- I'm so sorry to hear that you've been suffering
with this pain, you know?
It's been going on quite a while, huh?
- It's been about four years now.
- Yeah.
- It's kind of constant, my neck pain.
Sometimes it's just a two, but it can get pretty high.
And it's, I don't know,
it's really disrupting my work.
- Yeah, I bet.
- Yeah.
- Are there anything you've noticed in association
with why it might be higher or lower at different times?
Any triggers or anything that you've noticed?
- Yeah.
Well, I feel like a primary trigger is being on my computer.
- Mm.
- Being on my phone.
My physical therapist said
that he thinks it's my posture's really bad.
So whenever I'm hunched over, I feel it.
But I've also felt it when, you know,
things are really stressful at work,
or really stressful with my partner, so-
- Yeah.
- It's a mixed bag, I'd say. Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, research shows that posture matters,
but not that much.
- Okay. (Howard laughs)
Yeah.
- There's a lot of research on this,
and what happens is that frequently,
and we'll be evaluating all this,
that the brain becomes fearful of a certain position,
or computer screen, even.
We see that all the time.
And if stress is making the pain worse,
then that's showing us that your brain
is sensitive to stress.
And it might be the stress
that your brain has learned in relation to a computer screen
as opposed to the stress
of actually holding your head in a certain position.
And we'll be looking at that,
but I think that's entirely, entirely likely.
We see that all the time.
- Yeah, well, I mean, when it did start four years ago,
it was the most stressful time I've ever had at work.
And so I was on the computer for like 12 hours a day.
So I could see that position
get associated with stress. (Howard laughs)
- Yeah, we call it a conditioned response,
like Pavlov and his dogs.
And, you know, we're not dogs, but we are human,
and humans have that all the time.
And I had that.
I had back pain that hurt every time I bent over,
and it turned out it wasn't bending over.
When I even imagined bending over, I would get the pain.
And it turned out I could, I taught myself,
talked myself really out of that pain over time,
and we'll work on that with you as well.
But today I wanna maybe see if we can focus on some
of the emotional situations that might be,
if we can look at some of that,
because stress makes it worse,
we may be able to link this to emotional situations.
That might help dramatically.
Would it be okay if we do that?
- Okay. I'd be a little nervous, but yeah, okay.
- Yeah, I know, it's hard.
We often don't wanna face some of those things,
especially if there's situations that have been hurtful
or harmful or scary.
And that's part of this
is you may, oftentimes people have fear of their neck,
of their movements, but they also have fear
of facing the situations in their lives.
- Yeah, yeah. That makes sense to me.
I do feel a little afraid.
- Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
But the fears actually leads us to where people need to go,
because stress and emotions activate the same danger signal
of the brain as does a physical injury.
So the ongoing stress or emotions,
or even what we call unresolved emotions
that may even go back to childhood,
can activate this danger signal in the brain,
and cause a real physical pain.
It's an amazing process.
- Yeah. Okay.
- And it kind of makes sense for you
and your history, from what I can gather.
- Yeah.
- So-
- I can see that.
- Is it okay to kind of start to explore that a little bit
and see where we go?
- Yeah, it's okay.
- Yeah. Good, I'm glad.
It takes a little bit of courage.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it does. But I'm with you.
- Okay.
- So when you think about the discomfort,
the sensations you have in your neck right now,
are you having them right now
to some degree? - Yes.
On the computer. (laughs)
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
- What's your feeling toward those sensations,
would you say?
How do you feel about them
or toward them right now when you just
think about that? - I hate them.
- Yeah.
- I really hate them.
I feel like I almost,
I feel half distracted from our conversation
from that, I hate them.
- Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And one of the things that we talk about
is how our reactions to the pain can actually make it worse.
- Yeah.
- Our reactions to the pain can actually make it worse,
and anger is one of those things, frustration with it.
And I wonder if we could just do a little experiment
to get started right now.
- Okay.
- If you would be willing to just close your eyes
for a second, and see if you can locate in your body,
or see if you can identify the feeling
that you have toward this discomfort,
toward these sensations.
If you can identify that kind of frustration, or resentment,
or anger, can you kind of identify that feeling
or that in your body? - Yeah. Yeah.
I feel like a ball of energy in my chest.
- Yeah.
- And, yeah.
I really don't like the sensation in my neck.
- Exactly. And who would?
Don't like it. - I really don't like it.
- Yeah, exactly, and it turns out that
that's obviously the normal human reaction
that everyone would have, but in order to invest,
but we wanna see this pain as not as a tormentor,
that your brain is tormenting you or betraying you,
but we wanna see it as almost a messenger or a guide.
It's like a smoke alarm that the brain activates
when it feels in danger,
and it may feel endangered in stressful situations
in your life, and it may feel endangered
by being on the computer screen.
- Yeah.
- And so we don't really wanna react
to it with resentment or anger so much,
because it's actually kind of a guide.
So if that makes any sense to you.
- Part of me gets that.
And then another part of me is just like,
how could this be true?
Like, it's caused so much trouble for me.
- Exactly.
- Like that word tormentor. It does feel that way.
- Exactly.
- Sometimes, so I-
- Exactly.
- Yeah. I don't know.
- Well, let's see if we can explore it a little bit. Okay?
- Yeah.
- Let's just see if we can explore a little bit together
and see what we find.
- Okay. Yeah.
- Okay, so if you could just close your eyes
for a second and just identify the feeling
of this big ball of, ball of, what was it?
Energy, I think you said.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And what if you, just for the moment,
just for an exercise, for the purpose of this exercise,
if you gently took that ball of energy,
and just gently reached inside of you metaphorically,
and just gently set it like on the desk,
or on the table for a moment,
(Kat exhales sharply)
just for a minute.
If you just decide you don't really
need to feel that anger right now,
if you can think about it in a different way.
Can you do that for a second?
- Yeah.
- Trying to like blow it onto my desk.
(Kat laughs) - Yeah.
Just gently just letting go of that anger
and frustration for a moment.
- Yeah.
- How does it feel to do that?
What does it feel like to just let go
of that as best you can right now for a moment?
- A little bit of fear comes in. It feels a little fluttery.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, I think I could do it.
- Yeah. Good.
And if you can do that, then we can begin to approach
this sensations in your neck, the pain with a little bit
of more open inquiry and curiosity to see.
Maybe it has a message for you,
maybe it can lead us somewhere
that might be helpful from an emotional point of view.
- Okay.
- And if you could then begin to think of the sensations
in your neck as coming from your brain
as maybe being helpful in some way,
or leading you somewhere to something important
that you need to work on or deal with.
If you could kind of, in a funny way,
see if this pain will talk to you.
See if you can ask it a question.
See if you say to him,
"Hey, look, I understand you're here.
Maybe you're here for a reason. Maybe you can help me.
I'm not angry with you anymore. I wanna learn."
If you can take that attitude,
and you can just, it seems silly,
or, you know, metaphoric to be talking to your neck
or talking to the pain.
But if you could almost say, thanks for being here.
I know you're here for a reason, you can do that.
- Yeah. Yeah.
It's funny, when you were talking,
it was getting a lot tighter,
and when you said thanks, it kind of loosened a little bit.
- That's amazing. That's amazing, isn't it?
How you can
begin to see. - Yeah.
- And demonstrating that the pain isn't there
as your tormentor, really.
It's there, it can turn up,
it can turn down in relation to how you think about it.
- Yeah.
- So, yeah. Say thanks for being here.
I know you maybe have a message for me.
Can I ask you a question?
And you can literally see if it will kind
of respond to you in a way,
if you can hear a message from it,
if you can ask it a question.
Can you ask it a question? What does it say, okay?
- Yeah.
Do you want me to ask out loud?
- Yeah, does it, it doesn't have to be out loud,
but is it willing to have a little conversation
with you metaphorically?
- Yes.
- Yeah, that's fantastic.
So now you can say, "Thank you for that." (laughs)
- Thank you.
- And you can ask it like, well, when did this all begin?
When did this fear, when did this worry,
when did the stress, when did this situation,
where does it lead back to?
What image comes to your mind?
If you ask, in a sense, asking your neck,
well, when did this all start?
Where's the beginning of this? Do you get any sense of that?
- Yeah. A long time ago.
- Really?
A long time ago. - Yeah, yeah.
- Is there an image of you,
is it like five or eight or 12? Or-
- Mm.
- What just pops into your mind when you kind of go
to that place of trying to look for the origins of this?
- I'm 10, but I feel like it started way before then.
- Mm. Right, right.
- Yeah.
- And if you could be,
if you'd be willing to do a little, you know,
imaginative exercise to see if we could have you, yourself,
your adult self, if you could look inside
of yourself and find the part of you,
which is really caring, and confident, and courageous,
when you think of that little girl who's you,
who's 10 or younger,
what's your feeling toward that little girl who's you?
What reaction do you have toward her when you think
about her situation?
- I feel really bad for her.
- Yeah.
- There's this-
- Really sad.
- Sadness and sourness.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, is there feelings of compassion, caring for her?
- Yeah, I feel a little hard to find, but yeah, I think so.
- Yeah, well, if you're sad for her,
you know, if you're sad for somebody, it means you care.
- Yeah.
- Let's see if you could take your adult self right here,
and now, and in a caring way, in a compassionate way,
and just imagine going back in time
to visit your younger self,
to just see if you can imagine finding a place
where you could be together, where you could be alone
with her at whatever age pops into your mind.
If you could picture that, just take a moment,
and see if you can imagine that scene.
The setup was looking at this pain as a neural circuit,
not a tormentor, thinking about it's not, no,
it's not so much the computer screen or your posture.
It's your brain, and thinking that it's there for a reason.
It's not to torment you, it's not to harm you.
It's to protect you in some way.
And maybe there's a message for it.
And if we can take the anger toward the pain,
and set that aside for a moment,
then we can approach the pain with compassionate inquiry.
We can ask it, "Well, tell me. I'm willing to learn.
I wanna know."
And then they have this little conversation,
and then she goes to her adult, I called it the adult self,
or the higher self part of compassion, courage,
and confidence, and caring.
And then the, the answer was,
"Oh, it started a long time ago."
And say, "Oh, let's look a long time ago then,
'cause we can see where this started."
So we're linking, helping her understand,
linking the stuff that happened in her childhood
to the pain that she's having now.
Now it becomes clear.
Now we have this opportunity to rescript,
to go back in time, take an imaginary trip
that I sometimes call time traveller,
to go back in time to visit her younger self.
Now, and she's feeling, I ask,
"How do you feel toward that younger self?"
Compassion, caring, kindness, sad, sadness for her.
Good. Let's go back and see how we can help her.
Can you help her? Your younger self?
If you could take your adult self right here and now,
and in a caring way, in a compassionate way,
and just imagine going back in time
to visit your younger self,
to just see if you can imagine finding a place
where you could be together, where you could be alone
with her at whatever age pops into your mind.
If you could picture that, just take a moment,
and see if you can imagine that scene.
Can you get there?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
Can you just imagine what she's wearing, how she's feeling?
Maybe you can imagine putting your arm
on her shoulder or around her, or rubbing her back,
or some way of expressing kindness toward her,
if you can imagine that.
- Yeah.
- Good.
What would you say to her if you could speak to her?
What kind of words would you wanna tell her
if she could hear you right now?
- So sorry.
You don't deserve this.
You don't deserve to be going through
what you're going through.
- Yeah.
- To be so scared.
- Yeah.
This is not your fault.
- Yeah.
- Can she hear you, do you think?
Can she hear you?
- Yeah. I'm not sure she quite trusts me or-
- Uh-huh. Yeah,
- Yeah.
- Yeah. She may not trust adults.
- Mm.
- Was there any adults in her life
or other people who were scary for her or not trustworthy?
- Yeah.
Yeah. Her dad, my dad.
- Yeah, yeah, and had this been going on for some time?
Had he been difficult for her?
- Yeah.
He just was so scary.
He yelled all the time.
He would break things.
- Oh.
- And he was really scary to be around.
- Yeah.
- And I'm guessing she, this younger version
of Kat really felt helpless,
and, you know, unable, powerless to do anything.
Is that-
- Yeah.
- What was her feelings in relation to all this,
you know, really difficult situation?
- Well, I mean,
there was nothing she could do once he got kicked off,
it was just like, had to burn himself out.
Just wouldn't stop yelling.
- Yeah.
- She'd have to leave a lot.
- Yeah.
- Go around the block, leave the house.
- Right, right.
- And sometimes she couldn't, but-
- Yeah.
- And so she had to learn probably to run, to hide,
to try to be perfect, to try to,
you know, not do anything to set him off.
Did that kind of thing happen?
- Oh my gosh, she got perfect grades.
- Oh.
- Yeah, she worked so hard to not cause any problems,
to not set anything off.
- Right.
And sometimes those patterns really linger
on into later life, even into adulthood,
where people feel they have to be perfect
as an adaptation to the stress that went on earlier in life.
- Yeah.
- In addition to the sadness you feel toward her
and the compassion you feel toward her,
what you've expressed to her, is there any other feelings?
Is there any anger or resentment
that you feel toward the way she's been treated?
- I feel really angry about it.
- Do you think her anger is justified?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Absolutely.
- Absolutely. Right?
And she could probably never, ever express that anger
or maybe never express any anger.
Maybe that was another pattern she learned.
- She did maybe once, and learned never to fight back again.
- Absolutely.
This exercise here is an opportunity to change the past,
not change what happened,
but change the memories of the past.
Change the emotions of the past in order to allow you
and her to feel safer, more powerful, to express feelings
that could never have been expressed then.
It's a very powerful way of expressing things.
And what you're expressing now toward her is compassion,
and caring, and love that maybe she didn't have as much
as she needed back then.
- Yeah.
- That you're giving to her now,
and you carry her within you.
- Yeah. - And I'm wondering
if you can also help her to express anger,
to express resentment toward her father.
- Yeah.
- Couldn't be done then, if you can allow yourself
to feel that anger on her behalf right now.
I wonder if you can do that.
If you don't block that anger,
if you let it grow within you,
maybe you make your hands into a fist even to help her,
to protect her, to stand up for her,
right now in this, in this visualisation,
to allow feelings to come up.
Can you do that a bit?
- Yeah.
- Let them grow, Kat.
Let those feelings grow for her, for her sake.
And what would that anger, if you could speak to her father,
or if she could speak to her father,
however it comes out, what would that anger wanna say?
Not what she could say, or would say,
or should have said back then,
but what she can say right now.
What would the anger wanna do to him, even physically,
maybe when he needs to push him, or shove him, or kick,
or hit, or throw him out of the house, or call the police,
or whatever it is that that anger would wanna say
to him or do to him.
Can you just imagine that for a moment?
- Yeah, stop. You have to stop.
- Keep going. You're doing great.
Don't hold anything back. Keep going.
- What you did was not okay.
You scared me all the time.
I hate you for it. I hate you for it.
- And I won't put up with this anymore.
- I'm done. I'm done with you.
I'm done with this.
- And what does that
anger wanna do to him? - You can't.
- What would the anger do if it came out physically?
If you don't hold anything back,
if you just put whatever the urge or the impulses, Kat,
to let that anger out on him, would that look like?
- I wanna push him. I wanna push him down on the floor.
- Picture that.
- I want him to feel small, like I felt.
I want him to feel scared of me.
I'd push him on the floor.
I would throw a chair, so he would look at me, so he'd stop.
- Picture that happening right now.
Just let those feelings come out.
Let that anchor come out onto him.
And is there any one last thing that you need to say
before walking away?
Any one last thing you need to say
or do to him to finish this off, to let all that anger out?
- Fuck you.
- Good. - I'm done.
- And if you take a deep breath,
how does it feel to just do that, to let that anger up
and out at this point, how does that feel right now?
- There's a lot of energy. (laughs)
- Yeah.
- You did a fantastic job of that, Kat.
And you don't need to hold on to this anger.
You can actually choose to let it go.
(Kat exhales sharply)
Just say, my anger is justified.
- My anger is justified.
- I have no guilt about being angry.
- Now I choose to let the anger go.
- Good, take some nice breaths,
and with each breath, just let it go.
(Kat exhales sharply)
- Good. Keep doing that, letting the anger go now.
Good.
Just coming back to compassion for Kat,
caring for her, taking care of her,
letting her know she's gonna be okay.
She's gonna get through this.
- Okay.
- How does that feel to do that?
- That feels good. Yeah.
Yeah.
- Good.
I'm going to end the recording and start up again.
I got a message like 10 minutes left.
I don't know what happened, why it didn't,
so I'm gonna end this now,
and then we'll start up again from this point.
- Sounds good.
- So we'll just
end here. Picture your mom now.
We'll pick this up tomorrow to the end of this.
But normally what I do, when you listen
to the time traveller exercise on my website,
you'll see that normally after doing this process
of re-scripting the memory, allowing any anger to come up,
letting that go, exploring.
I didn't explore with her very much guilt
if she felt guilt about it.
But we often do that. And that's all in the book.
We talk about that. I can answer questions about that.
And then going back to the compassion and caring.
And then usually what I like to do is see
if the adult wants to take the younger person, the child,
or their younger self, you can do it.
The adult can be two years ago, five years ago,
10 years ago, whatever timeframe you're working with,
if they can go together someplace to get away.
It's just a way, and so what I would say to her is,
"Well, where would that, now that you've done all this work
and there's this relief, where would she like to go?
If you could take her anywhere, a beach, a park,
an ice cream store, where would she like to go?"
And usually they say, "Yeah, she would love
to go in the woods or a tree house or a beach," or whatever.
And then I have them imagine going there together.
And it's just really a nice visualisation
of taking your younger self somewhere
where you can be together, where you can play,
where you can talk, where you can feel safe,
or you can feel happy.
It's getting to the feeling of safety
in this way for yourself
and for your younger self at the same time.
And it's usually fun.
And then it's just kind of feeling freer, easier, happier,
laughing, playing, whatever they wanna do,
whatever they're doing, and then I'll usually say,
this comes from internal family systems,
"Would you like to take some of these hurts
and symbolically let go of them?
Would you like to take some of these hurts
and bury them in a hole, or throw them into the water,
or leave them to the heavens,
or burn them in a fire?" or whatever.
And usually they have a very clear idea,
"Yes, I wanna burn 'em,
or I wanna throw 'em in the water," whatever it is.
And then we say, "Well, you can do that."
You can take these hurts from that time,
and symbolically let them go.
It's just a nice thing that I learned.
And then after that, she'll say to a younger self,
"I'm here. I'm here for you.
I'll always be here. I'll always be with you.
If you ever need me, I'll come back. I can come back.
You can come back and visit her at any time,
and do this again if necessary."
Or visit her at different points in her life.
If she was five, then, well, you can come back
and visit her when she's eight,
and see what's happening then, see if you can help her then.
And it's just a way of rescripting
and resolving some old hurts.
When we pick it up tomorrow,
we'll be talking about the situation with her mom,
which is completely different.
Her mom wasn't abusive at all,
but there's other feelings she had toward her.
So I wanna explore that with you tomorrow.
Any questions or comments?
- Do you do much paediatric work with this sort of thing?
- Hm, mostly I see teenagers.
I don't see many children really in that sense.
So no. But what were you asking about?
- I was just wondering how you would?
- Oh, do this work for children? Not usually.
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- No. No, not usually.
Teenagers can do it. (laughs)
They enjoy getting their anger out.
(all laugh)
They're good at it. Other questions or comments?
- If someone has difficulty to imagine, they say,
"I cannot imagine.
I cannot put myself into this situation or any situation."
There is any other option?
- You can always work with them in the present.
There's lots of other ways to work
with people in the present.
One of the things you can do,
if you wanna help people access feelings
and emotions in the present,
you can talk about your own relationship,
the relationship you have with them.
What are you feeling now?
What does it feel like when I'm asking you
to imagine something?
How do you feel about that?
That can be very insightful and interesting.
I have a video clip of a similar thing like that.
So you're just looking for trying to be creative,
to find ways that people can,
or you could have them think about a situation
that happened yesterday, or this week,
or something that's happening in their life right now,
that's not having to do with the past,
'cause as we said before, if you're dealing
with something in the present, you're also dealing
with things in the past at the same time.
But I, in general,
I haven't really had that problem very often.
Do you see how this is working to change the past,
or change the memories of the past,
change the emotional memories of the past?
That's the essence of this rescripting part.
And there's examples of it in my book.
- How often do you do
the emotional awareness expression part with the PRT?
Or sometimes you just do the PRT and that's enough?
Or do you always kind of do both, or?
- Yeah, some people are really not interested
in the emotional work,
or they don't really think they need it,
or there weren't really traumas or whatever,
and they're doing great with the PRT,
so we may not go there at all for some people.
- The client's kind of-
- [Howard] Yeah.
- Wish.
- Yeah, yeah, if we're doing a lot of PRT,
and they're still having a lot of symptoms,
maybe we should start looking at the other (laughs) as well.
So in general, I think both are helpful,
and they work well together,
but you see what makes sense for each person.
We'll see you tomorrow.
(audience applauds)