Psycho Cybernetics (a video book) – 31 chapter 10 – remove emotional scars
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Here’s the text from today’s video:
CHAPTER TEN
How to Remove Emotional Scars and Give Yourself an
Emotional FaceliftAnger is really disappointed hope.
-Erica JongThe facelift business is booming. Cosmetic surgery profession revenues have increased by doubledigit percentages each year for the past handful of years. You now see mass television advertising offering any combination of procedures desired~nose, ears, throat, whole facelift, breast enlargement, buttocks improvement, tummy tuck-for a set monthly payment, akin to buying a car on payments! Still, many people seeking emotional salvation and satisfaction from the surgical scalpel will wake up with a new face or better sculpted body but with old disappointment and frustration.
I and others have learned a great deal about Psycho-Cybernetics in the more than fifty years that have passed since I first began drawing the connection between patients coming to my office seeking to correct scars in their outer image and the existence of “scars” hidden away on their inner image or self-image. However, the fundamental analogy is every bit as valid as when first uncovered and recognized.
As a medical doctor and surgeon, I have performed countless operations of reconstructive as well as cosmetic facial surgery, and been privileged to lecture on such clinical techniques all over the world. Yet I have never become jaded about tlle miraculous systems built into the human body. For example, when you receive a physical injury, such as a cut on the face, your body automatically forms scar tissue, which is both tougher and thicker than the original flesh. The purpose of the scar tissue is to form a protective cover or shell, nature’s way of insuring against another injury in the same place. If an ill-fitting shoe rubs against a sensitive part of your foot, the first result is pain and sensitiveness. But, again, nature protects against further pain and injury by forming a callus, a protective shell.
We are inclined to do very much the same thing whenever we receive an emotional injury, when someone hurts us or rubs us the wrong way. We form emotional or spiritual scars for self-protection.
We are very apt to become hardened of heart, callous toward the world, and to withdraw within a protective emotional shell of one kind or another.
What We Can Learn. When Nature Needs an Assist
In forming scar tissue, it is nature’s intention to be helpful. In our modern society, however, scar tissue, especially on the face, can work against us instead of for us. Take George T., for example, a promising young attorney. He was affable, personable, and well on his way to a successful career, when he had an automobile accident, which left him with a horrible scar from midway on his left cheek to the left corner of his mouth. Another cut, just over his right eye; pulled his upper eyelid up tightly when it healed, which gave him a grotesque “glaring” appearance. Every time he looked in the bathroom mirror he saw a repulsive image. The scar on his cheek gave him a perpetual leer, or what he called an “evil look.” After leaving the hospital, he lost his first case in court, and was sure’ that his evil and grotesque appearance had ,influenced the jury. He felt that old friends were repelled and repulsed by his appearance. Was it only his imagination that even his own wife flinched slightly when he kissed her?
George T. began to turn down cases. He started drinking during the day. He became irritable, hostile, and something of a recluse.
The scar tissue on his face formed a tough protection against future automobile accidents. But in the society in which George lived, physical injuries to his face were not the primary hazard. He was more vulnerable than ever to social cuts, injuries, and hurts. His scars were a liability instead of an asset.Had George been a primitive man and suffered facial scars from an encounter with a bear or a saber-toothed tiger, his scars would have probably made him more acceptable to his fellows. Even in fairly recent times old soldiers have proudly displayed their scars of battle. I suspect the same is true of young toughs in inner city gangs.
In George’s case, nature had good intentions, but nature needed an assist. I gave George back his old face by plastic surgery, which removed the scar tissue and restored his features.
Following surgery, the personality change in him was remarkable. He became his good-natured, self-confident self again. He stopped drinking. He gave up his lone wolf attitude, moved back into society, and became a member of the human race again. He literally found a new life.
This new life, however, was brought about only indirectly by plastic surgery on physical tissue. The real curative agent was the removal of emotional scars, the security against social cuts, the healing of emotional hurts and injuries, and the restoration of his selfimage as an acceptable member of society, which in his case surgery made possible.
Most people build up a considerable amount of scar tissue on their self-images with no correlation whatsoever to actual physical disfigurement that can be solved by a skilled surgeon with a scalpel.
How Emotional Scars Alienate You from Life
Many people have inner emotional scars who have never suffered physical injuries. And the result on personality is the same. These people have been hurt or injured by someone in the past. To guard against future injury from that source they form a spiritual callus, an emotional scar to protect their ego. This scar tissue, however, “protects” them not only against the individual who originally hurt them, but also all other human beings. An emotional wall is built through which neither friend nor foe can pass.
Zig Ziglar tells an amusing story about a cat who innocently traipses across a stove top and lands on a burner still hot from recent use. With a loud yelp, the cat leaps off the stove and sulks away to nurse its tender paws. Zig says, not only won’t that cat ever climb up on that stove again, he’ll never even go into the kitchen!
Emotional scar tissue built up on the self-image affects people like scorched paws affect that cat. Given several repeats of an unpleasant, embarrassing or frustrating “scarring” experience, the affected individual not only avoids the precise situation, he avoids the general area in which it might occur. For example, I once counseled a very capable executive, rising up the ranks in a big corporation, who had been repeatedly chastened by his mentor and boss · for sitting as quiet as a church mouse through meeting after meeting, only a spectator, not a participant. This fellow had very good ideas and input to offer, often did so privately, and often missed any credit for his contributions. In fact, most of his colleagues viewed him as “dead wood” and wondered about the boss’ motives for having this fellow on the payroll.
You can probably do your own diagnosis at this point and guess right. This fellow had, throughout his junior and senior high school years, stuttered nervously if called on in class, suffered ridicule from other students, and, as a result,. withdrawn from active participation in his classes, doing his level best to be “invisible” at all times. Call that the first layer of self-image scar tissue. Fast forward to his first marriage.
Both his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-Iaw were domineering personalities, quite possibly abusive, both constantly criticizing this fellow’s ideas, whether choice of clothes, political opinion, even an opinion about a book or TV program. Early in this marriage he adopted a keep-it-to-himself attitude. This became a second layer of scar tissue.
Fast forward to a very recent year, when, active in his community association, he found himself at odds over an issue with a very influential, egotistical, uncompromising, bullying, and far more persuasive neighbor. His adversary attacked any idea this fellow proposed thoroughly and aggressively, and turned enough others against this fellow that he was summarily voted off the council at the end of his first year’s term. Layer number three.
It didn’t matter now that he was not dealing with school children, an abusive mother-in-law, or neighbors, that he was in a very different environment, that he had the full support of a powerful mentor and boss, that his suggestions would be listened to with respect, and that it was far more important for him to assert himself than at any of these other times. It didn’t matter that this situation was very different from the others. Like the entire kitchen is to one stove top burner, this situation was still in the general area of the others. Close enough to be threatening to his self-image. Consequently, instead of representing the self-image of the smart, competent, promising .executive he was, in these circumstances, he represented the self-image of a “scaredy cat.”
Putty, Not Plaster
Could this man scrape away all this scar tissue and liberate his selfimage? Absolutely, using all the tools of Psycho-Cybernetics we have discussed-awareness, rational thought, deliberate decision (i.e., establishing the target), purposeful use of the imagination, including the Theater of the Mind mental rehearsal techniques.
In his fine book Profiles of Success and Power, Dr. Gene Llundrum writes: “Self-Image is not set in plaster, it is set in putty.”
I’m known as a plastic surgeon, but as an amateur sculptor for many years, I enjoy taking scalpel to clay and have often sculpted, unsculpted, and resculpted a face in clay until it was exactly as I imagined.
The clay or putty-like material stays soft and malleable enough to do so many, many times. In his infinite wisdom, God manufactured the self-image of similar material, so it remains malleable throughout our entire lives. No one is ever too old, too jaded, too frightened, or too traumatized to “wet the clay” and begin remaking it as they imagine and desire.
Do Not Overprotect Yourself
As in the case of a facial scar, excessive protection against the original source of injury can make us more vulnerable and do us even more damage in other areas. The emotional wall that we build as protection against one person or one situation cuts us off from all other human beings, from many opportunities, even from our real selves. As we have pointed out previously, the person who feels “lonely” or out of touch with other human beings also feels out of touch with his real self and with life.
These listed techniques of Psycho-Cybernetics, all combined, place in your hands a most powerful, magical emotional scalpel, and they infuse your hands with the dynamic talent and ability of a world class emotional surgeon, so that you may remove whatever emotional scars now inhibit your self-image. But to do so, you must take a risk.
You must risk “bumps in the road,” disappointment, rejection, and mistakes with the certainty that they will occur but will not deter you from your overriding goals.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Emotional Scars
Built-up emotional scars, one atop the other, make the self-image a threatened and vulnerable entity that triggers “survival mode behavior” from the servo-mechanism-flee or fight, fear or pugnacious aggressiveness-whenever confronted with a situation it senses might harm it in the same way. as the past incidents that left scars.
In a book titled Anxiety Disorders and Phobias, the authors,1 including a cognitive therapist, state that, ” … the same apparatus that prevents a person from venturing into physical danger also deters him from exposing himself to psychological danger.” In other words, the servo-mechanism may not be able to accurately assess the relativity of dangers. For example., you are not in any physical danger due to social embarrassment at a dinner party by not being able to hold up your end of a conversation, perhaps because you make less money than the other guests and feel inferior because of it, and are therefore fearful of being asked about your job or investments. Yet the situation may trigger the same kind of anxiety and inhibition as being confronted by a mugger in a dark alley. In the case of the mugger, meekly taking out your wallet and throwing it toward or past the mugger and running as fast as you can in the opposing direction may be appropriate. In the social situation, throwing away all opportunity for a pleasant evening and fleeing into silence or monosyllabic responses is wholly inappropriate and may lead to the exact result you are worried about-being perceived badly by hosts and other guests alike. The social situation is most likely to trigger this survival reaction if it closely resembles some situations that have left scar tissue on the self-image.
I would like to make one point addressed earlier in the book: You do not necessarily have to painstakingly revisit every incident or influence all IAaron T. Beck, M.D. and Gary Emery, Ph.D., with Ruth l. Greenberg, Ph. D. (New York: Basic Books, 1990 reprint edition the way to early childhood in order to perform the emotional surgery needed to liberate a scarred self-image from this compulsive triggering of survivalist behavior in situations where it is inappropriate and counterproductive. You can begin with fresh programming, using recall of successes, mental movies, mental rehearsal, and other Psycho-Cybernetics techniques.
Acceptance of the new by the self image will automatically remove the old scars. Remember the term ”solution-oriented therapy’; or better yet “do it yourself solution-oriented therapy” and think in those terms rather than the cliche of 30 years of weekly visits to the couch.
Emotional Scars Help Make Juvenile Delinquents
Psychiatrist Bernard Holland has pointed out that, although juvenile delinquents appear to be very independent and have the reputation of being braggarts, particularly about how they hate everyone in authority, they protest too much. Underneath this hard exterior shell, says Dr. Holland, “is a soft vulnerable inner person who wants to be dependent upon others.” However, they cannot get close to anyone because they will not trust anyone.
Sometime in the past they were hurt by a person important to them, and they dare not leave themselves open to be hurt again. They always have their defenses up. To prevent further rejection and pain, they attack first. Thus, they drive away the very people who would love them, if given half a chance, and could help them.
A popular staple of daytime television talk shows these days is the theme show featuring “teens out of control,” teens swearing, abusing their parents, skipping school, drinking, using drugs, engaging in promiscuous sex, even shoplifting and stealing cars.
The show host and the parents tum these out-of-control teens over to military-type ”juvenile boot camp” leaders who drag them off stage and take them away to “boot camp.” Weeks later; they return, many dramatically changed. This is all controversial, yet there is considerable evidence of it getting positive and lasting results more often than not. When it works, why does it work?
Even at a young age, these youngsters have piled on layer on layer on layer on layer of scar tissue, so that their self-image has totally handed over the reins to negative, Automatic Failure Mechanism emotions, notably including aggression to the nth degree. You’ve no doubt heard the saying “desperate circumstances require desperate measures.” These boot camp interventions are desperate, last-resort measures-in a sense, incredibly sharp emotional scalpels. To slice away all the protective, hardened scar tissue on these self-images requires these heavy-handed, confrontive techniques.
Bottom-line: Most delinquency is symptomatic of severe emotional scarring, a profoundly unhealthy self-image, an Automatic Failure Mechanism unleashed and unchecked.
Carefully consider all your own habitual or repetitive behaviors and life experiences. Do you suffer through one disappointing intimate relationship after another? Do you find one group of co-workers after another disagreeable? Are all your clients cheapskates or “difficult”?And so on. Whether avoidance or aggression, self-image scarring is involved. Can We Prevent Future Emotional Scarring?
There is a cowboy saying that is a favorite of this book’s editor: “The first step to getting out of a hole is to stop digging.” We might say that the first step to liberating a scarred self-image is to stop piling on more scar tissue. Can we do so? Certainly. New knowledge about why you respond to certain stimuli as you do, heightened emphasis on rational thinking, and maturity can be your allies. Just as there are smart things you can do, that are within your sphere of control, to strengthen your physical immune system, such as eating certain foods and avoiding others, taking antioxidant vitamin supplements, regularly exercising, there are things you can do to strengthen your emotional immune system as well.
And with that, we will meet again next time with chapter 10,
Three Prescriptions for Immunizing Yourself Against Emotional Hurts
Interested in your own copy? Get it here
Start at the Beginning: Psycho Cybernetics video book
And, always keep smiling with love and light,
Nancy Holtzen
Skype: nancy.holtzen
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