NEGATIVE FEELINGS
ARE CAUSED BY MAKING EARLY ASSOCIATIONS
Very often we experience negative feelings in our life on a recurring basis.
Feelings such as fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, and sadness. We experience them
every time specific events happen, such as fear whenever we make a mistake or
someone gets angry at us, or anger whenever we are told what to do.
An experiment by a psychologist named Pavlov many years ago explains why this happens. He gave food to a dog, who responded by salivating. This was an automatic response. Then he rang a bell just prior to feeding the dog. After the bell was rung several times before food was given to the dog, the bell was rung and no food was delivered. The dog salivated anyway, because he had associated the bell with the food. In other words, an event that normally would not produce a response (the bell) does so because it gets associated with an event that does produce a response (the food).
Here is a real life example: Joe experiences fear whenever he makes a mistake. After being asked when he first experienced fear after making a mistake, Joe recalled that when he was a child his father was never satisfied with anything he did. When his father called him "stupid" and yelled at him, he felt fear.
When Joe thought more about what happened as a child, he realized that his fear was not really caused by making a mistake. He saw that what really caused the fear was the meaning he unconsciously attributed to his father's behavior: As a child Joe felt that the person he depended on for his very survival was withdrawing his love. If he wasn’t loved, he wouldn’t be cared for; if he wasn’t cared for, he wouldn’t survive. That is what caused Joe’s fear.
Here is the principle: The original cause of almost every fear you experience today was the perception that your survival was being threatened. The original cause almost always was early events that involved your parents, the people on whom your survival depended. You interpreted these events to mean that either something terrible would happen to you, or your parents would withdraw their love, both of which would threaten your survival. Without the perceived threat to your survival, the same events would not have produced fear.
HOW THE DECISION
MAKER® STIMULUS PROCESS (DMSP) WORKS
The DMSP works by helping you to realize that it was this perceived threat to
your survival that originally produced the fear; it was not the events as such.
You come to realize that fear is not inherent in the events that cause the fear
today.
You associated
"making a mistake" with a perceived loss of love, which you experienced as "a
threat to your survival." The DMSP assists you to break that association, by
distinguishing between the real cause of the fear (the perceived threat to your
survival) and the neutral events that you associated with it. At that point
the events that got associated (making a mistake) will no longer cause fear.
Step 1. You start by identifying the recurring feeling you want to get rid of
and the events that cause it. In the example we have been using, it is fear
that is caused by making a mistake.
Step 2. The next step is to discover when you first experienced the feeling
that is caused by events today (fear that is caused by making a mistake). It
almost always involves your parents when you were a young child. Imagine it
was a father who angrily criticized almost everything you did.
Step 3. Next, realize that the original cause of the fear was not making a mistake,
or even that your father was angry and criticized you. It was the meaning
you unconsciously gave to your father's behavior: His anger meant that his
love was conditional; if he could withdraw his love, you couldn’t count on him
being there whenever you needed him; your survival was not certain.
Can you see that
you never distinguished between making a mistake and what really caused
the fear, which was the meaning you gave to a father who angrily criticized
almost everything you did?
Step 4. Can you see that, without a perceived threat to your survival, making
a mistake would not inherently produce fear?
Step 5. If as a child you had realized that fear was never inherent in making a mistake, would making a mistake have caused fear then? If it didn't cause fear then, would making a mistake cause fear now?
Step 6. Imagine a situation in which you make a mistake? As you imagine it, do you still have the feeling of fear? (The answer should be no)