REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The Mindbenders and how they do it.

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Sunday, January 31, 2010 23:56
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Sunday, January 17, 2010 7:56 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Okay,

For this thread imma dispense with my usual habit of obfuscated hints and broad generalities, as such the content might be disturbing, so, you were warned.

That said...

What we're talkin about here is the collective of research done between 1948-1985 by various pools on human behavior, contrary to what some folk believe, there never was any great grand conspiracy but rather a whole lot of smaller research programs and pools, often with conflicting interests and directives, most of which failed abysmally.

Not just Gov interests, either, Milgram, Standford, Skinner... but even pure research found it's way into this, but you also had Ultra, Artichoke, Monarch/Bluebird - ironic that Ultra gets the most attention despite it being chem-based and other than bringing us Ritalin and SSRIs was prettymuch an abysmal failure, while the most successful, my pet hatred, Bluebird was far more effective and insiduous, being behaviorally based, and Naomi was far more dangerous since it resulted in Phoenix, among other military projects.

All to easy to lump them into one category, but they WERE different projects with different goals, but for now we will class this as "mindbending" for the sake of simplicity.

And imma show you to some degree how the machine works.

Firstoff, realize you've been had - note that this stuff is always, ALWAYS, oh so carefully talked about in the past tense only and then dismissed as quickly as possible - why do you think that is ?

More to the point, why the HELL would you believe that ?

We're talking about agencies who when caught out, promise never to do it again, laugh up their sleeves and go right on doin it till they get caught again, who even their so-called superiors cannot call to heel cause they're never in the loop to know, allright ?

And given the overwhelming evidence that COINTELPRO (infiltration and sabotage of protest groups) and MOCKINGBIRD (fake news, Talon News Service, Jeff Gannon, paid editorials, Maggie Gallagher, etc) are still going strong, all day long, and given the proven untrustworthy source of the assertation...

About as credible as that bullshit story about our enhanced interrogation tactics being reverse engineered from a pilot program to resist primitive 50's era north korean interrogation, innit ?

So let's not kid ourselves, this research is an ongoing thing, to the point where even corporations indulge in it, they just call it marketing, although nowadays with doubleclick and others selling mined data to the alphabet goons, the line gets a little blurry.

And that brings us to the fruits of that bitter vine, which IF YOU LOOK, you can see around you every day - not all of them are poisonous, mind you, that same research has been extremely effective at helping victims of trauma or abuse, I deal with some Class-IV people on occasion, which are for the layman, folks triaged off as unrecoverable by conventional pysch folk.
Success rate sucks, but that I have one at all is a pretty solid accomplishment.

But the end results of this research are so invasive, unbiquitous and prevalent that they escape most peoples notice, especially with the desensitization effect of television, which is loaded to the brim and overflowing with it...

Push-polling, mental trickery in advertisements, political doublespeak, all come from this root, everything from a teacher using crowd dynamic manipulation to control an unruly classroom, to the blended music advert on the radio, to politicians managing to seem to promise everything while committing to nothing.

Hell, I noticed it almost instantly in army basic, that they were using a combination of seperation anxiety, forced exhaustion, and sleep deprivation not to "toughen up" their subjects, but to render them into a compliant, easily programmed state - being born an iron willed, contrary jackass has it's advantages here.

If we wanna be brutally honest, some of us even use it here, on each other.

The key is recognizing it for what it is, deconstructing it, and then reverse engineering the intended result and rationale behind it - which can be anything from "buy my product" to "shut up and agree with me" to "stop accepting things without question" - often it's a matter of motive, which can only be determined once you critically examine the attempt.

And I'd like some of you to do that, as an exercise - use a commercial, or a political statement, or whatever, but take it apart here and examine it, with notes, and try to determine the motive, or prove one, if you know it in advance, right ?


And this part for you specificaly, Littlebird - before we really tear into this, hie thy backside down to the nearest health food store and buy some catnip tea and a non-subliminal environmental background noise CD, like sring rain, pounding surf or thunderstorm.

The tea is a natural calmative, one subtle enough to slip past the defenses which will trigger on actual chems or tranqs, and the white noise of the CD will bring a mood stability that is similarly subtle - the combination of which should bring you a bit of breathing space against those "Shut the hell up" defense triggers and eventually allow you to subvert them, this is part of what's called the working box theory, where the person in question uses environment to set the defenses in rest-mode and then disables them from inside, which is prettymuch the only way to do it cause any direct external interference will set them off in an exponentially increasing rate.

Patience and a controlled environment with limited, predictable social interactions is key to the working box theory and it's application.

-Frem

There always has to be a price.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 8:14 PM

BYTEMITE


Do you mind if I link this to DT and my friend Drago in e-mail? I think DT would be interested, and my friend Drago has wandered around on some boards that discuss stuff like this for a while.

I'm listening and thinking.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 8:46 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Frem, I feel like I have to do a lot of reading between the lines to work out what you are talking about. Is there a possibility you can provide some links to give some clarity.

Am I right in assuming that you are questioning the motives and the application of certain behavioural sciences?

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 9:00 PM

FREMDFIRMA


Yes, and how that research has kind of polluted almost every element of our society, Magons.

I'll add some clarity stuff when I get back to my PC, remember I am typing this on the fly on a laptop in the middle of a deserted, frozen over park in between walking security rounds for site three, so bear with me.

And no, I don't mind, Byte - don't expect me to be nice to him if he goes on a personal-issue rampage however, I've had enough of that for my patience from him.

-F

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 11:02 PM

FREMDFIRMA


Ok, where to even start, let's begin by breaking down and explaining the research pools, starting with the straight civilian, pure research folks.

The "Founding Fathers" of much of this research were Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, and the latters ideas on behaviorism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner

Problem with the latter is his own politics and beliefs encouraged it's application offensively against "unruly" people rather than theraputically.

As for how involved Skinner was in any of the Military/Intel research, no one knows, but it certainly would not be out of character.

The three most substantial studies along this line were the Asch, Milgram, and Stanford experiments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

And out of that a seperate branch of study called "Lucifer Effect" also came about, regarding how even the most decent people can be lead into doing truly hideous things by disparity of social power and perceived authority.
http://www.lucifereffect.com/

Modernly that line of research has been broken further down into crowd dynamics in combination with swarm theory/game theory concerning manipulation of large groups of people at once, which for all but the most minor of things (like selling a product) it falls apart cause there are just too many variables in the average crowd - that said, you would NOT want someone like me in the middle of one with a bullhorn giving helpful advice, the very thought should scare you.

Data mining ties in with that research, and it's the one area where it crosses over because the data mining companies used for market research by corporations, who are for-profit enterprises themselves, turned around and also sold the data to the FBI, NSA - who were forbidden by law to collect it but hid behind the excuse that they didn't COLLECT it, just bought it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/etc/producer.html

Which leads us to the dark side of that research, mostly conducted by the CIA.

The most well known of these was of course MKULTRA, although in essense it was a disastrous failure, being primarily focused on chemical behavior control/loyalty, which was found to be prettymuch untenable as a sole solution, although it did boost research that lead to antipsychotics, ritalin, and eventually SSRI drugs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKULTRA

There were also multiple offshoots of ULTRA that lead in different directions, like NAOMI and DELTA, which didn't work so well on the chemical end of things, but having the trained operators lead eventually to PHOENIX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKNAOMI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKDELTA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program

Recruitment for that continued well into the 1980's, as one of the second chance school systems I was dumped off on was a feeder system to provide likely candidates for the program via funnelling them into military service, and it was overseen by a "dual-hatter" (usually military/Intel, but in this case education/intel) by the name of Bill Haroth, that prick - and yes, the school system in question was also called Phoenix.
I had thought them defunct, but apparently they're back in operation.
http://www.aacps.org/aacps/phoenix/index.asp

ARTICHOKE was a side business of that focused on military interrogation, eventually producing the KUBARK interrogation strategy, which is what we call "enhanced interrogation" - and several of it's methods, forced social isolation, forced exhaustion, sleep deprivation, were introduced into our army basic training when it was evidenced by the Twentynine Palms Survey that a substantial percentage of troops would refuse to execute obviously illegal orders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_ARTICHOKE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUBARK#CIA_manuals
http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/419.html

I notice that the wiki article on ULTRA has been edited, ARTICHOKE and BLUEBIRD didn't have anything to do with each other and apparently someone with access to the delete button has wiped anything related to BLUEBIRD/MONARCH.

BLUEBIRD was entirely behavioral, and MONARCH was a subsection of that for the whole programmed assassin bit, which never much took off, but BLUEBIRD being my pet peeve on this front, mostly cause it was so damned successful, this I do know quite a bit about.

BLUEBIRD was all about drastic behavior modification, and part of the initial research was bankrolling Synanon in exchange for observing their behavior modification methods.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/synanon.html

When Synanon began to attract too much attention and started to sink under the weight of legal troubles, the folks involved here bankrolled The Seed, which was more or less a clone of Synanon, but then had to shift things again when Congress began investigating back in 1974 - an investigation which ultimately lead to the Church Committee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

So, with the application of more money, The Seed became Straight, Inc. which collapsed in 1993 due to the same backlash of lawsuits and criminal charges, and rose again as WWASPS, which with the sinking of Pathway Family Centers in Fed 2009, is all but doomed - but it's apparently a game of whack a mole, since CEDU has risen in it's place.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/synanon/synanon7.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEDU

I can trace that lineage from one to the other with absolute assurance, this isn't theory, but documented fact, and the involvement of many current heavily-connected political folk (for which Romney took a BEATING at the polls, when his connection to this shit came out) should not be any surprise by now.
http://reason.com/archives/2007/06/27/romney-torture-and-teens


And, thing is, all of that research eventually gets applied somehow, from great and small, all around us, even here - hell, look at how I make folk laugh, and connect that "laugh at stupid idea" to the idea of Sarah Palin running for president, and it WORKS, at least temporarily, despite me TELLING YOU THE PURPOSE OF IT, right up front, because it plays on pre-existing conditioning from almost every form of media surrounding you today.

But yeah, those are the ugly roots of the tree that has it's branches strangling our society today.
Does that clarify things any ?

-Frem

This is vengeance, and so I shall ferry you to Hell.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 11:27 PM

LITTLEBIRD


Frem,

I'll go get the tea and CD first thing tomorrow.

I always just lumped project Bluebird under the MK header. But, yep, it was Bluebird leading to Dissociative Identity Disorder. What a mess.

By the way, the book Bluebird: deliberate creation of multiple personality by Psychiatrists has recently been re-released under the title: The C.I.A. Doctors: Human rights violations by American psychiatrists .. Colin A Ross. M.D.

I want to thank you for coming forward with all of this and sharing what you know. I am already learning things I did not know before and you must know how heart felt my appreciation is.

Debra

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Sunday, January 17, 2010 11:43 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Yep, Bluebird - Sodium Amytal, Strobe lights, ECT and DID, all too goddamned familiar with it, which reminds me of a semi-related news story back in November 2007 which touched on the issue previously.

Here's the thread in question, quite relevant to this discussion also.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=31482

But one can skip right to the news story too, if they want.
http://www.4029tv.com/news/14664847/detail.html

-F

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Monday, January 18, 2010 1:06 AM

LITTLEBIRD


Frem,

I quit taking all the psychiatric drugs they had me on 3 years ago. I was starting to throw up all the time and could hardly get out of bed or move. It almost felt as if I was being poisoned.

Since then we've tried acupuncture, body work, and a couple of hypnosis sessions. The body work helped some, but still not a lot of improvement.

I've been telling my husband that it almost felt better to just work on this myself without outside help. Which would seem to indicate The Working Box theory if I am understanding it. I have noticed lately that when I lay down and get into a meditative mood that sometimes memories will just float up to the surface. Plus, it does calm me down for a bit. But mostly it is just living in a state of high anxiety and not doing anything that might trigger me. I even had a mild dissociative episode just sharing on this list. But feeling better now. stronger.

First time I was hospitalized in 1977 I was put on a wing with only MPD patients. An entire wing!
This is widespread.

So, yes, it is good to put this information out for people to chew on and think about. It does rattle cages and push buttons though and most people just really don't want to deal with it. It's understandable I guess. It's weird shit.

It's heartening to see a few people ask some questions and start thinking about it.

I also am not advocating anyone to stop their meds cold turkey like I did. We're all different and it's not a decision to make lightly I don't think.



Debra

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Monday, January 18, 2010 1:21 AM

LITTLEBIRD



Thanks for the links. Don't know how I missed the 2007 posts. probably dream of rabbit holes and life rafts if I even decide to actually go to bed.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 6:42 AM

BYTEMITE


Ah ha. I'm actually familiar with the Asch Conformity Experiments, Milgram Experiment, and Stanford Prison Experiment.

I took a class on psychology early in my college years, even though I pretty much hate modern psychology because of the potential damage I feel it can do. I did this for a few reasons, first because I wanted to find out if my feelings about psychology as a pseudoscience were wrong, second because I wanted to challenge myself by taking a class I thought I would utterly loathe, and thirdly because I do have an interest in trying to understand how people think and feel, mostly for writing, but also because I'm something of an outside observer when it comes to human emotion.

The psychology class provided me no such illumination, as everything that was covered in the class screamed at me with poor scientific method, illogical self-serving conclusions, and I had genuine objections as to how the class was teaching that this perspective of psychology was human nature. Our understanding in this field is far from complete, and the ARROGANCE of the people who believe they KNOW human nature got me into some insane debates with the professor now and then.

It was the only class in college where I got a C, my lowest grade ever, and I was probably lucky that I wasn't ever thrown out. One of the biggest arguments we had was the day that we covered the Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments.

Anyway. Reading on.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 6:51 AM

BYTEMITE


Quote:
Recruitment for that continued well into the 1980's, as one of the second chance school systems I was dumped off on was a feeder system to provide likely candidates for the program via funnelling them into military service, and it was overseen by a "dual-hatter" (usually military/Intel, but in this case education/intel) by the name of Bill Haroth, that prick - and yes, the school system in question was also called Phoenix.
I had thought them defunct, but apparently they're back in operation.


Wait, doesn't this mean that the funding support structure such as WWASP is intact somehow? Or has someone else now stepped in with this same interest?

EDIT:

Quote:
So, with the application of more money, The Seed became Straight, Inc. which collapsed in 1993 due to the same backlash of lawsuits and criminal charges, and rose again as WWASPS, which with the sinking of Pathway Family Centers in Fed 2009, is all but doomed - but it's apparently a game of whack a mole, since CEDU has risen in it's place.


Ah.

EDIT #2: Hey Frem, looked into it. Looks like CEDU is having troubles if not dead themselves, but we may want to look into "Universal Health Services" and the "Idaho Educational Services." Also possibly an Organization called Brown Schools, which I can't seem to find any information about. Hmm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEDU

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Monday, January 18, 2010 6:56 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Goodness, Byte, what was the argument about the Stanford experiment?? How could there BE arguments, it seems so obvious.

Okay, I don't know about all the fancy stuff you talk about Frem, or most of the names of...projects? Companies? I dunno. But what I GOT out of that first post was stuff I've known, or suspected, or worked out, in the last twenty years. Is it because I'm older and anyone with half a brain can work it out in time? Or am I missing something? When we watch TV, ads and politicians and pundits, etc., we laugh at the "subtle" shit and manipulation, it's perfectly obvious to Jim and Choey and I, so what are you telling us beyond that?

Doesn't everyone already know that "boot camp" is intended to break the spirit, tear a person down so they can be re-molded into what the military wants? I thought that was just general knowledge?

The basic human brain is convoluted enough that it subconsciously uses many of the tactics you mentioned or hinted at, and more, and you're right, we no doubt use them on one another. It's only natural that those who wanted to control would recognize this, take it further and try and figure out the best methods, most effective tricks, etc. Of course there are tons of people out there who never "get it", but I don't think too many of them exist HERE, so you must be telling us something beyond what I already know. Yes? I'm a bit confused; like Magons, I'm a bit unclear on all of what you're saying. Sorry if I seem obtuse.

I guess part of what I'm saying is: If we understand it and know it's out there, isn't that all that's important? Not who or how it started, who funded it, etc., etc., just that we need to be aware? I guess I'm confused...



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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:05 AM

HKCAVALIER


Hey, Littlebird, welcome to the visible portion of the RWED.

Have you heard of/tried EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy? Frem, you heard of this? I've had some of my most profound breakthroughs, cleared some of my most tenacious PTSD using EMDR. It's really amazingly simple and manages to give you all the benefits of, say, a year of talking therapy in a matter of hours, self-generated and self-directed.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:09 AM

BYTEMITE


The way the professor presented the experiments was "look! proof that people are EVIL!"

I took issue. Immediately. I pointed out that this is not a natural setting, that there could have been any number of influences upon the guard students, even plants that had been encouraged to act in a certain way in order to bring about a certain result BASED on previous experiments about peer pressure and crowd control. The experiment was uncontrolled, both in an ethical and scientific sense, and all conclusions derived thereof are suspect.

Can people in authority become twisted by that authority? Oh hell yes. The error is in claiming that EVERYONE in an abusive system becomes contributors to the abusive system, and that it's human nature for this to happen. Which is what my dumbass professor was trying to push. No, likely the guard role people who took things to such a horrific level already had some sadistic or psychopathic tendencies before the experiment started. It's not difficult, not in this society, and it's also not hard to coach people to act a certain way. The setting was specifically engineered to bring out such tendencies, as such the experiment had a bias from the get go and was EXTREMELY unethical. They knew the outcome before it had even happened.

Do you see why this is a prop up for totalitarianism? Try applying this idea to modern society (also an unnatural setting). There is a big big problem with this idea, and that's why I argue against it and fight it so hard. All science has an agenda, and psychology often has the most DISTURBING ones.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:17 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Okay, Frem, are you going to tell us EMDR is a subtle conspiracy or something? Because I'm just like Cavalier; EMDR helped me dump tons and tons of "old messages" and was the beginning of me being able to get healthy, so I'm going to have a hard time believing it's some kind of conspiracy or something. The woman I worked with was on the forefront of it, has a couple of books out on it, and is fairly well known in the community. She was never anything but supportive and let me find my own way 99% of the time, so I'm curious what you have to say about it.

I understand it was initially developed for helping people with PTSD in the military, so I can see how its use could be subverted, but the method itself...?

By the way, you might be surprised to discover that the mental health community (what I've experienced of it, and that's included two of the biggest forums on the 'net) is very negative on the subject of psychiatrists and psychologists. We feel pretty much the way you described, and avoid them except if we absolutely NEED someone to prescribe meds. Therapists are a different matter---there are bad ones out there and good ones, but the good ones are worth their weight in gold.

Just from experience and observation, I put it down to psychiatrists' (we call them p-docs) egos and greed, and the fact that their training has all beed chemically-oriented, whereas therapists most often COME from therapy and want to give back, plus are able to empathize with what the mentally ill go through, which p-docs are definitely NOT, they go with the "doctor as god" prinicipal, and tho' most of them I've seen or heard of are at least as mentally ill as those of us categorized as such, wouldn't be caught dead even recognizing that fact.

I found out later that, among the medical community, p-dos are on the very BOTTOM rung, which explains a lot about how they behave and what they think. Just me, rambling.



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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:20 AM

BYTEMITE


Niki, Frem hasn't even mentioned the EMDR thing. Cavalier was just asking him a question about his take on it, and wondering if LittleBird had looked into it.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:21 AM

HKCAVALIER


Yeah, the obvious missing piece in the professor's "theory of evil" is all the people who instinctively opt not to participate in such "studies." People with their empathy intact don't go in for this kinda shit. "You want me to what? Administer an electric shock to some stranger? Are you out of your tiny little mind?"

Are there plenty of broken people in this world who will buy into the "in the name of science" b.s. and go through with all manner of inhuman, effed up abuses? Well, duh. But that's not human nature, that's conditioning.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:23 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Omygawd, Byte, is that really the conclusion your teacher came to? That's just plain SICK! Yes; everything you said is right on the money, and it's exactly what I've heard and nothing else. I've never heard anyone say it was proof that at their root all people are evil! I never went to Stanford, I lived and worked nearby and folkdanced weekly there, so I met a lot of other young people who went there, and pretty much everyone knew about that experiment. It was ages after the experiment itself, but everyone knew about it.

We pretty much agreed, and I would say, many people can end up the way the students did, but for many different reasons. Young people still carry an awful lot of "old messages"; people don't have to be psychopathic to be pushed into behaving as they did...they can be "authortarian followers" (remember that?), young people are more susceptible to both peer pressure and desire to please their professors; there can be myriad reasons they gave in to the temptation and acted the way they did.

The mere idea that ANYONE can be made that way is absurd--bad professor, I would say. There are far too many out there; either bad, lazy, ignorant or any number of other things, but it's scary to think people just took what he said verbatum!



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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:30 AM

BYTEMITE


His other students did. ._. Which brings to mind some question about the intention of psychology students... I've seen quite a number of psychiatrists and psychologists, both historical and present day who I do not think fall under any definition of the word "sane."

He was also pushing an agenda, and my impression is that rather than recognize the problems with the experiment, a lot of people, not just the people in my class, accept it as human nature. That's Frem's point, that's why he brought it up. In a number of liberal arts colleges, THIS is the interpretation of human nature that is being pushed.

I have nothing against liberals, but many of the more educated among them are being controlled by a sinister crowd. Similar to how many conservatives (uneducated and educated) are being manipulated by the god and business rhetoric.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:30 AM

HKCAVALIER


Quote:
Originally posted by Niki2:
Young people still carry an awful lot of "old messages"; people don't have to be psychopathic to be pushed into behaving as they did...they can be "authortarian followers" (remember that?), young people are more susceptible to both peer pressure and desire to please their professors; there can be myriad reasons they gave in to the temptation and acted the way they did.
And not just any "young people," Niki, but college students in particular. The psychological profile of a successful college student is already "broken in," as it were, preconditioned to jump through any hoop, ignore healthy resistance and submit to authority.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 8:51 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Frem

My opinion: if a mind can think of an action, no matter how evil or perverse, then someone has already done it somewhere. And probably several someones, or even many someones working together - and even funded by the government. Sad, but true.

Not to make any grand statements on human nature, but humans have been human for a long time, starting, I think, at the acquisition of abstract language. And there is a lot of already existing information about us humans in fairy tales, history, and news stories. For example, 'The Emperor's New Clothes' (Asch) or Nazi Germany (Milgram, which the experiment purportedly was to examine). Even the Synanon programs are a lot like the public Chinese criticism\ self-confession sessions instituted in every village during the Great Leap Forward.

Regarding this -
"Legal changes after 9/11 allowed the FBI and other intelligence agencies to move aggressively to access the vast oceans of information aggregated by commercial vendors. The data titans, ChoicePoint, Acxiom and LexisNexis, offer not only access to data -- everything from ordinary public records to personal spending habits -- but also increasingly sell analytic technologies to the feds to help them make sense of the vast amount of information out there.
... a 2004 GAO report identified 199 data-mining efforts in 52 federal agencies, and that's just what's known publicly."

- it's something I've been harping on since the USPATRIOT Act was passed. Will they get any useful intelligence out of it ? Hell no. 'You can see anything, if you use the right filters'. What they NEED is a data training set - they need to have a robust set of activities logs of many known terrorists in order to search for similar patterns (fuzzy logic) among a large set of data of regular people. What they WILL get is lots of access to the records of innocent people - access that could always be used to construe ill intent, if they so desired. My feeling though is - anything that can be done will be done. Not an endorsement, far from it, but a statement of sad fact.

And let me repeat my thesis that the US a heavily propagandized population. We are told over and over to ignore our experiences and those of our families and neighbors in favor of ideology and someone else's concepts: everyone lives in a wonderful house like on TV, happiness is buying the latest stuff like all those happy good looking people in the commercials, capitalism is nature's invention and works to an ultimate good, if you don't have what everyone else has like on TV it's your fault ... To a large extent we are already trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys, ready to be fed to the corporations and government.


***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 8:59 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Byte and Cavalier: I agree. And I guess I was kind of meaning "college students"...by 61, I just think of them as "youngsters", if you know what I mean. But I would posit that people who DON'T go to college are ignorant of how they're manipulated, and I'm not sure which is worse.

Frem:
Quote:
And let me repeat my thesis that the US a heavily propagandized population.
Doesn't everyone with half a brain already know this? I thought they did. Not counting the "ignorant" (not "stupid") who never bother to think for themselves and just go through life accepting whatever they're told...which may be the majority, I dunno, I don't want to THINK so anyway! Call me an optimist!

I agree with almost everything you just posted, but you didn't answer our question: What about EMDR? I'd like to hear your take.



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Monday, January 18, 2010 9:12 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Ah, gonna take these in order.

Byte
Quote:
Wait, doesn't this mean that the funding support structure such as WWASP is intact somehow? Or has someone else now stepped in with this same interest?

Well, there's always Government largesse - The Seed was started by a government grant slid to them under the fig leaf of that crap being a drug rehab concept, helped along by the quiet men in suits watching from the sidelines - and Phoenix is funded under special education, technically.

CEDU is Justin's problem, and looks like he's doin a bang up job, which doesn't surprise me in the least, I gotta stay outta that, trust that I hear enough "meddling old bastard" commentary from him as it is - and this day and age my more aggressive methods have no proper place in, so avoiding the temptation to intervene is the best idea.

That's not to say there ain't a few places where I honestly believe workin someone over from behind in the dark with an axe handle would have a positive effect on the situation, but that's probably more bad habit talkin than wisdom.

Niki
Quote:
I guess part of what I'm saying is: If we understand it and know it's out there, isn't that all that's important? Not who or how it started, who funded it, etc., etc., just that we need to be aware? I guess I'm confused...

Yeah, YOU know this stuff, but every generation after knew less and less, and was discouraged heavily from even questioning till it almost became a programmed instinct, which in combination with the desensitization effect of media and the sheer amount of indoctrination in schools these days, both psychological and chemical, younger generations do not have those edges quite as sharp, barring abberent folk like Dark Sparks.
(not meant as insult, simply as divergent from "norm", even if "norm" is screwed up by OUR standards.)

So I am puttin the history up front and center, along with details, connections and motivations, for those who do not, or did not, know, and so that it makes sense to both them and people who don't live in the US (as I suspect Magonsdaughter doesn't) who would otherwise be unaware of the related history involved in this branch of research and application.

Don't take for granted that generations after yours have the same ability to make the connections and see through the sham, not when they have been trained and conditioned against that prettymuch from the very cradle.
(See Also: Black Pedagogy, Authoritarian/Adversarial parenting)

I am also saying don't take for granted that this stuff isn't still going on, cause even under this administration there's a push to combine this very research with COINTELPRO and apply it.
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/obama-staffer-infiltration-911-groups/
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/
index.html

That alone is worth watching out for, but really I don't think I am tellin you or Mikey, or even Byte, anything you don't know - this is mostly for them that don't, and whatever lurkers who cannot overcome their own issues enough to post them, who may find the info useful despite being unable to come forth into the discussion.

HKCavalier

Re: EMDR

One thing at a time, guy - trick with this boobytrapped variant of PTSD is that if you push too fast, too hard, it pushes back, viciously, you gotta be subtle, I was gettin to that part AFTER giving the lady some "breathing room" against the "remain silent" programming, which appears to have time-faded without reinforcement, prolly cause it didn't take well in the first place and whoever pulled this in the first place discarded her as a subject when her underlying personality didn't mesh close enough with the programming to make her useful.

Littlebird, if you're going to try that, wait on it - wait till you've reached that balanced meditative state when the suppressed stuff starts floating to the top like tea leaves out of your subconscious and THEN do it, but be prepared cause that will almost certainly start pulling subconscious triggers on you and set off the anxiety complex till you get a better handle on avoiding them - again, patience, you push this thing, it can and will push back, and there's no way to know if there is a breakdown or self-injury subroutine in there, which there often was in many of the early subjects cause they did not want to leave human evidence someone might be able to call them on.

Byte
Quote:
The error is in claiming that EVERYONE in an abusive system becomes contributors to the abusive system, and that it's human nature for this to happen. Which is what my dumbass professor was trying to push. No, likely the guard role people who took things to such a horrific level already had some sadistic or psychopathic tendencies before the experiment started. It's not difficult, not in this society, and it's also not hard to coach people to act a certain way. The setting was specifically engineered to bring out such tendencies, as such the experiment had a bias from the get go and was EXTREMELY unethical. They knew the outcome before it had even happened.

Do you see why this is a prop up for totalitarianism? Try applying this idea to modern society (also an unnatural setting). There is a big big problem with this idea, and that's why I argue against it and fight it so hard. All science has an agenda, and psychology often has the most DISTURBING ones.

Oh yes indeedy - there's some damned funny stories around about experiments like that who've run into a natural contrarian, reflexive snarker (*waves to Mikey*) or Dark Spark, which tends to immediately ruin their experiment and blow their pre-conceived and anticipated result out of the water.

While the percentage of troops who actively rebelled against the concepts of the Twentynine Palms survey was in fact fairly low, one in twenty is plenty enough when they are against it strongly enough to open fire on their fellow troops to prevent it - and if you look at the timing between that study and the revamp of training policy shortly thereafter, the connection is bloody obvious as an adjustment to weed out folk who will react badly to illegal orders of that type - note that NOT ONE MEMBER of the 82nd airborne resisted, even passively by grounding arms, the order to confiscate weapons from american citizens - the Oathkeepers is our counter to that, playing on the better part of human nature against training to the contrary, cause human nature is in fact, HUMANE, Rousseau knew it, Kropotkin proved it, and the evidence is right before anyone who knows where to look.

One might go as far as to say the X-factor of all those contrarian, snarky, sparky and other folk who put personal mores before acceptance is a damned solid bulwark against tyranny by manipulation of the public consciousness, even if most of em are pretty halfassed and short sighted in how they go about resisting that manipulation.

Niki
Quote:
I found out later that, among the medical community, p-dos are on the very BOTTOM rung, which explains a lot about how they behave and what they think. Just me, rambling.

Yah, but they're individuals too - good and bad, just that the profession itself has been fairly corrupted by a lack of respect, bad training, and insufficient ethical policies, which lead to a snowball effect of the profession then racking up even more unethical people, etc etc.

I mean, contrast Doc Perry, with Bacharach the go-to-guy for Ritalin scrips.
(he's the chem control "hatchetman" for Phoenix, btw, the "evaluator" they send those kids to in order to justify the Ritalin scrip, with a 100% chance of that diagnosis, and he's been in legal trouble enough times that they prolly have some hold over him about it, especially since one of his patients murdered another a while back - by poisoning, no less.)

Much like involving Social Services in an abuse case, going to a Psych professional is a VERY hit-or-miss option, and it shouldn't oughta be.

That said, there ARE good people in it, Doc Perry for one, and we have a few folks who are actually accredited that we can mostly trust, but in something as delicate as this I think trust trumps credentials every time.
I mean, I have NO official credentials at all, doesn't mean nothin to me, and it sure don't mean a damn thing to folk I help.

Byte
Quote:
That's Frem's point, that's why he brought it up. In a number of liberal arts colleges, THIS is the interpretation of human nature that is being pushed.

One of my points, yes - and it's a bad bill of goods, the people selling that line of shit are without fail the ones offering to "control us for our own good" - yeahhhh, right, I don't think so.

But folks buy it, cause they've been conditioned to, and I do mean to put a stop to that shit, and innoculate those even now being conditioned to against that by showing them the big pointy hook hiding under the bait.


Interesting discussion so far, wouldn't mind some examples of deconstruction of various tricks by the mechanics of them to add to it for the younger folk though.

-Frem

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Monday, January 18, 2010 9:25 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Frem: I gotta go run the huskies while the rain is just a downpour; they're driving us nuts!

So I'll come back, but two things:

YES to pushing EMDR too fast, it can DEFINITELY do more harm than good.

And yes, grudgingly, to what you wrote me about p-docs and psychologists. Especially the training; I was told they're given a VERY short course on dealing with mental illness any way other than drugs. THAT needs changing badly.

Around here, p-docs have started this game: "I won't treat you unless you let me be your therapist as well"...therapy is once or twice weekly, psychiatry (after initial session) is every few months for scrip. NO p-doc should be a therapist, IMO! Greedy bastards!

My personal "god" is Hagop Akiskal. He's NAILED us bipolars, and is working hard to change treatment to what we NEED, not what the "system" thinks is convenient.

Oh, shit...I missed my opportunity, it's black and monsooning again. I blame you!



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Monday, January 18, 2010 9:27 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Niki

There are a LOT of things we take for granted, not b/c they are true or best, but b/c we've been soaked in them as 'the way things are'. They are our unstated assumptions. Life is competative. The world is zero sum. You have to work hard. There's something wrong with you that needs fixing. This is the only naural way to be - anything else is social(ist) engineering. And then b/c of the way we have structured our society, some things are self-fulfilling - for example, you DO have to grab whatever you can when you can b/c if you don't, someone else will grab it.

I had a vision many years ago - a dream actually. In it the people lived by one rule: just enough. And b/c of that ONE thing, there was no waste; no poverty, hunger or threat to physical security; no pitting of people against each other; no overpopulation. And the people feared just one thing - a contagion of greed. B/c if ENOUGH people started grabbing and keeping, then everyone ELSE would be forced into it, having to grab what they could NOW, b/c it might not be there later.
And the reason they revered their one belief ? B/c the proof of its benefit was right there in the security and peace of their everyday lives. They knew that their rule directly led to their good lives. They had no need of faith.

Anyway, its antithesis is capitalism, and its attendant ideology - or religion, if you wish - b/c its based on faith.

You should have seen the scorn, personal abuse and sheer disbelief that that idea might actually have enough merit to even discuss. B/c what we have now is only natural. And people wouldn't make progress if there wasn't a profit somewhere. And god is the only reason we know right from wrong. And it's just not human nature. I could go on, but you get the idea. What we are doing NOW is deeply ingrained in many people, mostly through our pervasive propaganda, and anything else is perceived as a threat.



From what very little I know, EMDR looks promising. Like many things stumbled upon almost by accident, I suspect the reason why people think it works will not turn out to be the real reason. But as far as I know, it works very well. I would like to know more about how specifically it's done, as I have no specific or direct information about it.


***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 9:30 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Okay, since I'm stuck here I'll continue:

Rue: "everything you said" and more. I'll talk about EMDR if anyone's interested.

Frem: Wow, that is a real bummer, to hear that subsequent generations are getting LESS savvy, not more. Scary! And damned sad. In which case, I'm twice as happy you're putting this stuff up!

I never doubted this crap would continue, even now...I never expected THAT kind of miracle from Obama--remember what I said about his power and its limitations, even if he wanted to change things. Whatever works always gets continued and built upon, it's just human nature.

Okay, gonna go get dressed, put harnesses on, stand by the front door and pray to the rain gods that they give me just a SHORT break so I can get these damned beasts OUT and run 'em!!!



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Monday, January 18, 2010 9:47 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Oh go on, let them play in the rain, sure you might have to wash some more towels, but revel in natures glory for once, willya!

Too much civilization is bad for ya, moderation in all things.

And yes, most scientific discoveries of real value start with "What the fuck ?!" instead of "Eureka!", and I don't have the slighest clue how EMDR works either, but I suspect it might have to do more primitive and unproven line of research related to eye movement as expressed processing.
http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies_eyes.php

But admittedly, I am out of my expertise on that whole area - my knowledge base might be very deep, but it's also very narrow and basing off an ad-hoc and hands-on education rather than any formal training, which does have both advantages and disadvantages.

-F

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Monday, January 18, 2010 10:14 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


"I'll talk about EMDR if anyone's interested."

I AM ! I AM !

I saw the orginal 'breaking' of the story on '60 Minutes' many years back, with the lady who started doing it at the VA. HOWEVER - she had a comfortable calm non-emotive demeanor and voice. She did not push her patients. She allowed them to recall traumatic events in a calm, contemplative way at a leisurely pace. At the time I wondered if SHE was the key to the therapy.

And I just found this:
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a controversial treatment suggested for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other conditions, was evaluated in a meta-analysis of 34 studies that examined EMDR with a variety of populations and measures. Process and outcome measures were examined separately. and EMDR showed an effect on both when compared with no treatment and with therapies not using exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli and in pre post EMDR comparisons. However, no significant effect was found when EMDR was compared with other exposure techniques. No incremental effect of eye movements was noted when EMDR was compared with the same procedure without them. R. J. DeRubeis and P. Crits-Christoph (1998) noted that EMDR is a potentially effective treatment for noncombat PTSD. but studies that examined such patient groups did not give clear support to this. In sum, EMDR appears to be no more effective than other exposure techniques, and evidence suggests that the eye movements integral to the treatment, and to its name, are unnecessary.



So, apparently it works, but the eye movements are not necessarily a key feature.


STILL - I am VERY curious. SO --- explain away when you have the time !

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 10:36 AM

LITTLEBIRD


Thank's for the EMDR suggestion and welcome HK.

Niki, I would be interested in hearing about your experiences with EMDR. And yours to HK.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 10:54 AM

LITTLEBIRD


Rue,

What a wonderful dream of "just enough". I agree with that 100% as a way to go against the flow of capitalism and that type of programming. My husband and I practice the sustainable lifestyle to what is considered a ridiculous degree by some people. Wish we could more actually, but within the structure of present day society we are considered a bit radical.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 11:59 AM

MAL4PREZ


Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
So, apparently it works, but the eye movements are not necessarily a key feature.

STILL - I am VERY curious. SO --- explain away when you have the time !

I'll step in a little about this. I did EMDR to go after repressed memories of sexual abuse, and after reading things like you just posted I was pretty gung ho about trying it. It wasn't complicated. The therapist asked questions while I wore headphones that beeped on the left and right. It was getting the sides of my brain going, I guess.

Nothing much came of it. I think I had bad dreams during the months I was trying this, which I could never remember, but in the sessions nothing ever happened. Perhaps my mind just wasn't ready.

Thing is, the therapist ended up deciding that I had a sex phobia and I needed to go out and have lots and lots of sex. You know, like how arachnophobes just need to make friends with tarantulas and all will be well. Oh - and she said I should be careful not to get emotionally attached with any of these hordes I have sex with, because then I might end with hurt feelings. No shit, that was her advice.

Yeah, so there might be something behind the EMDR method, but like anything else be careful. It really depends that the therapist is capable. And not insane.


-----------------------------------------------
hmm-burble-blah, blah-blah-blah, take a left

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Monday, January 18, 2010 12:21 PM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...


Just a quick thx to Frem for taking the time to post this thread and all of the links - absolutely fascinating.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Monday, January 18, 2010 2:21 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)


Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Frem

My opinion: if a mind can think of an action, no matter how evil or perverse, then someone has already done it somewhere. And probably several someones, or even many someones working together - and even funded by the government. Sad, but true.

Not to make any grand statements on human nature, but humans have been human for a long time, starting, I think, at the acquisition of abstract language. And there is a lot of already existing information about us humans in fairy tales, history, and news stories. For example, 'The Emperor's New Clothes' (Asch) or Nazi Germany (Milgram, which the experiment purportedly was to examine). Even the Synanon programs are a lot like the public Chinese criticism\ self-confession sessions instituted in every village during the Great Leap Forward.

Regarding this -
"Legal changes after 9/11 allowed the FBI and other intelligence agencies to move aggressively to access the vast oceans of information aggregated by commercial vendors. The data titans, ChoicePoint, Acxiom and LexisNexis, offer not only access to data -- everything from ordinary public records to personal spending habits -- but also increasingly sell analytic technologies to the feds to help them make sense of the vast amount of information out there.
... a 2004 GAO report identified 199 data-mining efforts in 52 federal agencies, and that's just what's known publicly."

- it's something I've been harping on since the USPATRIOT Act was passed. Will they get any useful intelligence out of it ? Hell no. 'You can see anything, if you use the right filters'. What they NEED is a data training set - they need to have a robust set of activities logs of many known terrorists in order to search for similar patterns (fuzzy logic) among a large set of data of regular people. What they WILL get is lots of access to the records of innocent people - access that could always be used to construe ill intent, if they so desired. My feeling though is - anything that can be done will be done. Not an endorsement, far from it, but a statement of sad fact.

And let me repeat my thesis that the US a heavily propagandized population. We are told over and over to ignore our experiences and those of our families and neighbors in favor of ideology and someone else's concepts: everyone lives in a wonderful house like on TV, happiness is buying the latest stuff like all those happy good looking people in the commercials, capitalism is nature's invention and works to an ultimate good, if you don't have what everyone else has like on TV it's your fault ... To a large extent we are already trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys, ready to be fed to the corporations and government.


***************************************************************

Silence is consent.



And the funny thing is, even when I think I might NEED help, THIS is the kind of stuff that keeps me from looking for it or talking to anyone about it in any kind of "official" capacity. Who else is this information going to? What are they going to DO with it? Why would they want it?

So I don't talk to much of anybody about certain things. A very good friend of mine got quite offended when he asked if I trusted him about a certain matter, and I told him I'll never trust ANYONE *completely*. He can't seem to grasp that, but given the things I've seen and lived through, how could I?



Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

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Monday, January 18, 2010 3:24 PM

FREMDFIRMA



Oh, ouch - yes, it does seem that a lot of therapists are far worse off than their patients, doesn't it ?

That ain't to say that secondary-trauma disorders aren't prevalent amongst them, but I do wonder sometimes if perhaps you don't *have* to be more than a little crazy to get involved with that job - which I guess calls my own sanity into question since I do it without a formal education or the income...

While delving into this I ran across one of those things that just makes you go "WTF, who comes UP with this crap ?!!"

Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder ?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_embitterment_disorder
Seriously, what the hell ?

I'm sorry, but this positively REEKS of "How dare you be pissed off about being screwed over and having your life destroyed!" - take someone who's been in a crippling accident, for example, then screwed over by insurance companies both vehicular and medical, shafted by the medical care system, and usually left hanging by many of their social contacts as well.

I think being pissed off about it is a pretty damned natural response!
And since I work the dark side, imma call this out right up front and center.
"Revenge is not a treatment."

BULL. SHIT.

Many treatment regimens are crippled into uselessness, or even compound the abuse, by demanding that a victim forgive their abuser - sorry, some things can NOT be forgiven, SHOULD not be forgiven.

And while Revenge as a longterm goal isn't healthy, for a fact, putting one in the ear of the system or person who abused them is a damned effective step towards overcoming feelings of powerlessness and helplessness, which if the forgiveness aspect is pushed in opposition to the patients feelings, can result in a learned helplessness which leads them to seek out unhealthy relationships where the abuse will be repeated.

It's a natural human response to lash out at the cause of things that make us afraid, in hopes of removing their power to harm us - this is a big part of the way the "Culture of Fear" leads folk down that whole Stanford/Milgram path into hostility towards people who didn't even DO anything to us, or supporting that hostility by playing on the fear of other.

All that said, there's a fine line between "Oh you ain't EVER hittin me again" and "now you must die!" - only one of them is a healthy response, and IMHO, the proper one, because forgiveness just enables most abusers.

More on that whole problem within these articles, by Andrew Vachss.
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches.html

At least there was SOME sensible reaction to the concept of PTED...
"Because of the possible addition of PTED and several other proposed disorders to the upcoming DSM-V, some psychiatrists warn that the new edition runs the risk of medicalizing the normal range of human behaviors."

That's a hopeful sign I've been waiting for ever since noticing they classed normal childhood limit-testing behavior as a freaking disorder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

Seriously, FIND me a kid who doesn't display those "symptoms" and I can assure you there's something very, very wrong with them.


All of this kind of mess is what lead to the Working Box Theory in the first place, because as Mal4Prez pointed out, abuse BY mental health personnel, both directly, and indirectly, such as by railroading a diagnosis, or reccommending a kid to a "behavior modification facility" they have compounded the problem and any further involvement by "professional" personnel will cause what's called an Iatrogenic reaction, where trying to treat them makes it worse.

That's where friends, family, and supportive, trusted amateurs come in, cause when dealing with this kinda stuff, trust trumps credentials hands-down.

The principle of the Working Box Theory is to build a mental box between you and the rest of the worlds influences and pressures, to cut that pressure OFF, allowing you to wrestle your inner demons without distraction or complication, finding a calm, introspective state that allows a person to get full use of "home field advantage" in the territory of their own mind.

The limited, predictable social interactions as a stabilising effect actually comes from treatment of autism spectrum disorders, but widening the application to other problems of that nature is prettymuch an intuitive step.

We got a very comfortable soundproof room modeled on a library design with low indirect lighting and a looped audio at the very barest edges of most peoples hearing - in fact I'll share the audio track in question.
http://www.amazon.com/Thundering-Rainstorm-Natures-Relaxing-Sounds/dp/
B000005T8C
There's a sample button under the cover photo with several other tracks and CDs if you prefer one of them - even for those without really serious problems they can be very calmative.

That door locks from the inside, and ONLY from inside, nor is there a knob or keyhole on the outside whatever, and it's quite deliberately solid and imposing looking, which in addition to folks they've chosen to trust all around the outside of their temporary fortress, gives a feeling of perfect safety and privacy which is integral to WHY it works.

Like I said, patience - a MAJOR problem with a lot of theraputic methods is that push to hurry it up, especially by paid personnel who are "on the clock"... I don't even understand that, I mean, if your patient has a major breakthrough or breakdown in the last ten minutes, it's almost criminal to brush them off, and I've SEEN em do it, that's just cruelty, and counterproductive.

Once you snap that heavy bolt lock, ain't NO ONE gonna come interrupting you, and I cannot stress enough to the importance/effectiveness of such a thing.


Oh, also - and thank Wendy for the reminder, one might try peppermints, although I am not convinced it ain't a placebo effect, I carry them all the time cause I suck on them to avoid dry mouth when walking rounds out in the cold, and it's my habit to offer one with a friendly facial expression and relaxed posture to someone in emotional distress, which over time seems to have a greater effect to where many of the kids keep some handy because the scent/taste has a counter effect to emotional stress.

I am convinced it's the association with the gesture and implied support rather than any effect of peppermint itself, but Wendy disagrees, so hell, it's worth a try.

That's all I got for the time being, since I promised her pizza and I am gettin poked in the shoulder impatiently at the moment.

-F

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Monday, January 18, 2010 4:25 PM

LITTLEBIRD


Frem,

Thanks for clarifying The
Working Box Theory a bit more. And also for the audio link.

Your safe room sounds just about perfect.


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Monday, January 18, 2010 5:45 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


i agree with what most of niki and rue say here.

Frem, I'm still kind of puzzled by what you are trying to say. A lot of research that was carried out in the past was or would be considered unethical today - that's why universities have ethics committees that approve research projects. You couldn't get away with the Milgram or Stanford research today. Nevertheless, poor ethics and morality aside, the outcomes were pretty interesting and I think do offer some explanations about the human capacity to do harm to others.

Human sciences are certainly interesting and complex, and you are right, not always accurate. I'd agree that a lot of harm has been done in the name of psychiatry - but I guess you could say the same of medicine in general. The Japanese and Germans both performed medical experiements on life prisoners in the name of medical advancement and in the process, committed obscene acts of torture. Even today, a lot of science is beset by ethical conundrums - ie research using human embryos, cloning and so on. Also most torturers are doctors, I read that somewhere, don't know if it is tru but it kind of makes sense. Doesn't mean you discount medicine because it gets misused.

Frem, I don't always get the drift of your posts, maybe because I am not from the US and you seem to have a very specific agenda that you may have discussed in other threads over the years. So I may be arguing at cross purposes here, but I don't believe you can throw out all research into human behaviour or ascribe conspiracy theory motives around it just because it gets used for non ethical purposes. Even before we knew through research about human behaviour/psychology - people have used what they have observed to get something they want. That has gone on through the ages.

I think we should be careful about research and not take it as gospel - well I don't believe we should take the gospels as gospel either but that is another story, and we should certainly be wary of people trying to sell us stuff, but as Niki says - it's hardly news to most of us that corporations, advertisers and politicans are trying to manipulate us.

There has been a lot of good stuff come out of research into human psychology, some it came from unethical sources. Bowlby did all his research on infant attachment while being an observer of the terrible conditions in orphanages - didn't do the orphans much good! However it did eventually lead to the abandonment of use of institutions for care of young children.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 6:16 PM

BYTEMITE


Oh, Frem didn't introduce psychology, I don't think he argued we should throw it all out.

Me, on the other hand, I'm a little less certain on that point. This whole thing gets into philosophy with me, about whether you're changing who a person is or repressing an otherwise positive expression of their genetics that would be helpful in certain situations so they fit better into mainstream society. Whether it is even useful to try to understand behaviour and mental processes in a species that varies so drastically, even by culture, and especially by upbringing. How do we know that our methods of trying to help people aren't hurting them? Do we really know anything about people who have somehow become or were born a danger to themselves and others? Enough to help them find functionality and no longer be said danger? Mostly it seems to me we use it for diagnose to put people away for long, long times, which screws them up further. Or, hey, pills, which can also screw them up.

To say I have misgivings is an understatement, especially considering my own treatment at the hands of doctors, both medical and psychological, who I could damn well tell couldn't have cared less about my welfare and had basically written me off as incurable and/or undiagnosable. Hearing what I've heard now from others, I'm glad I got out when I did.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 6:34 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Oh, Frem didn't introduce psychology, I don't think he argued we should throw it all out.

Me, on the other hand, I'm a little less certain on that point. This whole thing gets into philosophy with me, about whether you're changing who a person is or repressing an otherwise positive expression of their genetics that would be functionally useful in certain situations so they fit better into mainstream society. Whether it is even useful to try to understand behaviour and mental processes in a species that varies so drastically, even by culture, and especially by upbringing. How do we know that our methods of trying to help people aren't hurting them? Do we really know anything about people who have somehow become or were born a danger to themselves and others? Enough to help them find functionality and no longer be said danger? Mostly it seems to me we use it for diagnose to put people away for long, long times, which screws them up further. Or, hey, pills, which can also screw them up.

To say I have misgivings is an understatement, especially considering my own treatment at the hands of doctors, both medical and psychological, who I could damn well tell couldn't have cared less about my welfare and had basically written me off as incurable and/or undiagnosable. Hearing what I've heard now from others, I'm glad I got out when I did.


I made some comments about the over pathologising of emotions and behaviours on the Smile and Die thread, so I won't repeat them here.

Reading some of Frem's posts and some of yours, makes me wonder if things aren't much more different in the States than I had imagined. People don't get put away for long periods of time here, hell, even when they need to be in my opinion. Most of the institutions were closed years ago, except for violent offenders or people who really cannot function at all, even in supported accommodation. I thought that was the same in the states. The problem is now we have lots of people who actually can't look after themselves wandering around off their meds, living under bridges and not getting the help they need because locking people away is no longer considered humane. Or is it just expensive?

meds I agree - totally overdone. But I tend to blame individuals and families who want quick fix solutions to their problems.

But again, if Frem is saying that behavioural sciences can be used against people, well yes they can and are. But .....??? I seem to missing the crux of this thread.

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Monday, January 18, 2010 7:42 PM

LITTLEBIRD


Magonsdaughter

I had been talking to Frem on another Thread about the mind control issue. I mentioned I would like to see a thread on the topic of mind control because maybe there were others lurking on the list like me who had been in Bluebird but were terrified to speak out. Just let them know they are not alone and people do care and offer some healing solutions.

We were talking about the "don't tell" programming and Frem said he had some more thoughts on the subject he wanted to share.

Yes, these were American projects. I don't think they extended to other countries.

Please forgive me if I missed your point or didn't address the question you were really asking. I have some brain damage and tend to miss things.

But that is my understanding of why he started this thread.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 1:23 AM

LITTLEBIRD


Frem,

Remember how I mentioned right after I started talking that I expected the ax to fall at any second. Well, I think it just did.

Someone posted some horrible stuff on one of the threads under the name of chopper. chop her. And then started talking about sock puppets and not being taken seriously.

I know certain people will probably think it's me because the association has already been made between me and sockpuppets. And that would discredit me and the topic of mind control that I am wanting to explore.

It's not me and it's not an alter because I have been integrated for years. But I doubt anyone will believe me now. So, axe falling ... chop her.
Littlebird down.

I know you understand the tricks these people like to play and how they work. We are talking about some pretty loaded subjects and apparently it has ruffled some feathers.

I was really starting to feel that I had found a place to come and share with a good group of people and it was starting to really feel good. And now this.

It's going to be hard to get past this considering this happened so soon after I joined the list. sigh ....

Then again maybe it does not have anything to do with me at all and it's just some creep messing with the other list because they don't like the subject matter on that thread.

Class over ... Mindbender 101

Debra

You can't turn off the darkness, but you can turn on the light. .... old saying

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 3:20 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Magonsdaughter

Well, yes, they are used "offensively" but the trick to mitigating or stopping that crap is in the devil of the details, understanding the how and the why, and not everyone does...

One of the reasons I was such an obnoxious jackass in grade school was after noticing the huge gap in mental processing between me and my so-called peers was that I tended to treat everyone else like they were an inept moron, up to and including the adults - in retrospect, not all the folk who wanted to give me a good choking were without cause, I gotta say.

As I got older and wiser, I realized just how demeaning, offensive and disrespectful this was and tended to generally proceed on the assumption that whoever I am talking to is equally clever, but sometimes (note the initial post of this thread, for example) that don't work so hot neither.

So I've been trying to balance that without coming off like an overbearing jackass, trying to explain the background first, and then imma get to the actual mechanics of it, and from there, deconstruction and techniques for jamming up the works when such things are used in a harmful way.

It's like... in order to change piston rings, it is kinda helpful to know what they are and what they do, and to proceed on the assumption that someone does may not be exactly the right way to go about it - plus my sideways way of processing and concept-linking takes a bit of getting used to, I think.

And yes, the american concept of mental health completely sucks, there's not a lot I can do for the folks already messed up cause the best course of action is not letting folks GET that messed up, or intervening before the problems calcify, but all one can do, is all they can do - and from a starting point of one pissed off pre-teen with a handful of flunkies, we've done amazingly well.

Worse is how our idiotic society treats drug addiction as a criminal, rather than medical, problem, since a lot of the time it's a mental/pysch issue that lead to the addiction in the first damn place, but that's a slightly divergent topic, I think.

All that said...

Littlebird has the primary purpose nailed dead bang square, this one is for lurkers and folks who cannot overcome their issues enough to post, a sign that they are not alone, not ignored, that there ARE people who understand, who will not instantly dismiss them - believe me when I tell you that carries more meaning to them than most of us would ever really comprehend.

Plus the advice might be useful to them, even if they never do work themselves up to post, and that's a victory in and of itself.

Oh, and Littlebird ?

That ain't got nothin to do with you, it's our resident troll with a handful of names rolling out a new one to rile folk up, and the most useful response to that bullshit is to not pay any mind to it - Haken, the guy who runs this place (who is a right awesome kinda dude) is working up an upgraded version of this site which will allow such folk to be disposed of via an ignore function, but till then just brushing them off and denying them the attention they crave is the best policy.

I am well aware that hypervigilance carries with it a certain paranoia, but the posting style, word selection, phrasing, all that, indicates a pre-existing asswipe who was doin crap like this before you ever showed up, so don't let it get to you.

Believe me, those that might have an interest in trying to stifle a discussion of this nature have learned it's counterproductive to tangle with us, since the very act of trying prevents them from dismissing it, and and tipping their hand that way (like they did with some edits to wiki) tends to come back around and bite them, hard.

And gimme a minute here, imma roll out a visual-cue kind of thing you might find useful, but I have to make a call first, one of my folk has a sick kid and imma swap his shift to someone else so he can go handle that.

-F

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 4:12 AM

FREMDFIRMA



Okay, this is one of them things like EMDR that while we dunno HOW it works, really, just that it does, and is a specific bit of creative visualization that's been helpful with Iatrogenic or Boobytrapped PTSD.

Now, problem with PTSD to begin with is that there's always a set of triggers which set the goddamn complex off, and identifying them exactly is critical to the Working Box Theory and solving the problem from the inside.

One thing that helps as a starting point is looking at this almost like an exercise in lock picking and trap disarming, first identify the mechanisms, then the triggers, and then disable them, sounds easier than it is, but visualizing it like that has been very helpful in holding a mental concept over a long period of time.

First, picture a box of spring loaded triggers, the best base visual image we've found is the guts a box spring mattress.


Now, you're trapped in this box, which is what your problem is, and all those thrice be damned triggers are all linked to each other, which means when one is pulled, all the others wind tighter until it reaches the squash point and you have an anxiety attack or DID episode.

And so, first things first: IDENTIFY the triggers, keep a journal or a notebook of exactly what the hell they are and how they are set off.

Now, the primary trigger, the big bad bugbear, is that feeling of vulnerability, and anything but a near total feeling of safety and security slowly winds it up tighter, causing all the others to become more sensitive in turn - this can NOT be disarmed first, you have to clear this complex from the edges in, like working a jigsaw puzzle.

Now, the outer triggers, some are internal, based on emotional states, but the most destructive ones are generally external, based on either memories, images, sounds, or scent, the latter is a VERY powerful memory-provoker, although we've found something of a counter to it in a positive scent-memory that's damn near universal, which I will explain later.

So, IDENTIFY - first figure out what sense is used, memory, sight, sound, scent, what the BASE of the trigger is, which will then allow you to isolate it and what information specifically causes it to "fire", okay ?

Then PREPARE - use the environmental blockade to fake out the one primary trigger (and the last one you'll be disarming) which is the linchpin all the others are hooked up to, by "turtling" - build your physical/mental/social "fortress" and reach that point where you feel "safe" enough that the springs start to slowly unwind - have *patience* with this, you go pickin at it all hasty and willy-nilly, it's just asking for trouble.

You let that whole spring loaded mess unwind as far as you can, which at first isn't gonna be all that much, you'll know when you have though because you've already verbally described the state you're aiming for here previously.

Now SELECT the outermost minor-external trigger you have clearly identified, start small, because each of these things hooks up to the others and they get stronger towards the center, and so each one will progressively weaken those remaining, the emotional-internal ones often fade themselves as the external ones hooked up to them are removed.

Now EXAMINE the trigger, try to visualize the mechanics of how it works, the progression of stimuli to reaction, and find a weak point in that, and here's where a sense of humor comes in handy, because SOME part of that is likely to strike you as stupid or ridiculous, and ridicule is a deadly weapon against programmed reactions.

Take a short breather and gather yourself, your Ka, Spirit, Self, whatever you wanna call it, and pick your moment...

Then BREAK the trigger at the weak point, visualize it's actual destruction at your hands, use your own imagination as a weapon here, go over the top, tear that thing to bits, shred it to ribbons, but fix the image of it's destruction deep and firm in your mind as solidly as possible.

Then DEFEND, because the instant you remove that, if successful, the whole goddamn complex is going to react by chain-firing, winding the whole damned thing up in response, don't try to prevent that, just ride the wave, and make sure to take that little victory with you.

Then RELAX, remember you are in your "fortress" and safe, internalize and project that feeling - and the complex will, eventually, and the key word here is eventually, start unwinding again, which will let you get up and moving again.

This is a very, very physically and mentally exhausting thing to do however, and so patience is the key, because it is so intense an experience and time consuming - and pressing it too hard is a bad BAD idea, because if you push too hard at this the damn complex will retaliate by building a specific trigger against disarming it that way, and you will wind up playing whack a mole with the damned thing for no progress.
(It can be "worn out" that way, but you'd have to be damn near insane to want to go that route because it is tremendously psychologically destructive.)

So the pattern of events in this trick is...
IDENTIFY->PREPARE->SELECT->EXAMINE->BREAK->DEFEND->RELAX.

As you progress with it, eventually the complex is gonna unwind easier as there are less triggers in it, and the emotional-internal ones left over can be addressed with EMDR, leastways it seems an option, and a better one than we've been using up till now.

By having the visual base, and lockpicking/disarming concept to work with, in combination with faking out the defenses by applying subtle environment cues, what you'll be doing is engaging in a set piece fight on your own terms with complete home field advantage, since this mess is rigged primarily against EXTERNAL interference, and INTERNAL interference is it's weakest link, and since the threads have already started to unravel (picture the springs as rusty and weak) it's certainly ripe for the application of this trick.

This isn't a hard and fast set of ironclad rules though, each person is very different and you'll have to work the application out on your own, but it's been a very useful core concept for helping folks in this situation.


And before I head out, there *IS* a scent cue that is almost universally positive, I've so far not met anyone it's negative for...
Clothes Dryer Exhaust.

I noted this when visiting a hotel in Reno, that during the winter they vented the laundry exhaust into the entrance cube as cheap heating and to put their guests in a calmer, more pleasant mood - my first reaction was "HEY??!!" and then "Oh that *is* pretty slick..." and there didn't seem to be any real malice to it since a hotels intent is to offer you comfort in exchange for your money.

So it's definitely something worth adapting as part of the subtle environmental set-up to this, since scent-memory is a very powerful influence when dealing with PTSD of any stripe.

And I really gotta head out now, stuff to do.

-F

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 6:26 AM

BYTEMITE


I'm a little bit iffy about venting any driers to the hotel lobby, especially if we're talking about dry cleaners. May smell good, but could potentially introduce a crap ton of PCE into the air.

But use of a safe smell that isn't a dangerous chemical with inhalation as its primary exposure pathway, go for it.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:41 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


Hey Kwicko

You know what I posted - that if a person can think of an action, it either has been done or will be done ?

I think it's true, even for this:
"I had a vision many years ago - a dream actually. In it the people lived by one rule: just enough. And b/c of that ONE thing, there was no waste; no poverty, hunger or threat to physical security; no pitting of people against each other; no overpopulation. And the people feared just one thing - a contagion of greed. B/c if ENOUGH people started grabbing and keeping, then everyone ELSE would be forced into it, having to grab what they could NOW, b/c it might not be there later.
And the reason they revered their one belief ? B/c the proof of its benefit was right there in the security and peace of their everyday lives. They knew that their rule directly led to their good lives. They had no need of faith."

It's not all dark everywhere.

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 8:33 AM

FREMDFIRMA


Actually I think that concept is in fact strongly present in some countries, Iceland, Finland, Norway, even Sweden to a degree, and I do remember someone saying they had a specific word for it, so that might be worth lookin up.

S'funny considering I recently saw a very conservative commentator have their own mental revolt against the greed/need concept a while back too.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed170.html
And no, despite the similarity in both name and style, we're not related.

Kind of ironic cause that article came just before the Move your money concept started getting pushed by both the Left and the Right.

I think those scattered conservatives abandoned by the party's descent into mania might find your proposal quite attractive, M'lady - provided you can format it in a fashion they can grok with, something like "Be Conservative, Live Conservatively." or whatnot.

-F

ETA, nah, standard industrial size clothes dryers, Byte - I think the trigger scent is warm fabric and softener, although what's in most fabric softeners is stuff I do not use cause I am sensitive to it, but still the scent of warm fabric does trigger the reaction even though I use unscented detergent, so it doesn't seem dependent on chemicals so much as heat, humidity and fabric, all of which seem safe enough.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 8:41 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Okay, as usual I'm coming in waaay late; usually I only allow myself to come here once a day, first thing in the morning, but even then, it's later on the West Coast than most anyone else posts. Pfffft.

As to EMDR. The original idea was eye movement and it was developed to help soldiers suffering from PTSD; it's gone beyond that in several ways now. The concept is amazingly simple...by focusing the eyes (or ears now I see) on something that keeps the conscious mind busy, the unconscious mind can come to the surface, so an issue can be seen and dealt with objectively.

When people start having dreams and stuff about uncomfortable things, it's a sign that the subconscious has "decided" they're strong enough to face some previously-buried stuff. I've seen that happen time and time again.

The way it worked for me, there was a tiny bank of lights on a stand in front of me. The lights moved from one side to the other and my eyes followed them. We always went into EMDR with a specific issue, so my therapist would then bring the issue up and ask me when I first experienced it. I could remember the origin of the issue, which always surprised me because I'd never been able to before, even when I tried other methods. But this worked almost immediately.

Simple example and one so many of us carry around; the idea that I wasn't "good enough", which always translates into "I don't deserve to be loved" and deeper "I don't deserve to live". With EMDR, I could remember what my mother said, to me and about me...I could now see it through adult eyes and easily see that what she said was about HER, and had nothing to do with the child. That allowed me to let go, to recognize that the messages were false and never should have had any effect on me,.

I often left the therapists' office and burst into tears. Hated that at first, but she explained it's emotions long repressed coming to the surface, and a way of "mourning" what had happened to the child. It was "washing out" the last vestiges of programming. Afterwards, whether a day or a week, all the things around that issue became either easy to recognize when they were triggered, or just not there anymore.

For PTSD patients, obviously what it does is allow the person to relive the origin of the PTSD which has been buried by the conscious until ready (for their own safety) but which EMDR now allows to come to the surface, so that with the therapist there for safety, the patient can safely relive the experience, see it from the outside objectively, and either give it less power by having relived it consciously, or help the person see that it was one experience and they are safe now from it ever happening again—or sometimes the therapist follows up by giving them tools with which to live through such experiences again without needing the subconscious to bury the memory. You can see how effective this would be for soldiers, for whom it was originally developed.

EMDR CAN be dangerous, as I said, for a number of reasons. The biggest being the quality of the therapist and how well they understand and are trained in the method. Another thing is that it should never be done until the patient has a firm sense of trust with the therapist—sometimes one of the hardest things to get, and the lack of which many patients are unwilling to admit to the therapist. The single most important thing in ANY therapy is that you feel you “click” with the therapist and feel safe. Of course, it’s obvious the danger of that with a bad therapist; all of us have heard the horror stories of therapists who take advantage of the trust of their patients!

What Mal4 described would have made my therapist absolutely livid….she was a real bear about anyone utilizing EMDR who wasn’t properly trained and knew what they were doing. She’d also have been livid about what happened to you because of how it was used. She trains all over the world, and was real angry that EMDR was being used by people who weren’t good therapists in the first place. It can do a LOT of harm! It’s easy to see that something which was traumatic and which our subconscious buried, if then brought to the surface when we aren’t ready, could make the trauma conscious—and that’s horrible.

That’s the other way it can be dangerous, if the person isn’t strong enough yet; even our subconscious can be wrong about whether we’re ready to deal with stuff. Not usually, but some issues (like sexual abuse) do us so much harm in functioning that our wish to get help is conscious—and the conscious mind, as we all know, ain’t too good about some thing!. A good therapist will try EMDR once, and if the patient responds in a way which indicates it’s dangerous to probe further, they will stop and resume talk therapy, trying again later when they feel it’s safe. The patient has to be willing consciously to confront the issue and whatever happened to them—with PTSD, that’s really hard and should take a lot of talk therapy before it’s attempted!

Mal4, yours was a prime example of a bad therapist. What you wrote just made me gag. ESPECIALLY with sexual and/or physical abuse, one has to be extremely careful, and the therapist should NEVER tell you what to do or what they think your problem is! EMDR is for the PATIENT to work things out on their own, at most with gentle guidance, ask the therapist’s advice if they want to; a bad therapist is one who interprets FOR you, much less tells you what to do about it!!! That’s horrific; but then, there are so many bad p-docs and therapists and psychologists out there, it’s not surprising. I’ve heard similar horror stories.

A good therapist never tries EMDR more than once if it’s obvious the patient’s subconscious doesn’t think they’re strong enough yet! The dreams were predictable; like I said, when people start having strong bad dreams, that’s the subconscious telling them it’s time to deal with something. Unpleasant dreams after EMDR can be a case of the subconscious trying to deal with the issue that was worked on (I’ve experienced that), but the therapist should be told about them, and it should be an indication to the therapist to back off, do talk therapy, and not do EMDR again until it’s safe. Yours was just dealt with totally wrongly—most of us here probably know that dreams are a way of our subconscious either trying to work a problem out, give us something we’re missing in life, or push us to deal with something (among other things). It’s usually then that people seek help, even if they don’t quite know “why”.

My therapist would try EMDR with me when we decided on an issue. If I didn’t start having effect right away, or the effect was upsetting to me, she’d stop immediately and we’d talk about the issue, then table it for a later time. There was always something I wanted to work on; once it started working, I was eager to deal with so many of the things I carried around and couldn’t figure out why I had them. EMDR did me more good than all the talk and group therapy I’d done over the years, and tons faster, too!




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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 8:57 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!


THANK YOU for you post.

hugs

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 9:38 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Frem, yes, I did let them play in the rain, but it wasn’t me. Jim took them up to the divide; they came home tired, muddy, wet and happy as clams. I can’t walk them right now; quit therapy for my damned tendon and started it for my back, which was bad; the “modulation” she did on my back made it TEN times worse, I could barely move for three days the first time, ten the next. Now it’s subsided, back to the neurologist; I’m being set up for an MRI, possibly another epidural, or surgery (yuck!). Having stopped the therapy for the tendon, and not being able to do any of my exercises, means the tendon got worse again, I’m stuck in the friggin’ boot, and even walking WITH it brings pain. So I was going to walk them with crutches, but Jim was kind enough to take them for me. I’m stuck, in my very favorite and most adored season, watching it from the window. This time of year I’d usually be hiking the Mountain, joying in all the dry streams gurgling and making waterfalls, adoring the green everywhere, the ferns and mosses coming alive again, and more. To say I’m pissed is putting it mildly!!! But at least the huskies got outside to enjoy it, thank goodness.

Actually, you’re right on:
Quote:
I suspect it might have to do more primitive and unproven line of research related to eye movement as expressed processing
The word “primitive” is exactly right on. Our subconscious is the “primitive” part of us, if you will, and more in touch with our “base” being. The idea of moving eyes indicating lying seems to me the subconscious trying to find a way to evade something; DIRECTED eye movement is a way of freeing up the subconscious by getting the conscious “out of the way”, if you will.

Rue:
Quote:
she had a comfortable calm non-emotive demeanor and voice. She did not push her patients. She allowed them to recall traumatic events in a calm, contemplative way at a leisurely pace. At the time I wondered if SHE was the key to the therapy.
Now THAT’s a good therapist, you’re absolutely right. Trust and safety are the biggies in EMDR—it just plain won’t work otherwise. I’m confused by
Quote:
incremental effect of eye movements was noted when EMDR was compared with the same procedure without them
tho’—are they talking about EMDR with sound or some of the other methods used? If so, yes, that’s true—they’ve found lots of methods that don’t involve the eye specifically (like what Mal4 described); the concept is to get the conscious mind to concentrate on SOMETHING, to free the subconscious and allow it to come to the surface in conjunction with the conscious.

Mike, I think you’re absolutely right on about not talking about things you feel unsafe. Were it me, however, I’d try out several therapists until I hopefully found one I felt relatively safe with, then push myself a bit to open up. I’ve seen people do it, and while it’s hard for anyone to open up about private things, I’ve seen it be amazingly helpful. The trick to ANY therapy is not to take the first therapist, but to check out more than one until you find one you can feel some trust with. Trust is one of the two big keys to therapy working; the other is to force oneself to open up. People who do therapy for ages and complain it doesn’t work are the ones who just go and bitch about their lives, they don’t actually do the work! Therapy is hard work; anyone who says otherwise isn’t doing the work! As to your friend: fuck them. Anyone who gets upset that you won’t confide in them is either no friend, or has issues of their OWN they should deal with—or both!

Frem:
Quote:
it does seem that a lot of therapists are far worse off than their patients, doesn't it
. That’s the danger of therapy. I, however, would say it’s p-docs and psychologists who have issues they’re unaware of and who can damage their patients easily. Therapists usually come from having had problems of their own, having worked on them and gotten healthier, then want to “give back”, and can do so effectively because they can empathize with others having problems. Psychologists and p-docs come from having gained DEGREES in the intellectual arena, and far too often have problems they’re unaware of; and are usually in it for the money, from my experience!
Quote:
Because of the possible addition of PTED and several other proposed disorders to the upcoming DSM-V, some psychiatrists warn that the new edition runs the risk of medicalizing the normal range of human behaviors.
Says it all, doesn’t it? This stupid disorder seems to me like just part of PTSD, and I agree 100% that
Quote:
I think being pissed off about it is a pretty damned natural response!
The mental health provider community is so bent on pigeonholing everyone (for their own comfort), that sometimes it makes me downright sick. EVERYONE is different, and tho’ yes, there are legitimate “disorders” which can be recognized and treated, on the other hand it’s wrong to keep creating all these new pigeonholes. The one thing I find good about the DSMs is that they insist a disorder has to be bad enough to “severely affect functioning”. I approve of that—we’ve ALL got aspects of OCD and so forth—who cares? It’s only if they affect our lives so badly that we need help that they even need to be recognized, much less treated!
Quote:
by demanding that a victim forgive their abuser
Agreed. The good group therapy I experienced urged us to recognize the abuse, recognize it wasn’t about US (ergo self-guilt), then accept it happened and do whatever was best for each of us to become comfortable with that acceptance. For some of us, yes, forgiveness was the key; for others, cutting the abuser out of our lives worked, some found it effective to just recognize where their anger came from and accept it; some needed to confront their abuser; some found it useful to contact other members of the family they felt might support them (whether they ever confronted the abuser or not). Whatever works best for the INDIVIDUAL is what’s important, or should be!
Quote:
if the forgiveness aspect is pushed in opposition to the patients feelings, can result in a learned helplessness which leads them to seek out unhealthy relationships where the abuse will be repeated.
Bing-O!!!
Quote:
The principle of the Working Box Theory is to build a mental box between you and the rest of the worlds influences and pressures, to cut that pressure OFF, allowing you to wrestle your inner demons without distraction or complication, finding a calm, introspective state that allows a person to get full use of "home field advantage" in the territory of their own mind.
Hee, hee, hee—buddhism at its core! Different methods, similar end goals.
Quote:
a MAJOR problem with a lot of theraputic methods is that push to hurry it up, especially by paid personnel who are "on the clock"... I don't even understand that, I mean, if your patient has a major breakthrough or breakdown in the last
Bingo again!

Magons:
Quote:
I don't believe you can throw out all research into human behaviour or ascribe conspiracy theory motives around it just because it gets used for non ethical purposes. Even before we knew through research about human behaviour/psychology - people have used what they have observed to get something they want. That has gone on through the ages.
YES, I agree.

Magon
Quote:
The problem is now we have lots of people who actually can't look after themselves wandering around off their meds, living under bridges and not getting the help they need because locking people away is no longer considered humane.
Boy, so do we, but for a different reason. Here, more and more it’s become a case of “medicate them until they stop ‘acting out’, then get rid of them”. Yes, there are long-term placements, but on the whole, our psych wards are geared toward saving money, so they medicate people and turn them loose, rather than trying slower procedures like therapy and others. That produces the results you described. It’s usually only people who have acted violently who get long-term incarceration, whether in jails or psych hospitals, and even some of THOSE get turned loose too soon.

Littlebird: I repeat what others have said; it’s not about you. This kind of thing pops up fairly regularly, and it’s not about any one person, usually one person or one topic will instigate the sockpuppet, but it’s not about the person or the issue. It’s about the sockpuppet’s own needs, for attention, to let aggression out, or whatever. If you’re going to survive in RWED, you just can’t let them get to you. That’s sad to say, but it’s what I’ve learned and observed here and elsewhere. There’s a lot of sick people on the internet, and nothing can stop them from popping up now and again. I’m tickled to hear Haken is looking for a way to allow us to have an “ignore” button, it saved ME a lot of pain on another board to just be able not to “hear” or have to scroll past trolls.

Frem, I found your spring theory most interesting. By now you can probably see the comparison to EMDR—they differ in some ways, but in many the concept is the same. Wild, huh?

Okay, I’m kinda caught up now, I’ll shut up. For now.



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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 9:40 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Oh, Rue, you posted while I was writing my second one. You're most welcome; if anything I ever say or do can help anyone find a way to avoid the things I went through, my life is worthwhile. Even if it makes people think more about or try something, or educates them on something they didn't know--I know that has helped ME tons!

Or even if I can make anyone smile or laugh...those are precious!



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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 10:16 AM

LITTLEBIRD


Thank you so much Frem and Niki. Obviously I get overly paranoid at times. Thank's for all the helpful advice you've both posted. whew! got my reading cut out for me.

And Niki, I am grateful you have managed to survive and are reaching out to others to offer a smile and hope. I know how very hard the whole bi polar issue is. I had a friend who had that and unfortunately ended up committing suicide several years ago. I saw the struggles she went through and it was heartbreaking.

But, there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it's not all dark.

Debra

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