Hi CATI (The acronym for "CompleteAndTotalIdiot")
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Originally Posted by
completeandtotalidiot
1) please don't pick on scientologists. They frighten me and the last thing I need is to come home and find some jumping up and down on my couch.
There's bigger Bogey men out there than scientologists. They are just wacky religious people.
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As you've probably guessed, I'm using my real name here, so I'm pretty easy to find.
Um somehow I doubt your real name is "completeandtotalidiot". :eusa_think: You may have registered with your real name but the only name the public can see is "CATI". No one can access your personal information except the Administrator of the forum and he's not connected to the Scientologsts, Moonies or Knights Templar ... just some devious girl with a raven. ;)
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2) my biggest, fattest theory is almost relevant: I believe what we consider our "mind" develops around the beginning of (pre-verbal) communication, and to some degree, for a lucky few, it evolves from there.
What do you mean by "mind"? I'm not up on my developmental psychology but what I do know is that babies, though capable of some thought - it's very simplistic. The more complex forms of thought evolve gradually as the brain develops.
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I believe in degrees of sub- and pre-consciousness.
Subconscious, unconscious, higher conscious are terms for the same thing. Essentially, the unconscious is everything that your conscious mind is not aware of.
The question is - how would you distinguish the levels and for what purpose?
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But I also believe we have some kind of hard-disk recorder, on since birth, recording information and making simple connections.
That would be your brain, wouldn't it? Recording information (your memory) and making simple connections (neural pathways).
One thing though about our memory and processing of what our senses perceive - it doesn't work like a camcorder and is not as accurate as we think it is.
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If it sees consistent cycles of ones and ones and fives it will deduce 1+1=5.
That's your conscious mind.
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And I believe this "machine" is what is truly at the wheel, that makes all the really big decisions in our lives, like finding and falling hopelessly, deeply in love with the worst possible companion available to us.
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That would imply that we do not have control over decisions and that is incorrect because we do. Some people do not realize it and so it appears that things just happen. How we make decisions is a bit of a complex process. If you look at the attached chart, it'll give you a bit of an idea of how we form conclusions.
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And I believe there is no direct communication between this "machine" and the various levels of the mind, whatever they may be.
Different areas of the brain are involved in the processing of information and unless there is damage to one of those areas, they are all connected and do work together.
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Stop it with the couch jumping, I'm still talking here.
How did you know Tom Cruise was visiting? ;)
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The stripper with the abusive, greasy, felonious boyfriends, the secretary who only dates married men, every relationship I've ever even considered: bad relationships, especially the perfectly bad ones that are almost impossible to separate,
People make bad decisions for a variety of reasons.
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What her shrink doesn't seem to be recognizing, and I am embarrassingly at a loss to figure out a solution to, is that after all the cognitive therapy, after all the levels of this belief are uncovered, challenged and appropriately dismissed, thanks to this internal hard drive, her "knowledge" of her guilt will still remain.
This is something NLP could fix. Her guilt is linked to something and a good NLP Practitioner should be able to disconnect that link and it wouldn't take years of therapy either.
There is a reason that she is hanging on to the guilt - and that too can be dealt with fairly easily.
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Statistically, it takes the secretary 46 married "I know, I know, but THIS guy's different, he's REALLY gonna leave his wife" men before they see a pattern, but even then the following guy will be different, because he's really gonna leave his wife.
That has to do with a belief and it is also tied to self worth. These things can be changed.
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I don't believe, or at least don't want to believe, a childhood of being told you're worthless or the root of all evil destines you to a lifetime of recreating the family dynamic (and jumping on every ready-made similarity) and failing to correct or right it, but all I've seen -- the best I've seen have been methods of dealing with faulty beliefs about oneself, not this deeper, quasi-disconnected (maybe because it remains pre-verbal?) faulty "KNOWLEDGE" of one's own worthlessness.
Being told something repetitively can create a belief which can affect future thoughts and behavior. This too can be changed through NLP. Essentially being told something over and over again is a form of hypnosis. The person becomes programmed to believe what they are told, especially if it comes from an authority figure or someone who is important to them.
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The best I've managed so far is to, and to try to help others to, be a little vigilant and triangulate its manifestation from pretty certain clues (excitement about a job interview when one was told they normally only hire people who are actually qualified for the position is a pretty big clue that you're going to fail, daily, much to your bosses delight, but at least you know he won't fire you and thus ruin his fun.)
You are on to something there because the more we become aware of what we are thinking, the more we are able to change what we are thinking and therefore change our outcomes. Words are very powerful and what we say to ourselves (our thoughts are self talk) does make a big difference.
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I will say that Psych and the related Helping Professions' only hope is from amateurs, because the professional cure for it 'hurting when you do this' is to 'stop doing that,' ("...and it looks like our time is up. That'll be $200. Cash") and I believe it's not quite that simple. For starters, because I think our model of the mind is STILL horribly, naively incomplete.
In order for someone to change, they have to really want to change. Many people who see counselors want to change but they don't want it bad enough to do what it takes to change. Many people resist change even though their lives are not working for them. Many people fear change because they are more comfortable with what they know, even if it sucks, than the unknown future. As soon as one becomes totally put off with their current situation, they will change and it happens quickly.
Change happens within seconds, it's what leads up to the person making the decision to change that can take a long time.
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I ran all this by a PhD friend, by the way, pointing all the time to the hard disk recorder somewhere around the spleen; her only considered reaction was to confirm that I did know that all of this actually happens in the head, not the spleen.
Just think, if they remove the spleen then the person would not be able to function. Yes, it does all happen in the melon.
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I should have cut myself open and pulled out the bloody hard disk unit to show her just how wrong she is.
No hard disk, black box or microchip hidden in the body ... unless you are an alien. Maybe you are Master of the Universe ... or Data from Star Trek?:icon_albino:
M.
M.