Steve Andreas - Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

Fred: Yeah.

Nick: OK. Now, take the first two words, and begin to just start to fade them out. You know when things fade out, they just get fainter and fainter and fainter, … and then suddenly — pffft — you white them out so they're not there. And you'll know when they're not there, because when you look, they're not there. And now take the fourth word, and do the same thing. Start to fade it out a little bit more, a little bit more. And then there's a certain point where — pffft — white it out. So it's not there. You know it's not there, because when you look now, it's not there. (Fred: Umhm.) And take a deep breath in, and relax back into the space that's now there, instead. And as you feel your feet flat on the floor, you can notice now, and every time you listen back to this, just what it is that you notice about what it is you notice that's different. Now, as you try and think about the original phrase like you used to think about it, what do you notice?

Fred: There's only four more words on the billboard.

Nick: OK. And when you think about the phrase, what effect does it have?

Fred: It's quite relaxing.

Nick: It's quite relaxing. Now if you try and think about it like you used to think about it, what do you notice?

Fred: It doesn't have much — It doesn't have any significance.

Nick: "It doesn't have any significance." Now if you think about the time in the past when you used to think about this, in this new way, what do you notice?

Fred: It's just a memory really. Feels good, really.

Nick: "It's just a memory." OK. Now, what other phrases or things have you thought to yourself that have not been very helpful? Fred: "Please let me play well tonight."

Nick: "Please let me play well tonight." OK. What other ones? … Do you say, "Is it gonna go well?" could be one of them? Fred: Yeah.

Nick: OK. So let's just do the same thing with "Is it gonna go well?" Notice, to start with, it's a question. So, it's a questioning about whether it's gonna go well or not. Now let me just check: Is it an anxious voice, and is it a quick voice? Just

say, "Yes."

Fred: Yes.

Nick: OK. Now do the same thing. Slow it down so that it's like it's out of a play. "Is it gonna go well?" Then, make it overtly a question. "Is it gonna go well?" (rising inflection) Then slow down the phrase so there's a big gap in between each

and every word. So … everything … just … slows down. Run it all the

way through. Let me know when you've done it… .

Fred: Yeah.

Nick: OK. Now see it as a piece of text, but this time just fade out the first three words. Just start to fade them out more and more and more and more, and then at a certain point — pffft — white them out. So they're not there in the same way. And you'll know they're not there, because when you look they're not there.

Fred: Yeah.

Nick: Now, if you take a deep breath in and sit back in your chair, when you try to think about that phrase, what do you notice? Fred: I just see "go well."

Nick: "Go well." … And what effect does that have? Fred: Enlightening, really. Nick Kemp www.nickkemp.com

Recently a friend of mine in another state called me asking for suggestions to help a new friend of hers who had had trouble sleeping for 16 years, and had become an alcoholic as a result of using alcohol daily to try to relax. I offered her quite a number of things to try, including an outline of Nick's changing tempo process. Most of the things I had suggested were not useful for her friend, so she decided to try the tempo shift. Here is her report, which she sent me a couple of weeks later.

We did the visualizing and listening to his self–statement more slowly and with more space between the letters and words. With that, I visibly saw his body and breathing change — despite the very negative content of his self–statement. That night he slept significantly better, and he has been sleeping beautifully since then — falling asleep immediately, and sleeping eight hours a night. He also stopped drinking on his own at the same time, and has been sober since then. He says that he never knew he could feel so good every day, and realized that he had spent the last 16 years hung over and fatigued.

As a result of this very brief intervention this man made a huge change in his life, sleeping well for the first time in 16 years, and stopping the daily use of alcohol. My friend wrote further:

One of the side effects of his drinking and fatigue was that he was hyped up/manic a little bit each day, and now he isn't. Instead he is calm— and a little bored I think — and he says he is "waiting" for his hyped–up persona to come back. I don't know if that truly is part of who he is when he is sober, or if it was purely a side effect of being alcoholic. He hasn't been sober since he was a kid, so he doesn't know the answer to that either."

I don't know if you notice the warning signals in this second paragraph. " 'waiting' for his hyped–up persona to come back" clearly indicates a loss of a large part of his self–concept, his identity. Whenever someone makes a significant change that involves a loss of identity, that is much more pervasive than a change in behavior. They need something to fill the void created by the loss of identity. Some people can find a way to do that on their own, but others need some help. I immediately emailed her and warned her about this, but by then it was too late for her to do anything about it. Here is her later report:

I agree with you about him needing to find something else to do to fill the gaps caused by stopping drinking (and all the activities he stopped in order to stay sober), but he was unable to do that. In fact, at a couple of points he went on rants about how hobbies and activities "just for fun" were a waste of time and something he had no interest in. I tried directing him toward something that would add value to his life, service–oriented activities that centered around things he already liked.

Soon after that, he started to fill his time with more work, which was the only thing he felt had value. Then he ended up with four days off from work, and he was absolutely beside himself. His moods became unstable — very manic and hyper one minute, crashed out in bed the next. His cravings for alcohol became unmanageable, his inner critic turned way up, and it also turned against me, and some of his other housemates.

It was becoming extremely stressful to be around him, and at some point I brought up a conversation about needing him to respect my things and to also speak to me respectfully without swearing at me, because both were becoming a big problem, and he went off the deep end with extreme overreaction. I was shocked by his reaction; he was nearly foaming at the mouth, shaking, screaming, swearing, turning red, and took anything I had ever said during our friendship and interpreted it as a criticism and turned it inside out as if I were his worst enemy ever.

He also took every self–criticism — things no one else or I had ever criticized him for — and turned it around and accused me of thinking those terrible, demeaning things of him. He was so upset he couldn't even look at me and I couldn't de–escalate him except by leaving. He gave me the cold shoulder for the next few days whenever I saw him, and he put in a request at work to not have any time off indefinitely. I have not spoken to him since this incident. I have run into him around town and he starts pacing, tapping his foot, and speaks extremely animated to those around him. And, of course, having run into him, I know he isn't getting the workload he was wanting, and I have heard from friends that he has been drinking heavily, blacking out, forgetting commitments. At this point, it feels too volatile for me, so for my own sanity I am staying out of his way.

Usually you can use the tempo shift to make a significant and useful change that will fit well with all the other aspects of your life, particularly when you do a careful congruence check before using this process. But whenever someone makes a really big change that involves a lot of their life you need to check carefully to see if something else needs to be done. This is almost always the case with stopping the long–term use of drugs. In this case there was stopping using the drug — which involves much more than stopping the drug itself, but also all the activities involved with that — buying the drug, using the drug with friends, the lifestyle associated with that, etc. But there was also the loss of that part of his identity, which left a vacuum — "If I'm no longer an alcoholic, who am I — and what do I do?"

In retrospect, it would have been much better to change the content of this man's critical voices — the words that he said to himself — first. If that had been done, they would not have rebounded to torment him after his loss of identity, and they could have assisted him in creating a new life for himself in the vacuum created by the change.

Whenever you offer someone a change, you really need to do a congruence check to be sure the change is useful, and doesn't create as many — or more — problems than they originally had.

Most of us in the US are not very attuned to tonality, unless it is very obvious. By "tonality," I mean any changes in the pitch, melody, timbre, hesitations, accent, etc. — any change in the sound of a voice other than location, volume, or tempo. In contrast, the English are very attuned to tonality, primarily because of the importance of distinguishing different social classes, which are indicated by their different regional accents. Asian languages, with their tonal aspects, require speakers of those languages to become sensitized to fine auditory distinctions, but American English does not.

Since we tend to ignore subtle tonal patterns or shifts, and much of our auditory experience is processed unconsciously, we often react to certain tones and tempos without realizing it. After talking to someone, sometimes I find that I am somewhat "down," while other times I find myself feeling quite cheerful. If I review the previous conversation, I can often discover that it wasn't the content of the conversation that I was responding to, but the tone of voice that was used.

This is also true of the tonalities that we use when we talk to ourselves internally. If we become more sensitive to these tonal aspects of our internal voices, we can learn to change them, and have more choice in how we respond.

When you experimented earlier with changing the location, volume, or tempo of a voice and noticing how it changed its impact on you, you may have found that sometimes the tonality of the voice also changed. In the example that I gave at the beginning of this chapter, when the depressed woman changed the tempo of her internal voice, the tonality changed as well, and that was what actually changed her response.

Usually it is easier to change tonality indirectly, by changing the location, volume, or tempo, and find out if there is a spontaneous tonality shift. However, you can also try changing tonality directly, to find out if that changes your feeling response to what a troublesome voice says to you. Unless you are a trained musician, this is a bit more difficult to describe, because most of us don't have a good way to specify a tonality. One way around this problem is to talk about using a different national or regional accent.

One of the first steps in learning any discrimination is to experiment with polar opposites, or other experiences of great contrast. We can begin with noticing how we respond to large differences, and then gradually learn to make finer and finer discriminations, and find words to describe them.