Name: Steve Mensing

Topic: BH: Compulsive Behavior

Sent: 9:24 AM - 10/23 2000

BH:

I've delt with addictions and compulsions and I learned something real fast. Don't target the compulsion right away. It's a seven headed hydra. I've mentioned this to many others via email and earlier on the board to go after the stuff that empowers the compulsion and the compulsion loses all its steam. The compulsion is the skin over the boil!

Compulsions are a rush of activities and thoughts, they are the aftereffects of anxiety and other suppressed emotion. Compulsions are ghostly and elusive targets. You'll be spinning your wheels. What empowers them are underlying emotions like anxiety and sometimes depression. The compulsion is a defense mechanism against feeling your anxiety or depression. Defense mechanisms are held in place by energy blocks and reversals. Your unconscious will fight you every step of the way if you go straight for them. You will be tapping for quite a long time before you make a dent. Go after the anxiety or low feelings that spawn the compulsion. Asking yourself what is making you anxious or depressed in your life. (More often than not compulsions are set in motion by anxiety, however infrequently depression can power it up). The compulsion gives you some activity or repetitive thoughts to distract you from feeling overwhelmed. Addictions and their powerful pseudo needs are driven by unfelt feelings that threaten to capsize folks.

A compulsion is truly an unsuitable target. Therapists, especially in the addictions field, make the mistake of targeting compulsions and addictions directly and they wind up hitting a brick wall. They need to go after the beliefs and feelings that have mobilized that defense. When those get whaked, the compulsions have absolutely no energy to run them--they're dead in the water.

Best thing you can do is to back off from those repetitive thoughts, feelings, and addictive activities, and take an inventory of all that seems pressing and overwhelming in your life. Get that on the table and start allowing those feelings to process. Soon your compulsions, to do whatever you're doing,will blow. You may need to differentiate anxiety from those racing feelings, thoughts, and activities. Compulsions are trance phenomena. Your attention is fully absorbed and riveted on your compulsive object. Your perceptual screen is narrowed down and run from your unconscious. This is why people with addictive challenges feel so unwilled and disempowered by their challenge. This compulsive process is protecting you or doing you a so called good service, but it's an expensive and time consuming service and it may be shreding a good part of your life. Instead of feeling and processing through your feelings, you defense mechanism is taking you for an expensive spin all around Robin Hood's barn.

For starters it may be useful to recognize the profound but useful service this compulsion is doing for you. Thank it with full intention after you allow yourself to know it's doing a service for you. You have better ways of coping and mastering your emotions than this defense. That may take some relearning, some getting back in touch with feelings. Here's where tech can help you.

Feel free to email me or share this challenge on the board.

We can turn loose your natural talents and abilities for handling this challenge. Sometimes our defense mechanisms are like that old Chinese Roast Pig story that was described in "Core Transformation" and other books. The story goes something like this: Several Chinese villagers entered the ruins of a burned out house and found a charred pig. They were hungry and marveled at the roasted pig's flavor. They recalled their experience and a few weeks later they trapped a pig in a house and set the house on fire inorder to have roast pig. This was the tradition until one day someone discovered you didn't have to burn down a house to enjoy roast pig. Just check out your underlying anxieties and you won't have to burn down the house. Keep in touch, Steve

Name: Okie

Topic: Clearing an addiction!

Sent: 11:31 AM - 10/23 2000

BH, I had a hell of a time giving up smoking awhile back. I can't tell you how many times I've quit and come roaring right back. I had felt major league out of control about smoking. I always had the driven feeling to reach for a cigarette. Did you know that heroin addiction is easier to crack than a two pack a day habit. That's what they say.

I tried different tech on the compulsive "need" to smoke and at best it only made temporary headway. A compulsion is not the same as a feeling. It's the symptom of suppressed feeling. What Steve and Lyle say about it is true.

When I emailed Steve back during NAP's earlier incarnations, he immediately had me change targets. I used both the M.G. and the Vortex. Like you I got some relief from the craving which is a great tool in itself. I was new to the Vortex and did not know that compulsions have multiple aspects upon aspects. They are only surface phenomena. Steve calls them defense mechanisms against feelings.

Well Steve and I emailed back and forth for a few days. He got me to go after the anxiety I was having about work and several other things in my life. When I processed out the anxiety, that smoking compulsion never came up again. Then I cut out the anchored ghost habit. Steve had me link that to an onerous task and that ghost habit looked too unappealing. Steve also had me clear the various cues in my environment and in myself that got me smoking. Like when I go out to dinner. Or at a certain time at work. Or after I've had a spat with my old lady.

He also turned me loose on my addictive beliefs--that helps run smoking. He turned me on to a website called Rational Recovery. Instead of doing the Rational-Emotive processes, he just had me locate any belief systems that coincided with my smoking. Like: "I deserve to smoke after someone hassles me." "I need cigarettes to relax and feel good, if I don't get them I feel desperate."

There was more involved here. But I used the Vortex and and M.G. to clear and they did a super job. I do not have even the slightest desire to smoke anymore. I feel my feelings now instead. I do what I better do. That compulsion is just not there at all. I remember when I couldn't stand going without a ciggy. Not anymore. No cues trigger it. I didn't even switch to another activity.

If you get a chance, buy Jack Trimpey's book on Rational Recovery. Skip over the Rational stuff and glean the ideas and beliefs from that book that apply to you. Those make great clearing targets.

Okie