Been On Detour Long Enough ?

[sakoz]

Conditioned thoughts

[SWM]

unconditioned thoughts are also cues for emotion and behaviour. some conditioned thoughts are helpful. not all conditioned thoughts lead to unhelpful emotions/ behaviour.

[pljames]

I just realized I conditioned my children. Now they are grown and believe what I said. To late to recondition them the deed is done. Makes me wonder if I did good so for I think they turned out good? pl



Conditional thoughts are programmed memories which bring on emotion. I believe I was programmed by family friends society on what I believe even if it's a lie. This has happened to me. I want to believe people are good yet to find out some are not. I have been living a lie and believing it as delusion and truth. I saw this as reality and believed it was a truth. I am somewhat bewillered wondering how I could do this. PL

[sakoz]

pljames; Why are babies so lovable? One reason, they have not YET been conditioned to 'believe' falsities,  theirs or others. They are innocent. Not on 'detour' yet from 'naturalness".
Your bewildered by language use; it's so 'deep' you don't recognize what it was like without; behold, babies. The closest a adult comes to that, as I see it, we call,"charisma".

[sakoz]

SWM; Yes; I thought it goes without saying we need useful/helpful conditioned/thoughts/habits, like driving cars, riding bicycles, brushing teeth, writing, talking, etc, etc, There's probably more helpful ones than detrimental ones; but even one unhelpful one can cause 'havoc' if can't be regulated.
I noticed there are people who try to find exceptions/extreme cases where they think a principle 'might' not work in order to invalidate it, instead of simply applying the principle to situations where they know it is true/will work. "When you look for the exception, it becomes your perception."
"Yes but,,," indicates the exception in mind and hence "perception".

[pljames]

There's a statement in the bible that says, "The truth will set you free". Now that I know the truth what do I do with it? All this conditioning just made me deluded. At my age (68) if I start reconditioning my family and friends they might suspect me as (losing it). All I have is my opinion (as a believed truth).pl

[sakoz]

pljames; No need to REcondition, just 'suspend' current conditioning that are not useful.
             You will then 'function/operate' from wisdom instead.

  "The truth will set you free". From what ? The "prison" of false beliefs; from 'conditioning'.

[sakoz]

SWM, Am I banned again? A reply on this topic not accepted. I won't type it a third time.
Is 'freedom of speech" at this site determined by SWM?

[SWM]

freedom of speech is determined by me. i decide if what is acceptable. the people that have contacted me requesting other people to be banned will vouch for my fairness on freedom of speech. but ultimately this forum needs to be moderated and that falls to me to decide.

you are not banned obviously as you have just posted this message.

[S. Earl Martin]

The internet is experienceing a lot of problems today. I have recieved a number of error messages and updates. As well as being knocked off line. We were supposed to be hit by an EMP from the sun today. Due to sun spot activity. 

I for one have been on this sight for sometime and to be honest I believe SWM is very fair and patient. If I was in charge I would have been more heavy handed. But that is just me.

[sakoz]

SWM, clearly I made a mistake, I sincererly apologize, I once, earlier banned , so , it's obvious we are influenced (automatically) by our past experiience, this is a prime example. Sometimes it can't  be helped but we can make amends and/or make corrections,and go on . Are we ok?
The message I got, (not remembered verbatim)"You are not allowed to post on this topic". I can see now how that's for person 's not members.

[sakoz]

SWM; I take issue with ( in a inquiring/friendly way; not a challenge).

unconditioned thoughts are also cues for emotion and behaviour. some conditioned thoughts are helpful. not all conditioned thoughts lead to unhelpful emotions/ behaviour.

   Correct me if I'm wrong; to me; a thought is  conditioned by being believed true. therefore a unconditioned thought is not believed so is not a cue for emotion nor behavior.
In my experience, a "not-believed" thought has no effect, no emotion, no behavior. 'Believing" a thought makes it a cue, stimulus, signal, cause, perception.
In #3 to pljames, I wrote, babies have not yet been 'conditioned to believe'.  Human conditioning consists of "believing thought", believing made habit. That means 'thoughts' not yet 'conceived', but when they 'show up', by being believed, are instantly conditioned as a cue. Pavlovian conditioning requires repetition; that's primitive, antiquecated, cumbersome compared to human conditioning by 'believing'.
I wrote; "So when you think from your conditioned-thought-system....etc...". Implies another/alternative 'source' for thoughts. How about innate-body-wisdom? Thoughts from 'there' are recognized as insight/original/authentic. Can insights be false, a lie? Maybe we ought to investigate.
Have we been "missing out" on something we already have?  Are we only a insight away from insight?

[SWM]

the last error message for your account was "You must enter something in both the subject and message boxes." this occured January 31, 2012, 06:40:04 PM

[sakoz]

Would anyone, knowingly react to a false thought?   How efficacious is it to believe false thoughts knowing our 'involuntary/amygdala" will react to it as if real?
Let me reword the two questions; "Would anyone "knowingly believe" a false thought, knowing their involuntary/amygdala will react to it as if real?
'Believing" a thought is clearly a DIRECTIVE;  whether recognized as such or not. The 'effect' is the same.

[SWM]

SWM; I take issue with ( in a inquiring/friendly way; not a challenge).

unconditioned thoughts are also cues for emotion and behaviour. some conditioned thoughts are helpful. not all conditioned thoughts lead to unhelpful emotions/ behaviour.

   Correct me if I'm wrong; to me; a thought is  conditioned by being believed true. therefore a unconditioned thought is not believed so is not a cue for emotion nor behavior.

you think that a believing a thought conditions the thought, and not beliving a thought unconditions the thought, how do you know if these assumptions are true, how could these assumptions be tested verified?

i think we have different meanings for conditioned thought. i understand a conditioned thought to be a thought that occurs due to conditioning. conditioning happens through repeated exposure to an experience. an example would be a mother who screams when she sees a spider, the child who witness this as the conditioned thought "spiders are dangerous". an unconditioned thought would be a thought that occurs spontaneously without repeated exposure to an experience. both of these thoughts whether conditioned or not could be believed to be true.

[sakoz]

What did I learn from my 'mistake'?

SWM, Am I banned again? A reply on this topic not accepted. I won't type it a third time.
Is 'freedom of speech" at this site determined by SWM?

What's been my rationale for repeating a concept (irrationally ?) Some have wrote they "got it", enough already; why was I repeating. Here's why. We all 'got' the lesson of 'looking at a rope and seeing (our image of ) snake.The message is,"Memory images automatically interact with current perceptions". I was recently banned, that image is now part of my memory. Yesterday, I got a,message on my computer screen; "You are not allowed to reply to this topic." What image do you think came automatically from my memory to interact with what I was perceiving?
If I "knew" (so well) memory images interact with current perceptions; how come I fell into the "trap"? Because it occurs automatically for everyone. ( see article 'On Being Sane In Insane Places')
So when you tell me you 'got it", does not mean you apply/practice what you 'know'. We're back at 'conditioned habits'. No one is 100% immune but we can learn to 'catch' some and recoup, resilent when we do 'slip' into "believing habit". I'm not embarrassed for making a (wired-in) mistake. I , in this case, agree with S.Earl Martin, "We are imperfect beings", this habit 'takes the cake". I'm about reducing such mistakes and avoid IF possible.
( I'm glad I did not accuse SWM, but  instead asked two questions, that implied he did.(lol)

[sakoz]

SWM: I can't copy your # 14 to here.  "I think we have different meanings for conditioned thought. I understand a  conditioned thought to be a thought that occurs due to conditioning. conditioning happens through repeated exposure to an experience."  How many times does the mother have to repeat screaming when she sees a spider before the baby is conditioned to such repetition? I explained in my #11; "Pavlovian conditioning requires REPETITION......etc....; human conditioning by  BELIEVING." As soon as we believe a thought, our involuntary reacts; even,when the 'believing and thought' are both subliminal. That's why I said we can be conditioned to a thought prior to it's arrival, if 'believed' as soon as it arrives.

[sakoz]

" All creatures are involuntarily responsive to perceptions." ( Been so for eons, and will continue so.) Perceptions are very basic/fundemental. So why question perceptions? Even very sincere witnesses in our courts are cross examined. Why? To get to the facts; so cross examinations imply perceptions are,NOT reliable; Polygraph tests are not permissible in courts for same reason.
So what's going on? Perceptions have cause, meaning, perceptions are effects. So how can we 'see' prior to perception at the 'cause' of the perception? There are "belief-perceptions".
"Thinking" is a function/activity of 'making' or using thoughts. A analogy: we can go to a pottery store and see a variety of pots. If we do not go to the back room, we do not  see how they are made. From pliable.ameanable, soft clay. We cannot go "behind the scenes" of our own thought making and storage ( we can't go into memory, on ly retrieve from there), but we can acknowledge such :unobsereved reality". Instead, we been  taking our thoughts at "face value' (even false ones). Acknowledge "behind the scenes" even  though  not observable. We can emulate physicist,they not on ly acknowledge 'behind the scenes' that cause the effect of 'matter', they influence that level, look at all the electronic 'gadgets' being 'invent'.
Some of our peceptions are caused by "believed-thought-images.  Why are perceptions so compelling? Our involuntary is "hard-wired' to react to them, (even to false ones). Choice of reacting to perceptions is not an option, it's automatic, but we can learn  to choose the 'belief-perceptions' we want to react to rather than by 'default' when we believe by 'habit'.

[sakoz]

O.K. guys, you say i repeated my 'message' 'adnauseam, so you all throughly understand it as well as I do. So humor me and think of a man-eating tiger, you have your image in mind, (for some the image may be vague/unclear, but you must have some image in order to know what the word 'means') Now 'believe' your image is real. You can't do so even if you spend the rest of your life trying.  So how come in other contexts, with other images you do exactly that, if not you guys, you must admit other people do just that. So explain , here ,how you can't believe your 'tiger' is real yet other images are? Put the two together, a image not believed real and one that is, that too is impossible, because if side by side, you would see both are only images. O.K. so explain to me instead of me to you, how a mental image provokes/evokes involuntary reactions, causing so much emotional suffering, etc, etc. If it's so simple to you please, please explain, many will 'love' you for it, you can show them HOW to stop and no longer suffer needlessly, or is your 'understanding' academic, ?

[S. Earl Martin]

Recognizing a false image is not simple. Sometimes it isn't even possible. In order to recognize it as a false image you need to have a way to measure it. To do a comparative anyalsis. Using your snake rope analogy.
If I see a rope and think it is a snake. If I stay there and investigate it I would realize it was a rope. If I were someone who is afraid of snakes I might run away and never realize it was a rope. To them it would have been a snake. It would be no difference between a snake or rope. If I think about a man eating tiger I do not react for several reasons.
1. I have never seen a man eating tiger or experienced one in the wild. So the image is abstract.
2. It is a thought not reality. Just thinking about something scary doesn't elicit the same reaction as experiencing it. If I was in a cage with a tiger and was unfamilar with the process my reaction would be different. I would be looking for a weapon or an exit.
3. I have experienced a pit bull attack. Just remembering it raises my anxiety level. Even though it was many years ago it still causes me apprehension. That is a good thing. The image causes me to be on gaurd. So even though there is a degree of unpleasantness. It makes me aware of potential danger. It in the long run could save my life. In this case the small amount of emotional suffering as you put it would be potentially benificial.

When in life I experience something unpleasant I have a choice to just allow it to control me and my emotions. Or to work thru the situation and learn from it. So the emotional pain is just momentary. While the long term effects are benificial. Things that cause emotional suffering are going to happen. It is how we react to them that matters.

[sakoz]

S. Earl Martin: Thanks for reply, If I had known, I would have used the pit bull image, it would have made a difference, so It goes.

[S. Earl Martin]

I understand that you are trying to find a way to reduce peoples suffering. Sometimes the momentary unpleasantness is a warning or a lesson that we need to learn. How many times in my life have I told people mainly children. If you do that you will get hurt. They don't listen and do what I warn them about anyway. They fall down or burn themselves. They needed to learn the lesson for themselves. Hopefully the suffering taught them something and they don't make the mistake again. Life is a series of lessons that we need to learn. Some are painful. But they lead to maturity and understanding if we pay attention to them. Some people don't learn. They just keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. So their suffering continues.

How can we illiminate emotional suffering? I don't think we can and I think in some cases it has a long term positive benefit. Now on the flip side. Some of the things I have said to you have caused you "emotional suffering" per say. I didn't want to be mean, but I felt it was necessary to get you to move on with your ideas. Being all nice and supportive was not working. That is positive reinforcement. I switched to negative reinforcement because it was the only couse of action I saw with the results I was looking for. It did achieve the results I desired to a degree.

When I was a kid my parants would spank us when we were bad. Today some people think that is child abuse. They didn't beat us they would pop us on the butt with their hand or a belt. It taught us a lesson we needed to learn. It also kept us from doing something stupid until we were old enough to realize it on our own. It caused us pain and suffering, but I can see the benefits today.

Sometimes life isn't fair and many times it hurts just to go thru the day. Sa La Vie! 

[sakoz]

S.Earl Martin:  'Try' to "set aside" everything I wrote in the past and see this post 'anew'.
I 'take it' your a man of logic.   "Believing" is assuming/guessing: an assumption endorsing/sanctioning/vouching another assumption.(a thief vouchs for a thief).
When we 'believe a image is real', that's an assumption ABOUT an assumption. Does two consecutive assumptions 'make' the first one true? ( We sure act like it, at times).

I have been making a 'grandiose assumption':- That people don't like experiencing emotional suffering, dysfunctional behavior, mistakes, stress.
We 'do' experience our "believed assumptions"; are those the results they want to experience? It now seems presumptuous of me to think they would like to stop "needless" misery.

( Which is correct usage, the slash or hyphen in the following;- 'believe/assume'  or  'believe-assume". They are 'tandem' assumptions.)

[S. Earl Martin]

Believing is not necessarily an assumption. I can believe something that I know is a fact. That is a trueism.
It is
What you know
What you think you know
What you don't know
What you can't know.

Somethings are real. Some are not. We must continually make judgements and comparisons to determine what is real. If I experience something I think I know and build on that with something I think I know. Yes that would be building an assumption on another assumption. If when I experience something I know is true or real and build another thing I know? That is fact on fact no assumptions involved. This is what I tried to convey to you about scientific confirmation. 

We do act on assumptopns and false beliefs. This is true, but sometimes it is all we have to go on so we don't have a choice. 

[SWM]

"Let's imagine a person alone at her house at night, suddenly awakened by a loud noise in the hallway. The woman’s first thought is, ‘It’s a burglar!’" Most of our patients have no problem thinking of responses to this situation along the lines of "The burglar is going to hurt me!", "He will rob and destroy my property!", or "He might even kill me!", and can easily imagine the feelings of intense fear in this situation. "In ABC terms, the noise in this example is the activating event (A), the catastrophizing (negative-emotionally charged) thoughts are the (B), and the intense fear is the (C). Let's imagine further that the person is just about to dial the police and, in that moment, recalls that earlier that day she ran into her best friend from high school, who was in town for two days on business. The person had invited her friend to stay at her house, but as her friend would be busy until late, she had given her a spare key to the house. At the moment of that realization, her thought changed to, ‘It's not a burglar, it's Charlie’, and her fear was immediately replaced by the feeling of joy in reuniting with an old best friend. The (A) in this case was the same (the noise), but when she changed her (B) from ‘It's a burglar, he may kill me!’, to ‘It's my best friend, we will have a lot of fun!’, then, logically in (C), she flip-flopped from an intensive negative emotion (fear) to intensive positive emotion (joy). This simple story illustrates how quickly we can calm ourselves down just by changing our mind, even faster than we could swallow any tranquilizer. The fact is, however, that changing one’s minds is what people resist the most. They want to feel better, but try to do so without working to think better."

Such a sudden change from fear to joy is possible only when the person changes her mind from one intensly held belief to another at least equally intense opposite belief, which happens rarely in clinical situations. Usually, before people can make such a polar change, they have to go through a series of less and less negative emotions, neutral emotions, and then more and more positive emotions. (Agreing with Maultsby, we believe that we are always experiencing emotion, and naming neutral emotions like calm or quiet, "no emotions", is a mistake.) We have three basic emotional choices depending how we evaluate any given situation: if we believe a situation is a threat to our survival, comfort, or self-control, we experience negative emotions which motivate us to a flight or fight response; if we believe the situation is beneficial to our survival, comfort, or self-control, we experience positive emotions which motivate us to stay or go after the source; finally, when we determine that a situation is neutral (indifferent) to our survival, etc., we experience neutral emotions and can motivate ourselves to pursue our goals independent of the current situation (Maultsby, Wirga, 1999).

Let's return to our story for a moment. "When the person, out of joy, cries her friend’s name and opens the door of her bedroom, she is hit in a head by a burglar with a baseball bat. What does this tell us about our brains? It is possible that even though she indeed met her friend earlier that day, by coincidence her house also became a target for a burglar. Unfortunately, our brains do not care about the facts. Our minds will process and convert any sincerely-held belief into the internal, virtual reality of that moment, and this belief-triggered, cognitive/affective virtual gestalt will then control our actions." Even though we experience thoughts, emotions, and actions as one unit, with the above story we help our patients experience how changing thoughts and beliefs can cause emotions and actions to change instantaneously. As clinicians and therapists, we have sometimes felt hopeless ourselves upon hearing a patient’s problems, and sometimes we could not even believe that a particular patient had any chance of feeling better emotionally in what appeared to be an "objectively" miserable and hopeless situations. Yet, even in those times, our commitment to applying RBT to the letter despite those feelings never ceased to amaze us when patients began to change their beliefs and actually feel better, despite their dire life situations (e.g., prisoners with advanced AIDS and life expectancy much shorter than the term served). It was those patients with advanced, life-threatening illness who have really led us to our current radical take on Ellis' ABC model.

http://www.arcobem.com/publications/abc.html

[S. Earl Martin]

Excellent post SWM. This is an example of the process I was refering to eariler. In another thread.

Okay lets go over believeing. I believe I am S. Earl Martin. This is a belief, but it is also a fact. If you consider something that is factual as being something beyond or different than belief that is a matter of opinion. I hold that some beliefs are known and others are just believed or assumed. If facts are not beliefs? Then what are they?

[S. Earl Martin]

Okay that makes your definition clearer. That is good. Now how would you apply SWM's # 25 to your ideas? That might make your ideas even clearer because it is a scientific model to an extent. If that works it could lead to the devolopment of a scientific model of your own?

[S. Earl Martin]

Ahhh! " let's use it as our 'protype" I am not part of this per say. This is your idea. I will be honest. The only steak I have in this is to help you resolve this so the forum can return to a state of abnormality. LOL! It is a good example. I do not have the formal training in Psychology to help you formulate a model. I have intellect and some street smarts. Others here might be willing to help as long as you are flexable. They do have the training.

Also I believe in giving credit where credit is due. The amount of knowledge you are demonstrating in this field is impressive. Because when you first started posting I had trouble even following your sentence structure. Let alone have a clue what you were talking about. Now you have researched the information and are much more knowledgable. This is good. 

[SWM]

a general point about. believing images are real.

I have a 7 week old baby girl. sometimes she hits herself in the face or pokes her own eye and she does not understand why something has just hit or hurt her. she is scared by her own movements. she is also excited by the her own ability to swing her arms around and make noises.

if we were not able to make assumptions about the world, if we did not generalize and distort the information recieved from our perceptions, we would live our lives in similar state completely excited and terrified at the same time. every moment does hold the potential for great danger or great joy. if we were to live this experience we would be more stressed and highly strung as a species than we currently are.

conclusion:
 filtering; (i.e. deletion, distortion and generalisation) while it is the cause of many bio-psycho-social problems is also a necessary function of the brain to help the organism function effectively in world of experience and information that would otherwise be overwhelming.

     SOURCE of CHANGE/HEALING       ( new topic?)
SWM; I've been trying to make "a case" for "innate-psychological-healing" analogous to 'physical healing'. (anyone here 'buy' that?)
We talked about Benjamin Libet et al, (I'm glad your familar with their work; readers not so, may find this 'esoteric.)  They showed; "An act is initiated before we decide to do it."(enigmatic?)
I build from that, and say: "Perceptions are preceded by unconscious processes." Our perceptions begin unconsciously.
I postulate,"innate psychological healing" the same way. THE PERCEPTION OF CHANGE OCCURS AFTER THE FACT OF CHANGE.  When a client (or us) experience a insight, the insight 'arrives' after the change has occurred.  "Insight after the fact of change/healing."
So, how can we facilitate/foster unconscious "innate psychological change/healing?" ( I hope your "on board" with me.)

With hypnosis the conscious mind is bypassed or fooled. the experience needed to generate the required perceptions or interpretation of perceptions is supplanted in the unconscious. is this what you mean?