The Ideas Behind Rapid Transformational Therapy
We often hear people talk about the value of free will. Modern societies are built on the idea of "self-made" men and women who "make up their minds" on important issues. While we make our own choices, our minds are not entirely our own. Contemporary therapy tells us that we tend to form mental survival mechanisms in our psyches as early as childhood. These "childhood programs" ensure that we are physically, mentally, and emotionally safe. As we grow up, we tend to run into different challenges and defend ourselves the only way we know how: via our childhood programs. In this way, these early defenses become deeply rooted in our behavior, so much so that we are virtually powerless against them for the rest of our lives. Most people call these mental habits "coping mechanisms." They are anything but.
On the contrary, they function as a burden for most people. In the face of constant stress and trauma, a regular grownup will try and keep their inner child safe at all costs. This causes their childhood programs to go into overdrive. If this practice continues long enough, no amount of free will can change the mental habits we’ve acquired and all the anxiety that usually goes with them. We must go to the source in our subconscious mind to break this vicious cycle. This is a part of our mind that is beyond our day-to-day consciousness. Unlike our conscious self, which “takes a break” every time we go to sleep, the subconscious never sleeps. It is always on, reinforcing the negative patterns guiding our lives.
Rapid transformational therapy (RTT) seeks to change all that by using unique methods to reach into this restless part of our thoughts. RTT is like a switch you turn to isolate and fix that part of your mind. But before we understand how RTT does that, let’s answer the more fundamental question. Why do we need therapy? Why not just apply our willpower and change ourselves a little every day?
Free Will and the Subconscious Mind
Can we just undo our bad habits consciously?
The short answer is no. We can only slightly modify them to reduce their destructive effects. However, the core of the habit remains out of reach for our conscious mind. This is because the subconscious operates independently of our free will. However, this doesn’t mean it can’t be accessed in altered psychic states. This is why, since the time of James Braid and Sigmund Freud, therapists have been working hard to develop hypnotherapy to probe into the subconscious mind to heal their clients. Modern hypnotherapists such as Charles Tebbets, neurolinguistics Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and Sherry Buffington have all contributed to understanding the rules of the subconscious mind.
The most well-known procedure in hypnotherapy is the trance. It involves invoking a state of deep relaxation and suggestibility in a client so that the therapist can access his or her subconscious. Other important procedures include regression and hypnotic conditioning. Regression is a delicate hypnotic tool used to treat repressed memories or trauma. Conditioning, on the other hand, involves a therapist invoking deliberate changes in the client’s subconscious via remedial messages.
Rewiring the Mind for Success
Using RTT to change habits that lead to depression and anxiety
These are precisely the kinds of patterns that cause depression and anxiety. As we’ve mentioned initially, Rapid Transformational Therapy can help change all that. RTT can help us alter a habit based on a negative subconscious pattern and reach its root cause in our minds.
As described in the previous section, RTT is unlike standard hypnotherapy. Whereas the common hypnotherapist attempts to "reprogram" his clients with hypnotic conditioning, RTT places more emphasis on their understanding of the negative subconscious patterns. It helps them see how and when they arrived at their current beliefs and habits. Clients are then encouraged to make sweeping changes in the way they communicate with themselves. By informing them of the root causes of their problems, RTT leads clients to results faster and more often than standard hypnotherapy.
