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ne of the most significant contributions to the field of psychology is what Dr. Roger J. Callahan coined psychological reversal. This phenomenon is confounding to the intellect, even though everyone has expe-rienced it to varying degrees. Psychoenergetic reversal (PR) (a term that I believe more accurately defines the phenomenon) is a form of self-sabotage that can block you from accomplishing your most important dreams. When psychoenergetic reversal is present, you will ultimately fail in your selected pursuit. Regardless of how determined and persistent you are in striving for change, you will be frustrated and ultimately foiled. In the energy psychology community, we believe that psychoenergetic reversal affects both psycho-logical and medical treatments. But psychoenergetic reversal is not limited to healing issues. You can be reversed academically, athletically, socially, or in any other context.

If you always get high grades in school but continually falter in math, it is likely that you are psychoenergetically reversed. If you are a competitive athlete in a team sport such as baseball or a solo sport such as golf, your pat-tern of choking—not coming through in the clutch—is probably caused by psychoenergetic reversal. If you are never able to connect with that special person and believe you will always be alone, itʼs likely that you are psycho- energetically reversed. Of course, psychoenergetic reversal is just one piece of the puzzle when dealing with a particular problem. But if you havenʼt cor-rected an existing psychoenergetic reversal condition on a particular issue as a

first step in treatment, itʼs likely that the problem will persist, even if you have released all past residual trauma.

So, just what is psychoenergetic reversal?

To say the least, psychoenergetic reversal is paradoxical. Letʼs look at an example: John has a number of very good reasons for integrating an exercise program into his life. He has backaches from sitting in front of the computer all day; he has gained over twenty pounds in the last four years; his blood cholesterol is way up; and he is too tired to do anything constructive on the weekends. John has medical reasons as well as personal ones for including exercise in his life; he doesnʼt need convincing from anyone. He recently bought a membership at his local gym and agreed with his wife that he would exercise directly after work four times a week. As is frequently the case, John started off as a ball of fire. He bought new gym shoes, met with the trainer to develop an appropriate routine, and felt quite proud of himself for taking the initiative. Unfortunately for John, three weeks later he lost his burning moti-vation and had flat out stopped exercising. John started exercising to improve his health and feel better physically. By the end of the third week, not only was John not exercising, but he felt bad about himself for losing his resolve.

He had let himself down. John was psychoenergetically reversed about exer-cising. No matter how hard he tried and no matter how well he prepared, he just couldnʼt get himself to do it.

The primary paradox about PR is corroborated by manual muscle testing.

If I were to muscle test John on the statement “I want to exercise,” his arms would go weak! If I were to muscle test John on the statement “I donʼt want to exercise,” his arms would be strong as steel, indicating agreement. Why is this paradoxical? Because there is no logical reason for John to muscle test strong on not wanting to exercise—it doesnʼt make sense. And yet, virtually everyone has struggled with this same experience from time to time.

Psychoenergetic reversal is different from what psychologists call sec-ondary gain. A cognitive therapy–oriented psychologist might interpret Johnʼs behavior as secondary gain, with the payoff (possibly unconscious) being either the ability to continue lounging around the house and being lazy or feeling bad about himself (“Iʼm worthless”) for not succeeding in improv-ing his health. These are his payoffs for not exercisimprov-ing. Certainly, for some reason, John is sabotaging his own efforts to be successful. You are psycho- energetically reversed when your actions are in conflict with your conscious, intentional desires.

Energy psychologists theorize that at an essential level, this conflict is generated by a reversal of your energy flow. A helpful metaphor is the action of two magnets, especially since we, too, are electromagnetic. Imagine two magnets, each the size and shape of a flashlight battery. If you push together the positive end of one magnet and the negative end of the other magnet, you will have a very solid connection. In a sense, the magnetic energy is coherent, in that the magnets work together to create a balanced flow in and through each other. The two magnets are drawn to each other electromagnetically. But if you try pushing together the two positive ends or the two negative ends, they repel each other because their energy is no longer coherent or in har-mony—they are opposing each other.

Energy psychologists theorize that this phenomenon is what occurs with psychoenergetic reversal. The flow of your electromagnetic or chi energy, which is intimately coupled with a particular thought field, will be ener- getically opposed or reversed. When this happens, there is a disconnect between your chi energy and the energy that generates your thinking (i.e.,-consciousness). This manifests as action or behavior, and the result is self-sabotage.

How and why does this happen? I believe it is the result of long-term con-ditioning or negative reinforcement of a specific part of our life that has been perpetuated over time. Consequently, we become habituated to think about ourselves in a certain way. I know from my experience as a hypnotherapist that the unconscious mind is quite literal. If you continue to repeat a belief or a judgment to a child (when the unconscious mind is most impressionable and does not have the necessary ego defenses to reject self statements that are hurtful or diminishing), over time those statements become an embedded belief in the unconscious mind of that child. Many psychologically sophisti-cated people have come to accept the veracity of this unconscious imprinting and conditioning process. What becomes established at the unconscious level as a child persists into adulthood as an influential and contributing factor that determines motivation and behavior. A good hypnotherapist tries to reassoci-ate the matrix of beliefs that have already been established in the unconscious mind. This is done by helping the client get into a relaxed state of mind (trance) so that the critical, rational mind is temporarily suspended and no longer interfering with the positive suggestions offered by the therapist. Dr.

Roger J. Callahan (quoted in Gallo 1999, 103) describes psychoenergetic reversal as follows:

At times we all become aware that we are behaving in a destructive and hurtful way toward people we love, and yet we seem helpless to stop behaving that way. It is almost as if our willpower is suspended and we seem unable to do anything about it. At such times we are what I call psychologically reversed.

When you are psychologically reversed, your actions are contrary to what you say you want to do. You might say that you want to quit eat-ing when you arenʼt hungry, and in your heart of hearts you really do want to quit overeating. But in reality you are continuing to overeat.

You are sabotaging your own efforts, you feel helpless and you donʼt know why.

If you have generalized or massive psychoenergetic reversal, you will likely be negative about everything in your life. An overarching sense of hopelessness coupled with self-defeatism will be pervasive in your life. A succession of unfulfilling relationships, an unsuccessful career, and alcohol and drug addiction characterize the experience of individuals on a path to self-destruction. It may appear to others that these individuals want to destroy their life when they are, in fact, probably massively psychoenergetically reversed and truly unable to overcome their persistent negativity.

My example of John trying to initiate an exercise program is indicative of a specific psychoenergetic reversal. Specific PR is always context- or subject-specific. John may be pleased with his life overall, have a good job he enjoys, and have a family he is proud of. But when it comes to exercising, John is totally stuck. This kind of specific PR is present in a great majority of people.

There are often one or two areas in life that continue to be rough patches for us. It might be the fear of commitment in our most intimate relationships, or perhaps the frustration of maintaining a daily meditation practice. In these cases, it is likely that we have specific psychoenergetic reversal.

It should be noted that not all psychoenergetic reversal is a direct result of early childhood conditioning. When PR is an outcome of childhood condition-ing, the individual has created habits of thinking that are difficult to modify.

But PR may simply be the result of experiencing a single traumatic incident, or a resistance to following through on an intention that defies analysis.

Dr. Fred Gallo has defined other categories of psychoenergetic reversal, such as deep level reversal and criteria related reversal, but these are beyond

the scope of this book. There is, however, one more version of psycho- energetic reversal that I want to mention, which Callahan called a mini psycho-logical reversal. Mini PR occasionally shows up when treatment is progressing well until the clientʼs progress suddenly hits a wall and a wave of resistance emerges. I view this as a temporary retreat to or psychological refuge in the old habit that is resisting being changed. Everyone knows the tenacity of an old and familiar habit pattern. Once the mini reversal is identified and treated, progress will continue successfully without interruption.

It is very important to thoroughly understand the various levels of psychoenergetic reversal. If I were to miss the existence of PR at the begin-ning of treatment, the success of my Dynamic Energetic Healing® interven-tions would probably be eventually compromised, much to the detriment of my client. I have discovered that with some clients, treating psychoenergetic reversal in my office is not enough. When a client returns for subsequent sessions and there is still PR on a specific issue that we had previously treated, it is sometimes necessary for the client to elicit a daily energetic intervention (at home) over a period of weeks. I believe this reflects how entrenched certain habitual beliefs become at the unconscious level, perpetu-ating a disruption in the clientʼs energy system. I always make it a point to test whether psychoenergetic reversal that was corrected in a previous ses-sion has remained corrected. I am helping my clients achieve whole-system congruence—coherence throughout the entire person—with their conscious intention, their unconscious beliefs, and the unimpeded flow of their essential energy system that reflects a coherence throughout the entire person. Some-times psychoenergetic reversal can be treated once and it stays corrected.

There are other times, however, when it takes very dedicated persistence to permanently correct PR.

So, how do you treat psychoenergetic reversal? Most of the research in the energy psychology community follows Callahanʼs protocols for treat-ing what he still calls psychological reversal. His protocols derive from his Thought Field Therapy methodology, which targets specific combinations of points on the acupuncture meridians (i.e., algorithms). Originally, he also incorporated affirmations to act on the psychoenergetic reversal, a technique that he learned while studying with Dr. John Diamond. Many energy psychol-ogy practitioners who treat psychoenergetic reversal still use these positive affirmations in combination with the tapping of specific acupressure points.

Other authors, including Gallo (1999) and Durlacher (1994), have done a

fine job detailing the energy psychology communityʼs consensus treatment for correcting PR, much of which derives from Callahan. These treatments include tapping on the side of the hand (known as the karate-chop point, which is the small intestine-3 point) for specific and criteria-related reversals;

rubbing the neurolymphatic reflex point on the left side of the chest (known as the sore spot) for massive and recurring reversals; and tapping on the points above or below the lips (Governing Vessel and Central Vessel points) while repeating affirmations (Gallo and Vincenzi 2000). I will not cover in any detail all the permutations of PR and their attendant treatments that Gallo and others have already described, particularly since my approach, based on my successful clinical experience, differs from the consensus treatment of PR.

When I start working on a new intention with a client, I always test for psychoenergetic reversal. I want my clients to know that they are absolutely, energetically congruent from the very start. If during treatment I detect that a client resists continuing on our chosen path, I retest for PR. With knowledge and awareness of the phenomenon of psychoenergetic reversal, you can easily circumvent client resistance to successful treatment.

Clinicians who use a cognitive-behavioral approach (talk therapy) with their clients frequently encounter resistant clients. In these cases, a negative countertransferential process frequently emerges, and the client is blamed for being noncompliant. This sabotages any positive therapeutic work that the client has already accomplished. Furthermore, the therapeutic relationship becomes poisoned as the therapist unconsciously projects onto the client a noncompliant child who is not minding the negative, critical parent figure (the therapist). Frequently this goes undiscussed, because the client lacks the sufficient ego strength to challenge the therapist, who ought to know better.

If these clinicians were trained to allow for the possibility of PR, the clientʼs resistance to accomplish certain therapeutic objectives would be better under-stood within a larger psychological framework. Thus, treating the so-called resistant client becomes instead treating the phenomenon of PR, a naturally occurring therapeutic bump on the road to change that is easily corrected. A clinician who is savvy about psychoenergetic reversal contributes tremen-dously to eliminating negative countertransference between therapist and cli-ent. The therapist can stay neutral and be much less inclined to contaminate the therapeutic relationship with projections onto the client.

I treat psychoenergetic reversal the same way that I address everything else in Dynamic Energetic Healing®. I use a full complement of energetic

strategies that encompass all of my interventions (see part 2). Through manual muscle testing, it is the clients who select the most efficient interven-tion to correct their own PR. This can be the negative affect erasing method (NAEM), frontal occipital holding, chiming a Tibetan bowl, or tapping on the chakras. Occasionally, clients select one of Callahanʼs interventions, such as tapping on the karate-chop point on the side of the hand or rubbing the neuro- lymphatic drainage point on the left side of the chest. Because a major operating paradigm of my healing model is a process orientation, I am not prescriptive.

Rather, I make available to clients the best intervention that their own inner wisdom selects.

I donʼt mean to discount what Callahan-trained clinicians use as their treatment protocols. I believe that what works for clinicians is a reflection of what they hold in their field. Energy psychology methodologies work for almost any clinician. And as indicated in Energy Psychology in Psycho- therapy: A Comprehensive Sourcebook (Gallo 2002), there are many different models that use the underlying principles of energy psychology successfully.

Working in Process is creative and interesting to me. Cognitive analysis is deemphasized as I orient more from my second attention, making much more information readily accessible to me. I experience intuitive impressions, or simply a broader, unified field of awareness to what is happening in the moment within myself and within the therapeutic relational context. In addi-tion, my disposition to readily connect to the compassionate spirits as I work with clients helps to keep me reverent, humble, and in awe.

Dynamic Energetic Healing® is an outstanding therapeutic healing model that continues to evolve. Psychoenergetic reversal, and its attendant self- sabotage, is just one of the many barriers to successful therapeutic outcomes that Dynamic Energetic Healing® consistently resolves.

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In document Programa “Leer es un placer” en la comprensión lectora en estudiantes del I ciclo (página 54-58)