A Theory and Treatment of Your Personality. Garry Flint
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brain functions and muscle movements had fully developed, the early trauma memory would only remain in the relatively inactive neural areas of the brain. A great portion of the brain may not have constant repetitive neural activity, and this is where the traumatic memory of the early constriction trauma lingers. I call it lingering prebirth trauma.
I tested this theory with an intervention I carried out with many patients, a treatment I discovered by working with the subconscious of my patients. To treat this supposed condition of lingering trauma, I used a treatment intervention developed to treat trauma pain associated with eye position and the shifts between brain-hemisphere activities during trauma. The intervention involved the Callahan 9-Gamut Procedure (Callahan, 1985) in the following way.
Direct the patient to tap steadily on a point on the back of the hand, a half-inch behind both of the large knuckles of the ring and little finger. While tapping, direct the patient to look straight ahead, close her eyes, look down to the right, look down to the left, whirl her eyes in a circle in one direction, then whirl them in the other direction. Then direct the patient to hum a tune, count from one to five, and then hum a tune again. The subconscious said that this procedure would work to treat these hypothesized traumas lingering in quiet areas of the brain.
The following case had a prebirth trauma so I tried treating lingering trauma. I tapped on the 9-Gamut spot on the back of both hands of the patient and had the patient do the 9-Gamut treatment. The patient said that after doing three 9-Gamut treatments, she was dizzy. After three more 9-Gamut treatments, she had pain in her side and stomach. After four more treatments, she had anger and pain. After four more, the subconscious signaled the completion of the intervention. Then she had pain in her head. I followed the directions of the subconscious. After two more 9-Gamut Procedures, this pain was gone. The treatment was obviously having some effect on neural activity and produced some behavioral effects. She reported that the procedure weakened self-limiting beliefs involving guilt.
I used this procedure of repeated 9-Gamut treatments with a child. He experienced dizziness, sleepiness and then dizziness that he described as “like emptiness in my whole head with something swirling around.” Then he felt more dizziness. Then he felt clearer and I assumed that we had completed the intervention. In the following session with this young fellow, the subconscious led me to develop another procedure, working on the entire brain. This time, the patient repeated the following intervention suggested by the subconscious: Tap eight times on his forehead and eight times on the back of his head. In the following replications of this intervention, the patient felt progressively more tired and dizzy. Then he had a headache, and then he felt a little “drunk.” The subconscious told me to treat this last feeling with the eye movement procedure (EMDR). A week later, this patient said that he was doing better at school, that he felt it was easier to concentrate, and that he was becoming more independent in his play.
The subconscious as the treatment agent
One month after I completed the Thought Field Therapy diagnostic training with Callahan (1993), I received an incredible learning experience from another patient. This woman came into my office complaining of feeling incapable of handling her financial problems. I used the Callahan diagnostic and treatment techniques to treat the belief: “I can’t control or manage my life.” She immediately had the insight that her boyfriend was reinforcing her feeling of being incapable. While I was talking to her about this possibility, she said, “I feel this tickle on my upper lip.” I asked her subconscious, “Subconscious, are you trying to tell my patient to tap on her lip?” The subconscious said “yes” by raising the index finger. I had the patient tap on her upper lip. We continued talking.
Again, she felt a series of sensations at different points on her head and face. I inquired again, and the subconscious told her to tap on the points where she felt the tickles. At one point, she said, “Oh, God. They’re going too fast! They’re going too fast!” I said, “Hold it, subconscious. Hold it.” I asked the subconscious if she could do the tapping on the inside to treat the trauma while the patient just sat. The subconscious said, “Yes.” I asked the subconscious if she would do it. The subconscious said, “Yes.” Consequently, the patient sat there with her left arm on her lap and her right arm pointed up. After a minute or so, she said, “Wow! All this energy is flowing out of my fingertips.” She said that she felt clearheaded and capable, and knew what she wanted to do to resolve her present financial predicament. I believe her subconscious had completed treating some traumatic history having to do with competence. The subconscious, to my surprise, had learned to treat internally. This experience showed me that it was possible to have the subconscious treat a patient’s issue without my intervention.
The subconscious in trouble
After this experience, I systematically started to teach the subconscious of my patients how to do self-treatment — the internal tapping. I had another patient who had 60 parts that were ready to receive treatment. After treating many parts, I wanted to find out the number of untreated parts remaining, and so I asked the subconscious. To my surprise, what I learned from the subconscious was that she had independently treated nine parts in the preceding weeks. I asked her if she had tried to treat the suicidal parts that I had identified in an earlier session. She said, “Yes.” With further inquiry, the subconscious said that she became frightened when she provided treatment of those parts on her own. By asking leading questions, I discovered the suicidal parts had flooded into the Active Experience and had started to run the body. They presented a serious suicidal threat. The subconscious was “frightened;” in other words, she recognized the danger of suicide. Other parts that became active had difficulty protecting the patient from the intent of the suicidal parts. Since then, I usually try to treat suicidal parts as soon as possible. It is easier to do this now because I have learned a strategy to treat dangerous parts slowly and safely. This strategy removes the possibility of having suicidal thoughts or parts motivated by emotional flooding. It is respectful to all parts of the personality.
The subconscious can learn barriers
One of the most helpful qualities of the subconscious is that it is not subject to damage by trauma and physical sensations. The subconscious can accurately see life history and help diagnose and treat traumatic issues. However, I managed to damage a patient’s subconscious. (This damage was easy to repair, as you will see.) I caused the damage by having the subconscious step into her body experience and converse with me directly. I wanted to expand my understanding of the internal processes and thought that direct communication with the subconscious using spoken language would promote this goal. The subconscious was able to do this, and in one session we conversed readily.
In a later session, I noticed the subconscious was not as effective in identifying and treating issues as she had been previously. Using leading questions, I discovered that the subconscious process, while in the Active Experience, had associated with physical sensations. The physical sensations created barriers to “seeing” internal history and was restricting her view of the inner dynamics and her control of internal processes. I corrected this mistake by having the subconscious look through the patient’s eyes while I did eye movement processing. After treatment, the subconscious again became very effective in identifying and treating issues. Since this experience, I believe that it is inappropriate and even harmful to ask the subconscious to run the body and communicate with spoken words. Covert communication seems to cause no problems.
Parts can fool the therapist
The following is an example of the usefulness of working with the subconscious to solve a problem. In a session with a torture survivor, I identified at least three new parts that I had not met in previous sessions. I asked the subconscious if she could treat these parts. The subconscious said, “Yes.” I asked her to treat these parts and to let me know when she had finished. After she finished, I asked if she had joined these parts with “Barbara,” as I normally had her do. She said, “Yes.” I asked Barbara to become the active personality. She spontaneously commented that the three parts that had recently joined with her had made her experience chaotic. I returned to the subconscious to discover that I had been working with a surrogate subconscious