PSTECintheTrenches Intro

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PSTEC IN THE TRENCHES - INTRODUCTION

PSTEC in the Trenches is full of practical information on how to get the best out of

PSTEC. It can be equally useful for self-helpers and those therapists who are thinking

of using it but have yet to take the final plunge. I believe that one of the most useful

aspects of the work is the fact that I use many real life case studies. Not only will this

really help to concretise your understand of the model of the mind on which PSTEC is

based on but also will demonstrate the best way of applying these tools together for a

large range of problems.

I cover topics such as grief, stress, PTSD, complex phobias, Tourette’s, Asperger’s,

low self-esteem, severe anxiety and depression, suicidal thoughts and much more.

In addition I give a great deal of troubleshooting tips and how I get around what

seem to be big obstacles to a client moving forward. I have had many emails

thanking me for providing clarity on pitfalls to avoid and I hope that you too will gain

extra insight from this work.

Here are a couple of excerpts from PSTEC in the Trenches which will give you a feel

for what you will find inside. This first excerpt is about some advice on helping

those who struggle to bring up emotion:

“Sometimes people have difficulty bringing on the emotion on demand. I often find

that a few minutes chatting about the issue and related topics often brings up the

necessary emotion. Let’s say that a person experiences anxiety when in meetings at

work. On occasion I have asked them if they could generate that same feeling of

anxiety by focusing on any other context. If they can, they can generate the

emotion via the other context then just as the Click Track begins, they can shift the

context back again and imagine they are in a meeting room. I have used this

technique successfully a few times with individuals having this difficulty though it is a

good idea to PSTEC the other event also if still required after the click track.


Another useful approach in these situations is to consider what the earliest memory

they recall experiencing this emotion is which can sometimes unblock the ability to

bring the emotion up on demand. There are occasions in which it just isn’t possible.

In these cases go through the click track process anyway, whilst focusing on the

presenting issue because effective work can still be done despite the lack of

emotion. Give yourself easy access to the click tracks as the emotion might swell up

unexpectedly at some point which would be an ideal opportunity to go through the

process.

To those who claim that they can still feel no emotion, they have most likely

become so used to the feeling that it is almost invisible (though still affecting day to

day life). If you can feel no emotion really focus on and pay attention to what you

do feel on the inside. You may just need a little practice. An unusual technique that

I have found effective is to ask an individual who is struggling with this to close

their eyes and go inwards. Next they are to say a statement that is the opposite of

reality. Let’s say for example someone lost their pet dog recently but are unable to

generate emotion about this despite them clearly suffering from the loss. An

example statement in this instance could be:

“I am glad my dog has died, I never liked him anyway”.

Just the thought of saying this is likely to induce some emotion and even more if it

is said out loud. This is often enough to allow someone who is somewhat

dissociated from their emotions to notice an internal change and learn that these

changes are actually their emotional response to the situation.”

As a matter of fact this last strategy is now something that I use whenever I come

across a situation in which an individual is struggling to bring up an emotion on

demand and it works extremely well. I truly believe this tip alone could make a

therapists life much easier.


Here is an excerpt about how I help those suffering from intense grief. I have

found PSTEC to be extremely effective at quickly removing grief. However there

are certain cultural and individual beliefs that may get in the way of this or cause a

person to feel guilt at the thought of removing the pain. This is purely my

perception but I have found the way I present the situation quickly dissolves any

barriers to removing the pain:

“I would like to briefly discuss the use of PSTEC on grief as this is a special situation.

Whether to utilise PSTEC on the pain of grief is a completely personal matter and

should be decided by the individual. People experience grief in different ways and

some suffer far more than others. For those who find the suffering completely

intolerable, I can think of no reason not to utilise PSTEC to help manage the feelings

so that you can get on with day to day life without having to resort to drugs.

Some people believe that they would be cheating the person who died if they

removed the pain and that they would feel guilty if they did so. Again we each

perceive death and grief in our own unique ways but here is my perspective. If you

died would you like your loved ones to suffer greatly? Or if they had a tool which

didn’t involve drugs which would ease their suffering would you like them to utilise it

to help them deal with things better? I am guessing the answer would be a yes. It’s

as if some people equate the level of suffering to the degree of love they felt for the

person and that if you remove the suffering it also in some way suggests that you

didn’t love them so much in life.

In my experience by removing or decreasing the emotional pain, space is created in

which you can feel the love and recall with fondness all aspects of that person and

the memories you shared. When I help people in situations in which grief is involved

I always ask “Can you think of any reason to hold onto this pain?” and the answer so

far has always been “no”, especially after I present my perspective to them.


Whatever you decide, if there is a particular aspect surrounding the death that was

very traumatic – maybe a specific image or something that was said – I would

recommend utilising PSTEC on that specifically. It is often specific images that stop a

person from going through the natural grieving process and PSTEC can often remove

this block. These are my personal views on dealing with grief and you can feel free

to dismiss or take them onboard as you see fit.”

Finally here is an excerpt on how I dealt with a complex flying phobia. The intense

phobia turned out to be unrelated to flying as you will soon see:

“I helped a client overseas recently who had a severe flying phobia and was due to

make a 12 hour flight across the Atlantic. He had independently tried EFT and the

basic free tracks of PSTEC and achieved a slight decrease in anxiety but not enough to

give him confidence about the flight. In these situations a person is either not

following instructions correctly or there are additional factors involved, of which an

apparent flying phobia is but one facet. It was clear he was using the tracks correctly

– focusing on the phobic event, rating it on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the

highest possible anxiety and trying to maintain the anxiety whilst following the clicks

and tones and focusing on flying. Delving deeper it became clear that one of his first

flying experiences involved leaving his mother at the airport and not knowing

whether he was going to see her again as a young child. He actually was going to

see her again but his young child’s mind interpreted the situation differently.

This was coupled with the fact that his father was there who was intolerant of any

displays of emotion. As a young child he was basically being taught to repress his

emotions by parents who wouldn’t have known of the detrimental effect this can

have. This, in addition to the intense separation anxiety he felt about leaving his

mother and everything happening at the airport, led the subconscious mind to form

a link between the airports/flying and panic. Of course on the surface it appears to

be a simple flying phobia, when in actual fact flying is just one problem context

which initiates the emotions, the cause of which he had no conscious awareness of

until our discussion.


My client had a huge fear of making a fool of himself in public by losing himself to

emotion. In a plane where he was highly anxious anyway, this fear was increased

because he had nowhere to hide if he did have a panic attack or show his fear.

Moreover this particular trip was to see his sister whom he hadn’t seen for a decade

and he feared crying or otherwise showing his emotions when they first met up. My

advice to him was run PSTEC on the following:

The memory and fear of leaving his mother as a child (this took several

minutes of introspection to generate emotion as he imagined himself as a child

once more feeling those feelings)

The imaginary scenario of losing control of his emotions in front of his father

as a child.

The imaginary scenario of losing control of his emotions on the plane in the

present day and all the other passengers laughing at him.

Crying in front of his sister and all the associated emotions linked to that.

Running PSTEC on all of the above until each emotional intensity rating became zero,

followed by running PSTEC once more on the flying phobia completely removed all

fear of flying and he took a pleasant trip to see his sister and had a great time. * We

actually employed a tool called PSTEC positive in addition to this which focuses on

beliefs but I shall discuss this independently later.

Here is an example of how an emotion can represent a belief caused by a previous

life experience. He believed that people shouldn’t show emotion in front of other

people. Only when probed did he realise that the fact was he only “felt” this belief

was correct. Once he realised that this feeling was based upon an experience he

had as a child, coupled with the fact that he only applied the rule to himself and not

others did he realise that his life was better off without it. A great deal of talking

therapy may have helped in this instance but simply removing the emotion from the

problem event did all this work for him.


I hope the above examples will give you an insight not only into dealing with

phobias but also how intricately linked emotions are to beliefs, how they can be

formed and how quickly and easily our life experience can change once bad

emotion is removed from our body. I will discuss a few more important case studies

before going on to talk about how to utilise the basic PSTEC click tracks along with

other techniques and principles. In my view the more practical applications and

examples you have of how PSTEC has been utilised and why it works, the more

likely you are to have success with this procedure”.

I hope these excerpts help you to make a decision on whether you think this work

will be beneficial to you.

PETER OWEN

http://www.themindengineer.com

[email protected]

PSTECintheTrenches Intro

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