--Albert Schweitzer

Changing Unwanted Beliefs, Memories,
Addictions, and Any Chronic Symptoms

Changing such Issues as unwanted beliefs, memories, addictions, and chronic symptoms is something that we all want to do. Before I teach you how to do The Method, I want you to have some understanding about how to use The Method to change or eliminate painful emotions from your Issues. In the next section, I will give you a brief overview of the different parts of The Method. In the following sections, The Method and its use will be discussed in detail.

Beliefs and memories are slightly different from addictions and chronic symptoms. Beliefs and memories are simply memories with emotions attached to them whereas, addictions and chronic symptoms have multiple memories which interfere with changing them. Though change is briefly described in this section, there are sections later that fully describe how to use The Method to change beliefs, memories, addictions and chronic symptoms.

By using a painful belief as an example, you will obtain a general idea of how The Method is used to reduce or remove painful emotions. Changing painful memories, emotions, pictures, intrusions, nightmares, addictive urges and chronic symptoms, etc., are all similar to changing a painful belief. The similarity is that they are all based upon a memory and that you can use The Method to change the emotions connected to the memory. An example of using The Method will be given to change or remove the emotions an unwanted belief which will provide you with a general understanding about how The Method can be used for removing pain from other Issues.

Beliefs and Memories

It is the painful emotion connected to a traumatic memory that is the part of the memory that causes problems and disrupts your life. The memory of an emotion is different from the memory of what happened. All mild and severe psychological problems, self-limiting beliefs, intrusive memories or emotions and painful memories are memories with painful emotional memories connected to them. Again, it is painful emotional memories connected to experiential memories that make them painful.

Let’s look at beliefs as an example. It is easy to change an unwanted belief using The Method. A belief is either true or not true for you depending upon the intensity of the positive or negative emotions attached to the belief. If a negative belief is true for you, it can pop up in your thoughts frequently. To get rid of an unwanted negative belief, you simply have to change the belief from being true to being not true. When it is not true for you, you will tend to forget about it.

Hurt, by the way, is a term that stands for all negative emotions and will be explained further below. Unwanted beliefs are beliefs that are true for you because they have Hurt associated with them. It is the Hurt that makes the unwanted belief true. When you remove the Hurt from the belief, the belief becomes not true for you and does not intrude into your thoughts. You can use The Method to remove the Hurt from a belief. You can also strengthen weak, positive beliefs so they are totally true for you. This will be explained later.

Fears, bad feelings, thoughts and memories of bad events, including all the symptoms they cause, are memories with Hurt associated with them. So to change one of these Issues, all you have to do is use The Method to remove the Hurt from the memory. Similar to beliefs, if the painful emotions are removed from an intrusive voice, image, or "movie," they will stop occurring to you. The memory is not lost and may even be more accurate or complete, but what it won’t have is Hurt associated with it. Then, the memory or experience will have less or no impact on your life. Without it, your life can be more satisfying.

Addictions

Addictions can be stopped. The Method eliminates addictive urges. Since all addictive urges are driven by Hurt, The Method gives you choice because it gives you a way to change the Hurt and neutralize your urge or craving whenever it occurs. To be sure, it takes a strong desire to stop an addiction. It is important to do The Method before you do your addiction - before you binge eat, drink, or smoke - otherwise, The Method will not work. Because of the complexity of addictions, you will be encouraged to persistently and routinely use The Method to change your addictive urges whenever they are present. The strategy for changing addictions will be described in a later section. Do not try to change an addictive urge while you are reading this book. First, understand how to do The Method; then, build confidence that The Method will work for you by using it on less difficult Issues. Because addictive urges are sometimes more resistant to change, it is confidence that it will work for you to give you the patience and persistence necessary to change addictive urges.

Chronic Symptoms

Physical ailments, aches and pains and symptoms of chronic illnesses often have learned or remembered painful symptoms associated with them. You can use The Method to neutralize those remembered painful symptoms. Also, stress causes tension in the muscles that aggravates the Hurt caused by physical damage. If you remove the stress, then you reduce the muscle tension and relieve the Hurt. Sometimes when you use The Method to change a pain, inadvertently you can change underlying emotional Issues. It will never hurt to use The Method to try to reduce your symptoms.

Here is a sample of physical ailments and chronic illnesses for which partial or complete success has been obtained by addressing stress and remembered painful symptoms using The Method.                                     

Innerself Healing

A part of your personality is always alert and present in all of your activities and experiences. This is your subconscious. I call this part your innerself. The innerself is like a sleeping resource that most of us use only for insight and problem solving. In the last 20 years, it has become increasingly obvious to many that the innerself can participate in change processes. The Method is one of the change techniques that can be learned by the innerself. Once learned, the innerself can use it to change the emotions of negative beliefs, experiences or memories as they occur. As you read this book, your innerself will pay close attention and remember everything you read. Once learned, the innerself can mimic The Method and Troubleshooting corrections and do a change process. The final section of the book will reveal to your innerself additional resources. These resources will increase the ease, the independence and safety of the innerself change processes.