Shannon's Journal Discussion Thread, Vol. 5

[LionKing]

...

The fact is, that fearful part of you doesn't die when I succeed in getting you to do what the script is asking you to do; it simply stops being afraid.  But the nature of fear is, as you stated, that there is often a fear of being without fear, because the perception is that "fear keeps me safe".  In reality, logic keeps you just as safe, and fear is really only useful for keeping you safe before you develop enough understanding to use that logic.  After that, it's only useful for limiting you in irrational ways.

AM6 doesn't have a FRM.  It has my earliest attempts at dealing with fear in the method I was using before FRM, which was an effort at "healing and clearing" the fears and their causes.  That would specifically be EHPRA v1.

A response I got internally to "logic keeps you just as safe" right now was that logic isn't always there, assuming by "logic" you mean the thinking done by the conscious mind. It's very limited in how many things it can be processing at the same time, so e.g. if it was processing a work-related problem and and then something "dangerous" would be detected in the environment subconsciously, then the subconscious would need to raise the alarm (feeling of fear) to get the conscious part to process the situation and ensure our safety. But it's likely there has already been so much fear that a learned response (habit) has been formed to "hold" that fear in place with muscular tension, building up mental tension.

So If that's correct, then there already is this hand-off mechanism to let the conscious part deal with the situation, but (1) there's too much and (2) the fear signal doesn't turn off effectively. Not sure what the OK signal is back from the conscious mind to the subconscious that all is progressed... Maybe none, and the fear signal is present until the environmental triggers are removed, and its just expected that the conscious mind would decide on actions to leave or remove the threat. Again, we can't count of the conscious mind to not give it enough focus to process it fully and then forget or avoid to ever do that, so the reminder of fear is then necessary, like a post-it note.

Of course danger/threat can be anything, e.g. the small of blood caused by a mentally-deranged tiger piling and hiding human bodies behind the car om the street that you're about to pass, to a cute babe/guy about to get the first impression of you, to perceiving to be behind or inadequate at work. So I suppose this classification would be another possible piece to try to mess with, in addition to the signaling discussed above.

Do you still think the healing and clearing process works to reduce fear, if e.g. running E3 stand alone? Would that be through desensitizing oneself by examining the situation at length and, once the emotion is reduced, rationally to realize the fear is not justified, and thus allowing the subconscious to ignore those threat signals in the environment (also maybe mental environment)? I get that "execute when cleared" doesn't work because one doesn't ever consider himself cleared.