Overcoming Negativity in Healing

by Tim Brunson, PhD

Albert Einstein once said that you can never solve a problem while being in the same state in which you created it. While he most likely was not talking about helping therapy clients or the treatment of medical patients, he very well could have been. When people seek professional help for resolving a mental or physical condition they often seem to be mired in excessive negativity. Somehow they expect respite despite their obsession with associating fully into the condition that they are hoping to escape. Unfortunately, what they are doing is further reinforcing their problems. Breaking this pattern is the major role of the healer.

Recently I saw a very interesting lady. She was morbidly obese and had breathing problems as well as a host of stress-related issues and a plethora of medical concerns. Although she was several years younger than me, she appeared to be my senior by at least a decade. She was officially drawing disability payments. On top of that she had a life-long severe smoking addiction – which was the presenting problem that prompted the appointment.

Noticing that she had never worked with a hypnotherapist or was not aware that she had ever been hypnotized, I naturally started my pre-talk by giving her relevant information regarding hypnosis and my skills. What I quickly noticed was that she was fidgeting and apparently very anxious to ask a question. Therefore, I deviated from my routine and allowed her to express her concerns. She was wondering if during the session we would be able to address multiple issues as she wanted to be very clear that she had a tremendous amount of problems. Quickly she began going down the path of negativity, which I easily noticed in her voice and physiology. I saw this as a downward spiral that needed to be stopped if the session was going successful.

During the writing of my doctoral dissertation I began using the phrase "feeding the weeds" to describe such behavior. This concept is similar to a phrase used frequently by the late Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, PhD. He noticed that when a behavior or thought pattern is constantly employed, the associated neural networks become reinforced. He then pointed out that the opposite is also true. Stop a behavior or cease a thought pattern and the associated neural networks begin to wither. He called this "use it or lose it." So, when I refer to feeding or nurturing the weeds in your mind – and body – what I am pointing out is that continually performing a bad habit and/or thinking or talking about it reinforces the networks (i.e. patterns) in your brain and body. (This is especially true when people are claiming that they have "tried to quit" smoking cigarettes.) The problem with most therapy clients – and medical patients – is that they incessantly complain about what they don't want and don't understand why they can't get rid of it. Essentially, they are feeding their weeds and complaining about it at the same time. Once I point this out to my highly intelligent patients and clients – to include surgeons, lawyers, and dump truck drivers – they give me a puzzled look and say that that just doesn't make sense. I agree.

Obsessive negativity shifts the focus of neural activity to the survival and pattern driven areas of the brain to include the more primitive limbic system. This is the negative state to which Einstein referred. This part of the brain deals with emotions and the "why" question. It is not the part of the brain that is going to resolve any situation. What is needed is the more logical part of the brain – such as the frontal lobes – which is capable of answering the "how" question. Shifting a person's thought patterns from the why to the how is one of the primary services provided by any healer. The subject has been trying to resolve their problem by using the exact same part of the brain that has been causing the problem. Again, this does not make any sense at all.

The challenge is to get the subject to break a pattern to which they are accustomed and have consistently demonstrated mastery. As I frequently point out, one of the two most essential characteristics of any pattern is resistance to change. The greatest challenge for the clinician is not only to address the pattern resistance associated with the presenting problem. They must also counter the resistance represented by life-long negativity. (The other essential pattern characteristic is adaptation when resistance becomes futile.)

A mistake that is commonly made by clinicians is that they also excessively and harmfully focus on their client or patient's obsessive negativity. Of course, showing compassion, empathy, and understanding is appropriate. However, staying in their negativity land does not do anything but reinforce the problem. That behavior does nothing but feed their weeds. Their subjects feel that resolving problems require focusing on them. If they succeed in sucking their clinician into this black hole of despair, their condition will never improve. So, what is the answer?

The solution can be found in Hebb's use it or lose it concept. If focusing on the problem reinforces it, the only way to get it to go away is to let it wither from disuse – or a lack of focus. The best way to do this is to build up an alternate pattern. By creating an alternate reality in the mind of the patient, the associated neural pathways are created and reinforced. Of course, the brain's pattern resistance mechanism – which I believe to be embedded in the left prefrontal cortex – will fight this transformative effort. This is where hypnosis comes in, as the first characteristic of that process is to mitigate inertia. As the alternative – hopefully positive – pattern is installed during the hypnotic process, transformation is accelerated. I call this the "substitution effect." By creating a strong positive set of thought patterns, provided that alternative is sufficiently powerful – which I call antithetical -- the negative resistive patterns should naturally succumb to the need to transform.

Negative thoughts are the enemy of a person's mental and physical health. By habitually reinforcing limbic fight/flight structures in the brain and allowing chronic a sympathetic state to persist, the subject is preventing their self-healing mechanism from working. Our health care system – including the treatment of our minds and our bodies – is designed to focus on what is wrong with us rather than trying to inspire wellness by installing a positive blueprint. Patients in waiting rooms insist on experiencing their un-well states and focus on how medical doctors can fix them. The undue emphasis is on sickness rather than health. This does little but "feed the weeds." The more enlightened medical practitioners – such as Deepak Chopra, MD, and Andrew Weil, MD – are lone voices who have consistently attempted to influence an alternate attitude toward healing – the same attitude that I insist that all healers should follow. By looking at ourselves as ill, we are reinforcing the illness. However, should one follow Dr. Chopra's advice and see oneself as being in the healing process, then a radically different result follows.

Medical and mental health research over the past few decades tends to support my contention that shifting from negative to positive thoughts is the key to healing. This does not mean that the clinician should be unrealistic in the assessment of a person's condition. However, insisting on staying there is clearly not the answer. The act of moving a person toward health involves clearly establishing the desired destination. Of course, this attitude must first reside in the mind of the clinician. That topic is one that I will address in a follow up article.

The International Hypnosis Research Institute is a member supported project involving integrative health care specialists from around the world. We provide information and educational resources to clinicians. Dr. Brunson is the author of over 150 self-help and clinical CD's and MP3's.