There are several ways to perceive a situation. You can be inside and see everything with your own eyes (association), or you can look at yourself in this situation from the outside (dissociation is a breakdown of the state).
Choosing a situation
Please select some difficult situation for you, in which you cannot decide what to do. Maybe you cannot choose from some options, they all do not suit you with something. Maybe you have no options at all. This can be a situation of emotional or intellectual deadlock. When you have already tried everything you knew, and nothing new is somehow invented. At corporate trainings, we usually write out some general problems: difficult negotiations, sales, dismissal of subordinates, hiring new ones … everything that is stressful, everything that is important and difficult at the same time.
Please do not take on highly traumatic experiences, moments of life that make you cry when you remember them. After all, this is, firstly, only a book, and secondly, it is about decision making, and not about depth psychotherapy. Take something important enough, but at the same time something that doesn't work. Do it now.
So the association:
Attention: please, for the first time, read the description of the exercise to the end without doing it. And re-read it a second time during the execution.
Promotional video:
So, in order to "associate" (first, just read!), You will need to take the same posture in which you were or will be in this situation. If you usually stand there, stand up. If you are sitting, sit down. Make your usual facial expression in this situation. If you feel like crossing your arms in this situation or crossing your legs, do it. It helps in visualization, you can try it somehow for experiment without it and you will notice the difference.
Then imagine a very vivid and detailed picture. What do you usually see when you are there? Where is it? At home, in the office, on the street, in the club? Make the picture big, vivid, panoramic, really like reality. If there needs to be movement, make it move.
Turn on the sound. What do you usually hear there? Conversation with someone, music, noise outside the window? Think back to your inner dialogue. What are you saying to yourself within yourself? In this situation? Reproduce intonations, shades. Notice the bodily sensations. Don't try to change anything at this stage, just notice. Breathing, palpitations, tremors, internal movements, tension? Run your mind's eye over the body. Take a small internal inventory. Don't try to change anything, just notice.
Finally, if you have a name for these emotions, name it silently. Just tell yourself, "I am experiencing this and that." And come out.
Once again, in order to associate with a situation, you need to recreate:
- Body language: posture, facial expression
- Picture
- Sounds
- Internal dialogue
- Notice sensations and emotions
- State breakdown
1. We will need to physically go to some place other than where you were just associated in an unpleasant situation. Take two steps to the side.
2. Then take a deep breath in through your nose and shake yourself well as you exhale. Shake your arms, legs, whole body. Imagine yourself as a dog shaking off water. For a special effect, you can make a constant sound on exhalation, something like "A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a …" or "Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo …". Do this 3-4 times. I know it looks very funny. This is so that your bad condition is not carried over to the exercise. And this must be done ALWAYS before performing any game.
It is said that it is very difficult to taste ice cream when you have steak in your mouth. Likewise, it is very difficult to change a state when your body is busy with some other state. We are shaking ourselves to leave the old state behind.
Wine tasters rinse their mouths with water when moving from one wine to another. Perfume shops in France have pouches of coffee that you can sniff. They are needed in order for our receptors to “zero out”, to be ready to perceive new things. For "zeroing" the sensations helps to shake up. You can take a shower. But it's easier to shake things up.
