Shifting States of Consciousness: The Re-Creation of the Self Approach to Transformation

Outlines various presenting client issues in terms of neural activation. Differentiates working with the resultant self states from evoking a preferred state designated the Organic Self. Notes difference in emphasis from classical Hakomi Therapy and Re-Creation of the Self methods. Offers five clinical ways of facilitating clients to ground in the larger consciousness of the Organic Self state. Introduction to Falling Awake In my last article for this journal (Eisman, 2005a) I outlined the three kinds of psychological woundedness that clients present, based on the arena of neural activation and patterns that are formed through experience. The three are Neurological wounding or Trauma; the Fragmentation of Consciousness; and what I call Derivative Experiential Content [DEC]. I described them this way: Neurological wounding refers to issues of self that are specifically lodged in the Autonomic Nervous System (trauma and attachment issues; Perry & Pollard, et. al, 1996; Karen, 1994) and must be resolved neurologically (as opposed to developmentally). Fragmentation of Consciousness is the entranced identifications of Self that we form to adapt to stuck experiential situations. And Derivative Experiential Content refers to all the attitudes, behaviors, habituated perceptions, posture, gestures, moods, etc. that are generated by our neurological and fragmentational wounding (Ledoux, 1996). All of these are held by neural patterns in the brain and body: habituated collections of nerve cells that over time have formed structural and functional associations that generate particular experiences (Siegal, 1999). Patterns interact to create neural networks, and so a variety of experiences become linked (e.g., tightening the shoulders, feeling fearful and having the thought “They won’t let me...”). These patterns are “use-dependent,” so that the more a neural sequence fires, the stronger the links between those neurons become, and the more likely they are to fire together again. Use a particular pattern, and its presence and tendency to fire is reinforced (Morgan, 2004). Stop using it, and it begins to diminish, and the experiences of that pattern (the feelings, sensations, thoughts, impulses, etc.) become less likely to occur. It is this particular neural fact, that sustained use reinforces the likelihood of an experience that creates the kinds of woundedness that clients report as having control over their lives, and that psychotherapy processes seek to transform. In the Re-Creation of the Self (R-CS) Model of Human Systems, the primary form of woundedness addressed is the Fragmentation of Consciousness. R-CS holds that “to manage difficult or impossible situations, the Self divides itself into substantial and consistent sub-selves, each a distinct state of consciousness and identity, resulting in a complex, confusing and painful sense of personal fragmentation” (Eisman, 2005). Each of these “self-states” is a neural network, comprised of specific thought patterns, somatic tensions, postures and im-