Friday, May 31, 2013

"Your Eyes Are Healing!" How RRT Improved My Vision! Guest Article By RRT Certified Practitioner Jo Burleson, MA, LPC, RPT


By Jo Burleson, MA, LPC, RPT
Certified Practitioner, Rapid Resolution Therapy   

About 3 to 4 years ago I was diagnosed with Age Related Macular Regeneration (my term as I am convinced my inner mind will reverse it). At the Level I Clinical Hypnosis with Rapid Trauma Resolution Training in Austin, Texas in March 2013, I watched the video (for the second time) of the young woman who no longer wore a helmet or walked with a cane after an RRT session. My intuition pushed me to have a session with Dr. Jon Connelly and I scheduled it. I was already aware of his amazing healing presence.

On April 23, 2013 I had an appointment with my Retina Specialist, Dr. Williams. That morning I awakened with the thought in my head, "Your eyes are healing!" Just what I expected! The day was grey and overcast with misting rain, but I felt bright and joyous experiencing those spontaneous thoughts. Dr. Williams then said words I've never heard from him. I usually get a worried, somber look and hear, "Your eyes seem stable, come back in about three months." This time I heard, "Excellent, I haven't said this before but your eyes have reached the point where your vision would improve with cataract surgery!" Before Dr. Williams examined me his assistant checked my eye scans and exclaimed, "Your eyes look really good!" She is usually silent, somber and says nothing prior to his exam. I go back in August and my goal is to dissolve the cataracts by then.

While attending Level II in Austin, Texas on May 3, 2013, Jon used me to demonstrate Levels A and B trances. I continue to be amazed at Jon's healing presence as I am very sensitive to energy. In Jon's presence and in front of the group this continued my healing, and I noticed much healing energy permeating throughout the room. Awesome! At the end of the day, I returned to our room and my husband had a small laptop computer where he accessed my email. The print on his computer is very small, and I read it without my magnifying glass! I like reading without my magnifying glass. My heartfelt thanks goes out to Dr. Connelly for his vision of developing RRT and sharing his healing presence for improvement in my vision.


Jo Burleson, MA, LPC, RPT, RRT, has worked as a counselor for over 22 years and in private practice for 21 years. As a Level I and II RRT trained practitioner, Jo has a specialty in trauma resolution with many years of experience with children who have been abused-abandoned-neglected and in foster care. She does counseling for all ages specializing in trauma, grief and critical incident stress debriefing.
Jo has a miniature Daschund animal assisted therapy dog, Ayni Petra, registered as a Pet Partner for complex situations. Jo's child clients especially enjoy Ayni's playful, energetic, and loving spirit. You can reach Jo by email at jo.b.thomson@sbcglobal.net.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

One Week Left To Register For Level I IRRT In Denver, Plus Level II Trainings in Chicago and Denver!

Dr. Jon Connelly and fellow Certified Practitioners will be holding trainings  for Level I and Level II Clinical Hypnosis with Rapid Trauma Resolution in Denver and Chicago. In Denver,Colorado, the Level I training is May 31 through June 2 with the Level II training following from July 12 to 14In Chicago, the Level II training is June 28 - 30Please click here to register and for additional information.

Practitioners will earn 25 continuing education contact hours throughout the three-day intensive weekend training.
During the Level I training, you will learn to:

  • Resolve multiple traumas in a single psychotherapy session
  • Discover and resolve subconscious causes for emotional and behavioral difficulties 
  • Create positive and transformational change through multi-level communication 
  • Pinpoint and resolve issues contributing to medical problems
  • Promote mind/body healing
  • Expose and eliminate unconscious conflicts blocking desired change
  • Pinpoint the exact events to clear so that desired change is automatic
  • Eliminate the effect of traumatic events even if they are repressed or forgotten
  • Stop self-destructive behavioral patterns
  • Transform your client's cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns
  • Rapid Resolution Therapy Sequence Review 
When you register within 30 days of the Level II training, you will receive a $50 tuition waiver!

During Level II training, you will refine your skills from Level I training and learn the following:
  • Rapid Resolution Therapy Sequence Review
  • Transforming Frozen Grief: Rapid Grief Resolution
  • Clearing Anxiety & Panic: Rapid Panic Resolution
  • Clearing Substance Cravings: Rapid Cravings Resolution
  • Healing Mind-Body
At the conclusion of the Level II training, participants will receive a 60-page manual including step-by-step outlines for the processes listed above.
We would love for you to join us for the Level I and II trainings! Trainings begin on Friday at 1 p.m. and conclude Sunday evening at 5 p.m. For more information on the trainings and to register, please visit www.cleartrauma.com or call 800-587-2623.

Level I Trainings:
May 31 - June 2, Denver, Colorado
Aug. 9 - 11, Atlanta, Georgia

Sept. 20 - 22, Orlando, Florida
Oct. 18 - 20, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Level II Trainings:

June 28 - 30, Chicago, Illinois
July 12 - 14, Denver, Colorado
September 6 - 8, Atlanta, Georgia
Nov. 1 - 3, Orlando, Florida
Dec. 6 - 8, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

For more information on Level I or Level II trainings, please click here

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Overwriting - An RRT Technique


Certified Practitioner, Rapid Resolution Therapy 

In 1865 Lewis Carroll wrote about a little girl, Alice, who follows a white
rabbit down a hole and enters a whole other world where a host of strange characters regularly turn logic on its head. She winds her way among them intermittently struggling with her own size and identity. Eventually she runs into the Queen of Hearts, whose vengeful demeanor and favorite saying, "Off with their heads!" has everyone intimidated. In the finale, Alice faces the Queenʼs wrath and calls her and her minions out as just a pack of playing cards. As they rush her, she awakens to find not playing cards but leaves all over her face, and safe back in her own world with her sister just in time for tea.

Overwriting is a term RRT Master Practitioner Melinda Paige coined for the powerful clean up that is done in Rapid Resolution Therapy relative to participants' destructive meanings. Some of us might say, "Oh, thatʼs just reframing," but I think what we're onto may be something more. Lets take a brief look at the way overwriting is used in our work.

Overwriting is typically used after a powerful connection has built up. In looking over many transcripts, I find Jon reserves most of the best overwrites for the end of the process, sometimes following ghost busting, sometimes intermingled with it. In other words, overwriting understands our work is not done until dysfunctional meanings are cleared. It assumes a substantial amount of collaboration and momentum toward target is already underway. This is set up by the first stages of the method, which open up access to the participant's inner mind, as we talk to it in ways it understands. We can understand why connection must build first, as we would only incur defensiveness or disagreement if we swung the wrecking ball right at the outset. 

Reframing, as it is conventionally used, might leave the participant still thinking it over or debating an alternative view in their mind as they leave. In RRT we invite the participant to not only look with us through another lens but if we are artful, to also step through the lens. We ask them to experience themselves differently as they see how life events haven't negatively defined them after all and in fact could be construed in a very different way. Overwriting seems like a much more powerful form of reframing as we combine it with the participatory aspects of connection. It's the difference between stopping a movie at several points in the theater to discuss it with the audience versus sitting beside the participant in the theater while the whole movie runs. It's a movie so compelling and totally involving that we both forget about the popcorn on our lap.

Some examples come readily to mind. Changing internal geography and identity is a huge overwrite, as we lead her through to the realization that the core of her was never touched by the abuse. This is so powerful as survivors often feel soiled or tainted by abuse. There are many overwrites in our lexicon relative to shame.

One of my favorites is the girl and her father:

"Get it outside of you for just a moment. A woman told me her father once kicked her across her room and left her locked in her closet all day. She said that was the moment she knew she was worthless. I said, I don't get that. If you and I saw a grown man beating up a kid out in the parking lot, and I asked you why these things are happening, your first answer wouldn't be, "Well isn't it obvious, the kid is worthless?" It wouldn't, would it? Maybe you'd say, boy, we just learned something about that guy. But we wouldnʼt have learned anything about the little kidʼs worth, would we?"

This overwrite, which also uses dissociating the story, usually has massive beneficial impact, as deeper mind gets how shameful behavior was located in the perpetrator from beginning to end and never got in even skin deep to the survivor. It is then free to just sluff off.



We all know the overwrite of science over moralism. It starts with the story of the tree branch that is down and casts the participant as teacher to a younger person, teaching a scientific view of causality versus preference, moralism, or blame. The younger person in the story is our participant who is still trapped in those viewpoints. It ends with the participant getting how gratitude replaces pride but also things like guilt, regret, resentment, and blame. They get it through and through that they did past events in the only way they could have at the time and things couldnʼt have possibly transpired in any other way. Moreover, those events are no longer in existence. The much better course is to be present, tuned up, and causative in the here and now. 

A final example is often found on the tail end of clearing abuse when we clear stories of parental neglect. Iʼve always liked how Jon will frame the parentʼs inaction or hurtful responses as neurologically disconnected at the time. It isnʼt that mom got up one morning and thought through the best way to screw her daughter up for the next 30 years. She just couldnʼt connect the dots at the time the participant-child came to her with the bad news of molestation.

Jon paints an accurate picture of the severe click-off that denial does in the mind when confronted with overwhelming bad news. "Itʼs like you tell this guy, ʻYour house is on fire,ʼ and he says, ʻThatʼs a very valuable house, Iʼm choosing not to believe you." The parentʼs mind literally couldnʼt take it in, therefore they couldnʼt connect the dots and couldnʼt have taken effective action. This often enables massive relief and a sense of peace for participants. Similarly, in other transcripts, physical beatings, suicides, rages while on drugs, all manner of out of control behavior is pictured as a neurological storm, chemicals running around in a badly disconnected brain. This overwrites the long-carried notion that the behavior was personally directed at them or meant something about them.

Like Alice of old, we powerfully wake participants up from the walking nightmare that came from the meanings their mind attached at the time. We overwrite that story quite forcefully, but artfully, with proper timing. Listen and watch for when Jon starts a sentence, "Let me tell you what happened there..." You may just pick up something that will help your participant step back through the looking glass into a more positive world, into a more positively embodied existence.



Mark

Mark A. Chidley, LMHC, CAP, a fully licensed mental health counselor and certified addictions professional, offers counseling services at his office Kelly San Carlos Executive Center in Fort Myers, Florida.He has been in private practice since 1997. He holds certifications in Rapid Trauma Resolution (2010), Imago Relationship therapy (2001), and now specializes in the treatment of couples as well as individual trauma recovery and anxiety issues. He brings rich experience from a combined 26 years of hospital work and mental health counseling.  

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Re-Thinking Forgiveness


Certified Practitioner, Rapid Resolution Therapy 

Two weeks ago I saw an adult male client who needed some ghostbusting done around some text messages he and his family members had been receiving from his mother. He had a lot of emotion around the incidents, which indicates an old ghost. 

His daughter was getting married soon, so wedding plans were afoot with a lot of drama surrounding who was attending and who wouldn't attend if others did attend. As we all know, weddings are nodal events in the family life cycle, which bring up a lot of family anxiety.

I did the ghostbusting technique of "stop putting on your pants" to get his mind to see that "nothing needs to be done" about those past nonexistent events. The emotion "disappeared" for him.
When I saw him this morning, he related a brief conversation he had with his mother as she and her husband were leaving the wedding reception. She said, "Please forgive me." What came to mind to say in reply was, "There's nothing to forgive." He became curious about where that reply came from. Later he wondered if it was related to work that had gotten done in our previous session.

I felt one of those delicious "RRT chills" that we get from the life-changing work we're now able to do with our clients. 

I then told him about some new ways of looking at 'forgiveness' that have recently come to mind for me. I no longer see "forgive" as a verb, as that is something that is impossible for us to do. I use 'forgiveness' as a noun.

At a recent retreat, I heard a take on the word "repent;" it comes from a Greek word that means to turn around, or to think differently. I then remembered that "-pent" is Latin for think. (Pensive means thoughtful). Therefore "re-pent" literally means to "re-think" (great cognitive stuff!).

So keeping that in mind and adding some of Jon's RRT stuff, I have redefined "forgiveness" as the absence of all those negative, yucky emotions as a result of re-thinking.

My client exited our session with relaxed shoulders, an easier stride, and a big grin. 

Love,
Mae

Mae C. Young, EdS, LPC, has been in private practice for eighteen years in Southaven, MS, a Memphis, TN suburb. She has a great interest in neuroscience, as she previously worked as a medical technologist for eighteen years in hospital laboratories. 
She is certified in RRT and Level II EMDR, and has studied Bowen Family Systems Theory. She does counseling for all ages, but specializes in trauma, couples, and ADHD. She can be reached at 662-349-2148 and  www.maeyoungcounselor.com.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Molly, My RRT Muse


Certified Master Practitioner, Rapid Resolution Therapy   


While driving to the second annual Healer the Healer Retreat from Tampa, Molly Sanford took the first exit off I-10 to Fort Walton Beach, FL, only to find herself on a long deserted highway that runs through Eglin Air Force Base reservation with her fuel tank quickly reaching empty. When she called I heard distress in her voice as she described the fuel light was on, and she was thinking her car would run out of gas before she reached civilization. 
She had no conscious map or view of where she was relative to the nearest gas station. She had temporarily lost directional sense as the idea of running out of fuel activated her primitive mind to make her body stronger and more alert. "I don't want to run out of gas"...inner mind hears dominant thought- run out of gas- Yeeeeeks! She knows she can drive, but right now she doesn't know where to go.

I reassured her that I was familiar with where she was, and we'd take care of it.  I then began to develop a target. I saw Molly calm, at ease, creative, and joyful at the retreat as she sat on the beach. 

Step 1 - communicate you're not alone, you and I are connected, we're collaborating and will get this done! I had to figure out where she was, and then develop a plan for how to get her where I wanted her. She told me right away that she wasn't an auditory person, so I stopped talking in directions and started using visual landmarks to keep her with me. What I said was there, was there. I saw the steps--"You're here Molly, keep going, you'll see this, then that." 
I saw a coffee cup, no time to develop an activator, but I knew that Molly's mind was wonderfully responsive to coffee. "You're going to see a Tom Thumb store on the corner. They have coffee and Gas." After you fill up, start moving again, more visual directions to our meeting place, and then follow me to the retreat.  Whenever you get or give directions to someone, you rely on your own ability to go inside and mentally represent through a movie how to get wherever it is you want to go. Yes think about it. Even directions involve creating imagery of what it will look like!

Step by step my mind showed me what to do, and then I showed Molly in a way that her mind got it. She had worry thoughts of "What if I run out of gas?" She felt stressed and lost (yes these were certain responses that came up along the way), but she kept calm, moving and we were soon at target.       
I started thinking this experience of getting her to the retreat was not unlike a RRT session. What's the problem, where are they now, and where do we want them? Dr. Jon Connelly tells us to be intentional. Begin with the end in mind. See the target. Demonstrate understanding, connect, create experiences that change is underway, lead the way with commands (directions) for where we want them until they arrive, and then celebrate.


If you'd like to chuckle a bit, can you just imagine for a minute what some of the other more popular therapy approaches might have done? Validate her, draw attention to her need for fuel, poison with sympathy, analyze why, was it something about her relationship with her mother, father; did she ever dream of getting lost and running out of gas, what does this really represent, was the problem irrational thinking, should we give her skills to cope and tolerate emotional distress, would it help if she was more mindful and accepted where she was so she would not struggle or try to control it, would they look at her readiness, desire or motivation for change? Sounds pretty ridiculous compared to RRT, huh?  

I thought it's totally okay with her to not be running out of fuel and looking for the quickest way out of the woods! Only a RRT therapist would set the clear intention from the start - seeing her calm, at ease, creative, joyful, her mind showing her what has benefit, and possibility. In the end Molly delivered a creative, moving, and effective Heal the Healer Retreat.


For more information about upcoming Heal the Healer Retreats, please visit www.thehealerretreat.com



Since 1991, Dr. Elizabeth Michas has been in private practice with Michas, Valentine and Gill, Psychiatric Associates in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. She specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, and trauma and also has an interest in the application of mind-body medicine, neuroscience and integrative therapy approaches. In addition to psychotherapy, her practice includes psychological and neuropsychological assessment. Dr. Michas is licensed as a Clinical Psychologist in the state of Florida (PY4751) and is board certified in Rapid Trauma Resolution and Advanced Clinical Hypnosis. You can reach her through her website at www.drelizabethmichas.com or email her directly at drelizabeth@cox.net.