How do you get someone to look at their issues if they don’t want to?

Posted by John Dalton on August 13, 2008

+ How do you get someone to look at their issues if they don’t want to? - November - 05

Dear John,

I am enjoying your profoundly irreverent letters very much.
I think you are a naughty man.

I have a patient for lower back pain.  She also has many
emotional conflicts and issues within her.  She shows no
interest in addressing these issues.  The opposite in fact.

Here is my question.
Is it possible to invoke someone to address their issues if they
don’t want to?

Kind regards.

N. V.
Singapore.

P.S. Be nice.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Cute . .

When someone first comes to me for treatment, after the
initial, ‘Hello’, and ‘Take a seat.’ etc.  The first question I ask is,
‘What can I do for you?’
and then I shut up,
and wait.
Whatever their answer is, is what they are asking me to help
them with.

‘No kidding Sherlock.’

That may sound obvious but it’s surprising how many
therapist don’t get it.  From the sounds of it, you might be one
of  them.  [That's me being nice, in case you missed that too.]

Whatever they answer to question, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I want to sleep better.’
‘I want the headaches to stop.’
‘I want to stop attracting the wrong man/woman.’
‘I want to stop feeling so anxious.’
‘I want to get rid of my fibromyalgia’

It goes to form what I think of as a contract between us.  It
forms the boundaries within which I work and a declaration on
their part of what they want assistance with.

Let’s say someone asks me to help them with a very physical
problem and while treating them, I palpate lots of emotional
disharmonies.  If the emotional disharmonies are NOT causing
the particular physical symptoms I have been asked to help
with, then it would be very bad juju for me to try and start
working on the emotional issues.

First and foremost it’s disrespectful.
It’s like passing someone on the street struggling to carry
a new TV into their house.  They ask me to help them carry
the TV into the house with them.  I do this but once inside the
house I get a dose of ‘Queer eye for the straight guy,’ and take it
upon myself to redecorate the hall, stairs and landing
because, ‘Let’s face it, this person has shocking taste!’

Secondly, it’s more efficient to stick to the contract because it
can always be renegotiated in the future.

How come you are able to palpate the emotional issues in the
first place?

You can only ever see what you are shown.

If you stay within the bounds of the contract, it leaves space
for the person to say to you down the track, ‘I think I would
like you to help me deal with my emotional issues.’

It may sound unlikely but it happens.  It’s another form of
trusting that the person will allow you deeper when they feel
safe.  You’re job is not to invoke them to address their issues
but to provide the safest space you can, allowing them to feel
empowered enough to address their issues, if they’re ready to.

‘Why are people so dumb?’

Posted by John Dalton on July 2, 2008

+ Emotional issues - Why are people so dumb? - September 05

Ok Maestro. Read your blurb on your website.

You don’t seem like your standard “Be still
and know that I KNOW,’ sort of cranio person.
Is there a factory somewhere I don’t know about
that churns these folk out?

Anyways, I’ve got a question for ye.
I’ve been seeing people for 4 years now, using
a combination of acupuncture and cranio.

As time goes on I’m seeing the cause of many
physical problems are emotional.

They tell you their life stories when they come
in and you can see how they keep repeating
the same self destructive patterns over and OVER again!
You point it out to them and they just keep doing it?

What gives?
Why don’t they get it?
Believe me I’ve tried everything!

So let’s hear your answer on that one Kemosabe.

K. Orlando. Fl.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Why DON’T people get it?
Is it because they are dumb?

Well let’s explore that. If the reason people don’t
get stuff is because they are dumb then that would
include you and me.

Wouldn’t it?

Or do you think we are special?

That you and I get stuff quicker than other people?
Maybe it’s just you and the rest of us are dumb?
Okay, so maybe there is something else going on.

It’s called subjectivity.

Let me explain.

This situation happens to about once every couple of
weeks in my practie. I will be talking with a patient
about their condition. I will be in the middle of
saying something that I hadn’t verbalised before and
what I am saying is COOL!

Part of me will be listening and thinking ‘This is
really good, profound, insightful stuff I’m saying.’

Within a few minutes the patient will be looking
at me in an awed sort of way. I can see them
rummaging around internally for the makings of
a nice pedestal to put me on. That’s when my
ALARM BELLS GO OFF.

For me and for them.

While I acknowledge that every now and again
I do say something original, I know it’s not
good for me to get too self admiring about it.

I also, know that the patient is about to disempower
themselves if I don’t do something fast.

At this stage they will usually be in the middle
of telling me how they feel like a screw up of
one kind or another.

The inference being that there are people in the
world who are normal, they are in the majority
and the patient is an anomaly.

I stop them and explain the objective/subjective dynamic.
I make a point of explaining that I can have insight
about their lives because I AM NOT IN THEIR BODY.
I’M NOT LIVING IN THEIR LIFE.

I further the point by telling them that if we
swapped seats and I started telling them about
my life, they could have some very useful insights
about my life. Particularly the things I am not seeing.

Bottom line Tonto, is you have been sitting in the
therapist’s chair too long. You have forgotten what
it is like to be a patient. You have started to
believe your own press and feel like you should
be up there on that pedestal your patients have
been eager to put you on.

WARNING! WARNING! YOU ARE IN DANGER OF
FALLING INTO THE THERAPIST TRAP.

I know because I fell in it a few times myself
in different ways. It is one of those things
you need to be very proactive in not allowing to happen.

You have to nip it in the bud with yourself first
and then with your patients.

No pedestal building allowed.
No special powers implied.
No act together imagined.

So be of good cheer, K of Orlando, it’s not hopeless
but you will need to do something NOW.

I suggest going to a therapist, a cranio sacral
therapist even. Put yourself in the other chair
for a bit.

Take a class. Learn something new.

Do whatever you can to break up the cocoon of
smug superiority you have woven around yourself.

Try and energetically stand beside the patient
as you look at their problem, rather on opposite
sides of it.

Be with them, two people doing the best they can,
sometimes with ignorance and fear
sometimes with grace and beauty.

Dude, somebody hug me.

Sciatica

Posted by John Dalton on July 2, 2008

+ Which technique should I use? - September 05

+ Comment from Al Pelowski, principal tutor with The South
African Institute of Cranial Studies. on sciatica- October 05

Hi John,
Found your web site very useful and your URL easy to remember.
I use it as my virtual business card. I have been treating a man in
his late fifties with sciatica. I have had some success but feel I
could achieve more.

Can you recommend any techniques that you have found
particularly useful for sciatica?
Thanks
J.P.
Brisbane.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Glad you like the site.
I’m going to answer your question in two parts. Let me start by
saying no one technique is ‘the’ technique for ANYTHING.

Techniques are ways we get a handle on the bigger picture.
And the biggest picture is what you need to be available for.
I am putting it like that because describing it as ‘looking’ for
the biggest picture is way too active, eager, inefficient and INTURSIVE.
You need to ask yourself, what is really going on here?
Why has this person got these particular symptoms?
Why are the symptoms in this configuration?
What’s the root cause of this situation?

Symptoms generally manifest physically, meaning they show up
in the person’s body.  But that doesn’t mean the CAUSE of those
symptoms is exclusively physical.

Often EMOTIONAL issues will express themselves as physical symptoms.
It doesn’t just stop there, often the root cause of what is going
on has a physical component, caused by an emotional component
but the root cause is not emotional it is something DEEPER.

That may sound spooky or kooky to you depending on your slant
but I have seen it time and again, where the root cause was deeper
than physical and emotional issues.

How can that be?

Let’s go through it one layer at a time.
Physical problems.
These problems are characterised by very physical causes and
descriptions,  ‘The tentorium cerebelli is pulled inferiorly here,
causing pressure there . . .etc’.
Regardless of the source of a pattern of a restriction, it will show
up physically.  Becoming accurate in identifying the extent and
complexity of physical restrictions takes a lot of practice and is
a prerequisite for working with the deeper causes.

Emotional issues/causes.
Restrictions in the emotional aspect of the person can have causes
like, a person may need to leave a partner or job or it may be an old
emotional abuse.
Emotional restrictions are more difficult to identify accurately
because it’s very easy to start theorising about the person’s problems
instead of simply receiving the information from the person’s body in
the same way you do with physical patterns.

Core problems
These relate to how the person sees themselves in their lives, their
relationship with themselves, with God, with their idea of God.
A feeling that they’re off track.
And no, you don’t need to know what their track is.
Core problems can feel like fundamental disharmonies within the
person.  They are the hardest to perceive because they are so deep
in the person.
Your ability to see and work with these core issues comes with lots
of practice and humility.
Their revelation occurs in the dynamic between you and the person
and what you have to offer each other.

Are you with me?

It generally works its way through the layers something like this.
A disharmony in a person’s core will affect them emotionally and
in turn affect them physically.
For example someone might think they are fundamentally bad.
This could manifest emotionally as anxiety and paranoia, which
could manifest physically as headaches and chronic fatigue.
The skill comes in being able to assess where the root cause of
the problem is.

Before you go charging off into the great mystery, let me add this.
It can be as easy to go the other way and start looking for deep
emotional and core issues as the root cause of a purely physical
problem.

‘I just twisted my knee Mate!’

Now the second part of my answer is purely physical.
There are lots of different ways of creating sciatica.
It’s a pain, which means there have to be nerves involved.
The pain generally is in the lower back and travels down one
leg or the other, sometimes both.

Have a look at, [in books and with your hands] the lumbar plexus,
the sacral plexus.  How are the nerves on both sides of the spinal
column as they leave the vertebral foramina?

Scan the nerves up as far as the thoraco-lumbar junction.
Remember tight membranes can pull vertebrae together and pinch nerves.
Consider how long the person has been getting the pain?
Getting a sense of when and how the pattern of restriction was formed.
So, look particularly at the dural tube.
How are the membranes running?
Most particularly how is the cerebro spinal fluid moving?
Find ways to help it come into a harmonious flow.
It’s all about flow.

Top

***COMMENT FROM AL PELOWSKI***
- On additional physical causes of sciatica.

John,
Some of the rootlets of the sciatic nerve pass through the psoas
muscle - a noted emotional contractor- - slightly bent over posture,
unable to fully extend hips without pain, affected leg externally rotated.
Another sciatica tip: usually on right side, I-C Valve, Caecum.

Yet other possibilities: Leg length differences, real bony differences,
or more likely due to rotations in the leg from protecting an old sprained
ankle or twisted knee — most commonly external rotation in the foot
where there has been damage to the ankle lateral colateral ligaments
– resulting in compression of the S-I joint and thus irritation of the epineuria.
“from the ankle joint to the knee joint…etc” Remember the tune?

Yo. Ta for newsletter. Much food for reflection
A

>>>MY COMMENTS:

Thanks Al. All very useful places to look for the mechanics of
the physical manifestation of sciatica.

Silence

Posted by John Dalton on July 2, 2008

+ Question about talking about emotional issues. - July 08

Dear John,
Thank you for your wonderful newsletters they are
so helpful.  I find your wellness detective agency
idea novel and very useful.

I have a particular patient with chronic fatigue
and Fibromyalgia for 6 years.  She is in a lot of
pain.  The cranio sacral treatment itself is going
reasonably well but I feel she has emotional
issues that make her condition worse.

I have broached exploring the emotional causes of
her condition with her but she becomes very
defensive and then frustrated and then despairing.

Do you have any suggestions on how to approach
these issues with her.

Thanks again.

PM
Perth.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

The secret weapon of cranio sacral therapy is
silence.

Personally, I can talk a lot about the other
stuff.  Why the person might be sick and so on.
I can talk about that stuff so much I wrote a book
about it for crying out loud.

But for some people talking can only make
things worse.  They will usually have been sick
for some time, like your patient, and will usually
have seen quite a few other therapists.  They will
have a number of theories crashing around in their
heads as to why they are ill.  Ironically each new
‘helpful’ perspective you might offer can push
them deeper into confusion rather than helping to
clarify.

That’s when silence really works. Just let them
get on the table and begin your work.  You can
chat with them but don’t initiate it or keep it
going.  Eventually silence descends and in that
silence and the depths of your work, changes will
percolate to the surface from the depths of them.

Over time deep changes will occur and no one
will talk about it.  Sometimes if you are lucky
they will tell you an insight they may have had
and when they do it will usually have a deep ring
of truth to it.

Th1 - Trauma Pattern Formation

Posted by John Dalton on June 19, 2008

You are in the fruit and veg department of the supermarket.
You pull a bag from the roll provided. You are talking to your
friend as you try to open the bag. You rub the end of the bag
between your thumb and finger. After a couple of attempts you
realise that you are trying to open the wrong end of the bag.
If you look closely at where you have been trying to open the bag,
you will see that your thumb and finger have left an imprint in the
bag. You could say there is a pattern of restriction in the bag.
If you smoothed out the imprint as best you could, you would
still not be able to get the fine creases out of the plastic.

This is similar to the way restriction patterns are formed.
The body undergoes a trauma of some kind. Let us say a car
accident. The impact of the steering wheel on the body puts a
large pattern of trauma in the body. Broken bones, lacerations etc.
The body can release much of the pattern of restriction but it may
not be able to release the entire pattern (the fine creases in the plastic).
The residual pattern of restriction is what causes the symptoms
that the person comes to you for help with.

You might wonder why these patterns of restriction are not
detected and treated with expensive machinery, like MRI machines.
Also how could such small residual patterns of restriction be so
devastating?

To get an idea of what goes on in the body think of fascia as being
like 20 layers of glad wrap one on top of another with a thin layer
of fluid between each layer. When your body is functioning normally
each layer glides over the next. If you poked your finger into the
middle of those layers the imprint left by your finger would totally
compromise the glad wrap’s ability to move one layer over the other.
Take the above small analogy and multiply it by 1,000 and you will
begin to get an idea of the effect patterns of restriction can have
in the body. The machines are good but they are not looking for
widespread minute restrictions.

Patterns of restriction are often wide spread but like anything that
is creased, some parts are more creased than others. They are called
focal points, trauma focuses or energy cysts.

Patterns of trauma are usually complex because the body moves
as it is impacted. So in the example above the person would not
have a steering wheel shaped pattern of restriction imprinted in
the area of their body where they struck the steering wheel. The
pattern of restriction will include the way their body moved as it
was thrown around in the accident.

If you have ever seen crash simulations using dummies you will
know that they move around a lot during the impact.

Also to be considered is the depth the pattern is imprinted in the body.

You have a large bowl of jelly and a ball bearing. You hold the ball
bearing 5cms above the surface of the jelly and let it fall. It hardly
breaks the surface of the jelly. You retrieve the ball bearing and drop
it into the jelly from a height of 1 meter.
The ball bearing has now embedded itself into the jelly to quite a depth.

With patterns of restriction the greater the force of the trauma the
deeper into the body it is imprinted.

EMOTIONS
Emotional trauma also lodges in the body and can cause restrictions
equal in severity to patterns of restriction formed in a purely physical way.

You are six years old. You are walking past a building site. A brick
falls off the scaffold and hits you on the shoulder breaking your clavicle.
40 years later you have frozen shoulder.

You are six years old. Your father is angrily telling you that you are stupid.
As he does this he taps you on the shoulder with his finger to make the point.
40 years later you have frozen shoulder.

The memory of these events may not be in the conscious mind, but
stored in the cells of our bodies. In the course of a Cranio Sacral
session these memories can spring into the conscious mind as
patterns of restriction are releasing.

TISSUE MEMORY
If you find the notion of ‘Tissue Memory’ difficult to accept, think
of it this way; videotape is made of plastic with iron filings stuck
on its surface. There is nothing too amazing about that, yet when
the videotape is played through the VCR and we watch the film,
we laugh and cry and become emotionally engaged. The cells in
our bodies are a lot more complex than videotape. They store an
incredible amount of information and perform a mind boggling
number of tasks every second, it is very plausible that they can
also store individual memory.

TRAUMA RELEASE
Patterns of restriction release when the body returns to the position
it was in when the trauma was imprinted. For example if a person’s
frozen shoulder was caused years before by their arm being
violently. Then the pattern of restriction resulting from that trauma
will release when the arm is in the exact position it was in when the
trauma occurred, in this case bent backwards.

When the body returns to the exact position that the trauma occurred
in, a spontaneous release occurs.

It would be practically impossible for the therapist to find the exact
body position a particular trauma occurred in based on the person’s
memory and external guesswork. Luckily for us we don’t need to
work it out because the body remembers. The cranio sacral therapist
tunes into the body and allows it to move. With skillful following the
body will lead the therapist to the point where the trauma occurred.

The cranio sacral therapist uses the body’s memory of the trauma and
follows it knowing that with timely and appropriate assistance it will
release it’s own restrictions.

We will go into patterns of restriction in great depth as your training
progresses. For now, knowledge of patterns of restriction will give an
appreciation of what you have at your fingertips as you practice.