about anticipation

anticipating....

In the context of ongoing events:

a person uses his or her knowledge of & previous experience with similar events to generate anticipations of how ongoing events will unfold. 

These anticipations are continually compared with our sensations. Many anticipations are of a sort that manifest themselves as actions.

When anticipations fail to predict sensations, or produce ineffective actions, or conflict among themselves, our understanding of the events before us is clearly deficient. 

We generate more anticipations, attempt other actions & attend to our sensations, in an effort to return to relatively problem free interaction. When we succeed, some portion of the steps taken is "stamped into" our understanding. This process we might call adaptation.

5 Steps to Adjusting Expectations - By Dr. Tony Fiore

Dateline: January 4th. Orange County Anger Management class participants review anger triggers of the week.

Jane, age 23, engaged to be married: “My boyfriend openly flirts with other women in front of me.”

Jim, age 40, an IT professional: “a work group back East didn’t finish their project on time, which made our progress look bad – I blew up!”

Joe, age 46, successful business owner & young grandfather: “I get so mad at everyone that my daughter won’t let me see my grandchild. Now, I’m angry at my daughter, too.”

Mary, age 38: “I am constantly yelling at my 2 teenagers because they won’t do what I tell them to.”

Nancy, married 28 year old successful writer who goes into period rages toward her equally successful husband: “I can’t stand that he never picks up his clothes & he doesn’t do things around the house that he says he will do.”

Alex, a 50 year old salesman in class because of road rage: “ I can’t stand it when people cut in front of me on the freeway… it makes me crazy.”

Different Anger, Common Cause

In all cases, the cause of the anger isn’t what happened to these basically normal people; rather it's how they assessed or evaluated what happened.

Anger often results from comparing the behavior of others to your expectations.

Sometimes it’s a reasonable thing to do that, but more often it’s not because we have unreasonably high & sometimes just plain wrong, expectations of ourselves & those around us.

We can thus say that anger is caused by the discrepancy between what we expect & what we get. Indeed, the definition of expectation is “eager anticipation.”

Our Goal

It’s important to figure out exactly what “reasonable” means in terms of expectations of yourself & others. If your expectations are too low, you’ll feel cheated in life – or worse – that you're “settling.”

On the other hand, if your expectations are too high, then reality will suffer from comparisons to expectation – & you may experience disappointment & other anger reactions.

Adjusting Your Expectations

Step 1: Decide what's reasonable. This may be tricky because different people have different ideas of this. One way to do it is to think about it when you're calm & cool. Many things that seem “reasonable” when you're worked up, later seem ridiculous & petty.

Step 2: Eliminate the word “should.” None of us can control other people, try as we might. People behave the way they behave for their own reasons.

Instead of “should-ing” others, state needs from your own perspective, i.e., “I’d prefer if…” instead of “They should…”

Step 3: Recognize limitations. People often behave badly toward us because of their limitations or problems, not because they're purposefully trying to make us miserable. People are fallible & may not be able to live up to our expectations, or they may have a different agenda than meeting your expectations.

Relationships have their limitations. Marital research shows that 69% of relationship issues are basically unsolvable & perpetual. Wise couples accept this & find ways to live around the issues, rather than engaging in constant conflict.

Step 4: Be tolerant of other views. Rather than convincing yourself that others are “wrong.” Tell yourself they simply see things differently than you do. No need to get angry over this – they may be as convinced of their “truth” as you are of yours!

Step 5: Explore ways to get needs met. The underlying reason we often get angry at others is because our basic needs aren't being met as a result of the situation or the behavior of the other.

Rather than getting angry, we need to consider 2 more effective ways to deal with the situation:

1. Honestly communicate your unsatisfied needs to others.
2. Explore alternative ways to satisfy your needs. Take responsibility for your own needs & find workable & acceptable ways of satisfying them.


Dr. Tony Fiore is a So. California licensed psychologist & anger management trainer. His company, The Anger Coach, provides anger & stress management programs, training & products to individuals, couples & the workplace. Sign up for his free monthly newsletter "Taming The Anger Bee" at www.angercoach.com & receive 2 bonus reports.

Hypnosis, NLP & the Management of Pain - By Adam Sargant

What is pain? How does pain manifest? What is the "structure" of pain? How can NLP & hypnosis assist in the management of pain?

A recent Scientific American article stated: "Though often denigrated as fakery or wishful thinking, hypnosis has been shown to be a real phenomenon with a variety of therapeutic uses - especially in controlling pain"

Pain is an experience that blights many lives & comes in many forms. Chronic pain is often classified as pain that persists for a period of a month or more beyond the normal recovery time of an illness, or pain that persists for several months or years as a result of a chronic condition & can be of any intensity.

Even low-level chronic pain can be debilitating. Acute pain is a short-lived condition within the normal experience of an acute illness or injury. Breakthrough pain is a transitory flare of pain of moderate to severe intensity occurring on a background of otherwise controlled pain.

Pain originates in the nervous system & clearly has a useful role to play in the development of avoidance strategies for situations & experiences that can cause us harm. However, multiple factors can conspire to produce the sensation of pain in situations where the information is no longer useful.

It's obvious that in some injuries & illnesses, the brain receives information about pain that the person experiencing that pain is able to do very little about in terms of avoiding the stimuli. What isn't so obvious is that the conscious experience of pain is modified by many other factors such as memory, emotion & physical condition.

In other words, the experience of pain is determined by the context in which that pain takes place. This further complicated by the fact that some pain can't be found to have an organic (disease or injury) related cause at all.

Milton Erickson described pain as a construct that consisted past remembered pain, present pain experience & of anticipated pain in the future. These combine to give the meaning that the pain has for us & this is one of the reasons that chronic pain (of any intensity) can be so debilitating.

Nothing will intensify one's experience of pain as much as the anticipation that it'll be there tomorrow & the day after & so on. Similarly, learning to relax & simply let go of the anticipation & the fear can result in remarkable changes in our experience of pain.

As a child, I suffered several bouts of recurring osteomyelitis, a bone marrow infection that was often accompanied by high fever & severe pain. The pain persisted as a result of the deformations of bone that took place & the necessary surgery, but I learned very early on that I could alter my own experience of pain thru what I considered back then to be a number of mental tricks.

I didn't know what I know now about the nature of pain but I was able to effect some remarkable changes to my experience of pain, which laid the foundations for my current understanding of the nature of experience.

So, let's look at a few techniques that we can use to experience pain differently & take some control over how it affects our lives.

Relaxation & Trance

One of the simplest (& the hardest) things to learn to do is to learn to relax. I don't intend to cover relaxation & trance techniques in this article, there will be others on those, but I suggest that you simply think about words & phrases that help you relax & test them out.

I find I can go a long way into trance simply by telling myself to "Breathe...& relaaax" in a gentle & deep tone & feeling my body relax further on each out breath. I can then take it a little further by telling myself that as I count down from 5 to 1, I'll relax further & further into a trance. Try it. Play with it.

Meditative Approach

The first technique I'd like to share is the first one I discovered as a child with osteomyelitis. And that was to simply focus all my attention on the pain, in as relaxed way as possible. The pain became a focus for a form of meditation, whereby it's observed dispassionately for what it is.

Synesthesia

An extension of this technique (& best carried out in a light trance in my experience) is to observe the pain as a sensation & then observe it as one would see it if it had a physical existence. What shape is it, what color, what texture, what movements does it make? Where is it, does it move quickly or slowly?

Don't worry if this seems difficult, don't put too much effort into it – make it up! The important thing is that the image you're working with is a metaphor for your pain & as such, it makes sense to your unconscious mind.

The next stage is to move the representation of the pain outside your body, where it's easier to observe. Continue to examine it from, say, two meters in front of you. Now become aware of any sound it might make. What pitch is it, how loud is it & so on?

Now we can start to change some of the qualities of the representation. We can make it smaller or darker for example, or change the color(s). Alter the way it moves, change it's position. Change the sound; turn the whole thing up side down. As you experiment with this, notice which changes cause changes in the pain.

Finally, when you're satisfied with the changes you've made you can either send the whole thing off into the distance over the horizon, or you can put it back in your body in a different location where any discomfort might be more manageable or simply turn it upside down & put it back so it cancels out the original pain.

Increasing Energy

The debilitation caused by pain leaves us depleted of energy. Very simple visualization exercise can help combat this. Put yourself into a very relaxed state & focus on the breathing. Imagine a golden ball of light around your body, that you can both hear & feel vibrating. Spend some time experiencing this, the sensation of the vibration on & thru your body, the sound of the vibration as a gentle mixture of harmonies weaving together.

Now, simply become aware that as you breathe in, you take in energy. The golden light gets brighter, the harmonies louder & richer & the vibrations stronger. As you breathe out, waste & tension are expelled, so the light gets clearer, the harmonies more harmonious & the vibration serves to further relax & massage your body.

These techniques are simply presented as an introduction to the idea of taking control of your experience of pain.

They're not "NLP" or "hypnosis" techniques & they aren't necessarily the sorts of work I'd do on a consultation. I don't know how successful you've been with the techniques discussed in this article, but I do know that you've embarked on a quest to explore the nature of your own relationship with experience.

And that's the key. Successful pain management is less about a practitioner intervening & taking away your pain & more about you understanding & gaining control over the factors that influence your pain.