Conditioning Reset Therapy is essentially an EMDR and Bilateral Stimulation based therapeutic treatment strategy that prioritises the clearing of unhelpful emotional conditioning. It is the result of my long evolutionary process of optimisation and seeking to improve treatment success rates.
The strategy is based on the premise that most emotional and behavioural issues predominantly originate and are maintained at the conditioning level as opposed to the cognitive level, for example. By contrast many other therapies, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)*, tend to overly focus on the cognitive aspects of a client’s issue - the beliefs and thoughts. However, according to Conditioning Reset Therapy, it’s virtually impossible to shift a belief that is underpinned by emotional conditioning, so we focus on this first. Once the conditioning has been cleared typically the beliefs fall into a good adaptive structure with little or no effort. We’ve all had the experience of knowing something not to be true cognitively and yet we can help having a powerful emotional response towards it.
For our purposes, we can view conditioning as the non-cognitive type of learning, most obvious in animals. Where emotions are experienced in response to or in close proximity of certain situations, individuals, places, times, objects and behaviours etc then they can become profoundly associated.
This conditioning includes the classical conditioned response as identified in the famous Pavlov’s Dogs experiment, which has great relevance to the triggered cravings and urges associated with bad habits, compulsions and substance abuse. Trauma in some ways is the mirror image of this with PTSD and phobias at the far opposite end of the spectrum.
We can broadly consider trauma as negative conditioning, including any memory, trigger or conditioned response that evokes an unpleasant emotion. Cognitive thought is not required to elicit the unpleasant emotional response (though a thought may serve as a trigger or amplifier), the reaction happens automatically when accessing the memory or pattern matching it to a trigger, a situation associated with the memory.
How is new conditioning created? Conditioning appears to be the product of a couple of components, strong emotional arousal and repetition. The stronger the emotional arousal experienced the greater the chance a single experience may become conditioned or traumatized. If a bomb explodes nearby, one can develop PTSD in a heartbeat. However, similar can happen at lower levels of arousal when it is repeatedly experienced for the same trigger or stimulus. If one is repeatedly criticised in the same meeting room eventually anxiety may be experienced just entering or even thinking of the room. So, there is a trade-off between intensity and frequency. This mechanism is also mirrored for pleasant arousals – for example, a euphoric experience of crack cocaine is likely to hook someone quicker than nicotine.
Where the emotional intensity / frequency of a type of experience is sufficient, what I call a conditioning pattern is created. This is like a snapshot or sensory recording of everything in your immediate environment at the time of the experience(s). It’s a type of long-term memory but much more vivid than usual as any detail may contribute towards survival in the future. It is a sensory data file and literally consists of what you can see, hear, smell, touch, taste and feel. Alongside many other conditioning patterns, this pattern may lie dormant in the subconscious out of awareness much of the time. However, one’s environment is constantly being scanned against all of these conditioning patterns. Whenever a pattern finds a match or partial match in the environment, pattern matching takes place and the appropriate emotional response is triggered whether that be a panic attack, a powerful craving, anger, dread or a sense of confusion and procrastination.
People tend to accumulate these conditioning patterns throughout the course of their lives and for some, this culminates in a minefield of unhelpful triggers which, over time, in extreme cases can lead to a general sense of overwhelm and a tangle of paralyzing confusion - not knowing which way to turn or move as every course of action triggers unpleasant emotions. These conditioning patterns seem to also have a cumulative energy-sapping effect, even when one is not consciously aware of them. This can lead to frequent emotional hijacks and a general sense of stress, anxiety, low energy and / or depression.
During the reset, we initially go through the client’s emotional history identifying and clearing the unhelpful conditioning (unpleasant memories) with a range of desensitisation techniques including bilateral stimulation such as EMDR and Eye Movement Technique. Later we move on to the more general triggers which cause issues on a regular basis in the present time.
Once the reset is thoroughly completed the effects of the unhelpful conditioning may be near completely cleared, it’s as if one had lived a much easier life. Unpleasant memories remain however they are now detached and firmly of the past. For most clients, there is a new clarity a sense of relief and lightness, as if a great weight has been lifted. Thinking tends to become more rational, many related emotional issues may resolve as things seem to fall into place. At this stage we have a clean canvas on which other positive therapies such as hypnosis, CBT, positive psychotherapy and mindful meditation can work more effectively, unopposed, to replace the cleared conditioning with new healthy, adaptive and lasting conditioning.
For most clients, the whole process may be completed in between 2 and 4 long sessions, with significant benefits being experienced often after the first session. For a small percentage of clients, however, where the case may be more complex and where clients are less responsive to bilateral stimulation treatment duration can vary greatly but is still typically much lower than one would consider normal for typical psychotherapy.
I’m currently coaching other therapists in the Conditioning Reset Therapy protocol and in the future will be creating a curriculum for a more formalised training and educational program. If you are a qualified therapist and interested in training and coaching on Conditioning Reset Therapy please email me on info@growthypnosis.co.uk
*This is not way intended to disparage CBT which is a treatment modality for which I have great respect. It’s only an observation based on my direct experience practicing it and the recounted experience of many clients.
