Paul giving a session

Rizzo: Trigger Episodes

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Notes:

Trigger(ed) episodes

Trigger(ed) episodes are those periods of time when one has been reminded of some unpleasant event and is re-experiencing — to a greater or lesser extent — some of the unpleasant memories and even urges from that time. This re-experiencing can include sights, sounds, smells, feelings, pains and sensations and other perceptions, as well as an acting out or restrained desire to act out some of the events.

Deliberate triggering

Phase 3 work at PaulsRobot involves digging around for hot topics that are not currently in a state of arousal, and deliberately triggering them. In this way such topics can be brought to view and discharged. If there were no simple means of discharging them, deliberately triggering a person's hot topics would merely be cruel.

PaulsRobot aims

The PaulsRobot modules that address past charged events seek to reduce such events happening in the future. The things that one has associated with the past event will still appear in one's life, but the intention is that they will no longer have the same power to trigger the unwanted parts of the memories. The memories will still exist, but the emotional charge they pack will have been dissipated to a certain extent.

Three procedures

In Phase 3, Rizzo contains three basic procedures for addressing one's topic.

Reach & Withdraw

This is about the lightest pro-active technique imaginable in addressing a topic. It allows the client to touch fleetingly the smallest part of his topic on a Reach step, and then back off from it. Then back away from it even more on the Withdraw step, and return to how he was before executing the next Reach command. As this progresses, and the topic gradually discharges, the client should incrementally be able to face more of the topic. At some point — and this may be after five minutes or a hundred hours or more — he should be able to move on to the other procedures in this module.

6-Direction technique

This is a simple but very powerful technique for pro-actively visualizing parts of one's hot topic. There is a world of difference between reactively being swamped by unpleasant memories, and pro-actively moving parts of these memories in space, around one's body. Combined with Rub & Yawn, it is very effective for discharging a topic.

Rog

Rogerian Therapy, named after Carl Rogers, is a gentle talk therapy, in which the client talks about his topic to the practitioner. Every now and then, the practitioner reflects back to the client the essential points of his topic, both the factual and emotional content, without evaluation. The client can correct anything he feels the practitioner has not got right. In this way, he gets to look at his topic from a slightly different view, which can help in sorting it out in his own mind.

Alternating the three

At any time in addressing a topic one can switch among the three procedures. For example, start with Reach & Withdraw to get warmed up, do ten minutes of heavy lifting with the 6-Direction procedure, then wind down with ten minutes of Rog. Or just spend 30 minutes doing Reach & Withdraw alone. Or whatever. It is totally at one's own discretion.

Notes:

PTSD

The heaviest topics are described in current psychology texts under the term Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Can this PaulsRobot3 Rizzo module help someone with PTSD? No such claim is being made here. No formal testing has been done, and so no such claim could be validly made. In addition to this, PaulsRobot3 is primarily aimed at normal people and not clinical cases or the dysfunctional — one reason for this is that a certain self-discipline is needed to follow the session procedures, and someone who is "out of it" at the time would not be likely to do this. Another big problem is that PaulsRobot procedures work best on someone who is well-rested, well-fed, and not under the influence. Someone who sleeps badly and is heavily medicated has two strikes against them already.

That said, it is impossible to control who uses PaulsRobot or in what circumstances. If some PTSD sufferer tries it out and benefits from it, well, so be it. But it would be very irresponsible to claim that it would help in all cases.

Criteria

The Wikipedia article on PTSD gives these (simplified here) criteria for a PTSD diagnosis:
  1. Exposure to a traumatic event
  2. Persistent re-experiencing: One or more of these must be present in the victim: flashback memories, recurring distressing dreams, subjective re-experiencing of the traumatic event(s), or intense negative psychological or physiological response to any objective or subjective reminder of the traumatic event(s).
  3. Persistent avoidance and emotional numbing: This involves a sufficient level of:
    • avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, such as certain thoughts or feelings, or talking about the event(s);
    • avoidance of behaviors, places, or people that might lead to distressing memories;
    • inability to recall major parts of the trauma(s), or decreased involvement in significant life activities;
    • decreased capacity (down to complete inability) to feel certain feelings;
    • an expectation that one's future will be somehow constrained in ways not normal to other people.
  4. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal not present before: These are all physiological response issues, such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, or problems with anger, concentration, or hypervigilance.
  5. Duration of symptoms for more than 1 month
  6. Significant impairment: The symptoms reported must lead to "clinically significant distress or impairment" of major domains of life activity, such as social relations, occupational activities, or other "important areas of functioning".

Improvement targets

If anyone ever gets around to testing this, one might expect possible improvements in categories B, C, D and F.