Unblocking: Another Technique of Metapsychology

Excerpted with permission of the author from the book Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) by Gerald D. French and Dr. Chrys J. Harris (CRC Press; ISBN: 1574442155)

Introduction

Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) is one of the more potent tools among the myriad applications that have derived to date from metapsychology, but it is far from being the only one, and though robust, and effective in addressing and resolving a large number of presenting conditions, it is by no means simply a stand alone technique. For one thing, TIR does not lend itself well to addressing every kind of emotionally charged issue that a client might elect to bring up. There are other tools that cover many of the gaps, however, and one of the most broadly useful of these is called, "Unblocking".

A Repetitive Procedure

Unblocking is a technique that makes use of repetition as a means of allowing a client to examine an item or issue from a number of viewpoints which s/he may, in effect, have blocked comprehension. We block our awareness (or permit it to be blocked) in various ways and for various reasons. We may wish, for instance, to feel more comfortable about an unpleasant situation, and so suppress some feeling or thought we might otherwise have about it. Or perhaps, fearing to offend another, we invalidate some obvious indication that the other has made a serious mistake. In general, we prevent our own awareness by "blocking" it through the use of one or another sort of personal avoidance strategy. We may allow our convictions to be subsumed by the suggestions of an authority; we may be cautious about, conceal, or falsify information or perception that troubles us. Whatever blocks we adopt, though, the net effect of our failure to examine them, of course, is not really to protect us as we would wish, but to lessen our ability to confront and thus become able to resolve whatever is troubling us.

In making use of the Unblocking procedure, you will be directing your client to inspect a number of blocks repetitively, one at a time. The use of repetitive questions encourages continuous and close inspection and so leads to increased awareness, but as it is unlikely that an inexperienced viewer will ever before have had the same question asked of him/her more than once, you will need to explain your reasons for doing it before you begin. Depending on the clients level of sophistication, your explanation may be very brief, or may need to be fairly detailed.

Repetitive procedures such as Unblocking are one of the cornerstones of viewing. As Gerbode has observed, repetition is useful not only for developing skills and acquiring or changing habits but for achieving a thorough and penetrating awareness of a particular topic. If insufficiently respectful of the communication skills that need to be employed in the administration of these procedures, however, or of the Rules of Facilitation (especially numbers six and ten -- see below), a facilitator may feel it is unnatural and uncomfortable to repeat precisely the same question or instruction each time, and so will tend to vary it during a procedure. If a viewer were troubled by a situation involving his son, for example, and such a facilitator were to attempt to address this concern with Unblocking, Instead of simply and quite literally repeating the same question until the viewer had run out of answers, the facilitator would feel compelled to vary the wording from time to time. Instead of just, "Regarding your son, has anything been misunderstood?", s/he would ask, "Is there anything you haven't understood concerning your son?", or, "Have there been any misunderstandings regarding your son?", or, "Have you misunderstood anything about your son?", or, "What else have you misunderstood about that subject?", or even, "Find something else you've failed to grasp regarding your son."

Since each of these questions asks the viewer essentially the same thing, why should it make any difference whether we keep to the same wording, or vary it? The answer lies in the Rules of Facilitation and in the basic mechanics of viewing. The two Rules of Facilitation mentioned above are particularly apropos in this case:

6. Be interested, not interesting; and

10. Act predictably.

As we have suggested repeatedly, it is important that the actions of the therapist and the mechanics of the session should fade into the background and become transparent, so that the client can place his or her full attention on what s/he, as the viewer, is doing. And repetition reduces distraction.

Again, as Gerbode has stated^[1],

"It is a fact of human nature that something repetitive and unchanging in the environment (like a dripping faucet or a ticking clock) tends to become invisible. Things that change come into the foreground and they naturally attract attention. Deliberately becoming uninteresting is somewhat difficult for most of us because it goes against normal social practice. In normal conversation and in writing, we do vary our words because we wish to be interesting, to be in the listeners foreground so as to attract the attention in order to get our viewpoint across. In a world of interesting things and people, we learn to try to be more different and unusual than the competition, so that we will be noticed. But in a viewing session, we are not trying to get our point of view across to the viewer. Quite the contrary, in fact. We want the viewer to find his/her own point of view, so we want to make ourselves and the viewing procedure itself uninteresting. Adhering to a single wording of a viewing instruction [as in Unblocking] helps accomplish this aim."

When to use Unblocking

You can apply Unblocking successfully to a great many emotionally charged areas in a viewers life where TIR would be less workable or appropriate. Often, as mentioned below, you can use it to prepare a viewer to run TIR. You will find it to be especially useful for "cooling off" situations that exist for him/her in or close to the present moment. In TIR, and particularly Basic TIR, you will typically be asking your viewer to focus on past, heavily charged incidents. Sometimes, however, the viewers attention will be so fixed on a person or event close to the present or of such immediate concern to him/her that he won't be able to focus on what s/he needs to look at in TIR until you have handled the immediate problem. If s/he knows his car is on fire in the parking lot, s/he isn't going to have much attention available for reducing past traumas until the fire is out.

Unblocking won't put out a fire in the parking lot, but it can produce rapid and often remarkable results when you use it to address specific people or situations on which your viewers attention is fixed. Such fixations might include her husband ... his wife ... his daughter ... her job (or losing it) .. the burglary of her house ... his marriage ... her supervisor ... her parents ... his son ... computers ... being disorganized ... her demotion ... his last therapist ... the hospital ... Each and every one of those topics and a host of others have proven to be suitable grist for the mill of Unblocking.

If you have clients who have had earlier therapeutic experiences prior to coming to you for help, sometimes, even frequently, perhaps such experiences will not always have been pleasant, and they will have emotional charge connected with therapy itself. Unfortunately, many therapists tend to violate the Rules of Facilitation to a degree that disturbs or alienates a significant percentage of their clients. This may happen perhaps most often and most damagingly in overburdened institutional settings. At any rate, questions designed to uncover any such experiences should be a regular part of any intake interview, because any client of yours who has previously undergone therapy, feels harmed rather than helped, is likely to begin the work with you by being extremely wary of you and your intentions. The viewer may well identify you, consciously or unconsciously, as being the same as that other shrink, or those bastards at the hospital. You may have real trouble in getting him/her to differentiate between what you are about to do with him/her, and what they (as the client perceived it) did or attempted to do to him/her. In such a case, begin by using the Unblocking procedure to address "your previous experience(s) with therapy" or "your sessions with the crisis counselor", or "the hospital", or whatever fits. At a minimum, the end point will involve your having been thoroughly differentiated in your client's mind from earlier therapists, and you'll be able to go on to TIR (or whatever else you plan to do) with a clean slate.