Psycho Cybernetics (a video book) – 37 chapter 12 – do it yourself tranquilizers
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Relax… and take charge of your life.
Here’s the text from this video:
CHAPTER TWELVE
Do-lt-Yourself Tranquilizers that Bring Peace of Mind
Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole
nervous system, and profoundly affects health.
-Charles W MayoTrainqulizer drugs, which have become so popular, bringing peace of mind, and calmness; they reduce or eliminate nervous symptoms by an “umbrella action.” Just as an umbrella protects us from the rain, the various tranquilizers erect a psychic screen between us and disturbing stimuli. Tranquilizers work
because they greatly reduce, or eliminate, our own response to disturbing outside stimuli. But tranquilizers do not change the environment.The disturbing stimuli are still there. We are still able to recognize them intellectually, but we do not respond to them emotionally.
In chapter 7 on happiness, we said that our own feelings do not
depend on externals, but on our own attitudes, reactions, and
responses. Tranquilizers offer convincing evidence of this fact. In substance they reduce or tone down our overresponse to negative feedback.I might add that today’s medical community seems far too quick
and liberal in resorting to drugs for every imaginable psychological malady, from children’s attention deficit disorder to adult anxiety. The newest business of M.D. diagnosis and drug prescription via the Internet is most disturbing.For the person who suffers from severe anxiety or compulsive
behavior, Dr. Lucinda Bassett at the Midwest Anxiety Center has
done some remarkable work perfectly in keeping with the principles of Psycho-Cybernetics. I recommend her self-help materials and services, including, as a starting point, her book From Panic to Power. The author suffered from acute anxiety disorders beginning in childhood and in 1981 was a full-blown agoraphobic. Using her own healing process as a framework, supplemented with thousands of case histories, she developed a program, expressed in her book, that helps even those with severe anxieties reclaim their true personalities.For a great many people-probably you too-neither drugs nor
advanced anxiety treatment measures are needed; the do-it-yourself, Psycho-Cybernetic tranquilizers you already possess are more than sufficient, once you learn to use them.Overresponse Is a Bad Habit That Can Be Cured
Let us suppose that as you read this, you are sitting quietly in your
den. Suddenly, the telephone rings. From habit and experience, this is a .signal or stimulus that you have learned to obey. Without taking thought, without making a conscious decision about the matter, you respond to it. You jump up from your comfortable seat and hurry to the telephone. The outside stimulus has had the effect of “moving” you. It has changed your mental set and your position or self-determined course of action. You were all set to spend the hour, sitting quietly and relaxed, reading. You were inwardly organized for this. Now, all this is suddenly changed by your response to the external stimulus in the environment.The point I wish to make is this. You do not have to answer the
telephone. You do not have to obey. You can choose to totally ignore the telephone. You can, if you choose, continue sitting quietly and relaxed, maintaining your own original state of organization, by refusing to respond to the signal.Get this mental picture clearly in your mind, for it can be quite
helpful in overcoming the power of external stimuli to disturb you!See yourself sitting quietly, letting the phone ring, ignoring its signal, unmoved by its command. Although you are aware of it, you no longer mind or obey it. Also, get clearly in your mind the fact that the outside signal in itself has no power over you, no power to move you. In the past you have obeyed it, responded to it, purely out of habit. You can, if you, wish, form a new habit of not responding.
Also notice that your failure to respond does not consist in doing
something, or making an effort, or resisting or fighting, but in doing nothing-in relaxation from doing. You merely relax, ignore the signal, and let its summons go unheeded.The telephone ringing is a symbolic analogy to any and every
other outside stimulus you might habitually give control over to and now choose to very intentionally alter that habit. So-called road rage is nothing more than the giving up control of your own emotional state to an outside stimulus.Stress brought on by having too much to do-i.e., trying to do too
many things at once-is giving up control to the fax machine, the cell phone, the e-mail messages, the person hovering in your office doorway.How to Condition Yourself for Equanimity
In much the same way that you automatically obey or respond to the ring of the telephone, we all become conditioned to respond in a certain way to various stimuli in our environment.
The word “conditioning” in psychologital circles grew out of
Pavlov’s well-known experiments where he “conditioned” a dog to
salivate at the sound of a bell, by ringing it just before presenting food to the dog. This procedure was repeated many times. First, the sound of the bell. A few seconds later, the appearance of food. The dog ”learned” to respond to the sound of the bell by salivating in anticipation of the food. Originally, the response made sense. The bell signified that food was forthcoming, and the dog got ready by salivating.However, after the process was repeated a number of times, the dog would continue to salivate whenever the bell was rung, whether or not food was immediately forthcoming. The dog had now become “conditioned” to salivate at the mere sound of the bell. Its response made no sense and served no good purpose, but it continued to respond in the same way out of habit.
There are a great many “bells,” or disturbing stimuli, in our various environmental situations, to which we have become conditioned to and to which we continue to respond out of habit, whether or not the response makes any sense. But, my friend, you are not a poor, dumb animal who must go through life so unwittingly and easily manipulated and controlled. You are a human being with creative powers, with the power of rational thinking, with the ability to stand up on your hind legs and assert yourself. You must decide to be “worked like a dog” or to be your own person, to be controlled or to be in control. This is a decision with far-reaching consequences. It is the answer to the question,
how can I get respect in a disrespectful world?Many people learn to fear strangers, for example, because of
parental admonitions to have nothing to do with strange people. “Do not accept candy from a stranger.” “Do not get into a car with a stranger,” and sp on. The response of avoiding strangers serves a good purpose in small children. But many people continue to feel ill at ease and · uncomfortable in the presence of all strangers, even when they know that they come as friends instead of foes. Strangers become ”bells” and the learned response becomes fear, avoidance; or the desire to run away.In counseling sales professionals who are “frozen” and avoiding
the task of “prospecting” by every imaginable ,excuse and contrivance, I frequently uncovered this bit of programming grooved into their servo mechanism. In counseling men and women who are unable to make new friends or meet and initiate relationships with members of the opposite sex, I often uncovered this same bit of programming.Still another person may respond to crowds, closed spaces, open
spaces, persons in authority such as “the boss,” by feelings of fear and anxiety. In each case the crowd, the closed space, the open space, the boss, or whatever acts as a bell that says, “Danger is present, run away, feel afraid.” And out of habit, we continue to respond in the accustomed way. We obey the bell. It is time to disconnect these bells.How to Extinguish Conditioned Responses
We can extinguish the conditioned response if we make a practice
of relaxing instead of responding. We can, if we wish, just as in the
case of the telephone, learn to ignore the bell and continue to sit quietly and let it ring. A key thought that we can carry with us to use whenever we are confronted by any disturbing stimulus is to say to ourselves, “The telephone is ringing, but I do not have to answer it. I can just let it ring.” This thought will key in to your mental picture of yourself sitting quietly, relaxed, unresponsive, doing nothing, letting the telephone ring unheeded. It will act as a trigger or clue to call up the same attitude that you had when letting the telephone ring.It You Cannot Ignore the Response, Delay It
In the process of extinguishing a conditioning, a person may find it difficult, especially at first, to totally ignore a bell, especially if it is rung unexpectedly. In such instances you can accomplish the same final result-extinction of the conditioning-by delaying your response.
A woman, whom we will call Mary S., became anxious and ill at
ease in the presence of crowds. She was able, by practicing the foregoing technique, to immunize or tranquilize herself against the disturbing stimuli on most occasions. However, occasionally, the desire to run away, to flee, became almost overpowering.“Remember Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind?” I asked her.
“Her philosophy was, ‘I won’t worry about that now. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.’” She was able to maintain her inner equilibrium and effectively cope with her environment in spite of war, fire, pestilence, and unrequited love by delaying the response.Delaying the response breaks up and interferes with the automatic
workings of conditioning. ”Counting to ten” when you are tempted to become angry is based on the same principle and is very good advice, if you count slowly and in fact actually delay the re~ponse, rather than merely holding in your angry shouting or desk pounding. The response in anger consists of more than shouting or desk beating. The tension in your muscles is a response. You cannot feel the emotion of anger or fear if your muscles remain perfectly relaxed. Therefore, if you can delay
feeling angry for ten seconds, delay responding at all, you can extinguish the autortiatic reflex.Mary S. extinguished her conditioned fear of crowds by delaying
her response. When she felt that she simply had to run away, she would say to herself, “Very well, but not this very minute. I will delay leaving the room for two minutes. I can refuse to obey for only two minutes!”Relaxation Erects a Psychic Screen, or Tranquilizer
It is well to get clearly in your mind the fact that our disturbed feelings our anger, hostility, fear, anxiety, insecurity-are caused by our own responses, not by externals. Response means tension.
Lack of response means relaxation. It has been proved in scientific laboratory experiments that you absolutely cannot feel angry, fearful, anxious, insecure, unsafe as long as your muscles remain perfectly relaxed. All these things are, in essence, our own feelings. Tension in muscles is a preparation for action or a getting ready to respond. Relaxing muscles brings about mental relaxation or a peaceful relaxed attitude. Thus, relaxation is nature’s own tranquilizer, which erects a psychic screen or
umbrella between you and the disturbing stimulus.Physical relaxation is a powerful disinhibitor for the same reason.
In the last chapter we learned that inhibition results from excessive negative feedback, or rather from our over response to negative feedback.Relaxation means no response. Therefore, in your daily practice
of relaxation, you are learning disinhibition as well as providing yourself with nature’s own do-it-yourself tranquilizer, which you can take with you into your daily activities. Protect yourself from disturbing stimuli by maintaining the relaxed attitude.Early in his speaking career, the editor of this book would go
through a series of rituals to “get up” for the pending performance, including pacing around, without realizing it, adding considerable physical tension to his body. Later in his career, he could often be observed stretched out casually in a chair, even lying on a couch in a room immediately prior to his time on stage, looking to the observer to be completely disinteres’ted in the upcoming task. While he still went through certain mental rituals to ready himself for the performance,
he did so in a physically relaxed manner. You too can learn to be
motivated, to be energized, to be ready for peak performance without being tense and anxious.Learn to Use Pre-Performance Rituals to Your Advantage
In several different articles in various’ issues of Golf Magazine, Dr.
Richard Coop, author of the book Mind Over Golf, has advised players to briefly step back from a shot if they feel negative thoughts boiling up, and to use some physical ritual to regain calm control and reset their concentration. It may be adjusting their glove· or tapping their club on the ground. He also teaches developing your own personal preshot routine, as the best way to keep stray thoughts from invading your mind in the middle of your swing. “Bottom-line,” Dr. Coop writes, “good players have a consistent routine and poor players don’t.”We have a saying in Psycho-Cybernetics training: “Calm mind,
calm body; calm body, calm mind.” It doesn’t matter which end of the thread you start with, physical or mental relaxation, the result is the same. The trick is to develop a “pre-shot routine” for whatever you do that calms and relaxes, not heightens anxiety.
And with that, we will meet again next time with chapter 12,
Build yourself a quiet room in your mind
Interested in your own copy? Get it here
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And, always keep smiling with love and light,
Nancy Holtzen
Skype: nancy.holtzen
Work With Me and the Prosperity Team – Prosperity Formula
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