ENGINE ECR

© copyright Ian White 2015 1
What’s Your Engine – Your Inner Influence?
Find Out What Really Drives Us from Within
(and why it Matters – A LOT!)
Understanding the Dynamics of ‘Deep Emotion’ - an ECR Precursor
© 2015, Ian White
Self-publishing
ISBN 978-0-9871869-1-1

1 How ‘Feeling’ is Learned
2 How ‘Feeling Memory’ Happens
3 The Habit of Feeling
4 Pathways to Your Past
5 Mind Body Connection
6 The Territory of Feeling
7 The Chemistry of Feeling
8 Descartes's Error
9 The Avatar
10 Why it all Matters
This is called an ‘ECR* Precursor,’ implying that it is a short course needed before practitioner
training as an ECR practitioner. In some ways it is exactly that. But it’s also for everybody. Most
of us spend our days looking after our jobs, the rent, the bills, our cars, our hobbies, past-times
and sports and the hundreds of other things that require our attention, but do we spend time
thinking about the complexity of how our minds and brains work?
*Emotional Core Reframing
Do we think about just what power our subconscious emotional archive might be having
over the millions of choices that we have to make and how we live our lives today? If you do,
then you’re not part of ‘the tribal spellbound.’ But most people know less about these issues
than they do about the coming week’s television programs.
For all of us, though, it is necessary for us to get some understanding of ‘what’s going on’ in
the human mind before we can CHANGE what’s going on.
And this is why I am pleased to offer its contents to anyone who wishes any
positive improvement in their life at all. Perhaps the short ‘Why It Matters’
chapter at the end is the most important part.
So, this is designed as a short quasi-educational presentation that describes:
1. What the meaning of emotion and human feeling is -
2. How it develops and stabilizes from early preverbal times to now -
3. How it mostly makes no sense to any adult perception; professional or otherwise -
4. WHY IT MATTERS to us in the present adult world
We think we know who and how we are. In our society we pay much more attention to the
importance of the conscious ‘thinking’ ego-centric mind than we do to the unconscious
emotional mind – the ‘affect matrix.’ The term affect is defined as “a class of human feelings
and emotions which may not be able to be verbalized;” affectology is the study of how
significant affective learnings and habits are in the running of our mental, emotional,
attitudinal and physical lives. The information contained in the study of affectology is securely
based on the findings and research contained in the growing field of affective neuroscience (as
distinct from neuroscience per se).

This presentation introduces you to the major underlying principles of ECR, or more precisely,
the science that underpins the ECR approach to personal development in all facets of your life.
It is designed specifically to ease you into a completely new and different way of thinking about
human emotions and feelings, where they come from, and how it is that we can say that the
common and time-worn (or time-“worn-OUT”) methods of psychotherapy and talk therapy
(that is, analysing affect points of origin within your life story) is an almost impossible task that
must eventually be bypassed. But, we would hope that by reading this introductory
presentation, you will realise that affectology and ECR present apparently new material in a
way that shows that it is in fact ‘age-old’ material.
And, like the way of the Tao, or Zen, we must return to the beginning in order to complete the
cycle of being. As the philosopher Goethe rightly said,
If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not
succeed in buttoning up your coat.
In therapy – in personal development – we say that in order to change anything, you need to
be AWARE of it and understand a little of how it works. At the very least, acknowledgement
is required.
Welcome to a new look at the old world of the human emotional matrix.
Chapter 1
How “Feeling” is Learned
Emotion and Feeling
To clear up some misconceptions or confusions, we need to settle on some word definitions.
In the affectological view of things, emotion is a symptom of feeling. So when we talk about
feelings we are referring to the mind/brain dynamic that drives emotion:- in other words, a
core response that lies below and before emotion. Because feelings is a word that’s used in
many areas today, we’d prefer to refine this even further and mainly use the term affect, which
(again) is defined as ‘a class of human feeling that may not be able to be verbalized.’
In the Beginning; before words
Note the term, ‘Before Words.’ This is what affectology and ECR focus on to the exclusion of
almost everything else. Coming to a realization that you were once a ‘baby’ – or if you believe
in salience and sentience before birth, a fetus – then the impact of a realization that you spent
a huge proportion of your life learning to be who you are ONLY on an affect basis (before
cognition and language) can be nothing short of a shock.
Then, to discover that you didn’t leave those learnings behind is even more of a shock. And
finally, to discover that much of your life – not only in the emotional sphere – is today

influenced by those learnings AND that you don’t know it, AND that you cannot define or
analyze how that’s working, AND that no amount of talk therapy can ever get to the nub of
what’s driving the negative forces in life; well, that’s not just a shock: it’s astonishing!
But there’s no need to feel powerless over these non-verbal affect learnings that still exist
today. There is a way to change them through ECR – to grow them up; to mature them – and
that way is through a process that involves ignoring words and attempts to define the complex
trail of learnings that connect the older ‘infant’ part of you to the newer adult part.
So, reviewing this above, we come to explaining the word we use so often in affectology and
ECR, and that word is preverbal – before words. It alludes to what we in the ECR and
affectology r4ealm describe as being the “Core:” a core that is deeper and much different to
what we usually describe as being a “known core.”
Every detail and theory that makes up the concepts of affectology is formed around and
supported by existing affective neuroscience, its research and findings. In The Secret Life of the
Unborn Child, prenatal researcher, Dr Thomas Verny clearly states that “the unborn child is a
feeling, remembering, aware being,” and at six months of foetal development can understand
– or at least ‘feel’ – its mother’s emotions.
Prenatal neuroscientists show that even at a stage as early as 22
weeks (into gestation), the unborn child has the capacity – and uses
it – to store information related to emotional (affect) experiences
that it might be having, even in utero. The research proposes that
at this stage in development, the limbic brain (see later in this
chapter) and its associated neurological links, through the central
nervous system, have become fully formed, and it’s inconceivable
that the complex neural system remains idle until we, as adult
observers, “think” it should activate.
In his immensely important book, From Conception to Birth, the late Dr Tony Lipson
(Department of Genetics, The Children’s Hospital, Sydney) stated:
“What are the facts? When does the spinal cord communicate with the
processing and thinking part of the brain, the cerebral cortex, where the grey
and white matter resides? It is only when the vital connection between the
spinal cord processing center, or the brain stem, and the brain itself is made at
22 – 23 weeks that feelings of the senses such as warmth, light, sound and pain
have any real moral (or conscious) meaning and form part of experience. The
spinal cord can then communicate with the true brain and vice versa, both
responding to movement, feeling and position and presumably, albeit
unconsciously, able to have memory which will influence the person for the rest
of its life.”
Human beings begin to develop abilities to think and experience in more sophisticated
‘reasoning’ ways, much later in life – at a time known as the verbal emergent stage, and that’s
anywhere between 10 months and 2 or 3 years’ of age. And even older.
The bold new breed of affective neuroscientists, LeDoux, Damasio, Goleman, et al, have
reached the definite conclusion that we human beings lay down our affect, or emotional
personality during that stage in our development where we have no words, and our
experiences can only be emotional or feeling experiences.

Affect Brain Structure
We can now go on to look at the ways in which the brain processes and stores affect memory
and emotional encodings by first looking at the physical structure of that part of the brain most
implicated in the process of emotional – or affect – memory.
You, of course, understand that the study of brain physiology is vast and complicated, so it’s
appropriate to say at this point that our look at the affect brain complex is merely summarized
in this short presentation. Because we are investigating the brain, this does not mean that the
role of mind, spirit, or even soul is denigrated, but we are merely having a look at the processing
neuro-engineering that allows our lives to be either enriched or impaired by our subconscious
(unconscious) minds and our emotional experiences.
The “Affect Neuro-machine.”
Emotional and affect responses stem from storage facilities housed in particular centers of the
brain, contained within a part that is called the limbic brain.
It is the centre of our subconscious emotional and affective processing and contains areas
that give birth to our emotions, lay down and retrieve preverbal affect memories, and attend
to our emotional comfort or ‘balance.’
The processes involved in affect memory storage are truly unconscious – that is, that they are
below or beyond our capability to consciously understand them; at least, using words and
word-oriented thoughts. That our emotions and feelings arise from a primal functioning area
of our brain whose main, and sometimes only, task is to maintain emotional comfort and the
means of returning to emotional comfort and equilibrium (stable affect attributional state).
A TERMINOLOGY NOTE: If I must refer to “the unaware aspect of mind” – and I must – then I
prefer to use the word ‘unconscious’ rather than the more common ‘subconscious’ because of
the ‘sub’ prefix implications. ‘Sub’ refers to below. This in turn implies inferiority in the
hierarchical importance chain. There’s nothing inferior about that aspect of the mind that is
being investigated here. In fact, by the end of this book, you may realize its superiority in our
lives, even though you might not want to accept that our “thinking – conscious” does not run
the show. But it doesn’t.
And if it does, stop reading! Just “think” all your problems away.
The Limbic System
The limbic system of the brain is made up of many neural centers that go to driving the complex
that is responsible for most of our experiences that are not a product of exercising conscious
will. Experiences such as the restoration of conscious and episodic memory, and affect or
emotional memory and trace-bridging to our earliest unconscious affect memories – our primal
affect encodings (see later chapter).
The Emotion Centers

Neurologically, the structures that are important to
affect memory are processing centers such as the
hippocampus, the hypothalamus and, most
importantly, the amygdalae. The components of
the limbic system are linked and interact in an
amazingly complex way, with all its components
working together simultaneously. BUT, it’s
important to the affectologist to understand that
emotionally charged information and material is
processed, stored and consolidated initially by the
amygdalae, a pair of small almond-shaped neural complexes (singular: amygdala) at the
anterior aspect (front) of the limbic system.
The “Spark” at the Beginning.
So, let’s now have a peek at the process involved in this storage. I could use any example of an
experience at any time early in our lives, and for the sake of this example, let’s not talk about
‘in the womb’ experiences, but use perhaps an early infant experience.
When the young baby receives an emotionally charged stimulus (and this is registered merely
as DISCOMFORT or DISEQUILIBRIUM), the information is carried instantaneously to the
amygdalae by various neural pathways. It’s important to say that this information is merely
basic – basically uncomfortable, that is – and cannot be processed by the baby in any
sophisticatedly analytical way. The amygdala then does its job of storage of that affect memory
(in some ways, its ONLY job is the housing of emotional memory).
In the limbic brain, the two most significant bodies in the process of storing memory are the
amygdalae and the associated center, the hippocampus. The amygdaloid-hippocampal
pathway is responsible for overall encoding of data that we can call unconscious memory. The
hippocampus records memory of events and objects as facts, while the amygdala assigns
emotional content to those facts. While the hippocampus is relatively slow to develop its full
capacity to interpret events and episodes – that is, many months – the amygdala is
immediately capable (also prenatally) of encoding and storing information about feelings and
reactions to those feelings.
Affect Memory
Let’s expand on the example of the baby above. Remember that we are not settling on any
one time or life-era in the development of the child, but using this baby example to show how
fragile episodic memory (as opposed to affect memory) can be at any early stage in
development.
Let’s say that at one point, the baby of, perhaps, just a day or so of age (just an arbitrary age)
experiences a discomforting stimulus. This may be something as simple and benign as a change
in its auditory environment; perhaps the parents with raised voices in the next room (not an
argument), or an airplane flying low overhead, or some sudden noise like a dog barking or
something dropping or crashing. It’s evident that all these experiences do not constitute
ACTUAL trauma or danger to the baby, but it’s also obvious that this stimulus can create
discomfort in the baby’s experience: – negative emotional arousal. It is natural that this is so –
see the ‘fight or flight response’ in chapter 5. Note that the baby has never experienced this
sensory input before. It’s a “first-of” experience.

Through the processing centers of the limbic system and surrounding bodies (the thalamus
and the sensory cortex), this information is sifted and registered as naked discomfort, setting
in train the same neurological dynamic that happens whenever we establish ‘something to be
remembered’ as part of our life experience. When emotional arousal occurs, particularly in any
discomforting way, the limbic system becomes alarmed and unleashes a flood of stimulating
chemicals, mostly norepinephrine.
Norepinephrine empowers the memory, ‘burning in’ the emotionally charged crisis. This
burning in is called taloning. It’s important now to say that in the taloning process, it's not the
detail of the event, or the ‘story’ (verbal narration) of the episode that’s burnt in, but simply
the sense of the emotional experience.
This part of the brain is interested only in basic affect stability, and as such, must create a
reaction or a response to the ‘destabilizing alarm.’ At such an early age, we are incapable of
rational strategies even if we understood what the discomfort is about (which we don’t), so
the only reaction available to us is an emotional or affect one. We respond to the alarm or
discomfort with a feeling. The feeling produces a secondary stage to the process; an emotion,
something that is perhaps more complex and definable from an external perspective.
This emotion may go on to manifest as a behavior – an action (this may be crying or agitation
or the opposite – the appearance of ‘shutting down’) designed, as a primal unconscious
reaction, to get attention, and that action, in the majority of cases, causes us to get our basic
needs met, whether by being re-comforted by our care-givers or by having the discomforting
stimulus removed. And it’s at this precise point that we develop an unconscious construct that
says, “when I feel any level of discomfort similar to this, I need to react in this way in order to
get my needs met and my emotional stability restored.” But, remember that “react in this way”
describes a primary response that is affect-only.
It’s important to be aware of the fact that the PRIMARY response of a feeling is the most
significant to the limbic brain. The secondary and tertiary responses of emotion and behavior
are, in any case, driven by that primary feeling or affect response.
In affectological terms, this constitutes the process of encoding affect response experiences
that are designed to provide us with a template of how to respond in the future. This basis of
initial learning and affect memory will influence us forever, going toward the initial building
blocks of our emotional matrix, or our feeling subpersonality – our “sense of self.”
But the most important thing to remember about this section is that our building of emotional
and feeling experiences and the unconscious memory (encoding) of them is a far cry from
being the vague and gossamer-like process that so many of us think. There is no mystery. We
LEARN our primary feelings and emotions.
Unconscious Activity
We know that all processing of emotional memory, its recorded experiences, the primal
reactions, encoding and taloning takes place in the limbic system. All limbic system activity is
unconscious – that is, it takes place in a way that is entirely separate and distinct from the
rational processing abilities of our conscious, cortical, executive brains and minds. In
neurophysiological terms, affect encoding is not influenced or affected in any way by the
rational centers of the brain, the polymodal (cognitive) cortex of the brain. This, of course,
points out that affect taloning and encoding has no rational basis and cannot be analyzed at
any time later in life. It exists only as a reactive feeling memory at unconscious level.

Millions of words have been written about ‘the subconscious’ or the ‘unconscious mind’ and
its relevance to our experience. Material repressed in the subconscious was, of course, the
basis of Freud’s propositions and teachings; Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious have
gained traction in our society, and most therapeutic approaches hold to some definition about
how the subconscious mind fits in with the scheme of things.
The sheer fact persists that unconscious means un-conscious. There’s no such thing as a
knowing of one’s subconscious or unconscious mind or its contents. The moment a cognitive
construct (idea) related to the unconscious comes to our awareness, it is no longer
unconscious.
So, we do not define the ‘unconscious’ or the ‘subconscious’ in terms other than that part of
the non-aware processes of the brain and mind that create our emotional reactive self, store
the information and access it at a later time.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 We talk a lot about ‘emotion,’ but in affective neuroscience,
emotion comes second and is formed out of more influential affect,
or feeling experience.
 Affect memories and emotional memories are stored at
unconscious level in the amygdalae in the limbic brain. These are
laid down very early in our life – may be prenatal, but are certainly
preverbal (before word-use).
 They are very probably (almost certainly) the result of the baby
misinterpreting whatever stimulant causes discomfort.
Chapter 2
How Feeling Memory Happens
All in the Interpretation
We’ve discussed that by the time any human being develops the ability for rational thought,
verbal constructs or conscious level memory, they have already laid the foundations for how
they experience and respond to the world at an emotional or affect (feeling) level. This is
because in our early development we can only interpret the world around us at this level, and
these unconscious foundations or emotional matrix will then influence all our future emotional
responses and reactions. It’s unavoidable. We are empirical beings, and all our decisions and
present day learnings are influenced by and based on previous learnings – particularly in the
affect realm.
Developmental psychologists and researchers have, in the last few decades, had a hard look at
just how the preverbal infant processes information and builds a long-lasting (perhaps life-
long) emotional sense of self depending on those early life imprints and encodings. Infant

psychiatrist, Daniel Stern’s book The Interpersonal World of the Infant is a seminal work in the
development of an understanding about how we humans process information and
environmental experience at an early age.
The research shows that all preverbal memory could only be interpretive in the present
moment, and that often, when we are so ‘sure’ of our old memories, we are merely applying
our adult egocentric desire to ‘be of good memory’
There are two aspects of Stern’s research that support the affectology proposition. These are
the issues of amodalism, and RIGs (Registrations of Interactions that have been Generalized).
Amodalism
Great word, isn’t it. It doesn’t exist in my dictionary, but breaking it into its literal constituents,
it simply means without mode, ‘mode’ meaning the sensory modes of sight, smell, hearing,
touch and taste. In our investigation, without mode really means without specifiable and
distinct mode. It’s a “mish-mash” – a messy or confused mixture of different modes of sensory
reception.
As adults, particularly since the unfortunate advent of psychoanalysis, we make what are fairly
arrogant assumptions that we can scan back and perceive what it would have been like when
we were such-and-such an age. The fact is that we were not the same person as we are now
when we take into consideration our chaotic means of information-reception. We can NOT
interpret as adults, the actual experience of just what modes of sensory input were relevant
(or otherwise) to us as preverbal infants. Nor can we re-interpret any event, episode, or our
behavioral response to it.
Our qualities of experience, because of amodal receptivity, were global, embracing all modes
of perception, rather than any specific sensory mode.
Consider the implications of this when we scan our personal history. What part of you/us is
convinced that we can remember the exact details of events and sensory input in those early
years? We submit that it is the adult, ego-centric, ‘need-to-know-at-all-costs’ part of
personality that is convinced that it’s possible … It’s not.
We’ll now look at the aspect of input experience at preverbal age that underscores this concept
of the ‘arrogance’ of narrative therapy. That aspect is:-
RIGs - Registrations of Interactions that have been Generalized.
When we juxtapose the understanding of amodal perception and amodal sensory input with
the probability that the amodal sensory experiences are then “generalized” and “re-
interpreted interactions” before they are registered in such a way as to form the basis of
encoding and imprinting,.
This notion that the preverbal infant mostly misinterprets stimulating information, generalizes
it and then encodes the information is what constitutes the term known as RIGs.
Stern attests that “specific memories are deviant exemplars of a class of events.” The intention
of this comment is to say that as adults, we cannot retrieve specific and exact memories from
preverbal times without them deviating from actuality because they were subject to global
amodalism and that the encoding was the result of a RIG.

At best, we can never be quite sure that memories of events are authentic.
At worst, we can be quite sure that all memories are corrupt, not by intention, but by
amodalism and RIGs.
The Nature of Feeling/Affect Memory
Our investigations have shown us so far that we begin our emotional life at a time well before
we are capable of any verbally oriented thought or experience. In affectology, the first affect
encoding is called the Actual Point of Origin (APOO)*, referring to that experience (amodal,
global and representative) from which all future learnings generate. Science tells us without
equivocation, that this APOO must occur around, or shortly after, the period of time when our
Autonomic Nervous System becomes a bio-constructive reality (somewhere around 23 to 25
weeks into gestation) – a time when it is obvious that we have no capacity to relegate
experiences to constructs that result in verbalization.
On the other hand, Narrative Point of Origin (NPOO)* is that experience (usually an event)
that can be recalled at conscious (memory) level and be verbalized. In terms of developmental
science (and affectology), this cannot be the real point of origin of our primary affect learnings.
Actual POOs and narrative POOs can never be the same.
*APOO and NPOO are acceptable scientific
terms used to denote extreme differences in
points of origin as memories (one
unconscious, the other, conscious).
If this is the case, then verbal construct memory of early life is thrown into doubt, and we’ll
look at that in the next section. On the other hand, the encodings that relate to APOO
experiences remain authentic and largely intact later in life, in the way in which they were
originally learned. So, affect memories are concrete, remaining basically unchanged by rational
conscious effort.
To read more about how science (if you accept quantum and chaos theory as science)
maintains that initial affect encodings remain to a large extent intact over our life-time – or at
least are largely influential, you may like to go to this page of the ECR information website.
Is Memory Authentic?
What’s in a memory?
By now you should be questioning one of the cornerstones of classical analytic psychotherapy,
and in fact, any therapeutic approach that employs “talking” in relation to remembering earlier
emotional issues. And that is the principle that verbalization represents truth.
There’s no doubt that we can remember recent events and episodes with relative clarity and
authenticity. But this idea of authenticity of memory fades into oblivion when we begin to look
back over all that we’ve learned about just how fragile and (probably) misinterpretive earlier
life emotional learnings were in the encoding.
Chapter Wrap-up:

 In this chapter we have seen that ‘affect memory,’ or, unconscious
emotional memory, just doesn’t ‘happen.’ We have seen that
there is a significant – in fact huge – difference between what we
usually think we know is ‘memory’ and actual unconscious
preverbal affect memory.
 This unconscious preverbal affect memory is stable when it is
‘taloned’ by the amygdala, but is almost certainly a neurological
memory that has been formed within the dynamic of amodalism
and misinterpretation of the stimulating environmental factors.
 Preverbal affect memory is never what you think it is.
Chapter 3
The Habit of Feeling
Like with all things in life that we learn, we learn them once; if they get our needs met, we
automatically repeat them. Once; twice, and a habit is formed. We become victims of the
habit of feeling a certain way, in spite of whether it “makes sense” in the present dynamic or
not. In your present life, every feeling is a HABIT!
The Origin of Feeling Habits
A habit is defined as any human action or reaction that is unconsciously automatic and that
we cannot change through an act of conscious will. When we review the information in the
last two chapters, we can see that early life affect encodings do, indeed, form the basis upon
which we can begin to develop our feeling habits and build that substructure that we call the
“emotional (or affect) matrix.”
Much research has gone into the study of preverbal neuroencodings. We know that the
proposition of the Actual Point of Origin (APOO) to our feeling structures and emotional
learnings mimics the manner in which we learn anything in life; - that is, we experiment and
experience an action or reaction, we ‘store away’ the response that works for us in the
moment, and discard that which does not.
This, in effect, is the way in which we learn how to walk, drive a car, nod our head, tie our
shoelaces – in fact any action or reaction that is automatic today. This, then, means that the
way in which we learn our feeling reactions is an almost identical ‘point of origin’ dynamic to
the way we learn anything. This notion that we learn our feelings, then make a habit of those
feeling responses, is a fundamental concept supporting the study of affectology and its
practical application, ECR.
Habit Development
The fact that our automatic actions and reactions that are a part of our lives now (the car-
driving, the unconscious hand gestures, for instance) were encoded at some point in the initial

learning is significant when we compare this to our ‘feeling learnings’. Just as we use the
original encoding of just how to synchronize our
feet with the gear-stick, and our clutch pedal
with our accelerator pedal, to build an
automaticity of action so that we eventually do
these things without conscious thought, we use
our preverbal affect encodings to build our
emotional sub-personality.
Let’s look at the early experience of the
preverbal infant that we addressed in Chapter 1.
We’ve established that any negative emotional
arousal will cause an action or reaction that
serves to “get our needs met” and is encoded as an unconscious memory that is taloned at
amygdala level (see The ‘spark’ at the beginning – Chapter 1).
This creates the template for future response to discomfort, and so, when we experience any
other discomforting stimulus at a later time, whether it’s an hour or a day later, our reaction
will be identical to that which worked and got our needs met in the original encoding. And,
like later life learnings (the “how to drive;” “how to walk,” and the like) we adopt an automatic
remembering of the initial encoding. In other words, it makes no sense to not utilize that which
proved to be a successful reaction initially, and probably proves to be similarly productive, at
least for a while until it has been encased in the ‘habit categorization.’
Over a short period of time, perhaps only days, the adoption of this template of ‘what works’
becomes automatic, and has no rationalization attached to it. This, then, obeys and fits the
definition of a habit, so insisting that we perceive the development of feeling (affect) response
patterns as being habitual. It is for this reason, affectologists hold firm to the notion that all
our feelings are learned, and that all our affect responses are indeed habits.
This fact is vital to the clinical procedures that characterize ECR – that human beings have an
undeniable capacity to relearn anything that’s been previously learned, and that feelings are
not necessarily static concretions – that they are variable.
Habit Establishment before Thought, Reason or Logic
An interesting (and perhaps frustrating) aspect of contemporary socio-professional culture is
that the prevalence of preverbal affect structures is a given; has become accepted by the
neuroscientific and psychotherapeutic community, particularly given the strength of the
research that shows this to be true. But it’s also a puzzling scenario in that the acceptance of
an emotional matrix – an affect substrate that is a part of every human being – is largely
ignored in preference to verbal analytic approaches to therapy. Many of us simply do not
understand the significance of the formation and existence of the emotional matrix as it
affects our lives today. So, let’s investigate.
In order to make sense of the proposal, let’s use another real life example. We’ve established
that science is telling us that prior to the verbal emergent stage when we learn to use words
to tell self-stories, we experience our universe in non-rational and interpretive ways, thus
building a ‘set’ emotional matrix that is not defined by words, nor able to be described using
words. Can we propose that at verbal emergent stage, when our mind processing changes to
the near-rational and verbal, that we suddenly assess our past years’ learnings and say to

ourselves (rationally), “my earlier affect learnings don’t suit my way of processing any more,
and therefore I must delete those learnings in order to grow up to my present age”?
Of course we do not; we simply proceed in our living experience with our earlier matrix largely
intact and influencing in a non-verbal way, all that we continue to experience and learn. This
is the nature of the human empirical process: – that all our learnings are influenced by
previous learnings.
This constitutes what the affectologist knows to be an aspect of our emotional selves that still
exists at unconscious level in either subtle or profound ways. ECR Practitioners know the origin
of the oft-heard comment from clients, “there’s something going on emotionally that I just
can’t put my finger on!” or “I can’t quite describe how I feel.” Our emotional matrix is formed
prior to thought, reason or logic, and pretty much exists in the same form today as it was
learned at preverbal stage in development. It is a “feeling habit.”
FURTHER NOTES:
This presentation in this form and for this purpose denies us the logic
of going too deeply into the neuroscience and complex workings of
the hyperdimensional chaos that is the human developing mind. It
may be enough to offer you here the fact that the progress of the
continuum of learning that the emotional mind goes through can be
described by the word PERSEVERATION. Perseveration in psychology
is defined as automatically and unconsciously persevering (repeating)
an action or reaction long after the original stimulus that created it has
been forgotten or lost, or at least, no longer exists. So, ECR talks a lot
about ‘perseveration’ as a determinate in the long process of growth
of your hidden affect subpersonality.
‘STRANGE ATTRACTOR theory’ in Chaos Theory is an apt way of
describing the progress of affect learning and its influence and may be
read about here.
The other detailed aspect is the notion of STATE-DEPENDENCY. This
says that even today, the existence of initial affect learnings ‘live’ in
the unconscious mind in the SAME STATE as when they were learned;
that is, non-verbal. The ego mind thinks it should be able to know and
describe, but it doesn’t and can’t.
Unconscious Parts Drivers
One of the elementary concepts of Affectology is that which we call “Parts Drivers.” In
advanced affectology theory, practitioners study at length the conceptual underpinnings of
the large variety of ways in which we humans have learned tasks and responses at an early
age that still provide functions that are essential for the maintenance of a stable state of
emotional balance. The limbic brain has a strong tendency to protect initial affect learnings
encoded in the amygdala as ‘the’ status quo of the manner in which emotional reactions should
play out. Consequently, the automatic actions of the limbic system’s affect center(s) constantly
tries for an equilibrium that refers to a time when such responses were learned, but have little to
do with one’s existence in a present world. It can be said, then, that emotional learnings are most
often OBSOLETE.
To simply dip our toe in the water, let’s accept that it’s endemic in human behavior that people
(all of us) often utter words like “there’s a part of me that wants to …..” or “I seem to have a
part of me that wants to sabotage my life,” or words to that effect. These words are closer to

the truth for an affectologist than they might at first seem, yet they indicate a temporal
dissociation (not connected in time) dynamic that may very well be the source of all present
problems.
The lengthy study of parts drivers can best be exemplified by looking at only two highly
interesting drivers; (1) that part of us that learned at a very early
age that in order to survive, we must GET ATTENTION, and (2)
that part of us that learned at an early age that we cannot survive
without finding ways to get others to do everything for us. The
latter may be called the ABNEGATING RESPONSIBILITY parts
driver.
Both these learned tasks (that go on to create their respective parts drivers) are essential to
the early infant in order for it to exist at all. Think about that fact!
In affectology and ECR, while we investigate the full range of possibilities related to parts
drivers – including practitioners’ parts drivers – we are always aware of the existing traces of
both these parts drivers that can wreak havoc with even the best forms of narrative analytical
therapies. And we do not propose, of course, that these parts drivers are used on any
conscious or intentional level, but that their effects at unconscious level are still being
manifested in some ways. They were, after all, formed with a singular intention in mind: –
emotional stability!
Glancing at these two (above) parts drivers really only looks at what forces may be at issue at
that preverbal affect encoding level, and as such, are relevant to this presentation. However,
in ECR practical work, we are well-attuned to the existence of complex AVOIDANCE parts
drivers that unconsciously fight to maintain our status quo – no matter if it’s destructive in
present life, and SABOTAGE parts drivers that might fight to correct the system BACK TO its
original status. These parts drivers are not ‘reasoned.’ They do not say, “oh well, that’s OK;
life is different now and we’ll let things change.”
They are locked into a non-cognitive, preverbal affect fight to keep the system ‘as is’ so as not
to allow for disintegration of a mind system that was originally established as emotional-
stability-based. And survival-based.
In the next chapter we will look at the mind-mechanisms that insist that we are still influenced
today by preverbal infant learnings created at affect and parts driver level.
Chapter Wrap-up:
In this chapter I have aimed to help you understand that ‘feeling’ or
‘emotion’ just doesn’t HAPPEN.
 Deep affect memory is the beginning. APOO affect memories are
stable and they remain largely stable.
 Through the dynamic of PERSEVERATION, they build as emotional
habits, in much the same way as behavioral or operational habits do
– by repetition. But repetition that is below our awareness.
 Initial affect memories influence to a greater or lesser degree, every
reaction subsequent to them.

 We create hidden parts drivers (affect habits that can thwart any
desired attempts to change the status quo).
 All emotions are habits.
Chapter 4
Pathways to your Past
The Affect Bridge
In previous chapters we’ve talked about initial learnings being ‘automatically repeated’
because those learnings got our needs met; they ‘worked,’ so we repeat them. They
‘perseverate.’ This is a commonsense proposition. But affectology theory is built around the
fact that there’s a specific mind-mechanism that creates that repetition and perseveration.
And ECR is, in turn, built on the fact that that mechanism is a dynamic rather than a static
phenomenon – something that we are “doing,” and is therefore variable and changeable,
rather than something that we ‘are;’ unable to be changed.
Several decades ago, the psychotherapeutic world proposed (and defined) that the action of
a therapist applying a technique in which a ‘regressive connection’ is established between
current emotions and the first experience of that emotion, should be called the affect bridge.
And psychology ‘invented’ the affect bridge technique.
But a commonsense look at this should reveal that this is not something that a ‘therapist’ can
do to a client, but that an affect bridge exists in natural form in any event, and that this is
how we automatically perseverate (repeat) responses, whether they are of an emotional
nature (anger, panic, etc.) or of a mechanistic nature (driving the car, walking, nodding the
head, etc.).
So, AFFECT BRIDGE refers to that process of naturalistic ‘calling upon’ predetermined
response patterns in order to respond NOW in a way that we learned worked for us. We do
this by ‘tracing memory,’ at unconscious level, to the original encoded material in regards to
the dynamic of response.
This (affect bridging) is the system that we employ whenever it seems appropriate for us to
respond in a feeling or emotional or affect-oriented fashion to any given new stimulus. And
this goes for all of our positive affect responses as well. For example, the process of being able
to relax ‘in the now’ is the product of unconsciously remembering (via the affect bridge) that
we have at some time in our existence experienced that (relaxation), and we can call upon the
natural trace-memory mechanisms to automatically re-experience the sensation – without
trying, without the effort of consciously rebuilding the experience. And our body follows the
process – and relaxes.
In spite of the complexities of explanations of whether hypnosis or trance exist in everyday
life and how we operate as human beings, the fact remains that the process of affect bridging

is, indeed, technically described as a naturalistic hypnotic phenomenon. We utilize it
continuously – below awareness.
In the Present
But let us not run away with the idea that affectology proposes or ECR therapy utilizes classical
regressive techniques that are akin to taking the client into their past. When we experience
uncomfortable feelings or emotions, we have unconsciously bridged to encoded emotional
memory that exists in the present! And this takes place every minute, every moment of our
lives. It is constant and unconsciously ever-present within the dynamic of the emotional
matrix.
ECR operates from the practical concept that the past simply does not exist any more, and that
all affect phenomena are present dynamics that are to be dealt with and re-learned in the
present. While we adopt that as an operating principle that insists that there is no delving into
that which we have established can be inauthentic and interpretive only (episodic memory of
the past – see previous chapters 1 and 2), we accept ‘the past’ only insofar as its relevance to
neuroencodings of all kinds.
So, this explains, in part, the disregard that ECR practitioners hold for attempts to revive past
episodic memories and their narrative description. The EVENT, as traumatic as it may have
been, simply exists no more, yet the learned affect encoding (of the response) and the process
with which that encoding is accessed (the affect bridge) is having relevance in the present due
to (1) affect perseveration, (2) the theory of strange attractor influence, and (3)
the very nature of state-dependency of present influences.
The Limbic “Time Warp”
We have looked at the dynamic of preverbal neuroencoding and it may be useful to also
consider the temporal* nature of that encoding. At the time of establishing initiator
encodings, the limbic brain does not include a temporal dimension to its “memory.” It does
not register ‘time’ and creates a memory ‘without time’ or more correctly, a memory that
begins its path of perseveration through real life time without consideration for any
relationship with time.
*Temporal: time-based or chronological
This atemporal memory – and its continuance through perseveration – ensures that this
timeless encoding “lives on forever” – unless, like the introduction of a new strange attractor,
it is relearned through affect-directed means such as ECR, and so creating a new affect
initiator that is removed from the previously trapped time orientation.
The Trapped Inner Child as a Problematic Metaphor
From an existential perspective, there is no inner child apart from a foetus* during pregnancy!
Yet this – as a metaphor – has been used in many forms by many therapeutic approaches over
the last few decades.
*Foetus: original English spelling of Americanized “fetus”
But we must understand that it is only a metaphor. The inner child movement has proposed
all sorts of nurturing aims for the inner child that apparently resides in all of us. But, in his
early book, The Dark Side of the Inner Child, Stephen Wolinsky proposes that an unconscious
‘part’ of us that is stuck in the need for original basic emotional stability, auto-hypnotizes us

to experience early encoded discomforts. This is what he proposes as being the dark side of
the inner child, and that this side should be removed – deleted – rid from our existence.
We ECR practitioners understand that ALL of what we learn and encode early in development
is useful and has positive intention. The complexity of our unconscious layers of ‘parts drivers’
(see Chapter 3) insist that IF we want to use the metaphor of the inner child, then we must
see this as a matrix of inner children, all of whom are doing a predominantly good job, merely
needing adjustment to the way in which they operate in the present, rather than needing
extinction.
ECR is about balance in our current lives, not the removal of ever-functioning and often
useful parts.
Emotional Hijacking
We tend to take for granted that we can ‘work on’ an aspect of our emotional reactions at a
cognitive level, perhaps, for instance, attending workshops or writing affirmations, yet when
it comes to the crunch and the trigger comes along again, this working it all through at the
rational level seems to have been to no avail.
Before we can blink an eye, the emotional rush appears out of nowhere and superimposes
itself on our reasoning self. Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) calls this emotional
hijacking, as the amygdala immediately signals the rest of the organism to react in the way in
which the encoding originally occurred. It’s almost as if what we’d thought was months of
good work simply does not count. That’s because, in the main, it doesn’t!
We may then search around for someone else to blame. We perhaps blame the previous self-
development program and think that it has sold us a broom that doesn’t really fly! But the
real answer is that we did not yet get to
an understanding of the workings of
the affect unconscious. This is the very
reason for the existence of this
presentation. To become aware!
Attempting to change the way that you
react emotionally must be dealt with at
the emotional amygdaloid level, rather
than the rational willful level.
Computer buffs will understand me
when I say that to do otherwise would
be like trying to correct a basic anomaly
existing in the DOS system by merely
working at the Windows level. Can’t be
done.
ECR maintains that correction to the way in which we encode emotional material and access
it through automatic affect bridging can only be effectively altered by accessing ‘feeling
structures’ at the affect level rather than working with perceivable thought and cognition
structures at a narrative level. This supports the affectologist’s ‘feelings not thoughts’ mode
of approach and the descriptive axiom, ‘Mind over Chatter.’

The primary contention in affectology is that rational thought and reason and their cousin,
conscious will, are relatively powerless compared to affect bridging and the emotional
symptoms of this powerful and immediate phenomenon.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 This chapter has shown us that there is a cognitive dissonance about
‘emotional memory.’
 The human system remembers perseverated affect reaction and
memory but not the content.
 The reactions in the present are truly automatic, while any analysis of
their causal path (Affect Bridge) is impossible.
 The amygdala and primal affect brain centers simply hijack any
conscious or cognitive efforts to moderate reaction.
Chapter 5
Mind-body connection
Our previous chapters have addressed the phenomenon of learning to feel in a particular way,
the storage of that learning and its haphazard origins. The presentations have also been
intended to illustrate that there is another way to look at the business of ‘therapy’, beyond
‘talking therapies’, and another way to look at the business of ‘self-improvement’ beyond
‘affirmations’ and ‘think yourself better’. The meta-systemic view of ECR (a broad view, but
with a spotlight on preverbal affect) is that there exists another dimension to the facts relating
to emotion and feeling, and that there exists in all of us, aspects of self that cannot be
cognitively defined.
But all of that information remains merely academic unless we look at what are the results of
that phenomenon and exactly how our lives are affected by emotional learnings. In a time-
honored way, we again draw on science in its certainty of the neural connectedness of brain,
body, organs, systems and sub-systems. Is it really every thought that affects every cell in our
body, or every feeling? If it’s the latter, what are the implications?
A Swift Tour Through the Development of the Brain
It may be worth pointing out here that I refer to the matter of “survival” in two distinctly
different ways, each referring to a function of two different features of the brain. In
evolutionary terms, the reptilian brain came on the scene first. It was, among other things,
responsible for an animal’s physical and environmental survival (life, preferable to death).
Later in the hominization* process, the mammalian brain developed along with its constituent
part, the limbic system. The "old mammalian" brain evolved in our mammalian ancestors in
an environment of constant danger of being killed by larger animals. Mammals that
overreacted to signs of danger had better chances of survival than those who underreacted.
So evolution selected in favor of amygdalae that overreacted to survival threats.

*Hominization: the theorized evolutionary development of human
characteristics that set hominids apart from other primates
That's why some modern humans have amygdalae that are overly sensitive to perceived
threats. Some people's amygdalae seem hair-triggered to generate strong feelings that drive
emotional overreactions.
In addition to strong feelings and emotions, the amygdalae stimulate the release of fight/flight
and stress hormones (see “Alarm Bells”, below). A hugely interesting but indeterminate aspect
of how these two ‘brains’ operate is what can be called a ‘freeze’ response. The reptilian brain
has a highly effective freeze response that is directed toward physiological survival. In
evolutionary terms, this “freezing” and remaining motionless may have been essential to
escape detection by a predator. So, from that perspective, the reptilian brain can produce a
“play dead” or freeze response.
On the other hand, the later mammalian brain – or more specifically, the amygdalae – has
potential to produce a similar reaction. But this is ‘same reaction, different process.’ The
existence of well-developed neural pathways between the limbic system and the cerebral
cortex (and neocortex) mean that an amygdaloid stimulus can cause a ‘play dead’ or freeze
reaction of an entirely different nature than that of the reptilian survival reaction.
This “deer in the headlights” style of stunned immobility probably results from some small
cognitive influence brought about by an added neural pathway stimulation of the neocortex.
Added to the quasi-trance-like state there can be a “what do I do now?” quality to the
experience that can also be remembered at limbic level.
Through perseveration of a similar response through childhood, adolescence and into
adulthood, this ‘what do I do now?’ modus vivendi* can go on to contribute to many forms of
helplessness and depression or depression-like personality and behavioral characteristics in
adulthood.
*Modus Vivendi (Lat): A manner of living; a way of life.
So, owing to the brain’s developmental structure, the issue of ‘survival’ can have two quite
different meanings; one, physical life-or-death survival, the other, a maintenance of
equilibrium of a particular state of learned emotion (albeit obsolete). In the context of this
book, and in ECR, the second meaning is the relevant one.
The Autonomic Nervous System
Fundamental to our existence is the central nervous system (CNS) that carries electrical
impulses to the entire body – a highly complex message system. The Autonomic Nervous
System (ANS) is that aspect of the overall nervous system that is responsible for the
transmission of signals to other systems of the body in order to create fluctuation and
regulation of the somatic manifestations of those systems.
Some of the more important systems that are affected by the ANS are: respiratory (lungs),
pulmonary (heart and blood vessels), tear and sweat glands, digestive, metabolic, hormonal,
immune, gastro-intestinal, genitourinary and auto-phagocytic (the body’s capacity to clear
away extraneous cells). The ANS is responsible for the control of not only these systems, but
every organ of the body that is part of those systems.

Psychosomatic scientists and practitioners fully believe that every cell and organ of the body
is directly influenced by, and driven by, the brain and its generalized functioning. Traditional
Japanese thought was that every disease is caused by a dis-ease of the mind. ECR Practitioners
accept (and operate from that acceptance) that there exists a direct neuro-physiological
“drive pathway” from the amygdala and its emotional encodings via the limbic brain stem
and ANS to every organ, every system and sub-system and cell of the body.
This re-addresses a topic that we discussed in Chapter 4 – Emotional Hijacking – but it’s
important to get the picture that reactions and ‘message drivers’ utilizing the autonomic
nervous system immediately originate in the amygdaloid-hippocampal pathway, and are
maintained by the information also originating from the amygdala.
Alarm Bells and Rest Times
The functioning of the ANS is basically divided into two distinct aspects, known as the
sympathetic phase and the parasympathetic phase. We’ve all heard of the fight or flight
response, so let’s look at what occurs during that phenomenon.
Since the discovery of the fight-or-flight response in human and animal bio-function, much
has been said on the topics of “stress” and the ANS; trauma and the ANS; grief and the ANS,
and so on. In times of stress, the ANS
does indeed signal for the activation of
the fight-or-flight response in order for
the organism to be able to physically
respond to immediate danger. When we
anticipate danger or other stressful
stimuli, the Autonomic Nervous System
is immediately relegated the job of
carrying signals to the many and varied
systems within the body in order to
produce an increased excitation of
survival systems and a temporary
shutting down of systems that are not
immediately vital. This is called the
sympathetic phase.
During this phase, skeletal muscles tense
(contract), breath rate increases,
nervous alertness increases, and in order
to deal with the extra required oxygen
and nutrients, more blood is required,
causing the heart to work at a more rapid
level. All these functional increases are, of course, servicing that requirement to fight or run
in order to survive. The classic example of this profound reaction is ‘panic attacks.’
In order to provide the added energy to these systems, other systems and organs not
immediately necessary for survival, temporarily shut down. The ANS signals a short break for
the gastro-intestinal system, the urinary system, the reproductive system and the immune
and auto-phagocytic systems. When the danger has passed, and the ANS is allowed to re-tune,
the system enters into a relaxation phase called the parasympathetic phase, bringing about
an increased effectiveness in those systems that have been shut down during the sympathetic
phase.

Mental stress and emotional stress are both stimulants for the sympathetic phase of the ANS,
and if we live our lives with a predominance of either, the ANS insists on the continued
operation and excitation of the sympathetic phase. In our modern world, those of us who do
not achieve relief from worry, stress, so-called repressed emotions or continued anger live
with the results of high excitation of the sympathetic phase of the ANS.
Here’s a self-question for you. If you live with what is called a “low-index” stressor as your
companion – that is, continually experiencing a low level of stress, either consciously or
unconsciously known about, then what do you think this is doing to the activity of the body’s
organs that are influenced by the ANS?
Yes, I think you’ve got it … the whole affect-neural system is slowly but surely – for as long as
you experience this low-index stress – nibbling away at the effectiveness of organs and aspects
of what makes you healthy. Stress is a killer. And now you know how and why.
Much research has been done on the ability of meditation and mental relaxation to return
the ANS to its parasympathetic phase. This ‘rebalancing’ is also one of the fundamental aims
of ECR.
Physical Effects of Feeling
ECR practitioners are not fond of maintaining that feelings and emotions actually cause
serious illness, even though there’s strong evidence that supports this. They don’t deny,
however, that emotion (affect) has an influence – either subtle or profound – on the creation
and/or maintenance of these conditions. Returning to the information above about the direct
connectedness of amygdala and body (via the ANS), we can now have a very brief look at how
emotional stressors may influence and underlie many medical conditions.
In spite of overwhelming evidence of the above, western medicine largely ignores the role of
the emotions in the existence of the following few examples, opting for treatment only of the
symptoms:-
 Asthma – result of the excitation of pulmonary responses and constriction of lung
passageways (affected by the ANS).
 Eczema and psoriasis – result of degeneration of cells and associated feeder systems in the
body’s largest organ – the skin (affected by the ANS).
 Migraines – result of dilation of the blood vessels in and around the brain (affected by the
ANS).
 Stomach ulcers – result of reduction of maintenance systems in the alimentary tract during
sympathetic phase (affected by the ANS).
 Irritable Bowel Syndrome – the result of disintegration (lit.) of maintenance messages to
the bowel (affected by the ANS).
Thoughts or Feelings?
Common scientific understanding seems to focus on the extreme results of the flight/fight
response, yet more recent research strongly indicates that more subtle affect information
‘drivers’ at amygdaloid level also influence our body through the ANS. Our personal belief
systems, for instance, create emotional energy; affect information that’s also stored in the
amygdala. If we believe that we are destined (for example) to suffer all the negative symptoms

of menopause, then we will create an affect dynamic as a result of the emotional investment
in that belief.
That belief structure is processed by the amygdala, ensuring that those beliefs are
physiologically manifested in the body – the organs, and in particular, the hormonal system.
Common belief, by medical and lay people alike, is that these symptoms are caused by
hormonal activity. The Affectologist does not disagree, but knows that the production of
hormones is highly influenced by the affect material generated by our personal beliefs.
Another relevant example of this is depression. In a later chapter (7) we will look at the
chemistry of feeling, but I want to touch on the fact that depressed feelings are maintained
by the amygdala’s subtle responses to our beliefs about depression, and so sends those signals
to the body (see next chapter – The Territory of Feeling). So, we move further into our
investigation as to whether it is every thought that affects every cell in our bodies, or every
feeling.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 This chapter has illustrated the very definite and direct relationship
that affect storage and activation (in the limbic brain) has on every
part of the physical body.
 It has shown also that the ‘fight or flight response’ conveyed as part
of the autonomic nervous system plays a hugely significant part in
our long-term health, and that any perennial imbalance can have
very serious results.
Chapter 6
The territory of feeling
Most people believe that feelings and emotions originate and are experienced in our brains.
We simply take for granted that emotions are experienced cerebrally. This chapter presents
the facts that all emotions are expressed and experienced somatically, that is in the body.
This realization offers new insights into healing paradigms.
Closing the Loop
Following closely on from the information in the last chapter, let’s look at how the mind/body
system processes its own internal information. Without an extensive study into neural
networks, it’s enough to say that we know that the brain receives information from the body
in complex but definite ways.
When the limbic brain has signalled (from the amygdala) that a certain emotional response is
necessary or critically appropriate, we have seen that the body responds. This immediate
amygdala/limbic/ANS/body shock provides the primary message. The body then sends

information about “how it is experiencing” back to the brain. This
information is immediately processed by the amygdaloid-hippocampal
pathway, so reconfirming that the affect message has been received
and the feedback loop is connected. The circle of information is closed.
Although information reaches, and is processed by, the neocortical
part of the brain – the thinking part – the information feedback is truly
unconscious and serves to stabilise the initial response.
Put simply, following an affect reaction in which the body responds,
the feedback loop of information confirms to us on all levels that the
emotion is stable (locked in), and becomes more difficult to destabilise
(correct) through the action of the rational conscious mind.
The unconscious neural and biological systems are what are actually doing all the (automatic
looping) work, while the conscious mind merely looks on.
The Source of Emotion
Notwithstanding the above, we need to understand that the whole
brain is not responsible for the generation or experience of emotion
or affect feeling, although it is responsible for a recognition and
confirmation that emotion and affect is being experienced
somewhere.
It is important in the Affectological view, to see that although the
mind and body set up a pattern of repetitive feedback of information,
and that information is complex, the initial pattern is always
established by the neuroencodings stored by the amygdala. Yes, we
react to an external stimulus; yes, the whole brain is eventually
implicated, including the neurochemistry, but the trigger source of
emotional response messages is always the amygdala by dint of its
previous learnings (as described in chapters 1 to 4).
A Somatic Experience
The brain recognizes and confirms that emotion and affect is being experienced somewhere.
That somewhere, as we have seen, is in the whole body. To use two examples of this, let’s look
at anger and depression. In these cases, the myth prescribes that they are ‘brain’ or ‘mind’
problems. If we subscribe to the idea that the mind embraces the whole body – the whole
organism, and not just what’s inside the head, then the latter is half right.
But anger is expressed entirely in the body. Following the initial limbic signal, the body
experiences a flushing of the face, an excitement of the nervous system resulting in
accelerated breathing and pulse, a clenching of the jaw, and all the other expressions of the
“fight” side of the fight or flight syndrome. The rational mind is hijacked, and we recognize
that we’re angry specifically because of what the body is experiencing.
On the other hand, when the limbic brain signals a need for a ‘depressed feeling’ response,
the body obeys the signals conveyed by the ANS, experiencing reduced vitality, sluggishness,
lethargy and a general feeling of perhaps not even wanting to get up in the morning.

This set of somatic manifestations then, by the feedback loop, informs the brain of the
experience, and stabilizes the acknowledgment. So, the territory of emotion is in the body,
not in the brain.
The Role of the Brain
It’s not as though I don’t want to acknowledge the brain
or its vital importance, but given all the previous
information, we can see that the brain, in the case of
experienced feelings and emotions, is the clearing house
of the information that passes through it. While it is a
part of the brain that is responsible for initial triggering
of emotional responses, its job is done in the triggering,
and acts just as the rest of the brain in its task of
receiving, processing and re-distributing affect
information.
This may bring into serious question the social and professional beliefs that the whole brain is
the source of emotional and mental “disease.” We investigate the neurochemistry of emotion
in the next chapter.
New Insights into “Healing”
The question now must be, ‘can any therapy effectively turn around the complex whole of
what makes up the human in distress?’ Can pharmaceutical methods change everything
merely by changing the brain chemistry? Can talking therapies change the complex
mechanisms? Can so-called emotional healing therapies really bring about total healing
through the discharge of emotional material? Can persuasive cognitive restructuring as
experienced in self-development courses really bring about a completely different
unconscious mind set?
These are the questions that originally contributed to the development of ECR, where the re-
learning of learned affect responses at amygdaloid level are the aims, and ECR focuses on our
preverbal affect point of origin and the way in which those early preverbal scripts have
perseverated and established themselves into our everyday present way of being.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 This chapter has shown us that we should never consider the whole of
the human being as anything other than WHOLE.
 The brain does not exist in any vacuum. It operates and engages with
the complete rest of the body and organs in order to work in a cyclic
‘information-exchange’ way.
 Given that preverbal affect is a factor in establishing limbic reactive
behavior, the same can be said for deep emotions.
 Look to the body to register emotional status. Look to the emotional
status to register whole health.

Chapter 7
The Chemistry of Feeling
Because ‘depression’ has become one of the greatest and most insidious scourges of modern
society, in this chapter, we’ll look mainly at the issue of brain chemistry in relation to
depression, bipolar disorder and their similar mood states. It is simply a useful example
(depression) in showing up how modern medicine has skewed the reality in favour of chemical
intervention.
As we work through this chapter, bear in mind that the information presented about
depression can be applied to the full range of our feeling states – perhaps not in exactly the
same way in chemical detail, but the experience of what we call depression provides us with
the best example from which to draw our picture of ‘the chemistry of feeling’.
The information here is basic, but poignant enough to present the argument that the
chemistry of the brain is not the precursor to all mood problems.
Chemical Imbalance?
Are feelings and emotions caused by our
neurotransmitters and other body chemistry? Or is
the production of our neurochemistry the result of
the dynamics of our feeling states? We have seen in
previous chapters (5 and 6) that it is the state of
emotional balance of the whole person that has a
huge influence on the production of all chemicals and
hormones in the body.
This does not only apply to our biomechanical
aspects, but also to our neuromechanical selves. Early
pharmacological research found that laboratory specimens (rats, rabbits), when clinically
encouraged to adopt a depressed mood state, showed a reduction in the levels of the
neurotransmitter, serotonin (among others, such as dopamine) in the brain. This discovery led
to a convenient but illogical proposal that this depression was caused by the low levels of
serotonin. The debate still rages today, within learned circles, as to the ‘truth’ of that
proposition, with affectologists holding to the logic that if we suffer a continuation of
depressed feelings for any reason, then this in itself will bring about a reduction in the levels
of serotonin in the brain, as the brain requires less serotonin in order to function at a lower
synaptic rate. The opposite side of the debate is, of course, furiously supported by
pharmaceutical conglomerates and those who seek the ‘easy path’ of relief from drugs.
 “If YOU have a chemical imbalance then I have the expensive drugs here to fix it”,
says the pharmaceutical company.
 “If I have a chemical imbalance, and I believe that, then the expensive drugs are the
only way to stabilize my life”, says the sufferer.
The position of affectologists is that whatever we have created, we can recreate; whatever
we have learned, we can re-learn; whatever we have framed as our attributional style of
mood, we can reframe. We have seen from all our previous information in this project, that

we form a non-verbal emotional “style” of feeling and being at a very early stage in our lives.
This sense of self influences and predominates just how we grow to see ourselves and the way
we feel about our circumstances and life, being the foundation of almost everything we are,
from our emotional and mental habits, through to our attitudes and behaviours; even our
physical attributes, in health and ill-health; in wealth and I’ll-wealth.
So, our preverbally-learned sense of self ultimately influences the presence of attitudes such
as negativism and pessimism, which have a tendency to create the sort of “stuckness” in
depressed feelings and mood states that grow to become what the medical fraternity calls
clinical depression. It’s the “stuckness” – the habituation and perseveration – that creates the
reduction in serotonin, not the other way around.
This argument brings the occasional volcanic response from those who choose to justify their
depression and “blame” low levels of serotonin, and that’s understood. There is much
emotional investment in the proposition that this is the case. The big problem with that
argument is that, if that is the belief, then it follows that a life must be led always managed
through the intervention of mood elevating pharmaceuticals – the legal “uppers.” The
compounded problem with that is that all vestiges of self-responsibility for our state of
wellbeing are removed from us and we become powerless in the face of the myth that “I am
depressed because my brain chemistry is out of balance.”
This does not detract, though, from the fact that cases do exist where the depressive state is
the result of a genetic brain imbalance, an induced imbalance (from substance abuse) or, in
rare cases, a chronic progression from unresolved early life abuse that has created a locked-
in psychosomatic habituation toward constant depression. In these cases, we contend that
the logical course may involve temporary and careful chemical intervention.
Mood Medicines
At this point in history, the use of antidepressants has become,
sadly, a norm rather than an occasional exception reserved for
exceptional cases. We’ll briefly look at the current group of
antidepressants known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake
Inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Zoloft, Prozac, Luvox and Effexor, to
name just a few. In order to understand how these work, we need
to have a brief look at how the neurotransmitters work.
Simply put, the neurotransmitter chemical serotonin (as well as dopamine, norepinephrine,
and others) is required to transmit electrochemical signals from cell to cell in the brain. Each
transmission is called a synapse. Synapses occur at the rate of billions a second. The rate of
synapses determine the level of mental activity of the brain, and the rate of mental activity
determines the rate of synaptic activity.
Chicken and egg. Serotonin is produced with each synapse and is absorbed by the receiving
neuron when it’s done its transmission job. Pharmaceutical researchers have found that when
chemicals containing certain mineral salts are introduced into the system, the receptors no
longer absorb serotonin at the same rate as before. This creates an increase in the level of
neurotransmitters, resulting in an increase in brain activity. The theory is that this in turn
creates a heightened mood state and depression is relieved. This, then, is the function of
SSRIs. It’s synthetic and dangerous.

Apart from going into the myriad possible side effects of this incursion (insult) into the body’s
chemistry (not just the brain), it’s enough to point out two obvious results of ingestion of this
type of antidepressant. Firstly, it constitutes mere clumsy management of the symptoms of
depression, rather than a cure of any other cause than “chemical.” Secondly, the results of
excess flooding of serotonin in the brain almost certainly create episodes of mania, and even
violent tendencies, sometimes resulting in the sort of self-harm that they claim to relieve. At
best, correct dosages can merely be guessed at, and all too often the trial and error approach
creates more distress than the original depression. I’ll finish with a short story.
Paul came to see me a few months after he’d been diagnosed with clinical depression and
prescribed Effexor. His experience of depression had been mild at most. After several weeks
on this SSRI, he started to experience episodes of heightened mental activity, high anxiety and
periods of what he described as mania. His doctor immediately diagnosed him as having
bipolar disorder (nee manic depression) and prescribed medication to control that problem.
He was distressed that he seemed to be sinking into pharmaceutical dependency, when he
had merely started out with mild depression. When I asked him if he’d had any manic or high
anxiety experiences prior to taking SSRIs, his response was “never.” Yet, it had not occurred
to him or (seemingly) his doctor, that there was a distinct possibility that he was now bipolar
as a result of the taking of the antidepressant meds in the first place.
We live in a dangerous age, where interference and impairment of our most cherished
possession – our mind, our brain – is increasingly taken for granted.
Rebalancing
We accept that it would be irresponsible to argue the dangers of psychotropic medications
without attesting to any alternatives. The study of affectology has led to the development of
ECR, where the primary aim is to help bring about a balancing of mood states through re-
learning early preverbal affect responses. Aside from this ideal approach, many other
methods of rebalancing mind, body and spirit can become part of your life after experiencing
ECR: that is, the ‘retuning’ and flipping of the switch on stuck preverbal (silent) scripts can in
turn allow for a style of being where the following aids are easily incorporated into your life.
Meditation has been shown to bring about definite rebalancing of the activity of the ANS. The
simple activity of physical work creates higher levels of serotonin in the brain, as does
increased involvement in sports. The act of laughing more increases endorphin and serotonin
levels (and I mean belly laughing not just mouth laughing!). Many alternatives to chemical
intervention are available to us. We need not simply accept that the pill is the divine answer.
And after accepting a greater care about what you put into your system, then ECR is the real
answer to freeing up from stuck preverbal scripts.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 This chapter has shown us that we can use the very common story of
depression as an example of the mistake of thinking that mood
states and other life attitudes are the result of ‘brain chemistry
imbalances.’
 This is germane to this study simply because of the common attitude,
“anything wrong with my emotions? That’s OK, I’ll take a pill.”

Chapter 8
Descartes’ Error.
Before we embark on any excoriation of poor old Renee Descartes, it’s appropriate to say that,
like Freud (who also enjoys a measure of professional denigration today), his propositions
were seemingly right for his time; and certainly, as any theological historian will tell us,
religiously convenient. But, time passes, bringing further developments in logic and
commonsense.
Descartes’ Error is the title of a fascinating book by neurology professor, Antonio Damasio, in
which he writes that Descartes’ philosophical proposition “I think; therefore, I am” has led the
way to many of the emotional ills of today.
Nobody can argue against the fact that mankind has enjoyed a certain amount of self-directed
internal harmony for many millennia. Yes, we suffered the stresses and travails of the efforts
to survive; the so-called instincts that we required to continue to live, develop and propagate,
some of which were not comfortable; but it has been during the last VERY SHORT TIME in
developmental history that we have been cursed with the afflictions, dis-ease and emotional
disharmony that we almost take for granted today.
Since emerging from the primordial swamp, we’ve survived without the mental, emotional,
attitudinal, behavioral and psychosomatic problems that today characterize our species and
require that therapists exist anyway. If this is the case, what has gone wrong? What is it about
mankind that has made life today so fraught with the problems unknown to us a
comparatively short time ago?
The serious student of anthropology, historical linguistics or species-developmental
psychology may be thrilled at the details of the minutiae of what took us from the trees to the
moon, but, for our purposes, we focus here on the development of human thought and its
relationship to emotion, feeling and overall health; Man’s desire to compartmentalize and de-
construct the already perfect bio-machine.
The history of ‘modern’ Western medicine, Western surgical techniques, and certainly bio-
psychiatry and psychology is a very short one, particularly the latter two. Just a couple of
centuries ago in the Western medical tradition, surgeons were considered to be little more
than mechanics. Little was known of the workings of the body or its connection with mind
and all the other systems contained within it.
During the development of Western medicine, European thought was inclined, as it has been
for centuries, towards ‘scientific’ explanation, and requiring ‘scientific qualification’ in order
for any hypothesis to be accepted. As we know, scientific requirements are such that we may
accept only those facts that are observable and quantifiable. But ‘mind’ or emotions, are not
quantifiable, only the symptomatic manifestations that they may have on the body
(psychosomatics).

I Think therefore I Am?
So Western medicine, in its mad downhill run of desire to
specialize, readily accepted the philosophy of Rene Descartes, or at
least accepted an aspect of his philosophy to suit its purpose.
No matter whether Descartes’ ideas were as concrete to him as
most commentators claim, or not, the only thing that matters is
that Western medicine has built its foundations on his dualistic
theory of substance.
He stated:
“This ‘I’ – that is, the soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body, and
would not fail to be what it is even if the body did not exist”.
This, in modern terms has been conveniently condensed to the familiar saying; - “I think;
therefore I am.” And it is still attributed to Descartes, even though he said nothing of the sort.
His theories were complex, and this famous (or infamous) statement did not mean, I suspect,
what has been made of it, but what a boon for the scientifically-directed medical system of
the 18th
to 21st
centuries!
Protestations and condemnations aside, the fact remains that, in our society, medicine has
followed this dualistic view, and generally applies itself ONLY to the scientifically observable
machinations of the corporeal body and its tangible systems.
Consequently, our medical paradigm offers little solace to those members of our society who
wonder about, and seek help for, issues of existence that involve feelings, emotions, attitudes,
behaviours and their physical effects (psychosomatics). In the main, it is claimed that they are
“not observable, so cannot exist.”
At the very outside, we may be able to restore chemical balance by the ingestion of
psychotropic substances (they claim).
“This is Descartes’ error: the abysmal separation between body and mind, between
sizable, dimensioned, mechanically-operated, infinitely divisible body stuff on the one
hand, and the unsizable, undimensioned, un-pushpullable, nondivisible, mind stuff; the
suggestion that reasoning, and moral judgement, and the suffering that comes from
physical pain or emotional upheaval might exist separately from the body. Specifically:
the separation of the most refined operations of the mind from the structure and
operation of a biological organism."
----- Antonio R. Damasio.
Whether he intended it or not, Descartes’ short theoretical statement has established itself
as the unwritten ‘banner’ of the Western medical paradigm where, in general terms, a patient
is no more or less than the sum total of all physical parts and systems, and a
chemical/mechanical cause must be sought to explain our mood states.
What Really Drives the Bus?
Affectologists propose that the axiom, I think, therefore I am, drives psychotherapists and
counselors – and by extension, all of us – to believe that if we cannot observe an aspect of self

from a quantifiable and explanatory perspective, then it doesn’t exist. Or, if it does exist, we
can’t put it into words. And if we can’t put it into words, then it can’t be analyzed and
understood.
An unfortunate reverse corollary of the adage would go something like, “because the content
of affect establishment is not something I can analyze with the thinking mind, and I cannot
think it, therefore it doesn’t exist.”
For ECR Practitioners, “I FEEL, therefore I am” is a much more fitting axiom when we
understand the dynamics of the affect self, how we structure our emotional lives, and the
invisible everyday hijacking by our feelings that have been studied in all the previous chapters
of this course. FEELINGS drive the bus, not thoughts and verbalization.
Symptoms Vs Cause
Many therapies subscribe to the idea that ‘cause’ must be dealt with. I hope that we have
shown that all too often, the cause is inaccessible to ‘thought’ or the spoken word. ECR
practitioners work on the basis that authentic feeling cause is not inaccessible; it’s just not
accessible through the use of narrative description.
It’s often the simplest of metaphors that work the best, and the ‘symptom tree’ metaphor is
one that affectologists hold dearly to. If we can imagine the human being, in all its
complexities, as being a tree, then we can see that the readily visible aspects of that tree
consist mainly of its leaves (provided it’s an evergreen). We can conceptualise that the leaves,
being the most visible and recognisable equate with our ‘known’ aspects of self – what we can
describe in respect of our problems, symptoms and illnesses, The conglomeration of leaves is
our narrative self.
If we correct or pick off unhealthy leaves, it makes no difference to the tree’s root system.
And it’s the root system that forms the foundation of that tree – the ‘cause’ structure from
which it has grown and on which it depends for its health. To heal the tree in its entirety, we
must heal the root system first in order for the rest to flourish and naturally heal itself. To
address only our ‘known’ and knowable symptoms is like merely picking leaves from the tree.
To truly bring the metaphoric tree to wellness, we must embark on healing the feeling.
The Implications
The traditional Eastern medical paradigm is one that has adhered, for four thousand years or
so, to the notions that the physical aspects of the body, its systems, the brain, the mind (and
all its conceptual convolutions), the emotions and the spirit, are all interconnected, each
depending on the other for sustenance, support, homeostasis and psychosomatic balance.
We have seen that our earliest affect learnings influenced, through perseveration, all that was
subsequently learned; that all of who we are today, through our conditioning and education,
bears traces of the nonverbal affect self. If this is so, we have no option but to throw some
doubt on the verity and authenticity of memory and self-perception, or any therapy that relies
on the client’s self-assessorial statements to form diagnoses about past events, or even
current experiences that are influenced by subconscious processes.
But, “doubt” is the word, rather than denigration. Even though our propositions appear to
negate the value of any verbalization at all, we do not claim sole ownership of effective

therapy. Psychotherapy and counseling – the narrative (talking) therapies – are very often
effective, bringing relief through the cognitive processes of working through the intricacies of
a client’s emotional and mental life. But affectologists are concerned that when they fail, it is
because of the lack of recognition of the preverbal affect self and its influence on all that we
are.
Therapists and ‘change agents’ of all persuasions could well be persuaded to acknowledge
and understand the implications of what has been, and still is, a significant blind spot in the
professions:- the existence of the non-verbal affect matrix.
In the final analysis, affectology does not attack other effective therapeutic
approaches, but proposes that there exists a component, a missing link, that
requires contemporary acknowledgement and a greater place in the study of
understanding the complexity of the human condition.
Affective neuroscientists such as LeDoux, Damasio and Goleman have led the way; it now
remains for all psychotherapeutic approaches to insert this important piece into the jigsaw
puzzle.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 In this chapter, we have touched on the unfortunate idea that has
pervaded modern society – that the ‘thinking mind’ is the governing
mind. This is largely the result of Descartes’ “I think; therefore I am”
adage that has been adopted by psychology and post-Freudian
approaches to determining human states.
 The truth in all aspects is that “I FEEL, THEREFORE I AM.”
 “Thinking,” because it is dissociated from preverbal affect, can never
make a change to deep emotional states of being.
Chapter 9
The AVATAR
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end
we become disguised to ourselves.”
……Francois de La Rochefoucauld
This quote from de La Rochefoucauld is incredibly important in presenting this chapter.
Without suggesting that all that follows could be aimed at the relationship that we have with
ourselves – that is, how we see ourselves and the tools we use to define what we see – then
the text from this point could be construed as meaning the therapist-client relationship. You
know, the “what’s it to do with me” response.

The fact is that it has everything to do with you; or
maybe I should say, with both of you; - the conscious
you and the subconscious you.
I’d like to introduce you to a character, at right, that you
will hear about in this chapter.
In my book, Beat Depression the Drug Free Way, and on
this webpage, I address the fact that every person who
attends psychotherapy, counseling, talk therapy
(whatever you want to call it), in all probability, shows
some sort of face to the therapist that is not his or her
authentic subconscious self. In my ECR work, and
indeed throughout this presentation, I have proposed
that much of what drives us at the deepest emotional
(response) level and maintains our personality, our self-
beliefs, and our day-to-day existence is NON-VERBAL.
And when I say non-verbal, please accept that I mean it in its literal sense. I’ve tried to make
this clear in previous chapters. The problem with ‘therapy’ (as we know it) is that in almost
every case, it relies – not just heavily, but entirely – on your ability to verbalize your problems,
your life, your experience of any symptoms or problems that might be ‘getting in the way of
living the life you deserve’ and where it may have come from in the first place.
If we look at the clear signals and data that are offered to us by affective neuroscience, we
now know that our emotional (affect) matrix and the way we set ourselves up to experience
the world are laid down long before we have the ability to form words and cognitive ways of
self-recognition. Depending on who and what you believe, we set up our emotional self-
assessment at anywhere from 24 weeks into gestation to some time into infancy. In any case,
long before what the neuroscientists call the ‘verbal emergent stage’.
Since we then have no words, yet unconsciously REMEMBER the reactions that worked in our
best interests (then) and form repetitions of those reactions and quickly build habits of them
at unconscious level, science shows that we become who we are – at least as an emotional
being – at a time when we ‘had no words.’ This, then, attests that the building of our emotional
habits are what is called “state-specific” – existing today, more or less, in the state in which
they were specifically learned and cemented in our subconscious character. “State-
dependent” also defines that they are existing today dependent on their non-verbal
character.
So it follows that if we are reacting and forming self-assessments today out of remnants of
that which is learned before words, then they defy verbal description. I hope that after all our
discussions in previous chapters, you are starting to see the circular reasoning I’m applying.
The whole of the work of ECR proposes that (a) much of the deeper subconscious emotional
patterning that is driving mental-emotional and life problems cannot be described, analyzed,
actualized, using words as the tool for reporting, and that (b) in our society, in post-Freudian
times, we labor under the cultural habit of thinking we HAVE TO use words to describe our
problems and the causes of our problems.

We enter the therapist’s rooms holding in front of us the face that tries to do what we believe
it should do. … talk! And when we find we can’t actually delve deeply enough and ‘words fail
us,’ why, then, we confabulate – try to make it up, either consciously or unintentionally.
This is why our friend in the picture above is significant to therapists, clients and online
participants in the world of ECR. He represents the authentic unconscious affect person hiding
behind the mask that our culture and our professions have insisted he build. The tape over
the mouth represents the dynamic of ECR, where the client is disallowed from talking to the
extent of wandering away from the true affect subconscious self.
So, what about the relationship with yourself, and
why is this story about Avatars and the like,
significant if you are interested in ECR as a means
of emotional resolution for you? The fact is that
everything we can say about the Avatar self
applies also to the way you build stories that
describe yourself to yourself, and what you might
bring into therapies that are based on ‘verbal
revelation’ and narrative reporting. I mentioned
the de La Rochefoucauld quote that led this
chapter for this very reason: do not fool yourself
that you have not built some way and means by
which you can disguise you to yourself. And
subsequently, unconsciously disguise the truth
to any practitioner/therapist.
And ECR (along with its previous form, Af-x®) is the only known approach that is created to
find ways to circumvent the Avatar self and help you deal with your true affect sub-person
residing at unconscious level.
Chapter Wrap-up:
 Our culture, and PARTICULARLY our professional psychotherapeutic
culture, has developed a deep and pervading respect for the spoken
word, apparent attention to the client, and an importance on
honoring autobiographical report.
 This has created a situation (in therapy) where affect is ignored, and
THE WRONG PERSON is heard and attempts are made to treat that
which is not your true inner self.
 Affective neuroscience research shows unequivocally that during our
early life span, we become strangers to our preverbal emotional self.
 While this is true of the way that modern psychotherapeutic attitudes
perform, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are far too easily
fooled by ourselves and enticed to consider that what we “think about
ourselves” is correct.
 This, at the expense of what we authentically feel about ourselves.
 Beware the Avatar. Even your own!

Chapter 10
Why It All Matters
This question of “why should I care?” or “why does it
matter? I’m now an adult!” is one that has chased
affectology, Af-x and ECR for years.
Even though ECR began its life over three decades
ago as a psychotherapy interested in helping with the
rebalancing of emotional issues in peoples’ lives – in
other words, mostly concerned with the sorts of
symptoms we identify ‘therapy’ with; depression,
stress, anger – the practice has become just as
successful in treating people whose livelihoods
depend on business decision-making and occupying
a space in their minds where they operate at full
potential.
It’s not so usual for those people who are operating at either less potential or downright
mediocrity to realize that much of their mode of operating might be influenced by hidden
preverbal governing drivers.
And just as importantly – or if you value your health, more importantly – there is less of a
tendency to consider ‘emotion’ as being a quiet killer. But it can be so.
If we review Chapter 5, we can easily trace the influential action of preverbal affect initiators
throughout the physical body. For many reasons to do with Western medical specialization,
we have grown to be a culture that does not readily see the connection between mind and
body. But consider the path.
If the deeply established affect storage system is out of balance, then this influences the way
the limbic brain engages with the parasympathetic phase of the central nervous system. If the
parasympathetic nervous system is out of balance, then this dynamic is transported to all
organs and musculature and peripheral systems of the body. A mind out of balance means a
body also out of balance.
But then, this was the crux of the text in Chapter 5, so this must serve as a revision of that
text; but to focus on you and your health in a more subjective way. I include two excerpts
from scholarly articles that exemplify my concern that emotions do indeed have a profound
effect on our physical health and longevity.
I mentioned the idea that low-index stress (subtle level of stress that may go unnoticed – as
in attitudinal stress), may play havoc with your health, even to the point of serious heart and
cardiovascular disease. Here’s a piece from the Journal of Preventive Cardiology:
Long-term (Low-Index) Stress
Social and psychological circumstances can cause long-term stress. Continuing
anxiety, insecurity, low self-esteem, social isolation and lack of control over work
and home life have powerful effects on health. Such psychosocial risks

accumulate during life and increase the chances of poor mental health and
premature death. Long periods of anxiety and insecurity and the lack of
supportive friendships are damaging in whatever area of life they arise.
How do these psychosocial factors affect physical health? In emergencies, the
stress response activates a cascade of stress hormones that affect the
cardiovascular and immune system. Our hormones and nervous system prepare
us to deal with an immediate physical threat by raising the heart rate, diverting
blood to muscle and increasing anxiety and alertness. Nevertheless, turning on
the biological stress response too often and for too long is likely to carry multiple
costs to health. These include depression, increased susceptibility to infection,
diabetes, and a harmful pattern of cholesterol and fats blood, high blood
pressure and the attendant risks of heart attack and stroke.
…Prof. Rajeev Gupta
This following extract refers to attitudinal conditions as they relate to our health. It is worth
noting that the sorts of attitudes that are common to high achievers (anger, perfection,
superiority, even hostility) fall within the gamut of the parameters described below. This is
from the Public Access files of NIH – the National Institute of Health:
Psychological Trait Attitudes and Health
Over the past few decades, our understanding of the health consequences of
psychological factors has broadened to include both the detrimental associations
of negative psychological factors (such as depression, anxiety, anger/hostility,
acute and chronic stress) and the beneficial associations with positive factors,
including positive affect and positive attitudes.
Attitudes may affect CVD (Cardiovascular Disease) risk in several ways, by
influencing an individual’s 1) adoption of health behaviors, 2) maladaptive stress
responding resulting in direct alteration of physiology (i.e., autonomic
dysfunction, thrombosis, arrhythmias), 3) development of traditional CVD risk
factors, and 4) lack of adherence to therapy in both primary and secondary
prevention.
The overarching hypothesis is that attitudes, which originate in childhood and
mature by early adulthood, may ultimately be responsible for a substantial
portion of the burden of CVD. It is also conceivable that attitudes are important
modifiable targets both for primary and secondary prevention of CVD.
…NIH – National Institute of Health
There are many such research reports available online to the public if you should care to
investigate other affect and emotional psychological factors determining your path of health
throughout your lifetime and right now. These are just two that point out that the knowledge
most certainly does exist in Western medicine that emotion and attitudinal factors are ‘things
to watch’ in our efforts to lead the good life – or I should say our efforts to lead a LONG good
life!
Back to the question “WHY SHOULD I CARE?”

In the title of this eBook, there is the phrase, Why it Matters. And this is in reference to our
‘engine’ – that which is driving us from a deeper emotional perspective. It’s unconscious. It’s
hidden. It’s the ‘ghost in the machine.’
Whether we live our lives apparently happy and content to take a middle path in achievement
or we spend a lot of our time striving for perfection, making more money, rising to greater
heights in the things we wish to achieve, there is a glaringly good argument for the fact that we
should acknowledge that the dynamics of ‘deep emotion’ (or as we have now established
within this text, ‘invisible affect’) can and DOES play a part in our health.
What greater signal can there be to start to develop a concern for ‘that which lies below’ and
to take steps to balance the dynamic? Those steps? Change life-style and attitude? Maybe not.
Take up meditation? Maybe. Participate in the ECR program? Definitely.
The evolution of the brain not only overshot the
needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example
of evolution providing a species with an organ
which it does not know how to use
….Arthur Koestler (Author: “The Ghost in the Machine”)
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This e-book contains material protected
under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any
unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this
book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system without express written
permission from the author / publisher.

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