“Yes, you mentioned to me earlier that you always sense that you had a part of you that truly loved yourself and that you just had trouble accessing it. Well, we know where it is, don’t we? And what is there underneath the part that loves you?”
“Resilience. I see the sun. I have a picture of the sun and it is warm and calm. I feel safe here.”
“I am wondering Joe, what does this state of being in the sun mean to you?”
“It is God. He is here.”
(Joe was speaking in complete fluency and indeed had been since he dropped down through and out the other side of the nothingness. Most people who block do speak fluently once they reach this point.)
“That is great Joe. Now what we want to do is to really get this state anchored in so you can fly there anytime you want to.”
(Those who have come to master their blocking have been able to get this state so locked in and so familiar that they can just go there at will. It usually takes some weeks of practicing but you will get there. So just note what you see, hear and feel and put a word or a phrase to it as a trigger so that you can recall this state anytime you want to. If you fear a block coming on, you can just think of or see the sun and go there.)
“Now, Joe you are doing really well. Being there now in the sun light feeling that warmth; having that sense of strength, resilience, safety and calm I want you to take that state and apply it to the shame from your step dad. How does this transform and enrich shame?”
“It evaporates it.”
“And once it is evaporated, what state takes its place?”
“Healthy. I feel healthy.”
“That is great Joe. Now having the state of strength, resilience, safety and calm I want you to take that state and apply it to the anger. What happens to anger in the presence of strength, resilience, safety and calm?”
“It evaporates it. But I can still feel a little bit of it. I see one mad little boy.”
“That is OK Joe. Now, if you take that picture of the mad little boy and move him inside the sunshine, what happens to him?”
“Oh, he is playing and doing what little boys should be doing. He is having fun.”
“Fantastic. Now having the state of strength, resilience, safety and calm I want you to take that state and apply it to the sadness. What happens to sadness in the presence of strength, resilience, safety and calm?”
“It evaporates it. The sadness is gone. It is now joy.”
I continued this same pattern of questioning Joe as Joe took his resource state and applied it to each of the negative frames one at a time. (Applying resources – meta-stating – is the additional step I added to the original Drop-Down Through Pattern.) Did this move Joe to complete fluency? No, but it sure provided an excellent piece for the total therapy. And now that Joe knows how to do the Drop Down Through Pattern, he can do it on himself. We continued to utilize this pattern throughout his therapy.
Exercise 6.4: The Drop-Down Through pattern Overview
Identify the experience with the emotion that you want to transform.
Step into that experience, and re-experience the emotion to some degree.
Drop down through the experience until you reach “emptiness” “void” or “nothing”.
Confirm the emptiness and then continue to drop-down through and move to the “other side” of emptiness.
Associate into your resource state (fifth position) and apply that resource state to each problem state.
Test.
1. Identify the experience and emotion you want to transform.
What do you feel just before you block?
What feelings/emotions are behind your blocking?
What emotions or experiences are there which undermine your success as a fluent speaker, and which you would like to eliminate?
2. Step into that experience.
Being aware of a particular experience you would like to work on, associate fully into that experience. Be present in that memory, looking through your eyes, hearing what you heard and feeling what you felt then.
Where do you feel this emotion in your body?
What does it feel like?
On a scale of 1–10, how intensely are you experiencing this emotion?
Good. Just be there with it for a moment, noticing … noticing it fully … knowing that it is just an emotion, and knowing that you are so much more than any emotion …
3. Drop down through the experience.
This may feel strange at first, but you do know what it feels like when you drop … So feeling that feeling of dropping, just drop down through that experience until you find yourself underneath that feeling …
What thought, feeling or emotion lies underneath that original emotion?
And now just imagine dropping down through [that feeling] (use the exact words the person gives you)
And what thought, feeling or emotion comes to you as you imagine yourself dropping down through [that one]?
Repeat this dropping down through process until the person arrives at some version of “emptiness” (Figure 6.6). That is, they experience a lack of feelings, some kind of void or nothingness.
Note: Not everyone experiences the void or nothingness. They drop straight down through the negative frames into the positive ones. Sometimes they may just pause briefly as they make the switch from negative to positive.
Some people reach a point near or at the void where they say things such as, “That is it.
