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Chapter 20 : WHAT RESPONSES TO WORK ON?
In the years that I have had the opportunity to observe and understand the process of Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating, I have come to realize that the average individual requires a tremendous amount of updating of both its logical and emotional systems to even begin to approximate its True Positive self.
Effectively every thought and every emotional reaction should be analyzed and challenged, and we possess a great many of each. Due to the anti-life agenda of civilization as well as simple ignorance, stupidity, and the mediocrity that goes along with being a domesticated animal, one will seldom go wrong by assuming that there is some fundamental error in virtually each and every thought and emotional response that one has. As stated, therefore, this transformation should be understood to be never ending.
Similarly, one can assume that there is a virtually limitless supply of out-of-date responses needing updating using the Unconscious Updating technique. Furthermore, change begets the need for more change. As you update any given response, you will discover that there will be other responses that will need or benefit from updating due to the internal change that you have just completed.
In many respects, for an individual committed to becoming its True Positive self who uses Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating as its means to that end, its life becomes about moving towards that objective, and all the elements of its life become subagendas of that larger agenda. With that in mind, for the individual starting out on this journey, in addition to understanding that you will never actually finish the process but just run out of time as you are pursuing it, the question arises regarding where one should begin.
Each individual has its own starting point, and so there is no universal correct first step. As you clarify the concept of the True Positive Individual and commit to that goal and then come to realize where you are presently, it will become increasingly clear what has to be dealt with first in order to progress towards your objective. As you advance and remove the obstacles blocking your path, the subsequent problems and challenges to face will become apparent. Each person has its own rational-emotional system and the general approach to updating must and can be individualized. With this in mind, I will not attempt to focus in this book on individual responses that require updating because what might be relevant or accurate for one person would be totally useless for another.
Once the general principles and technique of updating have been learned, the individual should be able to utilize the method independently, or perhaps with some individualized guidance that cannot be easily formatted universally in a written manner such as this.
Despite what has just been stated, I will take this opportunity to address two extremely common issues that I have observed to be important for the vast majority of individuals that I have worked with, and will suggest a general strategy to deal with these issues using the methodology of Unconscious Updating.
1- Self-esteem
The first of the two common issues that I will address is that of self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to the respect and value that one has for oneself. It has been my observation as a medical doctor that a person's self-esteem is the single most important factor of all to determine one's health, be it emotional or physical health. People who have high self-esteem are more likely to be healthy and those with low self-esteem are most likely to be unhealthy. In fact, although my focus is on the individual, from the societal perspective, the best possible investment of money and energy in improving public health would be to address the dismal state of low self-esteem of our species.
Self-esteem has become a very popular topic in the western world recently, so that it is difficult to find a popular magazine without an article in it somewhere discussing how to have higher self-esteem.
One's self-esteem is fundamental to one's overall approach to reality in that if one has high self-esteem, almost regardless of what happens in one's life one will spin things off in a positive direction. However, with low self-esteem it does not matter how well things go, sooner or later if enough time is given, eventually everything will turn into mud. One's self-esteem is the major determining factor of one's course in life in terms of things that one has some degree of control over.
Self-esteem is the foundation of one's behavioral system, one's personality. Unconscious Updating is essentially a renovation project of the behavioral system to change learned responses. In that self-esteem is the foundation of the behavioral system, if one wants to get the best possible results in this renovation project I encourage people to examine and work on their foundation, their self-esteem, as early on as possible.
Since Unconscious Updating operates from a cue-response model, updating out-of-date responses to cues, the question arises how can we use a cue-response model to address the issue of self-esteem? What I have found is that if one wishes to work on self-esteem, the cue-response dynamic to focus one's attention on is that which relates to rejection. By updating out-of-date responses to rejection one does a tremendous amount to enhance one's level of self-esteem. Rejection is the big cue for self-esteem related feelings.
In using the term 'rejection' I mean many things. For example, I mean rejection like , 'Leave me alone', 'I don't like you', 'I don't love you', 'I never want to see you again for the rest of my life' type of rejection. But I also mean criticism - 'You are wrong', 'You are not perfect', 'You failed'. Essentially any non-affirming message can be considered to be a rejection cue. This cue can come from the outside but it can also come from within the individual itself. The average individual that I have met can generally do a very good job rejecting itself without having another person do this for it.
So when I refer to rejection, the cue is anything short of absolute affirmation. Absolute affirmation - 'You are the most incredible organism that has ever existed in this or any other universe' - is not rejection but anything short of that can be perceived as rejection. For example, for some people the nine minute standing ovation instead of the ten minute standing ovation represents rejection. 'Why didn't they clap for me another minute? What is wrong? They clapped another minute for the other person!'
So the cue is anything short of absolute affirmation. Now, of course rejection can realistically be unpleasant. Let us say that you have a job and have been fired from that job. That is rejection. That can be unpleasant. You do not have your income any more, you do not see your friends at work so much any longer. However, I am referring to more than that. You get fired from your job and you feel like you are a despicable human being. You feel as if you should not even exist any longer, that you should not even be on this planet. Not having a job any more may be a big deal but is it really that big a deal?
What I am referring to are feelings that do not match the reality of the situation - bonus discomfort, out-of-date responses.
Perhaps you are at the grocery store at the check-out counter and you are putting the groceries down on the conveyor belt. Let us say that you happen to put the can of peas down the wrong way on the conveyor belt and the cashier does not like how you did it and gives you a dirty look. You are devastated. You cannot sleep at night because you are thinking about that look over and over again. It bothers you for days and weeks. Now granted, perhaps you did put the can of peas down the wrong way on the conveyor belt and perhaps the cashier was legitimately upset with you. But the question arises, should you have been that uncomfortable for that long about that event? Probably not. Again, bonus discomfort, feelings that do not fit the reality of the situation.
Upon reading this, some people may think, "Well, I guess that I have very high self-esteem. If the boss wants to fire me then just fire me. I'll find another job. If the cashier doesn't like the way I put the peas down on the conveyor belt, well too bad for the cashier." It is possible that this individual has very high self-esteem and if so - good for it! It is also possible that if its boss rejects it or if the cashier rejects it, that it is all right but perhaps if someone else rejects it, then it is not all right. Perhaps if a parent rejects this person, a child rejects it, a spouse, a best friend, or some authority figure, then it is a different story. This individual begins to become very uncomfortable in that situation and has feelings that do not match the reality of what is happening there.
The point is that there are many components to the response to rejection, and before you discard it as a non-issue, I encourage you to examine the total package as much as possible to see if you have some responses to rejection that just do not make sense. If that is the case, then you have done step one of the process. You have identified the response, a response to rejection, as being out-of-date. You are ready for step two - decision making. Once you know the technique of how to change responses, you will have an option here - either to leave the response the way it is or to change it.
Essentially what you do here is a cost-benefit analysis. You compare the cost and benefit of leaving the response to rejection just the way that it is, versus the cost and the benefit of updating the response, and then you make a decision.
Let me lead you through that cost-benefit analysis for an out-of-date response to rejection. If you have an out-of-date response to rejection, there are both costs and benefits of leaving the response the way that it is.
The costs first of all. Every time the rejection button gets pushed, you get a boost of discomfort in your system. Now, some of that discomfort does not match reality but it is there anyway. This is bonus discomfort that you would not have if you updated the response. Therefore, this extra discomfort that you get is a cost of leaving the response in its out-of-date form. Then, there is energy spent to deal with that discomfort because every time that we become uncomfortable we spend energy dealing with that discomfort. Therefore, the energy spent dealing with the bonus discomfort is energy lost from or sucked out of the system. Depending on the intensity of the discomfort, there can be a tremendous amount of energy lost which comprises an energy cost.
In addition, there is the energy cost due to energy spent trying to make sure that the rejection button does not get pushed. This refers to all of the things that you might do to try to ensure that you are not rejected and all of the energy spent in doing this.
Now some people develop very effective systems and if you are one of them perhaps nobody ever rejects you. Typically, however, you are spending lots and lots of energy making sure that the button never gets pushed. That energy is thus being redirected from other possible endeavors and so there is a great energy cost- protecting that button.
Then there is the discomfort that you get as a result of the limitations that you impose upon yourself in order to avoid situations of rejection. Because of your out - of - date response to rejection, you do not do this or that, you do not go here or there, you do not say this or that, you don't, you don't, you don't... You end up living in the world of you don't.
Because of the limitations that you impose upon yourself in order to avoid situations of rejection, you again experience discomfort because you are living in a box. You are living in a limited universe. You do not have the options that you would like to have and, because of this extra discomfort that you have in your life, you once again spend energy to deal with it to bring your discomfort level down to a more tolerable one. Energy once again sucked from your system.
Then there is the discomfort that you experience as a result of the side-effects of your coping mechanisms. Let us say that you cope with your out-of-date response to rejection by smoking cigarettes. Your cigarette smoking will cause you side-effects which cause you discomfort. Again you have more discomfort in your life which you would not have if the response were up-to-date. Once again there is energy spent to deal with this discomfort and so more energy is sucked out of the system.
Then there is the hidden cost - the cost of lost comfort. Because of the limitations that you impose upon yourself in order to avoid situations of rejection and due to the discomfort that you experience due to your out-of-date response to rejection and the lack of energy that you suffer trying to deal with this discomfort, you are not getting the amount and quality of comfort that you could be having in your life in terms of personal development, relationships or career. Other people get this comfort but you do not. This is a hidden cost because after a while you get used to having a certain level of comfort and that becomes your reality. Nonetheless, whether you realize it or not, you are constantly not getting that comfort. It is out there but is just beyond your grasp and so it is a real constant cost.
Periodically you realize, ' I am not getting enough comfort in my life.' It comes home to you. Perhaps you observe somebody who is getting more comfort. Then you get discomfort because of that. So there is more discomfort in your life, and once again energy is spent trying to deal with that discomfort and so more energy is lost from the system.
In addition to all these other costs, the person with low self-esteem also possesses a negative sense of itself which is a tremendous cost in itself. All that we really ever possess is our own life and how we feel about ourself. A negative sense of self is often related to an out-of-date response to rejection and represents a tremendous cost of leaving this response in that form.
I have just summarized a number of the costs of leaving an out-of-date response to rejection in its outdated from but there are benefits to doing so as well - two that I can think of.
First of all, if you leave the response as it is, you do not have to change. Changing involves an investment in terms of energy, time, effort, and potentially money. If you choose not to change you do not have to make that investment. But of course you also do not change.
Secondly, if you do not update your response to rejection you will continue to use and get comfort from your present array of coping mechanisms. If you presently smoke, for example, you will continue to do so and therefore continue to get comfort from your cigarettes. You will also have the discomfort caused by your coping mechanism, but it bears stating that a benefit of not updating is the continued comfort from coping mechanisms.
Let us now examine the other side of the equation. Let us look at the costs and benefits of updating an out-of-date response to rejection.
In terms of costs, if you are going to update the response you will have to make the investment of energy, time, effort, and money required to change the response because it is not going to happen all by itself. The more efficient the method that you use, the less the investment required but a significant investment is needed to create this change.
Furthermore, the comfort that you used to get from the coping mechanisms that you used to use will no longer be there for you because you are not going to use them any more.
These are the two major costs of updating - the investment to make the change, and the loss of the comfort from the coping mechanisms that are no longer used.
Let us now examine the benefits of updating the out-of-date response to rejection.
First of all, the bonus discomfort that you used to get every time your rejection button was pushed, every time you got a non-affirming message from the outside or the inside, is not there any more. Now when you are rejected, whatever discomfort you may experience fits the reality of the situation and makes perfect sense. That extra discomfort which used to be there is now gone.
The energy that you used to spend trying to deal with that bonus discomfort is now available for other things in your life and so you now have more energy than you had before.
The energy that you used to spend trying to ensure that you were not rejected is available to you now for other purposes. Since you do not worry about rejection so much now, since it is not as painful as it was previously, you can spend that energy in other areas, and again you have an overall energy gain.
The discomfort that you used to get because of the limitations which you imposed upon yourself in order to avoid situations of rejection - well, since you do not limit yourself so much any longer you are therefore not as uncomfortable. You now feel more comfortable in more situations and are able to grow and develop in many different ways. As well, the energy that you used to deal with the discomfort due to your limitations is now available for other endeavors in your life.
The discomfort that you used to get as the result of the side-effects of the coping mechanisms you used is no longer there since you no longer use those coping mechanisms. Once again, the energy that you previously used to deal with that discomfort is now available for other needs. Again- more energy.
The comfort which you used to lack in your life, in terms of your personal development, relationships, or your career due to the limitations which you imposed upon yourself in order to avoid situations of rejection, is no longer lacking. You now get more comfort in all of these areas because you are no longer as restricted as you were previously. You are also not getting the discomfort that you used to get because you were not getting enough comfort in your life. Furthermore, the energy that you used to use to deal with that discomfort is now available for other purposes. Therefore, more energy again.
In addition to all of the above you now have a positive sense of yourself, which is in and of itself the greatest benefit of all.
For the average individual with an out-of-date response to rejection, I have just presented a logically irresistible argument in favor of updating the response. If you add up the totals of the two sides and examine the costs and benefits of leaving the response the way it is versus updating it, the balance comes out overwhelmingly in favor of updating.
Furthermore, this response will not just go away on its own. If you have an out-of-date response to rejection, I assure you that unless you update it, it will stay with you until the bitter end, until your last breath. It will stick with you for the duration of your existence. So if you have an out-of-date response to rejection you have three basic options. Number one is to leave it as it is and pay the price. Number two is to change it now. Number three is to change it later.
This is a very expensive response to maintain in its out-of-date form. It is like trying to heat your house in the wintertime with no roof on it. It is constantly giving you discomfort, constantly depriving you of comfort and constantly sucking energy out of your system. As a result you are constantly uncomfortable and lacking in energy. Due to this, when problems arise in your life to be solved, because of your discomfort and lack of energy you are not going to solve them in the right manner.
Guess what happens when you try to solve a problem in the wrong way? You get more problems! More problems that again will be solved in the wrong way, which once again creates more problems, and so on and so on.
It is like raising rabbits. You start out with two and as they reproduce their numbers begin to grow exponentially so that in a few years you have millions of them. Or it is like a snowball rolling down a mountain. At the top of the mountain it is fairly easy to stop the snowball but at the bottom of the mountain you have an avalanche. It can be very, very difficult to stop an avalanche.
The sooner you deal with the response the better because the longer you leave it the bigger it gets.
Furthermore, some opportunities for comfort come only once in a lifetime. Let us say, for example, that you had a child and it was the day of your child's sixth birthday party. But let us imagine that you were having a bad day on that day due to your out-of-date response to rejection. Unfortunately, because of your state of being that day the birthday turns out to be disaster. Well, that was your child's sixth birthday. It is gone now and does not come back again. You could even try to make another birthday party to make up for the first one but it would not be the same. If you are lucky this child will have a seventh birthday party and you can try again, but there is no guarantee that you will have that chance. This was a one time only event.
Every day is a one time only event. We only have one chance at today. There are only so many grains of sand in the hourglass and eventually they do run out. You and I are both going to die one day. You can be absolutely certain of that. The question is whether or not you will ever live. There are people dying around us all of the time who have never lived. They missed the whole experience. You either take advantage of the opportunity that you have in life or you miss out on the whole show. It can happen to you as it has happened to many others.
In stating that updating out-of-date responses to rejection is the means to use Unconscious Updating to address issues of low self-esteem, some additional points must be made. Self-esteem refers to the respect and value that one has for oneself. Therefore, a person who has high self-esteem values itself highly and has a great deal of respect for itself. What does this mean? High self-esteem is the result of an individual being true to the expression of its internal basic program and furthermore pursuing its expression to a high degree. Therefore, we do not have some inalienable right to high self-esteem. We must earn it.
The proof that one values oneself is the commitment to becoming one's True Positive self. Such a commitment implicitly indicates that to be oneself and to develop one's own potential is fundamentally affirmed by the individual. It indicates an affirmation of the basic genetic program that defines and guides oneself and a fidelity to the natural law that operates within. To be committed to one's self-expression and self-development requires a tremendous amount of determination and courage.
Self-esteem is the implication of and the result of making the
decision to be true to one's genetic program above all else.
Clearly, within the structure of civilization, the system of slavery and domestication of the human animal which is based on the hijacking of the individual's program to meet the agenda of an anti-life dominant group and their sycophants, to be true to the internal program is the most remarkable and revolutionary act of all.
Please do not confuse self-expression as referred to here with the simple willingness to live out every whim or perversion that a domesticated human ape may have. In this context, self-expression refers to the actualization of the basic human animal life-affirming genetic program.
There are many forces that oppose this program's expression. The zoo of civilization is, of course, fundamentally opposed to its expression, but even in a wild environment other living things are struggling to have their programs expressed as well. Those that most successfully deal with the reality at hand to fulfill the agenda of survival and self-replication in harmony with the laws of nature are allowed to move forward in time - natural selection.
High self-esteem is a state of being achieved by the individual who has chosen to play the cards dealt it in the game of life in a manner faithful with the rules of the game but at the same time with the goal of winning. The object of the game itself is survival, self-replication, and happiness.
Therefore, it is impossible to have high self-esteem and simultaneously betray the internal program by letting some other organism take over fundamental control of one's agenda. Thus it is impossible to be a slave, a domesticated human animal, and have high self-esteem. As a function of that fact, it is impossible to have high self-esteem and follow an anti-life agenda. The basic internal program does not have an anti-life agenda. Please be assured that we would never have survived to this point in time if our basic program was not life-affirming.
Self-esteem refers to valuing and respecting oneself. In this regard, respect refers to defending the expression of the natural program and an acceptance of the rules of natural law. This implies perceiving oneself as part of the universe and life and not outside of it or in opposition to it.
While the reality of natural selection clearly implies competition between living organisms for continued existence, the individual with high self - esteem maintains an inner focus.
This person is committed to being itself and is confident that becoming the most self-actualized version of itself that it can become is its best strategy to winning in the struggle of natural selection. It realizes that its only avenue to success is to be what it is. If being itself does not enable it to make it, it is even less likely to do so trying to be what it is not. Such a position implies a fundamental acceptance of oneself, one's nature, and the natural system of things. In the game of life this individual is going to play its part full out and let the results look after themselves.
Therefore, by giving your best effort each day of your life to being your True Positive self, you are doing all that you reasonably can to be successful in the system of natural selection.
Furthermore, you are choosing to have high self-esteem because you are choosing to respect your internal basic program and to express it as much as you can. High self-esteem is the result of an ongoing commitment to being your True Positive self. It grows incrementally with the duration and the degree of this commitment, just as a muscle will grow if exercised regularly.
One often hears the comment when athletes or performers win prizes or competitions that such victories will do much to enhance their self-esteem. This perception is inaccurate. While winning a competition may provide some feedback for the individual regarding its progress or development, since the healthy focus is inward its priority will in fact be regarding whether or not it performed to its potential and gave an effort of which it can be proud rather than on whether or not it won the prize that day. The prize, although enjoyable to possess, is either won or not depending upon a variety of circumstances which are likely not completely within the performers' control. What they are able to control is their effort and their focus and if those were there to a satisfactory degree they have proven their commitment to themselves and can be proud of their performance.
By now it should be overwhelmingly obvious to anyone who follows modern culture that many individuals who have won the top prizes that their society can offer and who are truly very talented in many respects still have very low self-esteem. Often these people have spent their whole lives seeking external affirmation, have even received this affirmation but still do not have a positive sense of themselves. Often their pursuit of this external affirmation has led them to not be faithful to themselves and to not look after their own healthy best interests. Often along the road to their fame they lost whatever little sense that they may have had of who they really were and simply created false personae, hoping that they might be accepted by the world. In fact, what has often driven them to such heights of performance has been this desperate need for external affirmation.
It is an extremely different reality to be a remarkable athlete or artist simply because one loves the game or the art and loves to express one's essence in that manner and happens to be acknowledged for one's successes, rather than being the performer who yearns for the applause and fame to compensate for a vacuum within oneself. The difference is between being the owner of one's own life and letting the judgment of oneself be determined from a reasonable internal perspective, versus letting oneself be a slave to the opinions of others. The person with high self-esteem has a clear sense of who it was fundamentally built to be and is pursuing the realization of that potential so as to have the opportunity to arrive there and enjoy that state of being and its rewards. The person with low self-esteem would just like to be accepted but deep down believes that it can never really happen, especially if others really knew who it really is.
How one approaches reality and oneself in reality is best exposed in situations of rejection because when rejection occurs the person is left standing effectively naked and alone and its true sense of self and its place in the universe is revealed without whatever external constructs it may have been relying on previously to support itself.
The person who has high self-esteem examines rejection situations and if it is receiving useful information from the situation to enable itself to further evolve towards becoming its True Positive self, uses the situation as a learning opportunity for further development. The person with low self-esteem just wants to kill its pain, which is generally out of context with the reality of the situation and then seeks some way of stopping the rejection now and hopefully preventing it in the future so that it does not have to experience that pain again. These are very different styles.
The first individual has a definite positive agenda while the second is in a defensive and reactive mode and simply wants to avoid pain.
I have stated that if one wants to address self-esteem using Unconscious Updating, the responses to focus on are those triggered by rejection cues. Out-of-date responses are out-of-date because they no longer make sense in the present day context.
In my example of Peter and the stove, it was understood that Peter developed the response that he did at age two because he had a limited understanding of reality at that point in his life. As he grew older, the response became increasingly inappropriate for him since we would assume that he would have acquired a greater understanding of reality and could find some more effective way of preventing himself from getting burned in kitchens than by using the kitchen response that he had developed as a two year old child.
Therefore, his kitchen response was out-of-date once he grew older. His problem was, however, that even though he possessed this greater resource base to work from, he continued to play the kitchen cassette every time he read the situation to be a kitchen again and so he was stuck in this loop. He would be able to change the response because it was truly out of date for who he had become.
If we examine the issue of self-esteem from the perspective of updating we must use the same reasoning. In order to have a high level of respect and value for oneself, one must treat oneself in such a manner and, as a function of that, be giving one's best effort to be one's True Positive self.
If one betrays oneself and one's basic program and does not challenge oneself to become the person that one could be, then one does not hold oneself in high esteem and no amount of updating can change this fact.
One has decided that it is not one's highest calling to be oneself and one has not striven to self-actualize and these decisions reflect a lack of respect and value for oneself. Inevitably, the result of such decisions will be that the individual has become a limited and negative version of who it could have been. The positive sense of self that goes along with having high self-esteem is the deserved reward of the ongoing commitment to oneself and one's self-actualization. This positive sense of self is earned.
Therefore, when an individual wishes to use Unconscious Updating as method to address self-esteem, in order for it to eliminate negative feelings about itself which may be triggered by rejection cues, these negative feelings must be out-of-date and therefore out of context with reality. Until self-betrayal has stopped, or at least diminished, no change will realistically take place since the response will fit reality. People can be despicable and pathetic creatures when they allow themselves to become limited and negative versions of themselves. It would be incongruous for such an individual to have a wonderful sense of itself.
Therefore, the first step in being able to use Unconscious Updating to address self-esteem is to make a commitment to oneself to become who one could be, one's True Positive self, and then to prove this commitment with consistent effort in that direction. Over a period of time when this takes place the individual will have reached a point where certain negative perspectives of itself are no longer consistent with reality. Once that point is reached, the updating technique will be extremely useful to enhance the person's sense of self.
If I say that behavior makes sense and therefore responses also make sense, at least in the original setting where they were developed, then what is it about rejection that is so important and how does all of this relate to self-esteem?
A reality of the human life experience is that we begin our lives as extremely dependent creatures. We spend the first nine months or so within the bodies of our mothers and then, after going through the transitional experience of birth to enter the outside world, remain in a very helpless state for a period of several years. Even as we begin to acquire some degree of knowledge and skill, it takes members of our species longer than virtually any other to reach a stage of maturity to be functionally independent.
In the dynamic between the parent and child, the child is clearly in a very low power position, depending on the parent for food, shelter, protection, and instruction so as to be able to grow to the point of independence in order to carry on the life process passed down to it.
The child who is the product of parents who are True Positive Individuals who find themselves in circumstances that enable them to meet the needs of their offspring, who truly want to reproduce, who welcome their child into the world and provide the care and attention that the child needs to grow and develop, and who affirm the basic genetic program operating within the child so as to get the process of self-actualization off to a good start, is fortunate and is receiving the essential ingredients to optimize its probability for personal success.
This child's existence, essence, and healthy positive development are affirmed by the parents, and its focus will be to develop to its full potential. This child may receive non-affirming messages from its parents but these non-affirming messages will not relate to its basic acceptance or existence but instead will be related to behavior patterns that the child might explore which would threaten its survival and its ability to fully evolve to become its True Positive self.
A child developing in an environment that lacks any of the ingredients listed above will be affected in some way by this deficiency. This child will be forced to address issues that are beyond its ability to deal with due to its immaturity and lack of resources, and this fact of being outmatched by its environment will result in some form of dysfunction.
To go back to the simple story of Peter and the stove, the problem in the story is that Peter should never have been burned on the hot stove in the first place. It is common knowledge that two year old children are not yet mature enough to handle such a situation and must be protected from being burned by those who possess the required resources to handle it. Therefore, in the story, in some way or another, Peter's parents were negligent in allowing Peter to be in a situation whereby he was able to be burned. If Peter had been properly cared for until he reached the point of development where he had the resources and understanding to handle kitchens with hot stoves, he would not have burned himself and would have grown up with a sense of comfort and security in kitchens and around stoves.
However, since the burn experience did occur, Peter had a backup mechanism within himself to protect himself from being burned again and this backup mechanism was expressed as his ability to develop the kitchen response. If Peter had to rely on the protection of his parents alone, he could conceivably have been burned there repeatedly. His kitchen response was a second-best option but it was certainly better than repeated burns.
Just as it is the responsibility of Peter's parents to ensure that he is not exposed to hot stoves until he is developmentally prepared to deal with them, it is the responsibility of each child's parents to ensure that their child receives all of the essential ingredients listed above in order to develop into its self-actualized potential self. Obviously, such is rarely, if ever, the case.
Few parents are their True Positive selves or even striving to be. Few are prepared to truly meet the needs of their offspring. Although reproduction is a volitional act, many who reproduce either do not really want to or are at the very least ambivalent about doing so. Many do not warmly welcome their child into the world. Few properly provide the care and attention that their child needs. It is virtually never the case that the parents affirm the basic genetic program operating within the child.
As a species, domesticated human apes are abysmal parents. Other species cannot get away with our parenting standards. Those that parent at our low level typically compensate by producing huge numbers of offspring of which only a few survive. Individually, that is not the pattern for our species but it may be that collectively such will be our fate. Just as Peter is harmed by the negligence of his parents, our children are badly scarred by the poor parenting that they receive. So long as this pattern continues, it is only logical that the eventual demise of these damaged individuals is inevitable.
Life is a continuum dating back billions of years. Sperm and egg cells are alive. When they combine they from a new organism that carries forward genetic material from the two parents. The fertilized egg is alive. Because it is alive it is affected by its environment - it feels. Not only does it feel, but also in some way it responds to its environment. As its genetically coded program plays out to enable the growth and development of this new organism, external factors have an impact upon it as well. If the developing organism is exposed to toxins it can die or develop malformations. If infections should occur or hormonal or nutritional abnormalities are experienced by it, damage can result which can cause a lack of proper expression of the genetic program. These facts are common knowledge.
What is not common knowledge is the degree of adaptability of the developing human and the influence that emotional and other situational factors have upon it. Just as two-year-old Peter is able to develop a kitchen response, developing humans even before their birth are able to develop adaptive learned responses to their particular environment and life events.
An individual's basic sense of itself, the universe, and its place in the universe is developed at a very early point in its life, even before it is born. The child conceived by self-actualized parents, growing inside the uterus of a mother who is happy with herself, her life and who strongly desires the child within her and is committed to doing everything in her power to help this child reach its full self-expression so as to take full advantage of its opportunity to be alive, finds itself in a much different situation than the one who is the product of limited, negative parents, growing inside of a mother unhappy with herself and her life and who does not want the child that she is carrying and who is not committed to assisting in that child's self-actualization.
The first child will likely have a positive sense of itself and believe that the universe is a good place to be and that it is its home. The second child will likely develop a negative sense of both itself and the universe and will feel out of place in what it perceives to be a hostile universe. Different environment, different result.
Clearly, there is a spectrum of experience between the two extremes. Realistically, however, very many children develop in an environment closer to the second than the first example. While it may seem that the first situation is some unrealistic dream, instead it should be understood that what are listed there are simply the necessary prerequisites for the creation of healthy humans. That this scenario should seem so unrealistic simply indicates how far off track we have become through the process of civilization. Because this scenario is an expression of the essential setting into which a new human must arrive to optimize its health and development, when one does arrive into a situation which lacks any of those components it is effectively in a less than affirming reality for its well-being.
Such a reality triggers a state of discomfort within the developing individual. The greater the degree of non-affirmation (i.e. rejection) the greater the degree of discomfort experienced. Clearly, the new individual lacks power and resources to primarily alter the situation to its benefit to provide what it is lacking due to its rejection.
Nonetheless, in order to attempt to avoid experiencing future discomfort it is preprogrammed to be able to develop adaptive behavior, just like Peter does in his kitchen experience. Such a potential is of course very useful. Because the new individual is truly dependent upon the parents for its survival it is to its true advantage to be able to seek out means to try to avoid rejection from the parents in the future. Its very survival depends upon their acceptance. It , therefore, adapts itself and its agenda to compensate for the dysfunctional variables in its environment. It does not perceive the parents as having the dysfunction, however, but instead senses that there is something wrong with itself. Its position is effectively, ' If God does not affirm me then there must be something wrong with me.'
Given the circumstances, there is an undeniable practicality to such a position. It therefore chooses to deviate from its basic agenda in order to attempt to avoid future pain and implicitly operates with the hope that such a move will provide it with the essentials that it lacked initially. Of course all of this takes place unconsciously since to the best of our present understanding consciousness has not even begun to develop at such an early stage of development. The ability to develop such responses prenatally is extremely useful so that when the child is eventually born it will be able to respond more appropriately for the environment in which it will find itself.
Effectively, therefore, the child believes that its discomfort is due to some flaw within it and, therefore, develops a fundamental negative self-concept. Furthermore, the world is perceived as being a hostile place. The greater the degree of rejection, the greater these perceptions. Typically, in order to avoid future pain it will do whatever it can in order to adapt to the circumstances in which it has arrived.
As a function of its security system, however, any non-affirming message that it will subsequently receive will trigger the replaying of the discomfort that it experienced at the time of its initial rejection experience. Not only will it experience that discomfort but it will also revert to having the perception of the individual that it was at the time, which was typically prenatal or at most infantile. Therefore, when its rejection button is pushed it begins to feel extremely uncomfortable and addresses the reality at hand from this very immature mind set. Not surprisingly, when trying to deal with a situation at some later stage in life with such a perspective, it does not deal with it in an effective and age-appropriate manner. It learns instead to do whatever it can to try to avoid having the rejection button pushed and if such is unsuccessful develops an array of coping mechanisms to help it dull its pain.
In addition, of course, the rejection that the individual received as a fetus is likely to be repeated over and over again in a variety of manners. Human children are dependent for a very long time. These later rejection experiences will augment the intensity of the response and reinforce the negative self and world concepts previously developed.
Because of the intensity of these responses and their significance, they tend to dominate the emotional scenery of the developing individual. As a result, rather than focusing its being on exploring reality and self-actualization, the individual's focus becomes more restrictive and defensively oriented to rejection avoidance and pain control.
Along the way, the individual chooses to divert from its basic genetic program. Although the individual experiences pain from this diversion, the pain that it is suffering due to its non-affirming environment is greater still and thus becomes a higher priority issue to address. Existence becomes rejection avoidance and coping. Morality becomes defined in the same manner.
The problem, of course, is that the individual is being forced to deal with rejection at a stage of development when it is not yet ready to be able to handle it, particularly when that rejection is coming from the individuals upon whom its existence depends. Humans are quite capable of managing non-affirming messages from others at some later point in life but dealing with parental rejection as a fetus or infant is more than we are developmentally prepared for.
Because the negative concepts of self and reality that such rejection experiences generate are created so early in the individual's life, prior to any conscious memory, they are typically accepted as a given. In other words, if I have no recollection whatsoever that includes a positive concept of the universe or myself, I operate from a perspective where my negative concepts are assumed to be accurate. In addition, since so many others have had similar experiences, it is uncommon to encounter those who perceive reality differently - which again reinforces this perspective.
Furthermore, individuals tend to choose to have their significant interactions with those who match their level of self-esteem and worldview. So, in one's closest interpersonal relationships again these negative perspectives are reaffirmed. One ends up living in a small world that develops a certain internal consistency. One begins to believe that nobody does and nobody can really feel good about itself. That life is hell and then you die.
In addition, it is not difficult to understand that having a negative sense at the core of one's being about both oneself and the universe which has been there longer than one can remember, which is virtually universally shared, and which appears to be unchangeable, has a profound effect upon how one lives one's life and deals with the universe. If I fundamentally believe myself to be a contemptible creature and the universe to be my enemy, my best options are to become what I am not, never trust myself or my instincts, look for external ways to control my internal pain and attempt to defeat this hostile universe and make it obey me. Therefore - civilization!
Civilization is the product of a post-traumatic stress disorder.
Just as Peter might be compelled to create an absurdly safe kitchen or perhaps never go into the kitchen again in order to avoid or minimize his kitchen discomfort, the madness that has driven civilization, in which the most important agenda of life has been replaced with anti-life values, has been the result of badly-damaged severely-rejected individuals attempting to minimize their internal discomfort. Because of the intensity of their dysfunction and their compulsion to attempt to address it externally, they reorganized the whole structure of human reality and subjugated those who were not similarly compelled.
Rivers of blood and billions of enslaved humans and other living things have suffered due to the out-of-date responses to rejection that certain significant dysfunctional individuals have had over the last ten thousand years. Their ability to actualize their dysfunction also depended on the complicity of all those who aided them and those who allowed themselves to be enslaved by them and whose lives were used as the engine to help them achieve their sick goals. Those who did not feed into their pathology were killed off so that those of us who remain are either staunch supporters of their mind set or are too timid to object to what we have allowed to happen to our so-called lives.
Human apes, although having the potential for violence, are not fundamentally the vicious brutes that one observes throughout the course of civilization. Individuals who really just want to have enough food and shelter and to look after their young properly do not have the need or drive to kill and enslave others to have gold baubles and endless external affirmation. However, when up against those who do, they have been consistently overpowered. It is the equivalent of having one's home robbed by the desperate drug addict. Such dysfunction can no longer be tolerated.
What happens at the political and societal level happens at the individual level as well. Each individual has a responsibility to itself to be faithful to its internal program. The relevance in the context of Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating is that I have observed that although inadequate parenting and rejection of one's offspring are almost universal human experiences at this time, there exists a wide range of effects of these experiences. I have met individuals who have come from extremely negative environments who although damaged, still have maintained a significant level of integrity and sense of self-worth and I have met others whose experience was not nearly so horrific but nonetheless became more sick and pathetic. The factor that led to these different outcomes was the extent of the individual's determination to preserve its identity and its faithfulness to its internal basic program.
When a developing individual receives less-than-optimal care from its parents, it always has an effect upon it and it is never as healthy an outcome as it might have been in the optimal situation. However, the individual still has the choice at any point in their life, from the fetal period to late adulthood, of how it will respond to that reality. It is understood that the greater the resources available to the individual, the greater the options that it may choose from. Nonetheless, the key factor that will enhance the possibility of a best possible outcome will be the individual's commitment to the expression of its basic internal program. It may be painful and unhealthy when one is betrayed by others but the only betrayal that can truly be unacceptable and which results in the greatest disease and destruction is self-betrayal. It is impossible to have self-esteem if you do not remain faithful to yourself because by definition you are not valuing yourself and not treating yourself with respect.
The horror of civilization has been as much the result of dysfunctional individuals imposing their dysfunction upon others as it has been due to those imposed upon not having sufficient commitment to their internal agenda to refuse and to fight back.
This struggle is being played out every day within you and me. Taking responsibility for one's life means choosing to follow the internal agenda. It means giving one's best effort each day of one's life for the rest of one's life in order to become one's True Positive self.
Unconscious Updating, the technique which one can use to update out-of-date responses is only relevant when a response is in fact out-of-date. If an individual has spent its whole life in a mode of self-betrayal, then the initial negative self-concept which it accepted early on in its life has simply had the opportunity to be developed and played out in reality. If such is the case, so long as the individual is willing to continue to betray itself and its internal program it would be unrealistic to update the response because there is in fact nothing out-of-date about it - it fits the reality of who the person has chosen to become. Peter will only change his kitchen response when he is no longer prepared to accept it.
It is precisely for this reason that the first step in Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating is that the individual make a commitment to become its True Positive self and then follow through with this commitment. The proof of one's self-esteem is in the actions that one is prepared to take to show that one does truly value and respect oneself. The greater the proven commitment the greater the level of self - esteem possible. Where updating enters the picture is when one has proven one's commitment to oneself but nonetheless is saddled with a negative self-concept which is preventing oneself from further achieving the agenda of the True Positive self. When that point is reached, the internal system is open to update the response and to eliminate the negative feelings that have clearly become inappropriate.
Only when one has proven an absolute commitment to one's internal agenda and thus is truly back on a healthy track should one expect to have a fundamentally positive sense of self. Even then, the level of self-esteem can grow as the individual continues consistently on this path, and furthermore experiences greater and greater self-actualization.
What had initially caused the divergence from the internal program was the fear, sadness, anger, shame, guilt, physical pain, or other discomfort that was experienced at the time of the rejection events. In order to try to avoid re-experiencing this discomfort the individual chose to alter itself in some way. Once this divergence is proven within the individual to be a greater loss than win and thus no longer an acceptable alternative, the openness to change can appear and updating can result if this choice is made. Such a decision will inevitably result in a fundamental restructuring of the person's life and internal learned behavioral system.
The out-of-context discomfort can now be discarded and no longer acts as an internal block to self-expression and self-actualization.
Previously, the very idea of allowing oneself to be one's true self or pursue a healthy goal may have triggered the greatest possible discomfort that the individual had ever experienced or imagined. By updating the response this counterproductive discomfort would no longer recur.
Updating , however, will not change the reality that uncomfortable events may result if one is committed to being one's True Positive self. However, because one will be addressing reality from an up-to-date perspective, one will be functioning to the best of one's ability in order to confront these real obstacles and furthermore one will not be waging a wasteful internal war at the same time.
Therefore, one becomes optimally prepared to face the inevitable rejection that is experienced when striving to allow the basic internal program's expression. It should be fairly obvious that if one plans to use Unconscious Updating to update one's security system in order to enhance one's ability to become one's True Positive self, and given that the issues related to self-esteem brought out by addressing rejection are so central to the question of whether or not one will in fact aim in the direction of the internal agenda, the best possible place to start applying the updating technique is in this very area. What is experienced is a renovation of one's life and one's learned rational and emotional systems. The decision to follow the basic internal program is fundamental and there is no better place to begin a renovation than at the foundation.
Furthermore, as alluded to earlier, the symptoms that typically provide the initial motivation for change, be they 'physical' or 'psychological' will not be successfully addressed unless the foundation is worked on. It is not reasonable to expect to eliminate chronic depression or anxiety, eating disorders or addictions, or chronic organ dysfunction unless the obstacles to positive self-expression are removed. If an individual plans to just update responses of minor overall significance it should not expect to achieve optimal results. These high quality results will not occur unless it confronts its issues relevant to self-esteem.
When I was first introduced to the concepts of the methodology that led to Unconscious Updating, I was advised that the approach presented was very effective to deal with disorders such as phobias. That has proven to be correct, but at the time I sensed within myself that there existed the potential for much greater application. Later on, another of my teachers advised me that, although much could be accomplished using these methods, I should be prepared for failures as well. While I recognized the potential for such outcomes and I respected and continue to respect the perspective of the person who told me that, I also wanted to understand why failures would occur.
At the outset of my own work in this area I operated from the perspective that it was inevitable when an individual knew how to update, that its being would be irresistibly attracted to becoming healthy. I was wrong. Due largely to the power provided through civilization we are able to survive and remain out-of-date. In fact, in a certain limited respect it is typically easier to stay the same than to change. Even when such is not the case, it is again, at least in a limited sense, virtually never necessary to commit to become one's True Positive self from an immediate survival perspective.
Choosing such a goal depends upon having a bigger picture perspective of reality and a high level of expectation for one's life. In my experience, it is common for people to choose to avoid working on their rejection responses and self-esteem issues. Such a decision results in little if any meaningful change.
Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating, which when simplified comes down to committing to become your True Positive self and then updating your out - of - date responses using the Unconscious Updating technique, is the most effective method that I am aware of to facilitate an individual's self-actualization and health. If failure should occur with this method it will be the result of either lack of understanding or lack of commitment to the goal, and is generally due to the latter.
One of the problems of this approach is that once a person understands the approach, it has no excuse except for its own complacency if it is not continuously moving forward towards its self-actualization. I call this a problem but it is in fact only problematic for those who are not taking responsibility for their own lives. For these individuals, once presented with a real solution to their dysfunction, they must in fact become more negative still in order to not change, which actually hastens their demise.
The genetic program operating within you is your best bet for success. The universe is your home. Having high self-esteem is the secret to optimal survival, self-replication and happiness. Having high self-esteem is the result of choosing to be your True Positive self and doing all that you can to become that person that you are genetically programmed to be. Unconscious Updating enables you to eliminate the out-of-date responses that inhibit its attainment. To help achieve high self-esteem in the most effective manner possible and furthermore in order to make the whole updating process more efficient, work on your responses to rejection. I cannot stress this point enough.
2- Confronting problems
Having addressed the topic of self-esteem, the other important theme that I wish to bring particular attention to in order to improve the utilization of Unconscious Updating is that of 'I have a problem'. While a relatively secondary issue in comparison to self-esteem, I have observed that the basic responses that individuals have to having problems in their life are extremely important and that, furthermore, many people have very out-of-date and counterproductive responses in this area.
The overall objective of this personal transformation is to become the True Positive Individual. As discussed, self-esteem largely relates to being true to oneself and one's internal program.
The characteristic 'Positive' was defined in this context earlier as the tendency to confront reality and to find the most constructive way possible to deal with that reality.
Therefore, because reality can be problematic, in order to be the most positive person that one can be, it is extremely important to respond to the problems that reality presents in the most up-to-date manner possible.
In observing people's responses to having some problem in their life, I have had the opportunity to recognize a range of feelings triggered by these cues. Obviously the responses can and do vary from person to person and from problem to problem.
However, I have noted that individuals tend to have what are essentially generic responses to the reality of having a problem in their life. Once they have identified the particular problem at hand they may have a more or less up-to-date response triggered by that particular cue but they often have a primary response to the general concept of 'I have a problem in my life' that is triggered first.
It should be expected that an individual who is committed to becoming its True Positive self would have a fundamentally different response to problems than one that is not committed to this agenda. This person has already made a commitment to a growth-related agenda and, therefore, has a proactive dynamic with reality, rather than the common reactive one that is simply about hoping to avoid suffering as much as possible. This is true but it is also to be expected that unless it has been in this mode from its conception onward, it may have developed some counterproductive responses in this area earlier in its life which are still present in its security system.
Many people when faced with a problem feel overwhelmed and assume a helpless and hopeless state of being. It is not difficult to realize that such a state is not conducive to effective problem solving and is certainly out-of-date if one is striving to be one's True Positive self. However, the way our system operates, it is conceivable that although one is rationally aware of the importance of a positive attitude to problems and striving to have such an attitude, if an out-of-date response is in the system it will be unconsciously triggered nonetheless and the associated feelings will be experienced. Therefore, the need exists to update such responses.
All responses, no matter how bizarre or inappropriate they may seem, always have a logical explanation behind them. This is true as well in this case. Why then do people respond in such a counter-productive manner to the reality of having problems in their lives?
Let us look at the optimal situation first. In this situation, the new human is conceived by two True Positive parents who are prepared for the responsibility involved in raising a child, who are focused on what is truly important in life, who are managing their own lives well, and who genuinely want to have the child. These parents understand that children grow and develop in a step-by-step manner.
Therefore, they make sure that their child is consistently in an environment that it has the maturity and developmental resources to handle effectively. This environment neither restricts the child from its needed development nor does it put the child in a situation that is beyond its capacity to deal with.
As a result the child explores its gradually-expanding world and along the way discovers how to operate in that world to best self-actualize. The parents will instruct and assist when appropriate but overall their goal is that the child achieves a level of mastery of that environment and, once achieved, will expand the environment to enable further growth to occur.
In this way, the child will face problems in each new environment that will need to be solved before it can proceed to the next step. In the learning process, the child will experience some difficulties but it will also discover that, either on its own or with some reasonable degree of instruction and assistance, it will be able to overcome these difficulties and achieve mastery. Eventually, of course, the child's world will expand until it finds itself ready and able to deal with the adult world and thus prepared to live effectively within it.
All of this time, the parents have been looking after the issues beyond the scope of the child to deal with, so that the child is able to focus its attention and resources strictly on the problems that it is able to handle. They realize that it is not the child's responsibility to look after their parental and personal problems.
Furthermore, in addition to the fact that they do not make their problems the child's problems, being the True Positive people that they are, they are effective problem-solvers. This is helpful for the child as well. First of all, the child grows up seeing that it is possible for humans to solve the problems in their lives, because it sees its parents solving their problems consistently. It, therefore, has the sense that our species can be competent. In addition, because it has parents who do solve their problems, it can benefit by observing and learning the strategies that they use to enhance its own dealings with the world.
This child will grow up with the sense that problems occur in one's life and that, with interest and effort, can be solved and, once solved, enable one to have greater options in dealing with the world in order to enhance one's self-actualization. In many respects this child will challenge itself to seek out problems, recognizing them to be opportunities for personal growth and enrichment of one's life. This child's response to a problem will be - 'that's reality, how do I deal with it'. It will not be intimidated, will feel powerful and secure in its ability to do the best that it can to find the best possible solution available to it - which is after all, all that one can ever do when facing a problem.
Let us now look at the non-optimal situation. In this situation, the child's parents, if they are even present in its life, are limited negative versions of themselves. They are not prepared or perhaps even interested in the responsibility involved in parenting this child. Their agenda, if one can even use that word given the state of confusion that exists within them, is clearly not directed to becoming their True Positive selves. Their own lives are in chaos, and their feelings about even having this child are ambivalent at best.
Such a reality is extremely problematic for this new developing human. It will find itself mismatched developmentally to the environments in which it finds itself. It may find itself in an overly restrictive environment that prevents it from developing when its internal program is ready to have it move forward, or it may find itself dealing with situations that it is not ready to confront and thus, like Peter in our story, suffer harm due to this mismatch. If it manages to survive, the types of strategies that it will develop will in some way later on prove to be dysfunctional because they were created without the proper resource base to work from. This child will develop with a sense of continuous frustration and dread of what limiting or unmanageable situation awaits it next.
The parents of this child will be overwhelmed with their own problems. These problems could be relationship problems, financial problems, psychological or health problems, or any others imaginable. Because they are not solving their problems, they inevitably become the child's problems as well. In fact, in some cases the parent may actively involve the child in the problem. For the child, all of this is extremely destructive. To begin with, the child does not have the resources to address the problems. Secondly, being presented with these problems diverts the child's energy and focus from addressing its own age-appropriate problems.
Furthermore, since these problems are its parents', in many cases no matter how much the child may try it will be unable to solve them, because they are not its problems in the first place. The child cannot stop their parent from drinking, or make them have a good relationship with each other, or solve their job or financial problems. Again, this will lead to frustration and hopelessness.
Furthermore, these parents who do not solve problems in their lives are implicitly sending out the message to the child that problems just cannot be solved. As well, since they do not have any idea how to solve their own problems, they do not provide the child with any useful instruction in how to deal with different problematic situations in one's life. To compound matters further, they may even attempt to undermine the child's development in problem-solving in order to maintain control of the relationship. If the child can solve problems better than the parent, then how will the parent be able to dominate the child? The parent, therefore, may actively set out to sabotage the child's growth and confidence in such a dysfunctional setting.
The child who develops in such an environment will develop a negative response to problems. When confronted with a problem, it will be taken back to these frustrating and overwhelming situations and will experience a sense of helplessness and hopelessness once again. It will perceive humans as powerless creatures doomed to inhabit this 'vale of tears'. It will try to ignore and avoid problems for as long as possible. It will perceive each molehill to be a mountain. The result of such a strategy will be, of course, that in the meantime the unattended problem will be continuously growing so that when it is impossible to ignore it any longer the molehill will have in fact become mountainous. Such an eventuality will only reinforce the horrific concept of problems that this individual holds. An individual with such an approach will not successfully self-actualize. It will live in a limited world just trying to avoid problems. Any unfamiliar situation will be perceived as being too much to handle since that well-recognized terrible sinking feeling will be triggered simply by considering the possibility of facing it. Procrastination will be a way of life.
Reality involves problems. In order to have a favorable result in reality it is to one's advantage to respond effectively to the problems when they arise. Furthermore, if you thought that you had problems in your life before you made a commitment to become your True Positive self, then wait until you see all of the challenges that are ahead for you in pursuing this most demanding of all agendas.
Mind you, the problems that you had before will be solved and left behind and the new problems that you will face in striving in this direction will be of a much more fascinating and life-enhancing type, but they will be problems nonetheless.
Therefore, I strongly recommend that you examine the feelings that are triggered within you when faced with a problem in your life. If you recognize that the response that you have in such a situation is not what you believe the True Positive you would have, I suggest that once you know how to update your responses you begin to address this response because the button is going to be pushed many times over the rest of your life. There is no point in undermining your own progress on the road to self-actualization.
In these preceding pages I have summarized the core concepts of Unconscious Updating - the concept of the unconscious security system, cues and responses, up-to-date and out-of-date responses, out-of-date discomfort and out-of-date comfort responses, and finally some attention to the topics of self-esteem and responses to having a problem in one's life. A clear understanding of these basic ideas is both necessary and sufficient for an individual to begin learning and applying the actual method to commence the updating of the out-of-date system.
I will not, in the pages of this book, explain the Unconscious Updating technique but will leave that information to be provided later to those who are genuinely interested and committed to the overall objectives of Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating. However, I will state that anyone of average intelligence and ability and comfortable with the methodology can learn the method in a reasonably short period of time. Once learned, the process involves ongoing utilization of the technique to update whatever out-of-date responses are present which are blocking the individual's path on the road to becoming its True Positive self.
I do not know how people manage to function without Unconscious Updating. Of all the skills that I have learned in my life, the one that I would be least willing to part with is the ability to update my out-of-date responses. The possession of that knowledge means that I do not have to be stuck in counterproductive loops that I myself recognize to be such. When I realize that my response to some situation is not compatible with my objectives, I simply have to go within myself to find the out-of-date cassette and change it. The possession of this knowledge and skill opens up opportunities in life that would otherwise be unimaginable.
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