About a month ago, I had something on my mind that I had already arranged to take care of later, but it kept drawing my attention, distracting me, and I wanted to concentrate fully on something else that I needed to do. First I noticed where this distracting image and auditory was— right in the center of my head. When I tried moving it out to the left side about six inches, that made it less intrusive but it was still distracting. Moving it out to the right side, and then behind my head was about the same—better than inside, but still bothersome. Moving it to in front of my forehead made it even MORE the center of my attention and distracting, and I immediately realized that’s where I put images of immediate goals and outcomes that I want to concentrate on. Then I moved it to above my head, and breathed a big sigh of relief. Up there it didn’t distract me, and I was able to concentrate well and get the job done.

For years I have been asking people who are bothered by a critical voice to notice where it is located (almost always inside or very near their head), and then suggesting that they hear the exact same voice coming from their left elbow or right kneecap. When they do that, the tonality of the voice often spontaneously changes, and it doesn’t have the same strong emotional impact, making it easier to listen to it without bad feelings. That can open the door to communicating with the voice, and working with it further in a variety of ways in order to integrate it and make good use of it, ultimately transforming it into a resourceful ally instead of a nag. Connirae once had an overweight client whose critical voice spoke from her stomach. (Try listening to a critical voice, and then move it so that you hear it coming from your stomach, and notice how THAT changes your feelings.) Hearing the voice coming from her stomach made her uncomfortable, so she ate frequently in order to make her stomach feel better. Moving that voice out of her stomach allowed her to feel better, so she ate less. Changing the location of a representation in this way is often a very powerful and useful change, and this is something that you can apply to a wide variety of problems. The next time you are distracted by a voice or an image, notice the representation, and then try moving it to some other location in your personal space until you find one that serves you well.

Jesse Kessinger, who works in a mental health clinic for an alternative school in the public school system in Baltimore, MD wrote me recently: “I was reading your book Six Bind Elephants again last night, and today I had a mandated client come in, a young adolescent on probation who got into two fights. In one he broke a boy’s nose. I found that the thing that angers him the worst is when people badmouth his mother or his girlfriend. In the moments when others insult his mother or girlfriend he was focusing on how they disrespected them, and that he had to protect them. I asked him if he noticed how much he was disrespecting his mother and his girlfriend by jeopardizing their ability to see him when he was locked up, and jeopardizing his own future (they love him). When I applied his criteria to himself, he sat there for a while and said, ‘Oh my God, I have hurt them,’ and it was as if smoke was coming out of his ears. He continued to process for a good 10 minutes, making various comments along the lines of, ‘This flips everything,’ as he continued to expand the scope of his disrespect to himself. He later said, ‘It was so stupid what I did—like a little kid.’ He then went on to mention that there were many other fights, all related to protecting his mom/girlfriend.

There is still work to do with this young man, but boy was that powerful for him, and I wanted to thank you for your teaching and your book; this boy is surely benefiting from it. It was quite amazing to watch a simple, yet well-targeted reframe, using your scope and category material, have such a profound effect.”

FOLLOW-UP A WEEK LATER:

“The young man I told you about has had multiple times when people have tried to fight him (in the past he would have fought). He has ignored these people’s attempts at baiting him. In describing the incidents he repeatedly used criteria with long time frames. This is all from just the reframe–no other work other than encouraging him and complimenting him on making good choices. I made no other interventions because I wanted to see how far this one would go first. This kid now sees his old behavior as being childish and views folks who want to fight as silly. Wow. I wish they all worked like this. I’d help alot of delinquents retire from delinquency!”

In my previous newsletter, I suggested trying out saying to yourself “What else can I enjoy right now,” repeatedly, until it becomes an unconscious mantra. That directs your attention toward what you can enjoy (rather than the gripes and problems that so often occupy our attention, and make us feel bad). But there is another aspect that becomes apparent if you compare it with a similar statement, “What can I enjoy right now,” which has a much weaker effect. The latter statement implies that you aren’t enjoying anything right now (even though that is not a logical consequence of the statement), while the “else” in the former question presupposes that you are ALREADY enjoying something.

Now for this month’s quickie: Everyone knows how a song or jingle can get “stuck” in your head, playing endlessly, and often annoyingly. Why not use this ability in a positive way? Think of some song that already has a positive effect on you, and deliberately sing it to yourself over and over, until it becomes an unconscious background. One of my favorites is “I’m sitting on the top of the world.” Another, sung by Rita Coolidge, I have forgotten the title of, but the lyrics go, “You can do whatever, you want to do whatever, you want to, and you’ll never die.” Singing a song that elicits a state that you find useful or uplifting is a great way to establish and maintain a mood, and it can also change your mood when you’re “down.” Sometimes when I first sing a song that is very different from my current mood, it seems artificial, or I have tears resulting from the conflicting moods, but quickly the song takes over and my mood changes. I think one factor in its power is that the words primarily activate the left hemisphere, while the melody activates the right one at the same time.

Following amputation of a limb, paralysis, or other interruption of sensory nerves, people often feel pain. Interventions directed at the sensory input have been ineffective or have even made the pain worse; newer approaches have been directed at eliciting motor output instead. Here is thepart of an article that I found most interesting:

“Evidence that stimulation of the motor cortex (the area that controls movement) can reduce phantom limb pain has been around for some time. Perhaps more surprising was a trial by Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran in 1996. They asked people with amputations of the arm and phantom limb pain to place their arms inside amirror box so that they saw their remaining arm mirror-reversed to look like their amputated one. When they moved their remaining arm in the box they were ‘fooled’ into thinking they were moving their amputated one, and their pain was reduced. Although this has proved less effective in some subsequent trials, it did suggest that phantom limb pain might reflect a loss of motor control to the limb, as well as loss of sensory input from it.

“More recently the mirror box has been used with some success in pain that is not due to sensory loss. In fact, a box may not be required. In phantom limb pain due to a peripheral nerve injury (brachial plexopathy), Giraux and Sirigu have shown that merely training patients to imagine their paralysed arms moving in relation to a moving arm on a screen in front of them can relieve phantom limb pain.”

Presumably this imagery stimulates motor output to reorganize the cortex, reducing the pain, a strong example of how imagery can have a physiological effect.

This process is described in an article in the Economist (July 22, 2006), p 75, and is also described in a Wikipedia article.