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Chapter 17 : AN INTRODUCTION TO UNCONSCIOUS UPDATING
The good news for Peter is that he does not have to spend the rest of his life stuck in his loop of being terrified in kitchens. Instead, Peter can update his now out-of-date response. What Peter could use is a method that I have learned and developed which I call Unconscious Updating to change this tiny cassette, this response that runs through his emotional system.
An extremely important component of Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating is this technique that I have taught to many people to enable them to reprogram their learned emotional responses to allow them to deal with reality in an up-to-date, logical and effective manner to enhance their ability to evolve to become their True Positive selves.
This method involves learning to access the unconscious level of thought and function so as to access the wealth of information, processes, and resources that are there to effect real change. This is the level of thought where we develop our responses, run our responses and, as it turns out, change our responses. This process is all about change. Updating the out-of-date response is the best possible solution to Peter's problem.
This is fundamentally different than what people usually do. What they usually do is say, "I'm uncomfortable in kitchens. Well, how am I going to cope with that?" "Maybe I'll just stay out of the kitchen and see how that works." Or, "When I go into the kitchen I'll pretend that I'm someplace else. I'll be in Fantasy Land. I won't really be there at all. I'll redirect my attention, I'll dissociate." Or, "I could have a few drinks before I come into the kitchen and that way I'll get the alcohol effect which has a life of its own, plus my senses don't work the same way when I have enough alcohol in me. It won't seem like a kitchen any more, it will seem different somehow." Or, "Maybe I could decorate the kitchen like a palace. That will confuse me. It won't seem like a kitchen that way either." Or, "Maybe I can just hold on tight and see if I can get through it."
Coping mechanisms. It does not take too much thought to realize that all coping mechanisms have their down side.
As a result you end up coping with your coping mechanisms, then you cope with that, and cope with that, and so on and so on. It is like entering a cascade. One thing follows the next.
It is a fundamentally different experience to walk into a kitchen comfortably than it is to walk into a kitchen with discomfort and try to cope with that discomfort. The difference is like day and night, black and white. There is no comparison between the two realities. Therefore, if Peter happened to describe his situation to me, I would strongly suggest this method of change, Unconscious Updating, to update his out-of-date response to kitchens to give himself a win-win here.
The basic concept of my approach, Unconscious Updating, is simple. Behavior makes sense. Everything that we do, we do for some reason.
We develop adaptive responses and then we run those responses over and over again throughout our lives. When we read cues we respond to those cues automatically. Some of the responses that made a lot of sense at one time in our lives do not make any sense at all as we get older and end up causing us a lot of difficulty. The method that I provide is a means by which we can bring these responses to a more up-to-date state so that the same cue will turn on a different response.
This approach, Unconscious Updating, is all about cues and responses. Let me define each of these terms to minimize confusion. A cue is a stimulus to a response, a form of input in one or more sensory modalities. For this method, a response is defined as a collection of feelings triggered by a cue. These feelings turn on patterns of behavior appropriate to the feelings triggered.
The big cue is the universe with its many, many components. We have responses to some of the components of the universe. If you are not satisfied with your reality experience you have two basic options.
Option number one is to wait for the universe to change in order to see if is going to line up better with your collection of responses so that you will become more comfortable in that way.
Please be advised that you could be waiting a long time for that to take place. It is like waiting on the corner for the bus that is just never going to show up. I do not encourage people to explore this option.
Option number two is to change your responses to the cues, particularly the ones that do not make any sense. The point is that people can do this. We can change our responses. If a human has a higher percentage of responses in their collection which make sense in present reality, they will have a greater probability of having a better reality experience. Therefore, I recommend focusing on the response end of the cue-response dynamic. The cues are out there. The question is how are you responding to the cues? If you are not satisfied with the response then change it!
With respect to responses, there are two basic types of them. Either they are up-to-date or they are out-of-date. Up-to-date responses are collections of feelings triggered by a cue that meet the standards of the True Positive Individual. Out-of-date responses do not. If the feelings triggered by a given cue are those that you believe the True Positive version of you would have in that particular situation, then you would consider that response to be up-to-date and, therefore, in no need of updating. You would leave it alone. Do not fix what is not broken. On the other hand, if the response is sub-standard and, therefore, out-of-date, you have an opportunity to change it and bring it up to date.
Unconscious Updating is then an exercise in finding and updating the out-of-date responses in your security system. Out-of-date responses are of two basic types. Fundamentally they are either comfortable or uncomfortable, and we can work on both types. To be accurate, you can have comfortable and uncomfortable feelings within the same response. Generally, however, it is reasonable to classify responses as being fundamentally comfortable or uncomfortable. Each of these types of responses can be up-to-date or out-of-date and, therefore, both comfortable and uncomfortable responses can be updated.
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