “Something just suddenly changed between us — It was like he didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.” Fathers can be just as clueless about this change due to the subconscious nature of the game. Many times they can become controlling and jealous of their daughters dating and social life and not know why. If these family dynamics are present it’s a good idea to get into marital counseling and deal with the issues that are preventing healthy intimacy.

• Possible Payoffs:

  • Confirmation of existential position: Conscious level — “I’m ok, you’re not ok”; Subconscious level “…somethings not ok” Outlet for “siphoning off” sexual tensions

  • Termination of a relationship mind game of Frigid Woman/Man between husband and wife Satisfies hunger for stimulation and/or intensity

  • Acting out familiar cycles of Abandonment, Shame, and Contempt to obtain negative strokes (Kick-Me Game)

• Roles — Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer

• Ego States:

  • Conscious/Social = Parent to Child

  • Subconscious/Psychological = Child to Child

“Courtroom”

This relationship mind game is played frequently when a couple first begins marital counseling. The therapist must refuse to get pulled into this game by redirecting the couple away from it or nothing will be resolved.

In counseling or not… if this game is in play, conflicts will increase in frequency and intensity with only an occasional ceasefire. Nothing will ever be resolved and matters will only get worse.

It would be helpful for you to read the Contemplation Stage of Change before proceeding here. Then come back and read the description of this game to get a full appreciation of it.

Courtroom can be played by any number of people but is essentially a three-handed game with a Prosecutor, a Defense Attorney, and a Judge. The couple take turns prosecuting each other in front of a judge — a therapist, or a talk-show host (there’s a jury in this case — the audience), or anyone else who is willing to preside over the case.

One partner starts “sharing their feelings” by ripping their partner on a whole litany of issues. When their partner does get a chance to squeeze in an explanation the prosecutor ignores it and rips off another “count” of the offenses on the list.

When it’s time to let the other person “share their feelings” they repeat the same pattern…on and on it goes. Nothing ever gets resolved because the relationship mind game never gets broken up. These exchanges can go on for so many years that the couple forgets what the original issues were.

As outlined in the Contemplation Stage of the Change Process, it is very important for each partner in the relationship to be their own prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge.

Part of a good prosecution would be the fact-gathering investigation of interviewing witnesses — in this case your partner. Finding out how they feel, what they think, and what they have experienced is good data for the judge to have. A good marital therapist is not a judge or referee…s/he is more helpful if seen as a coach or mediator who helps negotiate the rough spots. With this approach conflict resolution and healing can occur.

• Possible Payoffs:

  • Confirmation of existential position: “I’m always wrong” expressed by the excessive need to be right — Reaction Formation. Projection of guilt

  • Excused from guilt

  • Avoidance of the real issues — lack of intimacy for whatever reason Satisfies stimulus hunger and need for intensity.

  • Acting out familiar cycles of Abandonment, Shame, and Contempt

• Roles — Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer

• Ego States:

  • Conscious/Social = Adult (This is what s/he did to me…) to Adult (This is what really happened…)

  • Subconscious/Psychological = Child (Pick me, take my side) to Parent (You’re both right)

Integrated with the other models already mentioned, the AFM is designed to help address the impact and root causes of abandonment, shame, and contempt on adult relationships. Learn how the Drama Triangle, The Empowerment Dynamic (TED), and the Attention Focus Model simplifies some complex dynamics that otherwise may interfere with the healing process.

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Conscious vs. Unconscious Mind

The conscious mind operates like a computer screen, displaying only a fraction of our mental processing. In contrast, the unconscious mind functions as a hard drive, storing vast amounts of data and programming that influence our thoughts and behaviors without our awareness.

Life Scripts

Life scripts are patterns formed from our early life experiences, particularly those before the age of seven. These scripts dictate our emotional responses and behavioral choices, often leading us to reactively repeat negative patterns throughout our lives.

Core Beliefs

Core beliefs are deeply rooted beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world, often shaped by negative experiences. These beliefs influence our assumptions and coping strategies, impacting our overall mental emotional, and interpersonal health.

Examples of Life Scripts

Some common life scripts include self-sacrifice and submissiveness, and defectiveness and shame, which arise early life experiences. These scripts can lead to reactivity, emotional regulation problems, and a lack of trust & safety in relationships, particularly when developed from unpredictable or abusive parental figures.

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The videos in the Working with Ego-States course at Serenity Cafe Academy help to explore the Inner Landscape of Self, begin working with Ego-States or Parts, getting to know your Inner Family of Self with my Ego-State Projection exercise, connecting to wounded parts of self by my Integrative Journaling procedure, and other forms of Inner Child work, ego-state therapy, and gestalt therapy. Check out all my resources, click the image below.

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In addition to Parts One and Two, it is helpful to first watch the videos listed below as each are mentioned in this series. A good understanding of these videos will help you get even more from the present series:

• Window of Tolerance & the Autonomic Ladder

• The Iceberg Model

• The LSPM Model

• Victim Mentality vs Creator Mentality

Don’t let the Four Horsemen of the Autonomic Apocalypse ride roughshod over your life! This series will show you what to do, why we get stuck in these deadly cycles, and how to reconfigure your nervous system out of survival mode and chronic stress into growth mode and peace of mind.

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Internet of the Mind

The Four Horsemen of the Autonomic Apocalypse: (Part One)

Watch now (20 mins) | Join us for a Live Q&A Session, Thursday, Oct 5, 2023, at 5:30 PM (CDT) Video Transcript [00:00:10.580] This is my newest video that covers the cycle of depression, how we can get stuck in it, how and why it can become “treatment resistant”. There's a big picture here that we want to look at that a lot of times we only see a few pieces at a time. And if we…

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3 years ago · Don Carter MSW, LCSW

Another tip is to watch the videos listed below as each are mentioned in this series. A good understanding of these videos will help you get even more from the present series:

• Window of Tolerance & the Autonomic Ladder

• The Iceberg Model

• The LSPM Model

• Victim Mentality vs Creator Mentality

Don’t let the Four Horsemen of the Autonomic Apocalypse ride roughshod over your life! This series will show you what to do, why we get stuck in these deadly cycles, and how to reconfigure your nervous system out of survival mode and chronic stress into growth mode and peace of mind.

In Part Three of “The Four Horsemen of the Autonomic Apocalypse”, we go in depth on the topic of what to do about the cycles of depression and anxiety that often underlies addictions and compulsions.

In addition to Parts One and Two, it is helpful to first watch the videos listed below as each are mentioned in this series. A good understanding of these videos will help you get even more from the present series:

• Window of Tolerance & the Autonomic Ladder

• The Iceberg Model

• The LSPM Model

• Victim Mentality vs Creator Mentality

Video Transcript

[00:00:10.580]

This is my newest video that covers the cycle of depression, how we can get stuck in it, how and why it can become “treatment resistant”. There's a big picture here that we want to look at that a lot of times we only see a few pieces at a time. And if we don't see the big picture, it's going to be difficult to treat everything that needs to be treated in order to turn it around. So I'm going to share a presentation on my screen so we can go through it one step at a time. Some of you may have seen this first slide here. This is good stress, and stress gets a bad rep because stress is not a problem. Stress helps us survive things that are very uncomfortable or maybe even difficult to survive, and it triggers our survival instinct. And there are several things that happen when we get that stress response going. It's called the sympathetic response because it's part of the sympathetic nervous system. Nervous system, which is part of the autonomic nervous system, which is inside the central nervous system.

[00:01:35.920]

So, the sympathetic nervous system is the one that triggers the fight-or-flight-stress response, or also known as survival mode. And what's supposed to happen is when we encounter a challenge or a threat that's sufficiently uncomfortable, it will trigger that response. And when the stress response is triggered, all our energy is devoted into, channeled into that response and out of other systems that are not necessary at the time, such as digestive system or immune system or reproductive system or a lot of unnecessary systems, including the thinking brain, because the instinctive brain takes over and this one works a lot faster than the thinking brain. And so all our energy is channeled into survival mode. And when we overcome the challenge, we're supposed to have a parasympathetic reset or a healthy relaxation response, which is a return to the normal baseline of comfort and relaxation so that all of our other systems can come back online, and that energy can be devoted evenly amongst all the systems. As a way of giving an example, you may be aware of a couple that has been stressed out because they want to get pregnant. And so they try and they try and they try.

[00:02:59.370]

Nothing and so they go to the doctor, they take fertility treatments, and still don't get pregnant. Finally, they just give up and they adopt someone, adopt a child, and then they relax. Nine months later, they got pregnant. So, this can be a function of overactive stress response and trying too hard. That's just an example of what can happen. Another example is when our immune system is powered down, opportunistic germs and diseases can take over, take the opportunity to strike, and so forth. So, it's not good to be in the stress response frequently, such as when we have chronic stress. Chronic stress looks like this. There's a challenge or a threat, we rise to the challenge. Maybe we meet that challenge, we begin to relax, but we have an inadequate relaxation response, so we don't get a full parasympathetic reset. We don't get out of the sympathetic nervous system and into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the one where we can have that homeostatic balance that comes with all the other systems coming back online. Now, the reason we have inadequate relaxation sometimes is because maybe stressors are coming too fast and too furious and there's a lot of things on our plate.

[00:04:22.290]

And so we don't have time for the full reset or we don't take time for the full reset, or maybe we just have trouble getting a full reset because we already have some depression or anxiety or other issues going on. And if we have addictions and compulsions, then those can cause this staircase effect that we see here on the screen right now. And the staircase effect causes our survival mode to go into hyper-arousal, which is where we end up in fight or flight mode and that gets worse, and we can't continue that forever. So, we get to the top of the staircase and then we'll crash and burn, fall off the top and crash down into the bottom. Now, that feels like or looks like a parasympathetic reset, but it's not. It's a collapse into the depression side of the cycle. We'll see how that works here in a moment. But then sufficient to say we're not supposed to be outrunning a tiger 24-7. Maybe once in a while we have a trigger that puts us in this survival instinct, then we encounter the stress, overcome it, and have that healthy, parasympathetic reset. Again, creating that homeostatic balance internally where all the other systems, including our thinking brain and our immune system and everything else comes back online and powers back up.

[00:05:49.020]

So, there's this visual that I like to use for exploring where are we on that autonomic ladder, if you will. So there's three sections here. The red zone is hyperarousal. That's when the sympathetic stress response gets triggered. And the more triggered it becomes and the more we're on the staircase, we become overwhelmed, in difficulty thinking, or thinking becomes rigid or chaotic, one or the other. And then we have anxious, panicky, flight reactivity, or angry and critical fight reactivity. And you'll notice that the last bullet point is bolded because it's probably the most important. In the red zone, we cannot learn anything new because even the prefrontal lobes are powered down and that energy is diverted into the instinctive part of our brain. When we fall off the top of that staircase and we crash and burn into the blue zone down there, that's called hypo-arousal. That's where we have too little arousal. It's just the nervous system saying, I can't take it anymore, and just shuts down. So, we withdraw from others, we isolate, we have poor contact. We may not even want to leave a dark room if it gets bad enough and we numb our feelings either by cutting them off emotionally or by using something to help numb them, like eating or drinking or smoking or something else.

[00:07:21.850]

We have limited awareness of our sensations because we're not tuned into our body. We're not liking that shutdown. And the shutdown may get so difficult that we become unable to mobilize any resources at all. You'll notice too, the last bullet point on hypo-arousal is the same. There's no new learning that can take place there. So, what we want to do is get into that green zone, and you may have heard it called the window of tolerance. This is where change can take place. And look at the last bullet point here. New learning can take place when we get into this window of tolerance or in this green zone. And that is the parasympathetic reset that we're looking for. The parasympathetic relaxation response is activated so we can experience the full range of human emotions in this green zone. So this is not necessarily about being happy, joyous, and free. It's also about being able to grieve or do some other functional discomfort with the help of others. We're giving and receiving love. Let's say we're in a group of people who are trying to do something or someone important to us and a group of us get together and we support each other through that.

[00:08:36.880]

But the key here is that we can function on the full range of human emotions and not get into hyper or hypo-arousal. And so, then our mind is calm, it's alert, it's flexible, it's adaptable, even if we're in the grief process and especially if we're in the euphoric end of the scale. So we're able and willing to connect with others, new learning can take place. Now you'll also notice there are two yellow zones here, and if I'm in the green zone, then I want to pay attention if I start sliding into the yellow zone above or the yellow zone below. The one above is mild symptoms of hyper-arousal, and I want to take action there, and we'll talk about that later after we look at this cycle of depression coming up. The yellow zone into the blue zone shows mild symptoms of hypo-arousal. You can have mild, moderate, or severe symptoms of either. And the worse it is, the more difficult it is to pull out of it. So let's look now at the cycle of depression. If you start down here at number one where you see the depressive thinking styles, those depressive thinking styles will generate feelings of hopelessness, maybe even helplessness or worthlessness.

[00:09:57.360]

Those three sensations create anxiety, and that anxiety trips the trigger for the survival instinct at some point. And then when that happens, then the subconscious or the conscious mind begins to wonder, what’s going on? What do I need to do about it? And then what action should I take so I can close that loop? And that's the way we are. We encounter a threat, and we want to devise a way to cope with it, then we want to implement that and hopefully close the loop. Now, there are a lot of loops that can't be closed. Let's say that it's about some financial situation I can't take care of right away or some relationship problem and whatever it is, it triggers my core beliefs that come from a wounded childhood. If you looked at the iceberg lecture, you'll see how abandonment, shame, and contempt can cause these depressive core beliefs, and those begin to go round and round when they're triggered or when I'm triggered, and I start ruminating on them. That's what number two is. It's about ruminating on the negative, which is emotionally arousing, and it starts that ascent into the hyper-arousal after a while.

[00:11:20.820]

Have you ever wondered, why do we step into the negative thoughts and just chew on them and stew on them and go over and over and over again, making them over and over again? Making them worse because every time we fire off those neural transmitters in that loop, then it gets stronger because neurons, they fire together, wire together. We'll look at that too at some other point. But why do we do that? We step into the negative and we don't chew and stew on the positive. We don't re-experience it over and over and over again. We don't do that, which would create that green zone in us. Instead we do the opposite. Why do we do that? Because the depressive thinking style trips the trigger for the sympathetic stress response. And when that happens, the survival mode — the instinctive part of the brain is ruminating to try and figure out what to do. And like I said, a lot of these loops cannot be closed, so it keeps going and looping and trying to fix it. And we go to sleep at night with these open loops, things that make us feel hopeless or helpless or worthless or worthless even, maybe triggered from childhood abandonment issues or relationship problems or a toxic relationship, things that seem hopeless to us.

[00:12:44.790]

And when we're dwelling on those and ruminating on those and suing and choosing on those when we go to sleep, the subconscious mind takes over after we go to sleep. It starts setting up these metaphorical scenarios to try and close the open loops for us while we're sleeping because the subconscious mind works at night when we're sleeping. It grows our hair, our skin, it heals our body. It's supposed to help us recuperate, regather energy, and do our system maintenance overnight. it's trying to do all that, but it's also trying to close these emotionally uncomfortable, open loops by creating these metaphorical scenarios we call dreams. And those dreams are maybe weird sometimes, but the subconscious mind uses images or pictures or TV shows that we watched or books that we read or personal history even to put a scenario together, a symbolic scenario together. So, it's trying to find ways to close that open loop, but they can't be closed. Not until those core beliefs or limiting beliefs or depressive beliefs until they are healed, and they keep open. And so then there's a lot of over-stimulation, stress hormones being dumped into the system rather than recuperation and healing and so forth, and cortisol, adrenaline, and all of that lowers all the other systems that are unnecessary, such as the immune system again, and the thinking brain, and the digestive system.

[00:14:23.340]

Even if we are on a diet, we can't lose weight like this because that digestive system and the metabolism isn't as stoked up to where it should be so we can actually benefit from healthy living. With all that going on, the subconscious mind is working its tail off all night long and it's got no luck in closing a lot of those open loops and so we wake up tired and exhausted in the morning. Even if we got seven or eight hours of sleep, it was not restful sleep. So, then we have more loops that we go through. We go through impaired motivation because if we go through one night after another like this, then we start to have lethargy or apathy or lack of motivation. We don't want to engage in life and so we don't have as many pleasant experiences. We can't enjoy the enjoyable moments. And this then reduces our serotonin levels, which lowers our immune system, increases sensitivity to pain, and makes our sleep even worse. And so then we go around and around and around in loop number three here. And eventually we get frustrated, and the angry part comes out and we have trouble in our relationships.

[00:15:38.720]

We might be grouchy, we might be withdrawn, we might be sullen or sulking, or life is not good and we don't feel like exercising. We don't even have any goals, or we can't pursue those goals because they just don't matter. Everything's pretty hopeless by now. So, this is what it looks like when we're going through that cycle of depression. We have depressive thinking, which triggers the emotionally arousing, rumination, chewing, and stewing on things. And that continues even in our sleep, causing even more depletion, which causes us to wake up tired by morning and exhausted, feeling loopy. And that triggers the fight-or-flight response. So we go to the doctor and we say we're anxious, we're depressed, we can't sleep, everything is terrible, and he gives us some SSRIs or selected serotonin reuptake inhibitors to balance our serotonin levels. And that's important, but it's not the answer fully for this cycle, because if we take the medicine, it might lift us up out of the emotional basement, but it won't address the depressive thinking style, and it won't make the rumination go away, and it won't fix the past. And so we keep going around and around, and then the medicine doesn't work the way we want it to, so we get even more frustrated and angry.

[00:17:03.920]

And then when it gets more and more out of control, the inner critic comes on board. And it's got the Book of Sheds there and it says, We should do this. We should do that. What's wrong with you? Why don't you do this? And the inner critic starts beating up on the depressive thinker, which makes it worse. And so now that what I call the little professor with the question mark over there, he's got his job cut out for him because things are getting out of control, and he's got to figure out some way to hold all this together. And so he comes up with these things: smoking, drinking, drugging, gambling, sexing, working, video gaming, anything that takes me out of that loop so we can have a reprieve or some a lifting. We get into these addictive or compulsive behaviors, and they seem to be the only thing that helps. Without them, life is hopeless and worthless. It's not even worth living. So then the inner critic gets even more involved because, well, let me give you an example. Let's say we want to go on a diet. The inner critic says, we’re going on a diet.

[00:18:14.410]

We're going to live healthily. Losing weight is going to help us feel better and so forth. And so, it wants to go on a diet. But the kid in the candy store on the other side wants to eat everything in the pantry. We're all familiar with that struggle between the short term and I want to eat everything in the pantry and the long term, I want to fit my clothes and feel better. And so, when the addictions and compulsion start, the inner critic gets even more forceful and guilt-tripping and controlling and beating myself up. So then because it's a threat against the only things that seem to help, that little professor over there has to figure out a way to protect those things. So, he generates a king baby, which I call the kid in the candy store without parental supervision. And it's the one that protects with mental gymnastics my ability to continue to drink or smoke or do Coke or gamble or work all the time or whatever it might be, anything that makes me feel better. A wall of denial is put in place to protect that from the inner critic and from the other parts that know it's not helpful.

[00:19:26.490]

And so it may work really well for a while, but then because it's an unhealthy coping style, then more negativity comes into my life. I get DUIs, or I spend all my money, or I have self-esteem issue or broken relationships, and now the loop gets worse.

[End Part One]

This is the end of part one. I hope it lays out the problem in a way that's easily digestible. You can go back and watch the video a few times and then prepare to go on to part two, don't stop at the end of part one because part two is what do we do about this? How do we get out of this cycle? How do we change it? Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

The autonomic nervous system has two branches. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of the autonomic nervous system that is activated when we trigger the fight or flight survival response. The parasympathetic nervous system is active when the threat OR stressors have passed so that we can return back to a baseline of relaxation. It's also known as the relaxation response. So the autonomic nervous system is a major player in stress, anxiety, and many of the stress related conditions that we face in our day to day lives.

As I have said in other videos, stress is NOT the problem! The real problem is an inadequate relaxation response, i.e. the lack of a parasympathetic reset back to a healthy baseline of relaxation. Note the staircase effect in the video above. Also keep in mind, Heeb’s Laws for neuroplasticity (Neurons that fire together wire together and Use it or lose it) Following years of an inadequate relaxation response the use it or lose it principle creates a steady state of chronic stress - i.e., an HABITUAL bipolar homeostasis of hyper-arousal and/or hypo-arousal.

I designed the therapy cards below for my clients to provide visual representations of Dan Siegel’s Window of Tolerance and Stephen Porges’ Autonomic Ladder.  With these tools I can help my clients understand the consequences of chronic stress, the importance of stress management, and inspire them to become expert stress managers.

So, you see here the window of tolerance. There's a red zone, a Blue Zone, two Yellow zones, and a Green Zone. The Green Zone represents the healthy parasympathetic relaxation response. The red zone represents chronic stress, and the blue zone represents the crash that comes after an extended period of chronic stress when the nervous system just can't take it anymore and it needs to shut down. The Autonomic Ladder puts the Green Pathway at the top of the ladder, another way of looking at the same thing.

I want to inspire my clients to become expert stress managers of stress. That means we need to create a new steady state or neo-homeostasis - i.e., following Heeb’s principle that nuerons that fire together, wire together we can create a new habit of healthy regulation of the autonomic nervous system. There are many ways we can recondition the nervous system back to a healthy parasympathetic relaxation response. I suspect this is why mindfulness, meditation, and other relaxation techniques are spreading so far and wide these days. It all starts with an elementary understanding of the care and feeding of our autonomic nervous system. Watch the video to gain that understanding. All that remains is for you to find what works for you to get you into the green zone and keep you there! Be sure to check out my video library of tools at the Oasis @ Serenity Cafe for more ideas.

Therapists, Coaches and Other Helping Professionals: You can purchase the cards and supporting media to use with your clients in digital and printed formats by clicking the button below.

Window of Tolerance Therapy Card

Click the button below to download a sample of the Window of Tolerance & Autonomic Ladder Therapy Card.

Download a Sample PDF Card

Basically, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy presupposes that it’s our interpretation of events, rather than the events themselves, that cause the negative emotional and/or behavioral consequences we experience in a given situation. In the chart below are the elements of subjective experience upon which Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses.

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Elements of Subjective Experience

• A = Activating event (Trigger)

• B = Belief about the event (A) (The movie we make)

• C1 = Emotional Consequence (Resulting emotional state)

• C2 = Behavioral Consequence (Our actions or reactions)

As you can see above our beliefs (B) determines the movie we see in our mind… or the meaning we make of an event which in turn determines our emotional state.

Our resulting emotional state (C1) has an impact on the actions we choose or the reactions that chooses us… Our actions are proactive behavioral choices (C2) that we make about how to respond after first considering all the available options. Our reactions are reactive behavioral choices (C2) that we act-out automatically when triggered.

Reactive responses are grounded in limiting or irrational beliefs (B), also known as cognitive distortions in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy language. All of the elements of these reactive “buttons” that get pushed exist in our subconscious mind on well-established networks or programs that run automatically on cue… all of the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, memories, self-talk, and even the physiology is part of the network.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy does not necessarily concern itself with why we have the beliefs or where they came from… Rather it seeks to identify, dispute, and refute them so they can be replaced with more accurate and rational beliefs. Once faulty beliefs are replaced, the emotional state of the individual (or Part-of-Self) is more manageable and congruent with the situation in question.

The Precision CBT and LSPM Worksheet

The Precision CBT and LSPM worksheet is a fillable PDF I’ve developed for clients to use in identifying the Part-of-Self that is holding the strong limiting belief that we want to work with. (See the “Part 5: Mental Filters & Normalcy” Bias video)

Download the LSPM worksheet below. Always save a clean copy as a back up, save the one you are working on in another name. You can collect them and compare one to the other to see a bigger picture of how a system of beliefs can form and how we can zoom in on each part of the system with precision.

Open and Download the LSPM Worksheet

Video Transcript…

Hi, this is Don Carter. In this video, I want to go over how to integrate the Precision CBT model with the life scripts and parts matrix model. I call it Precision CBT because is it helps us to zoom in on the memory network or the ego state or the part of self that we want to focus on. It's important to point out that this process is most useful after an emotional trigger has been tripped and we've reacted in some sort of way that we don't really authorize or that we find uncomfortable. So, to begin with, we have an activating event.

An activating event is anything that happens that triggers an emotional response, especially one that we don't like. That emotional response then will lead to behavioral choice. Now, the emotional response is labeled to see one because it's consequence one of what just happened, and C two is consequence to the behavioral choice that we made about how to respond to what just happened. The behavioral response is also usually undesirable. It may be that we lash out at another person, or we lash in at ourselves, or we engage in some addictive or flight behavior of some sort, or we just collapse into the pain.

But the behavioral choice then will lead to a new activating event or it will close the loop. Now, you'll notice here that the loop is not entirely closed. It's only a half of a loop. Something's missing. What's missing is the meaning we made out of what just happened.

And that's a belief system that's programmed into us based on our prior experiences. It wouldn't be a trigger if it didn't trigger something that was already there. So it's the belief system or the meaning we make out of what just happened that leads to consequence. Number one, our emotional response. I like to think of it as watching a mental movie about what just happened, and my emotional response is going to be congruent with that movie I just watched.

If I'm watching a boring documentary in my mind's eye, then I'm going to feel bored. If I'm watching a horror flick, I'm going to feel scared. If I'm watching a travesty, I might get angry. Whatever the feeling is, it's a response to the movie that I'm watching or the meaning that I'm making out of what just happened. And when it's an emotional trigger of some sort, the meaning I'm making or the movie that I play in my mind is usually rooted in some prior experience in the past, usually childhood.

So essentially what gets triggered is a memory network that has encoded on it the experiences that I had in the past, the belief systems that came out of that experience. I may have made meaning about myself or about other people or about the world in general. And I organized that into a mind movie. Now, if you'll notice the loop when it's closed, there's only really two places where we can intervene. One of them is on the meaning that we make out of what just happened.

The other one would be the behavioral response that we choose to the emotions that come out of the meaning we make out of what just happened. Now it's more difficult to change the behavior, especially if it's an addictive or compulsive response that comes from a traumatic connection or memory network. As we'll see in the moment, it's more effective to begin working at the level of belief systems. This is because the meaning that we give to what just happened is only one possibility. If we were to play with all the possibilities, we may come up with dozens of possibilities of meanings that we can ascribe to what just happened and the meaning that we give it will determine the emotional response that comes from it.

So if we don't like our triggered emotional response, we need to back up a step and take a look at the belief system that triggered it. Is it valid? Is it an echo from the past? Is it possible that there is some other explanation or other meaning that we can give to what just happened? Now, right here, it's important to point out that as soon as an activating, event or trigger gets tripped, the speed in which we go around that loop is less than a second.

So as we're learning this process, it's important to unpack a situation that happened or a trigger that occurred using this diagram in order to learn from it so that we can adjust it on the fly in the future simply by changing our belief system into something a little more accurate or a little more useful. When we do decide to challenge our belief systems, this is when we bring out the live scripts and parts matrix model again, we can't trigger something that isn't there.

So, when we do get triggered into an uncomfortable emotional state, the belief system that triggered it is encoded on a memory network that contains all of the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings of the experience as it occurred originally. Every time we experience this trigger and go around this loop again, we strengthen the belief system involved, which causes it to occur. More and more often, these habits of thought become so real they seem to occur all by themselves, as if we're passive victims of the triggering events that keep happening.

A lot of times, then we'll focus on trying to sterilize our environment so that we don't encounter those triggering events. And when we do encounter them, we blame someone else rather than fix the problem. These cycles get so deeply ingrained that they become subconscious programs that run automatically. We don't have to remember to do them, and we don't have to supply any energy to do them, even though it's our energy every time we go through that.

So when the experiences are painful, what gets triggered is our self-preservation system that's made up of all those instinctive survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, submit, and attach in integrative psychotherapy, we add together various complimentary approaches to healing these reactive parts of self, ego state therapy, inner family systems therapy parts work, and the CBT model.

We want to Zoom into the memory network which we may refer to as a part of self or an ego state, in order to heal that part of ourselves either by releasing the emotional toxins related to the past event or tweaking the belief systems attached to it. In order to do either one of those things, we'll need to access our growth mode.

In growth mode, we have available to us the core self, which I call the CEO of the Self, and in transactional analysis they'll call it the Adult Ego State. But it's the part of Self that does all the executive functioning and it resides in the thinking brain. And when we're Proactive and we switch on the thinking brain to process what we're doing with what just happened, we can develop that dual awareness between growth mode and survival mode so that the growth mode can help heal the wounds from the past.

With all of our adult resources available to us, including the nurturing self and the protective self and the spiritual true Self, along with the problem solving executive functioning CEO of the Self, we can bring all of those forces to bear on healing the wounded inner child or the wounded parts of self that are so reactive. We must have this dual awareness of our adult growth-oriented self along with those reactive parts of Self that caused the difficulties that we face.

In order to develop and strengthen that dual awareness, we have A B one, C one, and C two related to the reactive parts of Self, and B two with a C one, and a C two related to the Proactive adult self. So, what we want to put in B one is what part of self got triggered and what are the beliefs that go with that, and how did those beliefs lead to a certain emotion? And what was the Behavioral response?

Once we have identified all of the elements of the reactive parts of Self involved in the issue that we're confronting, then we want to switch on the growth oriented adult self and begin to problem solve choosing a new, more accurate belief or meaning for what just happened, one that will produce the kind of emotional response we want C1, as well as selecting a suitable behavioral choice that can come out of that Proactive problem solving and decision making process employed by the Adult ego state. So remember, in order to develop new habits, neurons that fire together, wire together, there needs to be intensity and repetition in using this process in order to establish and develop the new responses that you'd like to have. With these new skills in place, it will be much easier to do the releasing of the emotional toxins that came from traumatic or painful experiences in the past. It may not do any good to release those toxic emotions and so forth if we keep accumulating them by allowing unhelpful and limiting beliefs to continuously get triggered. Thanks for listening.

I hope you found the video helpful. Remember to download the worksheet below and practice on a regular basis.

Download the LSPM-CBT Therapy Card

Many of you know from working with me that I am an integrative psychotherapist. In other words I integrate complementary models of therapy in many different ways in order to fit the unique needs of each client I work with.

I want to reiterate, even though I will be talking about the 12-Steps, it will not be in affiliation with any of the many twelve-step programs. While I DO strongly endorse them, their Traditions strictly prohibit affiliating with anyone outside the organization. To avoid controversy, they neither oppose nor endorse any causes or organizations. That includes any specific form of religion and/or therapy models

37 years ago I began my personal recovery from addiction. 6 months later I found myself back in school to begin my educational and professional development as a licensed therapist. I felt led to help others find what I have found through recovery. My greatest struggle has been HOW to share this three-dimensional experience of personal recovery, academic education, and professional development with others.

In the end, it became clear to me that I can only speak of what I know, share what I have seen, and teach what I have learned. For me, all of this has come through the lens of Christianity. It is my sincere hope that, even if your lens is different, somehow these observations of mine will be useful to you.

How Thoughts Become Chemistry…

“We Feel the Way We Think, & Think the Way We Feel”~ Dr Joe Dispenza

We can rewire our brain, by changing what thoughts and feelings we expose it to over time. In a way, we are the authors of our own pain. Our psychology knows the language of the biology and they communicate somewhere in the neighborhood of the pituitary gland - that’s where cognition (Thoughts, emotions, and images in our mind’s eye) is thought to be converted to chemicals that are released into our bloodstream.

This is why we feel the way we think, & think the way we feel, causing us to feel the way we think, and think the way we feel, and so on. This is why rumination is a major culprit in depression.

Our thoughts, whether they're right or they're wrong, are actually changing our biology. The Buddha said, "What we think, we become." Epigenetics is now saying, "What you are thinking is translated into chemistry, which will determine what you will become.” Only 1% of disease is due to genetic defects, while the remaining 99% is directly attributable to the environment and our nervous system’s perception of the environment. What it represents is this: the influences of our thoughts are translated into chemistry, which leads to inappropriate behavior and to what we call disease.

Flashlight of Awareness Therapy Card

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In this video, I integrate what I know about psychology with what I know about spirituality and how this pertains the Step 3 of a 12-Step Recovery program.

Before going any further, I want to declare loud and clear, even though I will be talking about the 12-Steps, it will not be in affiliation with any of the many twelve-step programs. While I DO strongly endorse them, their Traditions strictly prohibit affiliating with anyone outside the organization. To avoid controversy, they neither oppose nor endorse any causes or organizations. That includes any specific form of religion and/or therapy models.

37 years ago I began my personal recovery from addiction. 6 months later I found myself back in school to begin my educational and professional development as a licensed therapist. I felt led to help others find what I have found through recovery. My greatest struggle has been HOW to share this three-dimensional experience of personal recovery, academic education, and professional development with others. In the end it became clear to me that…

I can only speak of what I know, share what I have seen, and teach what I have learned. For me, all of this has come through the lens of Christianity. It is my sincere hope that, even if your lens is different, somehow these observations of mine will be useful to you.

How and Why to Refocus Your Flashlight…

Dr. Bruce H. Lipton, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. He is a Stem cell biologist, bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and recipient of the 2009 Goi Peace Award, he has been a guest speaker on hundreds of TV and radio shows, as well as keynote presenter for national and international conferences. Bruce's website: Click Here

Listen closely to what Bruce is saying and compare that with what you are hearing in these presentations of Flashlight of Awareness, Parts 1 and 2 as well as other videos and articles here on Internet of the Mind.

Flashlight of Awareness Therapy Card

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Remember to go over these lessons and videos in the order they are presented. Review them with intensity and repetition on a regular basis. This practice will create the database for integration in your brain.

Video Transcript

As an integrative psychotherapist I combine, connect, sometimes adapt, and sometimes create complimentary models of our “Human Condition”. This model of the neurological group home analogy is another effort on my part to do that. In this case, I will be using a diagram provided to me by one of my teachers, Janina Fisher, to explain and my analogy.

So, let's begin with a look at the two models that form the foundation of my psychotherapeutic approach. The first one is the iceberg model. It's a model that I created over the course of my career.

It's a high-level view of the wounding process. The second is a model that I adapted from the somewhat recently developed structural dissociation model known by many, if not most trauma therapists. We live in a broken world. As such, people get wounded by things that shouldn't happen to them and things that didn't happen for them. The former are trauma wounds and the latter are attachment wounds.

You'll find in depth descriptions of those in my previous videos. As we've referred to many times - wounded people, wound people. This is not about blaming parents or anyone else for that matter. Even if it was someone's fault or intention that I got hurt, assigning blame doesn't really help. It just takes precious time away that could be spent healing.

Now this is about healing the effects of those wounds on our present-day life and relationships. My iceberg model provides that high level view of the wounding process. Abandonment, shame, and contempt in a child's inner world forms a free-floating mass of pain that they come to know as their self. Here it's depicted as a false self because that's what it is. False is not true.

It's not what God created. This is what life created. In my opinion, this is what's at the core of many of life's struggles. As a child accumulates these emotional wounds, they learn to develop an external focus, abandoning their inner world because it's just too painful to focus inward. And then they put on a mask or a cover up that I refer to as an invented self and try to bury that free-floating mass of pain.

This leaves only the external world as a source for comfort and relief. The tip of the iceberg shows just a few of the many ways that we find to comfort or distract ourselves. As you can see here. The problem is that what starts out as a source of comfort or distraction ends up as another source of more pain, more abandonment, shame, and contempt.

You can find more details about this emotional wounding process and the survival skills we developed for surviving the wounds in my Iceberg video. For now, let's shift our focus to the life scripts and parts matrix model that I adapted from the structural dissociation model in my adaptation.

Here, you can see where I inserted a new layer into this model. This layer of abandonment, shame, and contempt creates a lens through which normal processing of perceived threats become distorted and magnified. We describe this experience of this distorted perception as being triggered.

As you can see, the model has two boxes on top growth mode and survival mode, also known as self-actualization and self-preservation. You can also notice here that growth mode or self-actualization is not connected to the flow chart beneath it. When we get triggered into survival mode, that whole flowchart lights up.

Now, we are all aware that survival instinct is an important part of the human experience. If we did not have a way to respond to a threat, we might not survive. Our responses to threat in this third tier of the diagram are also normal and important parts of the human personality.

A healthy flight response, for instance, would be an example of walking down a dark alley holding a baseball bat. And when someone tries to mug you, a normal fight part would be to start swinging that bat in self-defense. And with that same example of the dark alley if the assailant has a gun, a healthy flight response would be to start running.

Another healthy flight response in another situation might be to just push everything aside when you're working too hard and go to the beach for the weekend, escaping all the pressures that one might be under and take time out for relaxation. This provides us with a healthy reset of our nervous system and renewed energy to increase productivity.

Upon our return. Getting sick with the flu, we collapse into the bed and eat chicken soup. This is a healthy freeze response following orders from our boss at work is an example of a healthy submit response. True intimacy and the ability to share who we really are with another person is an example of a healthy attachment style and the ability to connect with others. It is this attachment drive that gets wounded and carries the pain of abandonment.

Because childhood is when it's most predominant. This leads to development of survival skills to compensate for unhealthy attachment styles. You can learn more about that in the video on the Life Scripts and Parts Matrix Inventory and the Life Scripts and Parts Matrix Model.

Suffice it to say here that the problem outlined in this diagram is the lens of abandonment, shame, and contempt that comes from growing up in that less than nurturing family situation. Again, wounded people wound people, and we find creative, albeit ineffective, ways to survive.

All these healthy stress responses become modified away from their original intended purposes and become survival skills. Now, at this point, it's important to have viewed the video called the fragment itself. This video contains my ceramic baseball analogy, which explains just a little bit of the neuroscience behind the emotional wounds that comes from trauma and unmet dependency needs. If you haven't seen that video yet, you can find it in the lesson on neuroplasticity. Okay, we're ready to take a look at Janina Fisher's brain diagram.

This is from the perspective of looking down on top of the head. Here you can see that in the back of the head is the amygdala, or the feeling brain. And in the front are the three elements of the thinking brain. The dorsal lateral left prefrontal cortex is what Janina calls the going on with normal life part. Eric Berne, MD calls it the adult ego state in his Transactional Analysis Ego State Model.

Other people refer to it as the logical left brain. It's like a computer, unencumbered by emotion. It gets the job done. It solves problems in the present moment. It makes decisions.

It's the part of us that's responsible for our executive functioning. That's why I like to refer to it as the CEO of the self. An example of how the getting on with normal life part works would be to imagine that a husband and wife are having a knockdown, drag out fight. They're screaming and yelling at each other. Then the doorbell rings.

What happens to that fight? That's right. The fight immediately stops and getting on with normal life part takes over. The couple act as if nothing ever happened, at least until the company leaves. That's because the getting on with normal life part is not able to connect with the emotional brain.

This is how it maintains its status as a computer unencumbered by emotion. Now, right behind the forehead is the medial prefrontal cortex. This is that curious observing part of us. It watches everything inside and outside as other parts of the brain record all significant emotional events, positive and negative.

That would be the short term and long-term memory functions of the hippocampus, which runs right down the center of the brain. There's really a hippocampus on both the right side and the left side of the brain, separated only by the corpus callosum, which is a collection of axon terminals helping the left brain to communicate with the right brain.

It's interesting to realize that the medial prefrontal cortex has a soothing effect on the amygdala simply by noticing its reactivity when triggered. Of course, this must be the explanation of why mindful meditation is so popular. Think of the medial prefrontal cortex as a monitor. It monitors everything going on in the external world, as well as everything going on in the internal world.

Other parts of the brain can see what's on the monitor and take action accordingly. But the monitor itself just monitors and notices activity, thereby stabilizing the amygdala. To some degree, this would be known as emotional regulation.

We can we nurture others, but not ourselves?

Now, remember, when we went over the Iceberg presentation, we saw that people who grow up in a less than nurturing family typically carry that free floating, mass of pain we call the False Self. They abandon their inner world by developing an external focus in order to avoid that pain. What they're really doing, though, is shutting down that internal focus of the monitor, at least on a conscious left-brain level. We'll come back to this later in the presentation.

The right orbital prefrontal cortex is known as the self-soothing center. In the ideal situation, this is where the representations of a healthy mother and father are to be internalized or recorded in the mind of the child. Also known as the self-soothing center, this is where our abilities to nurture, love, and protect those who are important to us reside.

We are also supposed to be able to apply those same skills to ourselves. However, when we grow up in a less than nurturing situation, we may not have enough internalized models for self-soothing. We may never have had those models to record in the first place, except for seeing them in someone else's family, or in our favorite teacher or on TV or somewhere else later on. We can draw from those models when it comes to taking care of those we love and care about. That explains why it might be difficult to apply nurturing, protection, and love to ourselves.

While it seems easy to provide them to our loved ones. In the ideal situation, our self-soothing skills are enough to help manage and regulate our emotions, which helps us to regulate our behavior as well. All parts are working together in harmony. Notice that, like the medial prefrontal cortex, the self-soothing center has that direct connection to the feeling brain. That is, if we can apply those soothing skills to ourselves, as we have learned, that connection may not be very strong if we grew up in a lesson nurturing family.

The good news is that we can enhance the neural circuitry involved with connecting those nurturing, loving and protective skills to our emotional brain. This will help significantly in our healing process.

So now let's look at what happens in the brain of someone carrying a significant amount of trauma or attachment wounds when they get triggered. As we can see, the thinking brain shuts down, leaving the amygdala to fend for itself. Emotional regulation and self-soothing do not occur.

The left brain, the getting on with normal life part, is unable to plan, problem solve, or even understand what's happening because it too is shut down. This is because the observing monitor is also offline, leaving the amygdala to become increasingly aggravated and agitated until we get rid of or get away from the threat. Eventually, when things calm down, the thinking brain comes back online and wonders what the heck just happened. So, what do we do in these situations? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Here's where my neurological group home analogy comes in. So, think of the amygdala as a group home full of troubled children. Remember, this is where all those fragmented, wounded parts of self-reside, beginning on with normal life. CEO of the self can become the group home director. The medial prefrontal cortex.

The monitor monitors everything that's going on in the group home 24/7, as well as what's going on outside in the neighborhood. The Self Soothing Center becomes the counseling staff of the group home. When something triggering occurs in the group home. If the thinking brain is allowed to go offline and stay offline, those kids may just burn down that group home. So, the number one priority is being able to stay online even in the face of threat or trigger.

This requires the development of adequate grounding skills. We will find out what works for you and our coaching or counseling sessions and in other videos in this collection. Right now, what we need to remember is that when we are triggered, we get transported back into the past where the wounded parts are taking us. For the thinking brain to stay online, we must have the ability to stay grounded in the present moment. Anything that grounds us in the present moment keeps the thinking brain available to help the feeling brain.

So assuming you have met that prerequisite of establishing healthy grounding skills that work for you, we will employ this group home strategy to monitor being able to stay online 24/7 knows exactly what's going on with every troubled child in the group home at any given moment. When a trigger occurs, the observing part brings that up on the screen for the director to notice.

The director then problem solves and makes decisions, sending instructions to the counseling staff to attend to the troubled child in question. The counseling staff then carries out that instruction to nurture, protect, and heal that wounded inner child that is reacting. The counseling staff has many different tools available to call upon for grounding and healing these wounded parts of self.

We will go over them in session or other lessons here at the Serenity Cafe Academy. Another model we need to keep in mind and understand in order to realize when all of the above is happening is the victim versus creator mentalities. When the thinking brain is offline and we are fully triggered, the only language understood by the amygdala is the victim mentality. We can only become creators with the thinking brain online and fully engaged. You can find more out about the Creator versus victim mentality in the video of the same name.

Thank you for watching and remember, you can contact me at any time with questions. You can do that through your client portal. If you're a current client or you can email me if you're a serenity cafe member or just a visitor to our website again. Thanks for listening.

One of the most important benefits of using the therapy card with my clients is that they must engage the thinking brain. This is called grounding in the present moment vs being hijacked into the unfinished business of the past or stage fright about the future. One the back of the card are all of the descriptions of each ego-state and how it functions,

Video Transcript

Welcome to this presentation on the functional ego-state map. There's a difference between structural ego-state maps and functional ego-state map. Both are from transactional analysis. A structural ego-state map just identifies where various Ego States are located if you were to draw them in a diagram.

Download the Functional Ego-State Card

The functional ego state map, on the other hand, is more concerned with how each of the ego-states function, not necessarily where they're located in a diagram. If you are listening to this presentation on the Sound Wise app, then you can find a visual for the Functional ego-state map in the Notes section of the Player. Before we begin, it's important to understand a few terms, assumptions and analogies I like to use when talking about the functional ego state diagram. First, there is the ceramic baseball analogy. This analogy helps me to explain how emotional and physical trauma creates fragmentation in the self, what integration is, and why.

Integration is the primary goal of therapy. So, if you imagine the self as a ceramic baseball and you come into the world, life throws you a curve and you get hit by a bat, what happens to that ceramic baseball? That's right. It breaks or shatters. Now there's a core chunk of self that continues to grow and self-actualize into the adult that you are today.

But being traumatized as a child would leave splinters or shards or fragments of self that are broken off or split off from the self and floating like satellites around the outside. To give an example of that, imagine an eight-year-old boy walks into a pitch black, dark room. The door slams shut, and there's a heavy scent of garlic in the air. Suddenly, he's getting beaten up by an adult male. He doesn't know who it is, but he's being traumatized.

30 years later, the same person walks into a dark room. There's a smell of garlic in the air. It's pitched black, and the door slammed shut. Suddenly he's having a panic attack and he feels like he's eight years old again. This is because his awareness left his core chunk of adult oriented self and went into the broken or fragmented part of self.

The traumatized part and re-experience that whole episode over again when he didn't get beaten up like he did the first time. Then his awareness goes back to the core chunk of self, and he's wondering how that happened. Some people wonder if the term fragmentation means we're talking about multiple personalities.

While dissociation and multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder, can result from serious trauma, usually it's the result of ongoing, severe abuse inflicted on a child before the age of six years old. So, for the vast majority of people, we are not referring to multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder.

All people have many different parts in transactional analysis and other parts-oriented therapies like internal family systems therapy or precision CBT. These are referred to as ego states or simply parts of self.

To get a better idea of the concept of parts of self, remember the last time you may have said something to yourself like Man, I hate it when I do that, or Why do I always do that? These are indications that some part of you is doing something another part of you does not authorize for this next part of the presentation. It helps to have a visual.

So if you're using the Sound wise mobile app and listening to this audio, you can open the notes section and find that visual there. Now referring to that visual. If you look right in the center of it, the adult ego state is the out front leading the way. Part of self. This is the part of self that gathers information, solves problems and makes logical, objective decisions.

All those executive functioning aspects of self. I like to call it the CEO of the self. And like any good CEO, the adult self must work in the here and now, mindful of the lessons of the past and the goals for the future. But operating in the here and now, and a good CEO knows how to work in consultation with the experts. In this case, that would be the integrated parent and child ego States.

The term integration means a combination of parts that are connected and working in harmony with each other. In my version of the functional ego state map, integrated ego States are represented by the color green. Fragmented parts of self are disconnected. They get triggered and do their own thing, causing internal conflict and disharmony. There's little or no connection with the adult ego state, and therefore little or no connection with the here and now.

Fragmented ego-states are operating as if they are actually living in the past. Here in this visualization, fragmented parts of self are represented by the color red and exist on the fringes of the personality. So, the green zone is where we are when things are going well and we are autonomous or not. In script, the red zone is where we go when we get triggered into those live scripts. This is when we experience those “scripty” emotional themes from the past and begin acting out those cycles of abandonment, shame and contempt.

Another concept is that of the psychological position. Psychological positions are ideas that we hold about ourselves, others, and the world in general. Psychological positions in the green zone of integration are based on the premise that I am basically okay, and you are basically okay. Fragmented positions are grounded in the belief that either I'm not okay and or you are not okay. Fragmented parts of self are not connected to the here and now.

They're not mindful of the adult ego state linkage to the adult is necessary for healing and integration to occur. For these parts, they need access to the adult oriented parts of self. Again, the words negative and positive represent the psychological positions of each ego state. Negative stands for not okay and Positive stands for basically okay. Keep in mind that I'm okay, you're okay.

It's the healthy position. Even when someone's behavior is not okay, they're basically okay and capable of making better choices. Okay? Referring to the diagram, the negative protective parent is the punitive and or demanding critical parent ego state that tries to control self and others with shaming messages like should, must, and ought to rules. This ego state functions under the philosophy that self or others are not okay, and they need me to set them straight.

The positive protective parent, on the other hand, is the part of self that takes charge in a directive but non shaming way when someone is in immediate danger, such as when a loved one drinks too much to drive or they're so depressed that they're talking of suicide. In those cases, we need to step in and take charge.

Another example might be when a parent has to step in and correct or redirect their child, such as when a teenager violates curfew or drinks alcohol at a party. The position here is that everyone is basically okay and usually able to make their own good decisions, but the circumstances are temporarily such that I need to step in. The negative nurturing parent is the fixing, rescuing, caretaking, codependent parent who needs to be needed.

This position is that you are not okay, and I must help you. The positive nurturing parent is that authentically, supportive, and nurturing part of self that comes up when the time is right, like in a situation, such as when comforting a grieving loved one or encouraging a nervous partner or just being supportive to a friend.

The negative natural child is the impulsive, undisciplined, spoiled, or bratty child who behaves in embarrassing ways, such as belching in public. It holds the position that I'm okay and you're not if you try to get in my way. This is the kid in the candy store without parental supervision, and sometimes this is the addict part of self.

The positive natural child is that spontaneous, free spirited, fun loving, and adventurous part that likes to giggle and laugh, enjoys the simple things in life, and wants to sample all the pleasures life has to offer. Everything and everyone is okay. This part means the positive adapted child to keep it somewhat in check.

The negative adapted child are the reactive, wounded child ego States, the vulnerable, needy child, the angry, defiant child, and the manipulative little professor. The vulnerable needy child holds all the original pain of abandonment and shame.

The angry, defiant part carries the contempt for self and or others, and the manipulative little professor figures out how to get needs met in those old, underhanded ways of childhood when it was not okay to ask directly for what you need.

In certain situations, these ego States get triggered into feeling very not okay, and they begin to act out those childhood wounds in present day life causing problems. The positive adapted child. These are the Proactive healthy child ego States that learned how to express their needs in socially acceptable ways. These are the parts of self that help us function in the world.

They've been socialized and adapted to the culture in which they live. Those who do not have such ego States are usually institutionalized until they can be rehabilitated. You can learn more about this functional ego-state map by reading the book Throwing Toxic Relationships. It's the fourth in a series of five books in the Thawing the iceberg program. Thanks for listening.

Download the Functional Ego-State Map

The three primary Ego-States of TA are the Parent Ego-State, The Adult Ego-State, and the Child Ego-State. The First Order Map is the Model used in the Functional Ego-State Map (Functional and Dysfunctional Parts of Self).

Watch the video above or read the transcript below to learn more about second and third-order ego-state maps.

Ego-State therapy paved the way for many other "Parts-Oriented" therapies including Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy and Parts Integration Therapies. Gestalt therapy also plays a major role in the evolution of this therapeutic orientation. 

Video Transcript

In order to understand the concept of ego States, we need to understand a little bit about how the brain works. We'll start with this image of a brain cell or neuron. There are trillions of these neurons in the mind and body. They are supercomputers, and you can see that they have many connections with many other areas of the brain.

Dendrites will take in an electrical chemical signal from other neurons, deliver it to the cell body, where a neural chemical will be manufactured. And with another electrical chemical impulse, that neurotransmitter will be sent down the Axon. The Axon then delivers the new neural transmitter to the next neuron via the dendrite connection, which is really actually a gap between one and the other called the synapse. So you can think of the Axon as the teacher and the dendrite as a student. There can be as many as 100,000 dendrites connecting to one neuron.

It's been estimated that there are more ways to connect the neurons in the brain than there are atoms in the universe. But all the neurons in the brain are not connected to each other. There are networks of neurons embedded in networks of neurons embedded in networks of neurons, and so forth. You may recognize this structure as something that we call the Internet. The internet is a huge network of computers consisting of networks of computers embedded in networks of computers embedded in networks of computers, and so on.

Neural Network Demonstration

However, the internet of the mind is much more complex and sophisticated than the internet of the world. A network of neurons in our brain can be referred to as a neural network. When we learn something new, it becomes encoded on a neural network. Let me show you how this works. Cross your arms in front of you, however you normally do.

Now take a really close look at how you have them crossed. Notice whether one hand is under or over and which arm is on top. Now try to do it exactly the opposite way.

Yeah. You may have noticed a momentary brain freeze. And even if you are able to cross your arms exactly the opposite way, it doesn't feel right, does it? The brain freeze happens because we don't have a neural network for crossing our arms the opposite way. We have to shift from right brain thinking, which is automatic and programmed as a neural network, over to left brain thinking so we can teach ourselves how to cross our arms the opposite way.

And even if we do manage to do it, it doesn't feel right because the mind and body adapt to the way we are used to doing it through that neural network. So we have everything we've ever learned in our life encoded on neural networks in our brain. The neural networks embedded in other neural networks comprise a vast neural matrix of networks embedded in networks embedded in networks, and so on. We have small networks encoding information, such as how to tie your shoe to very large and sophisticated networks for such things as how to do a relationship, how to do my job, how to do many other specialized things. The slide on synaptic pruning shows an infant's cerebral cortex neural circuitry shortly after birth on the left and the same child two years later on the right.

We can see the density of the neural circuitry has exploded over those first two years of life. A large majority of those connections have become obsolete because the child has grown beyond the need to use them nursing, for example but that child has a lot of learning left to do. Synaptic pruning involves the elimination of unused connections and the creation of new connections. This process of synaptic pruning continues throughout the course of our life. That's the good news.

We now know that the brain is not hard-wired. The term neuroplasticity highlights that the brain can change its structure in the same way. The plastic can be molded and remolded. Every 15 minutes that we are learning something new, we are either growing a new dendrite connection or recruiting unused connections for new networks. This is called neurogenesis or brain growth.

When we talk about chronic stress later on, we'll talk about the impact that has on neurogenesis. It's not good in that being triggered into survival mode shuts down brain growth or neurogenesis, and diverts all of our energy into survival and coping with those perceived threats.

First Order Ego-State Map

But our purpose here is to learn enough about neural networks to set up a discussion about ego States or parts of self. So what are ego States? You probably already guessed it. Ego States or parts of self are parts of our personality that are encoded on specific neural circuitry in the brain and body. In transactional analysis, there are three primary neural networks for our personality the parent, the adult, and the child.

The parent ego state has two jobs to nurture and protect loved ones, primarily our children. They do this from second perceptual position. Second position is all about others what they want, what they need, and what they feel. Healthy use of second position is called empathy. The position offers much flexibility when involved in a conflict with another person.

It's also extremely valuable for deepening rapport with others. So to be in second position means stepping into the other person's shoes, taking into account how an event or communication would look, feel, and sound from the other person's point of view, as if you're actually using their eyes and their ears associating into their body. Imagine that you are entering that other person's body in this position, and you can imagine looking at yourself through their eyes. What would you look like sound like, and what feelings would you get from the other person's view point of view?

The adult ego state is oriented in the present and can be comparable to a computer. I like to call it the CEO of the Self because it's responsible for executive functioning activities such as decision making, problem solving, planning, getting the job done, and so forth. The adult is organized, adaptable, and intelligent. It knows the history of the organization and the vision for the future. And it functions by testing reality, eliminating possibilities, making choices, dispassionately unencumbered by emotion.

The adult operates from third perceptual position like a curious bystander seeing everything from a distance and making objective decisions based on sound thinking and objectivity. Healthy use of third position is called objectivity or, in Alanon terms, it's referred to as detachment when used in a healthy way, such as emotionally detaching from dysfunctional behavior like those of the Drama Triangle. Third position is a good position from which to study yourself and your relationships. Think of it like being a bird in the corner of the room watching those two down there, or an innocent bystander watching those two strangers over there with curiosity. The child ego state contains all the impulses that come naturally to a child.

The child is creative adventuresome, spontaneous, curious, affectionate, and so on. The child loves to giggle and laugh, have fun, and enjoy the simple things in life. It can be a brat or wine when it doesn't get its way. The child lives in first person. When you associate into your own body, you are in first perceptual position.

You look, feel, and hear the world from your own viewpoint. In first position, you do not take into account anyone else's position. You simply think, how does this conversation or communication affect me? Healthy use of first position is called subjectivity or self awareness. It's the position that I must take in order to discover what I want, what I need and what I feel, who I am in this situation or this relationship.

Second Order Ego-State Map

The Second Order Structural Ego State map shows the parent, adult, and child in the adult and the parent, adult, and child in the child. Anyone who's ever watched a five year old play with a doll or push a baby buggy has seen the parent and the child. Kids integrate their learning through play and emulation. They pretend to be Mummy or Daddy in order to begin Populating neural circuitry on how to be Mommy or Daddy. So the parents and the child takes in all the parenting.

It gets all the shoulds and all the musts and all the Otis delivered by the parents and other authority figures such as school or Church or in the neighborhood. This is the socialized part of the child that learns the how to dad shows us how men are in the world, and mom shows us how women are together. They show us how men and women get along and do relationships. In the early days of transactional analysis, the adult in the adult was called the Big Professor and the adult and the child was called the Little Professor. That name stuck to this day.

The Little Professor is the smart little kid in each of us that figures out how to get what we want, how to get what we need, even when it's not okay to ask. It can be manipulative if that's what it takes to get what we need. The little professor is actually the subconscious mind of a child. The adult has life experience. The child does not, but it does have creativity, ingenuity, instinct, and intuition.

The natural, fun loving child is also known as the free child. It's unencumbered by rules and what other people think. It's the part of south that can become the kid in a candy store without parental supervision. Later on becoming the addict or alcoholic.

Third Oder Ego-State Map

The adapted child is the instinctive level ego state map or third order ego state map. It's the network locations of all the accumulated trauma. Here we have ego States, embedded in ego States, embedded in ego States. There are three main parts in the adapted child, the critical parent, the angry, defiant child, and the vulnerable needy child. Since it's the instinctive level, this is where the fight or flight response occurs.

The angry, defiant child, of course, is the fight response, and the vulnerable needy child is the flight response that's their jobs at the instinctive level. But later on in a healthy adult, the angry, defiant and vulnerable needy child have some very sophisticated jobs to do. The angry, defiant child brings enough energy to say no and set healthy boundaries. The vulnerable needy child brings enough vulnerability to let the walls down and let someone in so they can connect. But when we grow up in a less than nurturing family, there's trauma, either on a mild, moderate, or severe level.

When that occurs, the critical parent ego state contains all the critical parent messages given to that child, all the shoulds and the must and the Otto's. Some of them are good like you should look both ways before you cross the street, but others are not so good or helpful, such as you should never trust. Women or men are never to be trusted. The younger a child is, the more receptive they are to these messages referred to as parental injunction in ta language. The angry, defiant child is the neural network for the eight to twelve year old part of us that contains all the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, all the coping styles of that time in our lives.

We may see the angry, defiant child begin to emerge in the emotional birth, which is called the terrible twos, when temper tantrums become another way of getting what we want. But the era of the angry, defiant child begins in puberty and carries on into adolescence. The vulnerable needy child is the ego state of the one to seven year old part of us that carries all the abandonment, shame, content, and trauma from our childhood. These are the reactive, wounded parts of self that we'll be talking about in further episodes. So listen to this audio a few times until you feel like you have a really basic understanding of the concept of ego States and parts of self and look at the pictures on the last slide to remind yourself of child created ego state.

Child-Created Ego-States

Ego-State Projection Exercise

When you're ready, take a moment to sit quietly in a room and imagine that all five of your child created ego States are going to come into the room and join you one at a time but they're going to come in on their own terms. You don't decide which one comes in first you just tune into your intuition. Let them venture forth as they will using only your imagination and your intuition. Notice which part would be the first one to come into the room. Where would it sit or stand?

How old does it look? What facial expression and body posture do you notice? How do you feel toward that part of yourself? Do you like it or not like it?

Write these things down in your Journal. Just begin getting to know these parts of self and building a little rapport and connection. When you do the ego state projection exercise later on these notes will come in handy. One final thought when you the adult are talking to an inner child part or a younger part of self then your left brain is talking to some other part of your right brain and in order to do that it has to open up a channel. We call that a neural pathway or a neural connection connecting one neural network on one side of the brain with another neural network on the other side of the brain.

This exercise, when with intensity and repetition, actually makes biological changes in the brain that connect neural networks together for the first time. We call that integration and it's a prime goal of therapy.

Victim Mentality vs Creator Mentality

The Language of Survival Mode & Growth Mode

Our communication pattern is a major clue to us that we have been triggered into a reactive ego-state. The language of the reactive, triggered parts-of-self is always Victim Mentality! When we remain in growth mode, we can tell because the language of our proactive, executive functioning self is always Creator Mentality!

The question we need to ask ourselves is: "Which of these two mindsets is productive and which is destructive? Which mindset helps and which one hurts?" When we get triggered into survival mode we can be sure the victim mentality will come with that. When we are in growth mode, it is easier and more natural to adopt the roles in the creator mentality.

The challenge is to develop the ability to move into the Creator mentality (growth-mode) EVEN as we are being triggered into a life script, aka survival mode. This ability of dual awareness is required as a pre-requisite to integration (healing).

Below is an image of the Victim & Creator Mentality Therapy Card that I use with my clients and students here at the academy. When we are triggered into Survival Mode, we act out a Life Script as outlined in the LSPM Card (Below).

Video Transcript

Hi, this is Don Carter. I'd like to share with you. Steve Karpman's Drama Triangle. The drama triangle is a problem focused mindset that we get triggered into whenever we're and survival mode. It forms a foundation at the very core of every dysfunctional psychological and relationship mind game that we can play. In order to play the drama triangle, we need a persecutor, a rescuer and a victim.

Let's say the persecutor is dad who comes home from work and he's angry and irritable. He finds his son's bike in the driveway. When he comes in, he notices the twelve-year-old boy has not taken out the garbage, which is his new chore. So he jumps all over Johnny for not taking out the garbage. Mom, seeing Johnny as a victim of Dad's bad day, begins to rescue him by jumping all over dad for persecuting Johnny.

Dad then moves into the victim role, yelling at mom, saying he was just trying to teach Johnny good work ethic and get him to follow through on his shores. This starts a big fight. Johnny then moves out of the victim role into the persecutor as he yells at mom for jumping on dad. So, you can see where the term drama comes in in the drama triangle. It's not having these three roles, it's the ability for family members to shift from one role to another that creates the drama and chaos in the family.

So we learn the drama triangle early on in our lives, but we become much more sophisticated in how we play the game later in our adult relationships. If you watch the news or get on Facebook very often you'll see the drama triangle played out by groups of people as well as individuals. One feeling like the rescuer helping save victims from the main persecutors. This is because it's become our way of life. There is another option, however.

Download the Victim-Creator Therapy Card

An alternative to the drama triangle is the empowerment dynamic created by David Emerald. As already mentioned, the drama triangle is a problem focused mindset that we get into when we're triggered into survival mode. In growth mode, we can choose the empowerment dynamic. The empowerment dynamic is an opportunity focused mindset that we can choose. When we're in growth mode, it flips the triangle upside right.

In this model, the victim becomes a creator, refusing to play the victim and taking accountability for creating the life that he or she wants. The Rescuer becomes a coach. The difference between a rescuer and a coach is if I'm on the football field playing a game and I don't know what to do next, I can call a time out, go to the sideline and consult with my coach. After consulting with the coach, I can return to the game and implement the strategies we discussed. A rescuer, on the other hand, would put me on the bench and go in and try to play the game for me.

In this model, there are no such things as persecutors and a persecutor could be anything like a person or it could be a medical condition or a financial situation. It's a problem but there are no problems. There are only opportunities in the empowerment dynamic. We look at everything as a challenger offering an opportunity for growth. I just need to be able to make the right choices, consult the right coaches and find a way to overcome the challenge that I face.

I must also keep in mind that if I'm already good at something it offers me no opportunity for growth. It's those challenges in life that help me grow. It would be nice if it were so simple we could just simply choose this opportunity-focused mindset. However, when we're triggered we go into survival mode that's when we're caught up in our life scripts and it becomes difficult to make such choices if not impossible.

However, with recovery oriented therapies and twelve step work we can overcome those wounds that keep us stuck in those life scripts and enter into growth mode. When we realize the degree of complexity in making the shift from the problem focused model to the opportunity focused model we may select to retain a coach such as a therapist or a twelve step sponsor to help us heal enough to be able to be more choice in which mindset governs our life.

You can learn more about the drama triangle and the empowerment dynamic in the Serenity Cafe Academy and several of the courses there. You can also read more about it in my book. Thawing toxic Relationships thanks for listening

Download the Victim-Creator Therapy Card

Human beings are subjective beings. Due to limitations in our ability to process all the available sensory data (see, hear, feel data), we all have our own “Book of Shoulds” or cognitive maps. We see the world according to what’s important to us. We see things through our unique mental filters including:

• Our Spirituality

• Our Identity

• Our Values and Beliefs

• Our Memories and Experiences

• Our Programs

• Our Survival Needs

Out of seven billion people in the world – no two of us has exactly the same filters. For example, we may share a value such as spirituality… but your cognitive map of what spirituality means is not likely to match mine completely. In fact, there may be major differences even though we both value the concept and practice of spirituality.

So there are seven billion unique maps of reality out there. This is important to understand whether we are trying to motivate ourselves or someone else. Take a look at the video below to learn how our subconscious mind sorts, selects, and processes all that data.

Subconscious Processing with our “Book of Shoulds”

Download the Mental Filters Therapy Card

We have several primary Mental Filters

• My Sense-of-Self or Identity – How I see myself… what I think of myself… how I feel about myself.

• My Values – Things that are most important to me…these are usually just beneath the surface of our awareness if we have never taken the time to sort them out, but they are very powerful motivators of our choices and our behaviors.

• My Strongly-Held Beliefs – Right or wrong…good or bad…helpful or limiting…these are the beliefs we hold about ourselves, other people, life, and the world in general. They are keys to how thought creates reality.

• My Memories and Experiences – Every significant emotional event… pleasant or unpleasant is stored on the hard-drive of our subconscious mind.

• My Programs – Over 90% of our actions and reactions in a given day are carried out automatically by neural networks in our brain.

• My Survival Needs – Of all the brain processes survival is given the highest priority… so anything related to our survival goes to the head of the line for processing by the brain.

The Power of Belief

Beliefs are perhaps the most influential filters of them all. A strongly-held belief creates a strong emotional state. My current belief and resulting emotional state tell my doorman “what’s important to me”. We have:

• Beliefs about our identity

• Beliefs about our values

• Beliefs about our beliefs

• Beliefs about our experiences

• Beliefs about our programs

• Beliefs about our ability to survive.

Example of a Codependent “Love Map”

If someone has codependency then their doorman (RAS) is programmed to screen for data that will support their codependent values… codependent beliefs… codependent memories and experiences… codependent programs… and codependent survival skills. Codependent thought creates reality by attracting the right people who know how to dance the dance.

Their codependent mental filters may look like this:

• Identity – I’m not good enough, I’m less important than others

• Values – doing for others, self-sacrifice, making a good impression, staying busy

• Beliefs – I’m not good enough, others are more important than I am, I must always please others, if I say no you will go away and not come back.

• Memories – abandonment experiences, memories of abuse, shaming experiences

• Programs – care-taking, rescuing, controlling, fixing others, etc

• Survival Skills– approval seeking, don’t feel, don’t talk, don’t trust, etc.

Let’s say that this person has somehow ended her most recent codependent relationship. She is currently looking for a new partner.

She walks into a room full of 50 available men… Only one of them is alcoholic. The other 49 are all very healthy. Who do you think she ends up with? That’s right – because thought creates reality she soon finds herself wrapped up with another alcoholic partner. She asks herself… “How does this keep happening to me… Do I have a stamp on my forehead, or what!?”

No, she doesn’t have a stamp on her forehead – she has radar at the base of her skull called the reticular activating system (RAS)… and all her filters are set for codependency. It can be no other way because that’s how her “map of the world”, her neural network for relationships or “Love Map” is configured.

When she walked into the room her doorman began sifting through 2 million bits of data per second – allowing in only that data which fits her codependent neural network. Consciously she had no intention of coming anywhere close to another problem-person… Consciously she is looking for Mr. Right and the happily-ever-after scenario.

It just so happens that a person with a codependent map is extremely compatible with someone who has a map for alcoholism or other similar dysfunction… So, his mental filters draw him to her just as she is drawn to him. Her “Love Map” subconsciously synchronizes with his and they dance the only dance they know… Until someone has a wake-up call and begins to change their tune.

Whether it is codependency, addiction, chronic depression, or anxiety and fears – Our brain filters data in ways that help us create self-fulfilling prophecies and self-reinforcing cycles. The thing to do is understand how our mental filters creates our reality and develop a way of thinking, or filtering data, that helps us create the life we want!

Changing Mental Filters

The good news is we can change our mental filters and develop the neural circuitry for authentic intimacy. It’s simple, all we have to do is change our whole life! Seriously though, it will take more than a few well placed affirmations to rewire and recondition our brain and nervous system.

We can join a 12-step recovery group, or a community support group, find a good therapist or therapy group, join a Bible Study group at church, go back to school, or develop a new lifestyle.

Examples of Mental Filters for Authentic Intimacy:

• Identity – I’m no better and no worse than others, I like my True Self, I am a child of God

• Values – Spirituality, helping others, good self-care, being authentic with others, sharing who I really am with the world

• Beliefs – I’m worthwhile, I can be real with others others, it’s okay to set healthy boundaries

• Memories – Recovery experiences, memories of triumph, celebrations

• Programs – Self-care, service work, acceptance, letting go, etc

• Survival Skills– Assertiveness, share how I feel, hang out with encouraging people, trust but verify, etc

Mental Filters Therapy Card

Below is a therapy card I use with clients. Referring to it when we feel triggered can ground us in the present moment and activate growth-mode. It is also a fillable PDF so they can keep it on their phone and save it with a new name each time they use it:

On the back of the card is a format for focusing on and targeting one limiting mental filter for change. When we don’t like the inner state and we notice it is because of a limiting core belief about self, the world, or others we can make a conscious effort to focus on challenging that mental filter.

Download the Mental Filters Therapy Card

The neural networks of our brain and central nervous system are comparable to but infinitely more sophisticated than the fiber-optic network connecting millions of computers together in a single network that we have come to know as the Internet.

One main difference is that instead of millions of computers — our brain has up to 100 billion “computers” called neurons connected together in a biological network that would put AT&T to shame. And, just like the Internet, our brain has networks… embedded in networks… embedded in networks… and so on. A neural network is a cluster of neurons connected together to form a “database” of encoded information such as thoughts, feelings, beliefs, programmed reactions, emotions, memories, and even physiological data.

Neural networks are the actual biological location of change. Change does not take place without re-wiring of existing neuronal connections or creating entirely new connections. We call these biological changes “learning something new”

The Four Stages of Learning Something New

Learning as it relates to self-preservation, such as the survival skills and developmental tasks of childhood, is accomplished at the subconscious level. The learning process for information related to self-actualization (growth) requires conscious effort and self-discipline. This learning process can be boiled down to transforming explicit memory into implicit memory (growing a new neural network). There are four stages one must go through in learning a new behavior or routine:

• Unconscious Incompetence – Before people even become aware that they need or want to learn a new behavior or skill, they are incompetent it and unaware of just how incompetent they really are at the behavior. For example, I may decide I’d like to go bowling although I have never tried it before.

• Conscious Incompetence – once an awareness of the desire to learn the behavior arises, the awareness of incompetence soon follows. I throw my first ball and it goes into the gutter, as does the second, and even the third! I suddenly realize that I SUCK at bowling! (The reluctance to go through this awkward, clumsy stage of learning is often the reason some people won’t try new things.)

• Conscious Competence – If I keep at it and push through the initial stages of learning, with the help of explicit memory I start knocking some pins down and eventually get a spare or even a strike once in a while. As the new behavior is practiced repeatedly, skill is developed in the form of neural networks (Neurons that fire together, wire together) In the next stage of learning, those neural nets literally become part of me. We call it “muscle memory” the actual term for that is implicit memory.

• Unconscious Competence – Once a certain level of proficiency is reached the new behavior or routine becomes automatic or “Second Nature.” Now I can put a spin on the ball and make it do tricks as it rolls down the lane. This is because I have become ONE with the bowling ball! In other words, it becomes programmed into the neural networks of implicit memory.

There is no “Good” or “Bad” - Only Intensity and Repetition

You may have guessed by now, it matters not if the learning is “good” or “bad” learning. With intensity and repetition (practice), new learning moves from inside physical changes (neuronal connections) to outside physical changes (actual behavior). This is why we can literally “become” what we think about most of the time…

For example, if we frequently ruminate about depressive or obsessive thoughts, we are building a neurological database for depression or obsession and can experience everything that goes with it! If we think of each brain cell (neuron) as a computer and a neuron’s dendrites and axons as the fiber-optics, then try to fathom this — There are more possible ways to connect the brain's neurons than there are atoms in the universe. The connections guide our bodies and behaviors; even as every action we take physically modifies their patterns…

Thanks to sharp imaging technology and some brilliant research, we now have proof that [network] development is a continuous, unending process. Axons and dendrites and their connections can be modified up to a point, strengthened, and perhaps even regrown. – A Users Guide to the Brain, (page 20)

Each network has a function. We have simple networks for daily routines…

• How to tie our shoes

• How to brush our teeth

• How to shave

And more complex neural networks for such things as:

• How to do relationships

• How to perform various duties at work

• How to drive a car

• How to read

• Who I am

• Belief Systems

A Neural Network Demonstration…

Try this experiment, cross your arms in a comfortable position across your chest… You have just accessed your arm-crossing neural network – a small cluster of brain cells connected together and programmed for this behavior. Now take a close look and notice exactly how they are crossed… Got it?

Great, now try to cross them in exactly the opposite way. You should notice that the first way is comfortable and automatic…you don’t even have to think about it. The new way is uncomfortable if you are able to do it at all…most people experience momentary confusion and others freeze up totally and can’t do it. The new, uncomfortable way is new behavior for which you do not yet have a neural network.

You could create a network for doing it the new way, but it will take a few weeks of discipline and repetition. See Part 3: Basic Neuroplasticity to learn how to do that with the use of Heebs Law: “Neurons that fire together, wire together. & Use-it-or-lose-it.” This is why changing habits and behaviors can be difficult… it is simply easier to do it the way we are programmed to do it. If you happen to be ambidextrous you may be able to do it comfortably and easily both ways. This simply means you have a neural network for crossing your arms both ways, writing with either hand, etc.

The Ceramic Baseball Analogy

So, why is all of this stuff about neural circuitry and neuroplasticity important? To answer this question, think of the self as a ceramic baseball. When this ceramic-self comes into the world and life throws us a curve, then it gets hit with a bat… what happens to the ceramic baseball? That’s right, it shatters. This is a great analogy for what happens when people suffer trauma and attachment wounds early in life. A core chunk of the self continues to grow and self-actualize into the adult we know and love today.

But there are these pieces or shards of self that float or orbit around the core self, like little satellites. These are what we call fragments of self. They are frozen in time, disconnected from the actualized self (the adult self). As such, they do not have access to our adult resources and coping skills. They remain the age they were when created and employ the survival skills that got them through the trauma at the time.

Example of a Fragment of Self

Let's say an 8-year-old boy walks into a dark room, there is the scent of garlic in the air, the door slams shut and it becomes pitch black – then he gets badly beaten. Thirty years later, the same person walks into a dark room, there is the scent of garlic present, and the door slams shut – PANIC ATTACK!

Pattern Match Activated: Dark Room+Door slam+Garlic = Get Badly Beaten

The 38-year-old man’s awareness left the adult core chunk of self and into the wounded 8-year-old boy fragment of self. He then re-lived the trauma as if he was back there again. He had access to only the resources available to the 8-year-old part of self because of the disconnect from his adult self. This is what we often refer to as being triggered.

Compartmentalization

Another clinical term for this fragmentation of the self is Compartmentalization. When a traumatic experience gets encoded into a neural network of it’s own, this is accomplished by one-trial learning due to the intensity of the experience (think 9/11). Intense threats get encoded in the area of the brain for survival instinct, the limbic system or feeling brain. Then that network gets compartmentalized as if a firewall forms around it, closing it off from the thinking brain and our awareness.

When a pattern match is activated, the doorways to that compartment are opened. It’s like we get sucked inside and trapped in that traumatized network. In other words, when all the key elements of the original trauma are present (e,g, Garlic+Dark room+Door Slam) we get triggered and re-experience the trauma because it has not been fully processed (We will cover that in another post). When the experience subsides we are outside the compartment and the doors are closed again.

With ongoing trauma and attachment wounds there are several, if not many, compartments, which I refer to as fragments of self frozen in time.

Back to our Question…

Why is all this about neuroplasticity important? We began creating and growing dendrite connections the moment we were conceived… Later on, we create networks for sitting up, walking, talking, reading, and so on. Below is an image of neural networks in the brain of an infant compared to those of a 2-year-old.

Neurogenesis & Synaptic Pruning

Brain growth, also known as neurogenesis is staggering! The lifelong process of synaptic pruning begins when neural connections weaken and are no longer needed (use-it-or-lose-it!) Networks that were necessary at one point (nursing) stop firing when that behavior is replaced by eating solid food and drinking from a sippy cup.

A network contains explicit and implicit data for all the skills, knowledge, emotions, beliefs, physiology, motor skills, thoughts, memories, and experiences that have to do with that function or behavior. We have networks for identity and self-esteem… We have networks for how to drive a car, how to swim, how to be a good spouse, how to do our job. We weren’t born with these networks, we had to create and grow them.

We may also have limiting or unhealthy neural networks devoted to addictions, self-sabotage, phobias, anxieties, depression, PTSD, and other unwanted feelings and behaviors. But there is good news based upon Heeb’s Law, the subconscious mind uses a process known as synaptic pruning to rewire these unhelpful neural networks!

Networks you want to re-wire or new ones you’d like to create, such as one for regular exercise, will take several weeks of consciously directing your attention toward it. With concentration, dedication, and discipline it only takes several weeks of effort to feel like the new behavior is becoming part of you or “second nature” – Continuing the behavior becomes easier and easier.

Integration and the Biological Location of Change

Now for the bottom line ~ Why is all this stuff about Neuroplasticity so important to understand? Because Parts of self, including fragmented parts of self, are encoded on our neural networks. We need to connect with and update them in a process called integration. Integrative psychotherapy is all about the integration of fragmented parts of self! We need to be able to do this in a safe way so as not to re-traumatize and strengthen that part of self.

Those reactive, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn (submit) parts outlined in the LSPM Model live in the non-dominant hemisphere (usually the right brain) and are driven by the wound of abandonment, the infection of shame, and the scab of contempt described in the Iceberg Model. Everytime they are activated or triggered, they grow stronger.

The proactive, growth-oriented executive functioning parts-of-self live in the dominant hemisphere (usually the left brain) This is where, through therapy, we build the safe-container, activate the self-soothing parts of self, and strengthen the ego for the process of integration. With this in place we can finish the unfinished business without retraumatization.

In order for your manual, growth-oriented left brain to communicate with your automated, survival-oriented right brain, you have to open a channel, a neural pathway to establish a link vs bouncing back and forth between survival mode and growth mode. This IS integration aka psycho-biological change. That is why I call the neural circuitry of the brain and nervous system the biological location of change!

Practice Makes Perfect

As you read these articles and watch the videos, remember to review them in order, and more than just once or twice. Also remember that INTENSITY and REPETITION are the mechanisms for building these healing networks, aka parts-of-self. As indicated in the four stages of learning something new (above), practice makes perfect!

Using Neuroplasticity to Rewire the Brain

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s amazing ability to adapt to the internal and external environments it is exposed to over time. This is no longer just a theory, it is backed up by brain imaging technologies. Until now, researchers had to spend a large part of their time justifying the theory of neuroplasticity before they could even present their ideas and findings. Now they can spend that time researching and studying how the brain heals itself, adapts to changing situations and circumstances, and what happens when we “change our minds” about something.

The implications of this ability to rewire the brain are truly staggering. It was not so long ago that the prevailing wisdom was that we are “hardwired” and that, after 30 years of age, change is not very likely. Now that we know that is not the case, new ways of using neuroplasticity are rapidly being developed. So how does it work? I know it sounds complicated but when you understand how mirror neurons function, it is really very simple. According to Hebb's Law, there are only two principles that you need to know in order to make changes in your own brain and nervous system. Those two principles are:

• Neurons that fire together, wire together

• Use-it-or-lose-it

The video above outlines these two principles of neuroplasticity and is probably one of the most informative six minutes you will spend in your life. The video below shows biological changes taking place in real time such as synaptic pruning, new learning, and neural networks in action. As you watch it, keep in mind how interesting it is that your own brain can become fascinated with itself!

Rewiring the Brain in Real Time

There are two things you can do to increase and enhance the first principle of Hebb's Law, create intensity and use repetition. You can increase the intensity of an experience, belief, imagery, or affirmation by making it as vivid and real as possible. The more intense an experience is, the fewer repetitions it will take to burn it into your brain. The video below will explain why it is that we frequently don’t take action when we want to and know that we need to practice.

In the next video (The best one yet!) neuroscientist and meditation expert Dr. Joe Dispenza explains how to reprogram your brain. The video above outlines the major principles of neuroplasticity and validates the science of brain change by changing what thoughts and feelings you expose it to over time. It also explains why and how we are the authors of our own pain, why we find it difficult to muster the self-discipline and motivation to change.

“We Feel the Way We Think, & Think the Way We Feel”

Mirror Neurons: How We Create Our Cognitive Maps and Mental Filters

What do we do when a baby smiles? That’s right, most, if not all of us cannot help but feel good and smile back. What do we do when a baby has been fed, had a diaper change, a proper nap, and we have tried everything to soothe the baby, but the baby won’t stop crying? We feel frustrated, and most likely many of the same sort of feeling that the baby is expressing.

That’s because our brains have little computers in them called mirror neurons. These neurons record 'movies' of how our role models act in certain situations. The movies are called imprints and they become part of an overall template for thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

In a less-than-nurturing family regular, attentive, and consistent role models with healthy coping is not always available. Sometimes it is hardly available at all, and in other families, it is inconsistently available at best. When dysfunctional role modeling exists in parent-child relationships there is trouble in paradise.

Mirror Neurons are at the Root of Many Challenges:

1. Poor Attachment Styles

2. Mood Disorders

3. Low Self-Esteem

4. Poor Self-Care

5. Victim Mentality

6. Toxic Relationships

7. Adult/Child Syndrome

8. Complex PTSD

9. Abandonment Issues

10. Unmet Childhood Dependency Needs

As we learn more about neuroplasticity, mirror neurons, and the biological location of change we refer to as neural networks, we develop more ways to apply that knowledge in the therapeutic relationship between therapist and client.

I have selected Integrative Psychotherapy which is an assimilative eclectic blend of complementary therapy approaches provided on a foundational framework of Erik Erikson’s eight developmental stages of life. Here are my top 10 therapy tools for shifting back to Growth Mode:

1. EMDR

2. Clinical Hypnosis

3. Internal Family Systems

4. Mindfulness & Meditation

5. Ego-State Therapy

6. Gestalt Therapy

7. Precision CBT

8. Transactional Analysis

9. Twelve-Step Recovery

10. Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)

These approaches to helping have several things in common. Primarily that they are all useful with the idea that people have many different parts or aspects of self. Also, these parts of self come together to make up a whole system of Self. The system is functional and referred to as integrated when all parts work in harmony together.

The system is considered to be dysfunctional and fragmented when parts of self are frequently in conflict with each other or otherwise cause problems in our life when they “get triggered.” This Parts-of-self orientation is highly consistent with neural networks and how the brain and nervous system encodes information.

In Part 4, we will look at the role of neuroplasticity in emotional wounding, also known as fragmentation of the self, as well as it’s role in the healing process, also known as integration of the self.

The phrase "Getting Triggered" is almost a household word these days. A milder form of the same thing is "Getting My Buttons Pushed." What does it mean?

Essentially, being "triggered" means I become reactive. I am proactive when I choose my behaviors, and I am reactive when my behaviors choose me! When I act in a way that I do not like, it is a part-of-self that reacts to a cue internally or externally. Only one part-of-self can "drive the bus of my life" at a time. All the other parts are on board, but not driving. Reactivity is the hallmark characteristic of survival mode.

I must be able to react to a threat almost instantly. Imagine that you just stepped off a curb and instantly jumped back because a car was coming too close. In a case like this, you don't have time to consider all the options before choosing to jump back on the curb!

Download the LSPM Therapy Card

Growing up in a less-than-nurturing-family can provide ample opportunities to have these kinds of experiences. As a result, we develop many reactive parts-of-self to help us survive. The LSPM Card is a general picture of how the emotional wound of abandonment, the infection of shame, and the scab of contempt forms the filter or lens through which we get triggered.

The fight, flight, freeze, submit, and attachment responses are NOT the problem. We need to be able to react quickly to a danger or threat. It is when our nervous system gets conditioned to be hypersensitive to anything associated with the original experiences of abandonment, shame, and contempt that causes problems, triggers, or our buttons that “get pushed” in our present-day life.

Transcript

Hi, this is Don Carter. Welcome to this presentation on my Life Scripts and Parts Matrix Model (LSPM). in this presentation, and I'd like to go over all the elements of the LSPM. I'd also like to show how the model  integrates with my Iceberg Model of addiction codependency and the attachment wounds caused by adult child syndrome. Both of these models are central to my practice as an integrative psychotherapist. As such, I integrate several complementary approaches to create something new.

These include Ego State Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Parts Integration Therapy, Inner Family Systems Therapy, EMDR Somatic, therapies, and many other complementary models and approaches. One of the newest is the integration of all that we are learning about the clinical application of polyvagal theory to trauma therapy, such as the structural dissociation model and the autonomic ladder.

In my counseling and coaching sessions, I use a therapy card with my LSPM on one side and this image of the Iceberg model on the other. The card is great for self-discovery in therapy sessions as well as in between sessions. I asked my clients to refer to the card whenever they feel triggered because doing so takes them out of their triggered reactivity while simultaneously regulating that emotional state by initiating Proactive thought and decision making. I'll go over this in more detail later on in the presentation. If you've not already done so go back and watch the Iceberg presentation.  

So to begin, notice the top tier of the LSPM has two boxes, one representing growth mode and the other representing survival mode, also known as self-actualization and self-preservation, respectively. A major difference between these two elements of the diagram is the flowchart connected to the self-preservation box but not to the self-actualization box. In my video, the Fragment Self, found in the first lesson in the Golden Key program, I use the ceramic baseball analogy to explain the fragment itself.

To briefly summarize, if you think of the self as a ceramic baseball that comes into the world and gets hit by a bat, what happens to the baseball? That's right, it shatters.Growth mode would be the core chunk of the baseball that continues to grow and self-actualize, while survival mode is represented by the shards or fragments of self, orbiting like little satellites disconnected from that core of the baseball.

The clinical term for fragmentation is dissociation. Many of the elements in this diagram are adapted from the structural dissociation diagram and integrated with the Iceberg model, Ego State Therapy, Attachment Theory, and Internal Family Systems Therapy. The flowchart accomplishments the goal of describing this integration in a way that's understandable and extremely useful to therapist and client.

Remember, though, learning anything new requires repetition, most of us weren't very skillful riding a bike for the first time, but later on we could do so with no hands [Mastery]. So, watch this video as many times as necessary. Like anything else, it will eventually become natural and useful to you.

Before we take a look at the filter of abandonment, shame, and contempt, let's jump down here to this row in the Matrix. The fight, flight, freeze, submit, and attachment parts are not the problem by themselves. In fact, they are all healthy elements of an integrated, fully functioning personality. By integrated, I mean that whenever one of these parts of self are triggered, it is appropriate to the context that triggered it.

Fritz Pearls, the father of default therapy, was fond of saying that only one thing should be in control the circumstances or context one finds themselves in. An appropriate context for the fight response might be that you are in a dark alley carrying a baseball bat and someone tries to mug you. The fight part will help you start swinging the bat in self-defense. Likewise, if you are in that same dark alley and someone pulls a gun on you, you may take off running, which would be an appropriate response.

Or maybe you've been under some pressure at work for quite some period of time, so you set everything aside and go down to the beach for the day just to get away from it all. An example of an appropriate freeze response would be when you have the flu and you just collapse into bed, submitting to the flu, eating chicken soup and giving your body time to come through that virus. And finally, at work, there may be times when you put your own ideas aside and submit to those of your boss. So these are all examples of adaptive, appropriate responses to stress or threats to your safety.

Download the LSPM-CBT Therapy Card

Reactive behaviors that are not appropriate to the context, not in your best interest and harmful to you or others are maladaptive survival skills that flow from the wounded, fragmented parts of self. These wounded, fragmented parts are disconnected from the actualized adult part of self. Being disconnected, they do not have access to our adult resources in the actualized adult ego state. They are stuck in the past and used survival skills instead of coping skills.

Survival skills may have been appropriate to the context in childhood, and they were likely to have been the best that the child could do under their circumstances. However, survival skills do not necessarily serve them well in adulthood. Abandonment is an emotional wound that triggers the emotional infection called shame, which is covered by an emotional scab of contempt.

The contempt can be turned inward in the form of self-contempt, or outward as contempt for others or the world in general. Contempt is all those crusty feelings of anger, bitterness, and resentment. There's a lot of energy that goes with those feelings, and it has to go somewhere.

Notice here in the diagram that the “fight” part is directly under the scab of contempt. The collapse and submit “freeze” part, directly under the infection of shame, and the attachment drive that is the most vulnerable part of our personality is directly under the wound of abandonment wound. As I just mentioned, shame is an infection, and infections spread throughout the entire system in which they live, making it a central element to this whole diagram. It infects everything. We'll look closer at that shortly.

The emotional wound of abandonment typically begins early in childhood and continues to grow throughout the child's experience in a lesson nurturing family. The attachment drive is the most vulnerable part of our personality. When we are born into the world, we have a primal need for connection to a caretaker. If we have no caretaker, no emotional surface to connect to, then we would die. The primal need for connection is also accompanied by a primal fear of abandonment.

All of that is wired into our central nervous system at birth, and since we don't have verbal skills or cognitive abilities to make sense of any of it, it's just a primal, raw instinct to connect. When we are not connected, the alarms go off and flood the central nervous system. This results in a cry for help. That cry can grow stronger and stronger when the attachment needs are not met and eventually loud enough to be a cry for rescue. This is the only defense that an infant has.

They need a caretaker who is present and tuned in enough to interpret the needs of the child. In the ideal situation, when an infant gets wet, it gets changed. When it's tired, it gets a nap, when it's fussy, it gets nurturing. When it's hungry, it gets fed pretty much every single time. When this happens consistently, almost every time the child grows up with a healthy attachment style that is carried with him or her into adulthood.

To the extent the attachment needs go unmet, the child will likely develop an insecure attachment style of some sort directly resulting from the abandonment of their attachment needs. This will create and trigger that infection of shame, which will be covered over by the scab of contempt, all those crusty feelings of anger, bitterness, and resentment. To learn more about the unmet attachment needs and unmet childhood dependency needs, review the Iceberg lecture again.

We can see the wound of abandonment, infection, and shame and the scab of contempt floating just beneath the surface of our awareness, creating inside of a child a false sense of self. And remember, like any other wound, the infection will spread and become a bigger problem than the wound itself. Toxic shame plays the central role in this picture.

Here we can see that when the abandonment gets triggered, it triggers the toxic shame. This experience is something I refer to as a shame attack. A shame attack can trigger one or more of the following responses.

• I can fight the shame,

• I can avoid the shame by escape strategies,

• I can become frozen and collapse into the shame.

• I can submit to the shame, accepting that I'm not good enough, not lovable, not worthwhile, and I have to work very hard to make sure everyone is happy so they won't abandon me.

Since I have all that free-floating mass of pain referred to in the iceberg as the False Self, I cannot generate any good feelings inside. All I can do is keep an external focus and put on a mask, also known as a public image, or what I like to call the invent itself. This gives me the illusion that I am managing the pain when I'm only covering it up and stuffing it down inside.

Here we can see that there are two groups of managers. The submit part involves various strategies and behaviors designed to manage the impressions of those who are most important to me, to make sure they think the right things about me and that they are happy. When I make a mistake, though, the second group of managers gets triggered. Those fight parts are a group of managers that manage the submit part.

When I am in the submit role and perceive that I've made a mistake, it activates one or more of the managers in the fight part, usually the inner critic that triggers contempt, which in turn triggers a shame attack directed at the submit part for making a mistake. The positive intention of the inner critic is usually to motivate the submit part to not make any mistakes, because that could risk more abandonment.

When things are difficult or stress is chronic, the natural thing to do is try to escape. So frequently, we developed some escape strategies, possibly leading to addictive behaviors in order to get away from the shame and avoid it altogether. Of course, this usually causes more abandonment, shame, and contempt, so it's only a short-term fix, if anything at all. The escape strategies in the flight part are often referred to as firefighters. This name comes from the role they play when the managers fail to manage the pain of the wounded child ego state.

In other words, when the iceberg becomes a volcano and begins to erupt, the firefighters are called in to douse the flames. We can become dependent on the firefighters, some of which can be highly addictive and become a problem all of their own. The term firefighters come from the internal family systems therapy approach.

The firefighters are the last resort and defense against shame. When nothing else seems to work, we can collapse into that infection of shame and abandonment wounds. Internal family systems therapy would call what we collapse into an exile in. Ifs this is a wounded inner child that has been disowned and sent into hiding, these are what the managers protect. Another term for this collapse is hitting bottom.

Many addicts face those moments from time to time. Some hit bottom and go to treatment. Others seem to bounce on the bottom until they can reach out and get help.

Here in the LSPM diagram, we can see the parts involved in hitting bottom, also known as the freeze response. When managers and firefighters have been unsuccessful in controlling or managing the pain, we collapse into it. In internal family systems, they would call this blending with the exile in polyvagal theory, this would be referred to as the dorsal vagal response. In severe cases, this might lead to a mobilization, shutting down, feeling frozen and paralyzed, and maybe even too terrified of being seen to leave the house. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists might call this total collapse of psychological defense mechanisms.

In short, this is not a fun place to be.

Whenever we find ourselves in the fight, flight, freeze, submit, and attach parts, we can know that we are triggered into a reactive response. In a reactive response, our behaviors seem to choose us. We don't choose them. As soon as they notice they've been triggered, I ask my clients to pull out this therapy card and begin to study what just happened, looking for what parts were involved. This activates our self-actualizing growth mode, which is a centering technique that helps with emotional regulation.

When we are in the growth mode, we are Proactive, not reactive. In other words, we choose our behaviors. They don't choose us. We are free from life scripts and triggered parts. When we are in this mode, this is the best position to begin learning emotional regulation when we struggle with significant trauma and frequent triggers.

It is from growth mode that we can attend to the emotional wounds of abandonment, the infection of shame, and the scab of contempt just beneath the surface. Developing a dual awareness of our self-actualized growth mode when we are being triggered into survival mode is a critical skill to learn for the healing process.

This dual awareness opens the door to therapy and recovery processes. It is from this position that we can begin our healing journey. When we create a safe place in our inner world of experience, connecting to the adult and self-actualized resources already there, we can begin to attend to the wounds of those reactive parts.

We can develop those resources, learn re-parenting techniques, integrative journaling, and use many other complementary therapies such as inner child work, re imprinting processes, ego state therapy, Castle therapy, inner family systems therapy, EMDR, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), hypnotherapy, guided imagery, mindfulness, and many other integrative therapies.

However, it is important to note that implementing any of these therapies before doing the preliminary work of self-discovery, resource development, and creating a safe container internally and externally can lead to processing blocks and other forms of resistance to the therapeutic process.

This can be very frustrating and lead someone to believe that counseling won't work for them, so they drop out of treatment. So, when we begin any therapy or recovery process, it's important to be patient and give it a chance to work. As the healing continues, we eventually come to a fuller, richer contact with our true self. This will improve our relationships and our functioning in most, if not all, areas of our life.

Remember that true intimacy comes when I'm able to share who I really am with another human being who is also able to share who they really are with me. That would be our True Self. Thanks for watching, If you have any questions or feedback you can leave those comments or send us an email.