Ways To Address The Association/Dissociation Issue
This is one of the reasons I frequently say,
"I never want to be fooled by a temporary result."
Question: Hi Gary,
I was listening to webinar 119 wherein the discussion with Dr. Gabrielle Rutten took place about association and dissociation and as I have been using EFT (tapping) for my clients i have seen that when we are done with tapping on specific incidents and its aspects many times clients are not able to "remember" the incident as well as they were able to or they are dissociated, I always assumed that if the client is not able to get the memory back or are now disassociated with the memory that means we have resolved that incident or that aspect. In fact i believed that was one of the signs that we had resolved whatever we were working on.
But from the discussion I am wondering if the client is actually repressing and so not able to associate with the incident or the aspect of it and we have actually not resolved it.
I wanted to know your thoughts about it. I do make sure to test the results in as many possible ways I can but if it is repression then we will require from our side to still push the clients to be associated with the memory while testing.
Warm regards, Neha Mehta
Answer: Hi Neha,
We never know for sure if a client is dissociating (and thus not REALLY resolving) the issue UNLESS WE TEST. This is one of the reasons I frequently say, "I never want to be fooled by a temporary result." There are many ways to do this but here are some of my favorites...
Ask the client to step into their younger selves and, during the specific event, associate themselves by purposely looking through their own eyes. You can be more thorough still by asking them to hear, feel, smell and/or taste whatever may be going on.
Ask the client to narrate the story of the specific event (Tell the Story Technique) in vivid terms. Prod them if they are being too "surfacey" so you get them to properly associate.
Ask the client to run the movie within their own mind and exaggerate the sights, sounds, feelings, etc. Have him/her look for what's not done yet.
These methods often bring about more to work on. However, I tend to bring these out AFTER we have at least "taken the emotional edge off" of what might be an intense issue. I tend to err on the gentle side and start softly.
Hope this helps, Gary