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Out of necessity (after existing conventional treatments offered little help) I've been conducting a 10+ year self-experiment related to this topic. Like other

Out of necessity (after existing conventional treatments offered little help) I've been conducting a 10+ year self-experiment related to this topic. Like others have described, when I started experiencing symptoms of conditions resembling anxiety, depression, ADHD, mild bipolar, paranoia and CFS/ME, I initially sought mainstream medical psychiatric treatment and undertook talk therapy and was prescribed anti-anxiety (benzos) and antidepressant (SSRI) medications. There was some relief but there were also unpleasant side-effects, and I just had a strong feeling these treatments were not really addressing the core problems, and indeed I even felt like the symptoms were fairly normal reactions to the life experiences I'd endured. Later I tried to heal myself with nutritional and exercise-based approaches, and relatively conventional emotional approaches like meditation. Again, some mild/temporary improvements were noticeable, but they were inadequate, and it still felt like there was something deeper I needed to connect with. About 8 years ago, I found an approach that involves identifying and releasing traumas, attitudes, behavioural patterns, self-perceptions and defense mechanisms that are held in the subconscious mind, particularly ones that have been attained in early life and have snowballed through repetition compulsion [1] (a concept that Freud first articulated). I've been undertaking these approaches continually since I discovered them, and bit by bit all the symptoms have resolved. My experience has confirmed, at least to me, that these conditions are "adaptive responses to adversity" (or something else related to that concept), and that in order to heal the symptoms, I needed to understand their basis at a very deep level; as Jung said, "making the unconscious conscious" [2]. Once that had been done, adopting new, healthy attitudes and behaviours and living free of those symptoms has been fairly easy; i.e., healthier behaviours just emerged naturally once the causes of the unhealthy behaviours were identified and understood. If any researchers or laypeople are interested to know more about the techniques I've used and the results I've experienced, I'm happy to be contacted (email address in profile). None of the approaches I've used or their underlying hypotheses are novel; it's been written/spoken about extensively by veteran experts on mind+body health including Maté and Bruce Lipton. But there doesn't seem to be much in the way formal studies into these concepts, so I'd be happy to connect with anyone working in the field or anyone else interested to explore further. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetition_compulsion [2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/44379-until-you-make-the-unconscious-conscious-it-will-direct-your https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/44379-until-you-make-the-un...

kej 6y ago
>an approach that involves identifying and releasing traumas, attitudes, behavioural patterns, self-perceptions and defense mechanisms that are held in the subconscious mind Could you elaborate on this part? What does "identifying and releasing" look like, in practice?
- tomhoward 6y ago
  This is where discussions about this stuff can go off the rails, as the main modality I've used has links to the chiropractic profession (even though I think that profession is highly dysfunctional and many or even most of its practitioners are quacks at best and frauds at worst). Anyway, the modality I've most used is a technique called NET (neuro-emotional technique), which (I believe) is similar to a practice called Psych-K (I've never done this one but I'm told they're similar). Both of them use muscle-testing to identify incongruences between different aspects of the mind and body (e.g., conflicting/incompatible desires, beliefs or values). I've also done plenty of Holotropic Breathwork and Ericksonian Hypnosis, some EMDR, some EFT/Tapping, and some use of basic affirmations. Someone else I know well has done a lot of a practice called Family Constellations, as well as another practice that focuses on healing the trauma of birth - though I've not done either of those practices.
  - RankingMember 6y ago
    Hey if worked for you, it worked for you. Thanks for laying it out there regardless of what I think of some of these techniques.
  - sizzle 6y ago
    These sound like awesome techniques to have in your toolkit. Any idea if they've been studied in double blinded evidence based trials on patients for efficacy? We need more tools like this at our disposal for cracking the code on the last frontier that is mental health, in addition to the current shotgun approach of flooding our synapses with neurochemicals via SSRIs. Also wish I could try psychoactives like Psilocybin which many have had life changing positive responses to.

kej 6y ago

>an approach that involves identifying and releasing traumas, attitudes, behavioural patterns, self-perceptions and defense mechanisms that are held in the subconscious mind Could you elaborate on this part? What does "identifying and releasing" look like, in practice?

tomhoward 6y ago
This is where discussions about this stuff can go off the rails, as the main modality I've used has links to the chiropractic profession (even though I think that profession is highly dysfunctional and many or even most of its practitioners are quacks at best and frauds at worst). Anyway, the modality I've most used is a technique called NET (neuro-emotional technique), which (I believe) is similar to a practice called Psych-K (I've never done this one but I'm told they're similar). Both of them use muscle-testing to identify incongruences between different aspects of the mind and body (e.g., conflicting/incompatible desires, beliefs or values). I've also done plenty of Holotropic Breathwork and Ericksonian Hypnosis, some EMDR, some EFT/Tapping, and some use of basic affirmations. Someone else I know well has done a lot of a practice called Family Constellations, as well as another practice that focuses on healing the trauma of birth - though I've not done either of those practices.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  Hey if worked for you, it worked for you. Thanks for laying it out there regardless of what I think of some of these techniques.
- sizzle 6y ago
  These sound like awesome techniques to have in your toolkit. Any idea if they've been studied in double blinded evidence based trials on patients for efficacy? We need more tools like this at our disposal for cracking the code on the last frontier that is mental health, in addition to the current shotgun approach of flooding our synapses with neurochemicals via SSRIs. Also wish I could try psychoactives like Psilocybin which many have had life changing positive responses to.