self-responsibility


the state or position of being responsible. a person or thing for which one is responsible. the ability or authority to act or decide on one's own, without supervision.


You will see that this is Chapter 14. Where the hell is 13? You never see a 13th floor or Room 13. And what about Friday the 13th? The origin of the bad luck associated with Friday the 13th is that this was the date, on Friday, October 13, 1307, when officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military  order formed in the 12th century for the defence of the Holy Land.


Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviours (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky. What is less murky is that the last Grand Master of the Templars was Jacques DeMolay and that a society for young men from 12-21 was created in 1919, so that young people would aspire to public service in the fashion of Jaques DeMolay. By accident we had decided to hold our first young men’s weekend on Friday October 13th 2000. We knew that some very famous people had been DeMolays - Walt Disney, John Wayne, Edgar Mitchell, Dan Rather, and in Canada, John Diefenbaker and Tommy Douglas.


One of our volunteers, again by accident, met Dick Pound, Canada’s Olympic representative, and either Dick of his brother loaned us a genuine Templar sword to officiate at our program. What a pleasure! It made our day, and in return we made 45 young men happy. What has seemed ominous to millions over seven centuries convinced us that Friday the13th was our lucky day. 


Whatever the truth about the original Templars the DeMolays were expected to be “at their best” for everyone. And we, in turn were our “best selves” for the youth.  When you’re at your best a good whack of the time, you’re ready to move on and not be seeking help from others. This occurs when you stop blaming others when you’re miserable. As they say “If your life worked, who would there be to blame?” I was fascinated that José Silva determined that a person could not get in to alpha frequency if they are either angry or fearful. Makes sense though.


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What I have found after 25 years of presenting AcuDestress (and now The Citadel) is that there needs to be a point where one says goodbye to therapy. Goodbye to being looked after. It comes when you notice that when something comes up you don’t like, you don’t blame anyone else for it, and you take responsibility for addressing it. You may still prefer to do it with others, but they should be your equals, not somebody teaching you. The time for teaching has limits.


Now lets talk about the way to get beyond therapy! Turn to the pages in Bessel Van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score, (page 55 to 73) where his discussion of PTSD includes an explanation of Stan and Ute’s brain scans. I will also go back to discussion of The Citadel. In this regard, what remarks I make equally apply to AcuDestress and The Citadel, as they are variations on the same theme. The picture below is from Page 41 if you’d like to refer back to it.





Van der Kolk states:  “Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don't work, when our maps don't lead us to where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when relationships break down.” This gives us a list of priorities, suggesting that all 3 brain layers must be repaired not just our thinking apparatus.

After we look at what will be required we’ll suggest a mechanism to do this on the next page. 


The Amygdala (van der Kolk’s smoke detector) is part of the limbic brain (what we arbitrarily  call the red brain,) It is usually the first and the strongest reactor to trauma. On the other hand the Medial Prefrontal Cortex or MPFC ( vdk’s watchtower)  keeps us “being able to hover calmly and objectively over our thoughts, feelings, and emotions (an ability I’ll called mindfulness throughout this book) and then take our time to respond allows the executive brain to inhibit, organize, and modulate a hardwired automatic reactions preprogrammed into the emotional brain” Neuroimaging studies of human beings in highly emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger all increase the activation of the subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly reduce activity in various areas of the frontal lobe particularly the MPFC


Insight is not the answer “Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behaviour. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions of the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signalling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it. I'm reminded of the comedy in which the seven-time recidivist in anger management program extolled the virtues of the technique is learned: “They are great and work terrific – as long as you're not really angry.”                              van der Kolk p.64-5




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When Stan did his fMRI in a situation which artificially recreated the experience of the MVA trauma, he started sweating and his heart raced, and his blood pressure was sky-high.  This suggests to me that a brainstem reaction was occurring when he recalled the accident.


On Stan’s fMRI the dark areas are the overactive ones and the white areas are the quiet areas. As is typically the case when a person has a flashback of Stan’s type, the left hemisphere shows a shutdown. The great majority of the activity is on  the right. With Stan there is silence in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal areas (the timekeeper) and the lateral nucleus of the thalamus (the cook) on both sides. Note that the darkest, most active area is in the area of the right amygdala (vdk’s  smoke detector.) Van der Kolk comments that there is no way a person like Stan can process the past until these offline areas are functional again - thus the dictum he also has against “talk therapy.”


Our experience of patients recovering by activating the quieter region of their brain through mindfulness and neuroplasticity, suggests to me that  Stan may well be a person who thinks-and-acts-thinks-and-acts, over and over and that right now he can’t “think his way out of a wet paper bag.” We would guess that this makes him a RED in our terminology, and that he will recover by activating compassion for himself and others, and thus re-activate his think-and-act-think-and-act, through the help of his limbic brain.
There is a slight possibility here that Stan may be a feeling-doing-feeling-doing type who activates his right brain as Jill Bolte Taylor did during her stroke, but it appears in the scan  that there is already a great deal of tight brain activity. Note that of all types, YELLOWS are least prone to PTSD. This may be because they tend always to be on the lookout for danger.  Their naturally-occurring hyper-vigilance is a boon to them when trouble strikes.


Ute on the other hand is a different kettle of fish. In her brain everything shuts down, leaving her disorganized. It is so severe that one might imagine the she had pre-existing trauma. But it is clear as clear can be that she is a withdrawing personality as most or even all dissociaters
are. Such people are prone to alexithymia, and I note from reading her book that she found her way to a  emWave2 which not only helped her progress (probably by relieving alexithymia) but she also ended up teaching it to others, which is great way to enhance it for oneself. She can be none other than a prototypical BLUE.





                                                                       




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Schema As I finish up here, I would like to share with you a little advantage to be derived from combining a schema with our perception of the dominant red, yellow or blue personality in play. It is generally agreed that patients (especially those with C-PTSD) come in with a schema, a roadmap of “the way things are always done around here.” Without them actually having a roadmap of how they are doing in the face of   trauma,
they do keep going down the same roads time after time. They’re addicted to their own behaviours. Again, how could they be talked out of things that even have things like the µ-opioid receptor deficiency as is known to happen with Borderline Personality. So, Lanius and Frewen have their patient construct a self-created new schema (like the one on the right ) once they start improving, to record both what's  left to break up and whats been completed. This is helpful to keep track of progress and to see how close one is to discharge. Since we are discussing in AcuDestress people’s “colours” we add them to the schema for an even richer depiction, a living schema they may actually pin up on their wall. If you want to know more about this you can visit it in detail on my web site. This is an excellent way to
follow where you are in it all.


As I draw to a close here, I see some of you out there becoming 21st century phrenologists, if you are not already one. You have, even if you haven’t done AcuDestress our new alternative, The Citadel,  in these pages and the web site there’s enough to tell you what colour you are. As colour is not something pathological, but rather a helpful and useful depiction of the temperament one was born with, it is neither good nor bad to be a colour- everyone is one. I have just endeavoured to tell you even on the is page that knowing one’s colour conveys certain advantages, just like the pinning, the Silva Mind Control, The  Emotional Freedom Technique and Power of Eight. 


What I have in mind here is that with you using this as an Manual,  I’d be happy to consider you as a franchisee who’d conduct The Citadel. on your own. I’ve prepared a test on the material presented here, and I’d be happy to consider you for a franchise. There will be no cost. And you may even charge for producing it. I’m clear that we have something new and powerful. As my friend and AcuDestress graduate, Nigel Harris, who makes his living as a troubadour sings (he also wrote the lyrics)…. Things Go Better Then You’re Present.







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