CHAPTER 18: THE NETHERTON METHOD, PART 5:
THE INTENSITY OF PAST TRAUMATIC EVENTS
The patterns that embody our overpowering negative behaviors were created during scary, overwhelming and even life threatening events that had both physical and emotional content. And as I've said, besides our own feelings and thoughts from these experiences, also imbedded in our unconscious minds and bodies, are and the negative words and energies of the other people involved in the episodes. Remember the drunken father's angry beating? Lots of energy in that, as well as in our own three year old's pain and terror. This discovery of "other people's words" and the thorough way in which Netherton's technique can remove them from us, is one of the primary reasons his treatment does so much.
And because these past events were steeped in emotions like futility, hopelessness and the harshness of life, our unwanted patterns also have the same characteristics. To repeat, they are the very same thing; the recorded activities of past events repeatedly coming to life in the present, time after time after time. And they make "us" over react, negatively, to current situations.
Because traumatic energies are part of these stored experiences, we are usually unable to recognize that it is the words that were forced upon us by other people that now form the basis of our self-defeating behaviors. Remember I said that we don't differentiate between old tapes and our own volition very well? This is why. While in trauma, we were distracted from seeing the whole picture. Our consciousness was filled up with the pain and fear. So we weren't operating with our conceptual conscious minds. It wasn't interpreting. So the energies went directly into the subconscious recording, in the same manner that subliminal tapes work.
There's another aspect to these words. Different frames of reference, and different personal pronouns, are put into us at different times. A classic example is if the words are coming at us from someone else, it's "You" such and such. Whereas when the words were put in during the prenatal, it's mothers words saying "I" such and such. One's the exact words we say, the other's the words we feel about ourselves when punished by others, and that we might put out toward others. And in "previous lives," the same pairs of roles get recorded.
Again, the reason we don't remember the words getting recorded is because, at the times of the trauma, there was no conscious mind interpretation and understanding going on. It go written directly without our knowing about it. And that’s what makes the program.
Many of us remember having had morose thoughts in childhood that are similar to those written into us in pre-verbal times. As I said, the pronouns get switched. "You're bad!" becomes "I'm bad!" "I want to kill you!" becomes "He wants to kill me." Because we don't remember words that were said to us during the preverbal years, and because the words never went through the interpreting conscious mind, the negative commands from other people got written into our subconscious minds without our knowing it. We remember the "I'm bad!" because we thought that consciously.
But the programming that made us think that way came before. It was the deeper, more insidious and more controlling experiences which came earlier and the forceful words were those we received while undergoing physical pain that forced us into a deep alpha state. We were forced to behave in such self defeating manners, and we were also imprinted with commands and thoughts to continue behaving in this same way.
This is another important point. The reason the patterns repeat is because the underlying words say they will. The ability to pull these old patterns apart, and process out each set of words and experiences as they related to who was actually saying or doing them in the original episode, is another of the powerful aspects that makes the Netherton method so successful. When we remove the statements in the unconscious mind that say "You always," "It never." "I can't" and so on, then the patterns can stop.
So lets review and add some more nuances. Whenever we encounter similar, but less threatening circumstances in our current lives, a "link" between the current event and the past traumatic events gets activated. This link is our fear! And the activation of the past event always seems to make the current situation much worse than it really is to begin with. Whenever we make a decision, consciously or unconsciously, that a current circumstance seriously threatens the outcome of our whole lives, that's when the more devastating past material comes to life, takes over our thoughts, speech and action, and makes us act what is called neurotically. That is, we behave inappropriately in response to what is really happening.
Because we experienced these past events as serious and negative, when they take over our behavior, we act as if these current events are as serious, and as negative, as the related ones in the past, even when they're not. The current situation may be bad enough, but there's usually a way out even if it's unpleasant or painful. When we logically think about it, it isn't hopeless. However, the past events that get activated were indeed hopeless, or embody the feelings and words of hopelessness. They also embody terror instead of just plain fear, and often chaos, battles and repression. This is why our current situations often get blown way out of proportion. When the past experiences take over, they recreate themselves, in exactly the same way that a two-inch wide movie film becomes a 40 foot wide display in front of us when the projector out of sight is turned on.
The old tapes take us over simply because they are set in with very strong traumatic energies So the underlying propensity toward negativity is usually stronger than the energies we use to direct our more preferred behavior. This is the very reason why it is very important to strengthen the parts of ourselves that are not affected by the stuff that comes up. And later in this summary, I'll explain what some of them are.
The patterns are stacks of episodes. Every single person seems to accumulate a whole set of similar instances of the same kind of stored trauma in different subconscious memory locations. Each experience relates to a different time frame. This set of experiences ranges from recent times all the way back to infancy, birth, pre-natal and past lives or whatever you wish to call them.
This pattern, or stack, is part of the human condition. It's one thing to have a negative feeling and experience, and then let it go. But because these events created behavioral patterns that got fixed in a real physical way, they continue to limit our range of personality, our openness, and our attitudes about what life has in store for us. They also keep bringing into our lives the same kinds of negative people and situations and our own self-defeating way of relating with them.
Fortunately, by the use of Netherton's therapy and other techniques, the negative patterns can actually be removed and our natural, positive birthright will allow us to learn, retain and regularly apply more mature and satisfying ways of living. The overall transformation process takes a lot of dedication to oneself over a number of years. We can even say that our lives are meant to be a personal growth process and that our social experiences and career choices are actually tools and opportunities that can help us grow.
But in the short run, you'll be happy to know that noticeable change occurs in the first session with the release of part of our fixed physical form. This release continues and increases as it encompasses more and more of the whole body. As I explain next, this physical release removes the structural form that has seriously been limiting our flexibility with life on all levels.
Really significant improvement occurs after 10-20 hours of work. And with the wholistic combination, lasting psychological change occurs at the same time and gets even better after 40-50 hours of treatment and a self help program of special physical and meditative activities, of dietary change and of interpersonal communication practices. A large amount of transformation can occur in one to five years.
