Questions about how much releasing of emotion should be accomplished during the age regression process on the way back to the ISE?

Answered by Calvin D. Banyan, MA, CI, BCH

Hi Lynda!

It is always nice to hear from you. I hope your practice is really zooming along. Let’s see what I can do to answer your questions.

Question 1:

I'm still uncertain when you bring up the feeling that has everything to do with why you're here, how much releasing of that feeling do you do before you regress off of it? Sometimes they seem to need to pound the pillow before they can go back and get a first impression and sometimes they go right back to an SSE.

Answer 1:

When we bring up the feeling to conduct the affect bridge we do not intend to “release” any of that feeling. We just want to bring it up as strong as necessary to get a good affect bridge. A strong emotion is going to provide a more reliable bridge than one that is not so strong.

I never do any pillow pounding unless I am doing forgiveness work. Your question is kind of interesting though. Pillow pounding done in the FOO work is done to reduce the amount of anger which the client is carrying inside so that we can do the work, because all that emotion can get in the way of us being able to bring logic to bear on the issue, which then allows us to get the forgiveness accomplished.

I have never had anyone ask me about pillow pounding in AR. This is what I find interesting about your question. Usually a strong emotional link is best when regressing to ISE, so I think in your case having the client pound the pillow in the AR, may be a way to connect more strongly to the feeling. Interesting approach!

Question 2:

Then I'm always unsure of how much they have to release of the SSE before I go for the ISE. Should they be a limp noodle or just let go of some of it?

Answer 1:

When regressing back through the SSEs, our main intent is just to answer these five questions, “What is happening?” “How old are you?” “What does that make you think?” “What does that make you feel?” and “Is that feeling new or familiar?”

As they re-experience the event, thoughts and feelings associated with the SSE, there will be a release of emotions. But, we do not worry at this point as to whether or not there has been sufficient release. We keep doing this until we uncover the ISE. We also use these 5 questions with the ISE. Then we do the informed child. In the informed child work, we will be focused on two things regarding emotions.

First, we want to allow the emotions of the ISE to be expressed. We want that emotional expression to be equal to the emotion experienced. In other words, we don’t want them to feel pressured to express more than they felt. That would not be authentic.

Secondly, we want to remove any misperceptions or misinformation which was accepted by the child which leads to erroneously based beliefs or erroneously generated emotions.