Guest contributor: A new way to understand patients thoughts and feelings

My thanks to the author

When I started this blog, I had a vague idea of what I wanted: To share some of the knowledge collected over a lifetime with the readers, and maybe find others who wanted to share their thoughts, also. I love meeting new people, and wish I had more time to get to know them (luckily there is still plenty of it left).

One of my new acquaintances has written the following post just for us. I have read some of his post, and already know the author as an intelligent and creative man. I am very honored that he wanted to use so much of his creative energy on us. The post is well written, and really interesting to read. He applies his own thoughts on his psychological knowledge, and the result is an exciting new view of things. Since the theory must be researched more to be sure of its validity, this post is introduced as a refreshing way of looking at things.

This is the personal theory and thoughts of the author. The author is responsible for the content, and the owner of this blog has given permission to the following post. The theory is not researched and have not been used in psychological treatments other than the cases the author describes. Th. For more information, see the links at the end of the post.

-Nina, clinical psychologist

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Again, thank you Monty Lukies. This was truly appreciated

A way to understand thoughts of patients and others

Introduction:

I was asked to submit a couple of articles to another blog which covered all concepts of Psychology. Given I say in the about section of my site if there is ever a subject that any one wants me to cover in more detail, I will be more than happy to adapt it to a specific subject. I didn’t really have an article that covered the use of my code for psychology specifically, but it is something that I have covered in my research quite extensively.

So i decided to share some of this work on here, it’s a good insight in to an application of the code for psychology as another one of it’s many uses. I think after you see my examples you may have more questions than answers to begin with. This is a new system that I developed, I’m not personally working on this methodology, rather this is just an example of how to apply my code. I wanted to test to see how accurate it was as a way to prove the accuracy of my code.

Originally this was going to be given to a local university here in my country to continue elaborating on in a form of partnership, unfortunately I never had time to form this partnership with everything else I am doing, eventually I hope to find a university or research company that is willing to continue the work where I left of. I’m not suggesting a new methodology to the process that is already used by psychologists, more this is intended to compliment the existing process.

About the code:

The code is something i developed over many years while working in a creative profession. I developed this code to sell a unique product that had more of a scientific approach to something that is usually anything but. While doing this I began to notice patterns in creative expression, and ways to measure what made certain approaches more successful than others. The more I looked in to this, the more I began to understand about how the human mind worked. Towards the end of this I realized that I had stumbled across something quite big that had almost endless applications.

So this code is a way to compare thoughts and the feelings that drive them, a way to compare, and measure them. While thoughts can change from person to person, from one culture or language to the next, the actual feelings behind them, that is the sensory information that is stimulated be our bodily senses doesn’t. Because of this I was able to find a universal way to measure this, and my code is based on this system, and in this article I am going to use the example of psychology. This is part of what is different to a lot of other systems out there, we are really talking about something that can be applied universally, regardless of who the subject is, and what the application is. Some creativity is needed to be able to apply it, but here I have provided the best example I have for psychology.

In this post the most common part of the code I use is colour patterns, a post that explains the science behind this can be found here. However with the combination of words, numbers colours and other scales we can get quite an insight in to the patients emotional state.

In relation to psychology:

It such a common cliche to see in a film depicting the interaction between a psychologist and their patient, but that question which I am sure you have all asked in you professional career at least once, “and how does that make you feel?”.This methodology becomes a good starting point to do exactly that without even having to ask the question. You will probably see that this method works better with younger people, it also helps with people who are anxious about expressing their problems, or people who are withholding vital information that may assist in their recovery. Not only can it be used by the therapist, but it also helps patients to learn a form of self therapy, which they can apply on their own. The idea is to get the subject to focus on the feelings that drive the problems that they are experience.

This simple method helps to do this, it localizes the most intense and controlling of all feelings at the particular time, once dealt with the next most problematic one because the center of attention, moving from one to the other. It is very similar to the input and output testing used on computers (part of my background is in computer science which is why I compare it to this), not to compare the brain to an electronic device, more that the methodology is systematic in nature, which has it’s own benefits. If you read a little more about my work a lot of what I do is find mathematical and systematic ways to create computational models of dynamic, or in this case; organic system.

Getting the subject to use their imagination is the most important component because when using their imagination all of the sensory information that they would experience if it was really happening is the same, so this is how you can create a comparative point and accurately measure it. The other important part about using the subject imagination is that a lot of what we can imagine is controlled or driven by our own experiences, in particular what we are feeling at that given time. With people who are experiencing certain events, if you were to get them to write a short story, no doubt that at least part of it would be a reflection of their own life at that given time.

I think as most writers commonly say that they are most creative in times of despair, is usually because the feelings that drive our imagination are most apparent at this given time. So rather than explain to you every single in and out of the methodology, it’s better to show it to you an application, here is the best example I could find when I was testing it last year.

The subject “B”:

This conversation is between me and someone who volunteered to allow me to test the accuracy of my code. The person involved “B” has had a very prevalent history of mental illness growing up, she is a female of 26 years old. She was undergoing her own treatment at the time, this was an extra component to help with her existing problems, and it was the first time I had met her.

I’m not going to go in to detail about what exactly she was suffering from, her symptom list at the time was quite extensive and required more than just a simple fix. I haven’t included the entire conversation for privacy reasons, B did consent to this part being made public.

The interview:

Me: Close your eyes for approximately 5 seconds, and explain to me, in the best detail when you open them again, everything you see in your imagination.

B: I have absolutely no way of describing my imagination right now. There are worlds in there!

Me: try for me that’s why I say to take a deep breath it helps a lot

B: I see a universe. Like I said, there are worlds!

– To begin with she is anxious, and having trouble narrowing down on her feelings, the universe is actually a pretty common thing for people to envision as it represents everything. Other objects such as the world, scenes of nature such as the sky, and people the subject loves are the most common starting points. In order to get this to work I need to get her to focus on something smaller, usually the first step will be quite general, people aren’t always that willing to explain what they are imagining, and it becomes a forced representation of their internal thoughts. For the code to work, you need to get the raw “subconscious” driven content, so it’s important to build trust and help them relax as the process evolves.

Me: Laughs, see you can find words to describe it, what about the universe are you so drawn to at the moment?

B: The blackness.

Me: can you see any light?

B: Of course. But I like the empty blackness best. It’s calm.

– This is interesting because there are a few observations that can be draw already. The attraction to the darkness can be a representation of the mood patterns she is experiencing, black being a dark mood. The other most common representation one can draw from black or darkness is fear, she is obviously anxious about doing this as mentioned in the previous observation, the darkness is giving her a form of comfort making this easier to endure. She is very brave in my opinion, this is just a form of coping.

Me: does it just make you calm?

B: Black is anything and everything you want it to be.

Me: so is white… but it”s different, it’s on the other end of the spectrum. Okay, lets work on narrowing down on what you might be feeling at the moment, choose one of these 3 pictures;

Road

pyramid

Flowers

– Each of these pictures could have hundreds of associations, its only done to see which of the images she is more attracted to, to help narrow down on the feelings she is experiencing at the moment. In the example of the road it could represent the path that we travel, a long journey ahead of us, the pyramids could represent age, strength, endurance, and many other feelings. You won’t get the answer straight away, but by creating a path, we can at least eliminate some of the less important feelings.

B: I honestly like them all. I keep going back to the road though. But I wouldn’t call it my ‘favorite’.

Me: Okay, here is another picture, is the road still the one you are most attracted to?

Piano

B:The piano is my favorite, but I enjoy looking at the road the most.

– Once you have the answers it is easy to get a bit of an idea of what is happening. You really have to just take your best guess to begin with as to what feelings they are experiencing that is making them choose this. In the case of the road, it is indeed a willingness to move on, she wants to move forward but it seems like a long distance with no visible ending. The broken piano can represent an art form that is lost of broken, it can also represent life and her ability to function like other people. When doing this exercise I would recommend more pictures, all of which are of similar quality (tumblr and flickr are great sources for this) to give the subject a lot to choose from, you can experiment with this part a little, and find a system that works best for you.

Me: so there is something that makes you attracted to the road more, but your personal taste makes you like the piano, is that correct?

B: Yes.

Me: okay, interesting, do you like the pyramid picture, does it make you feel in the same way like the picture of the road?

B: Yes.

– It’s important to be able to distinguish between personal tastes and a sort of attraction that is driven by other means. Similar to the song that gets stuck in our head that we probably don’t like, that attraction can have beneficial purposes. Getting the subject to be able to differentiate between the two early on is an important part of the method. This can be accomplished by asking what it is they don’t like about the other pictures, over time you will be able to differentiate between the two better.

Me: Ok, tell me, at the moment, what is the song that you listen to the most, do you have one? that is a song you could play on repeat a lot

B:

The Smiths – I Know It’s Over

Lyrics: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/the-smiths/i-know-its-over.html

From the album “The Queen Is Dead”

– You probably won’t get much information from this if they can even recommend a song at all. Even just asking them for the first song that comes in to their mind, without holding back on the answer can be helpful. Reading the lyrics is an important part, the lyrics can be representative of their own nature or personality, it can give you some insight in to how they think. If in the case the subject is not a fan of music, a movie or television show they watched recently can be helpful. The idea is to try and get them to imagine something that exists outside of their mind, so you can create a sort of contrast or comparative point. If you can’t you can still work from that, but it really helps if you do have  point to begin with.

Me: the next question would be, now that we are talking, if you would have a song in the background which would it be? what is the first song that pops in to your mind? regardless of how lame or inappropriate it may be, try not to adjust your answers to sound cool.

B: I don’t do ‘the cool’ thing! laughs…  took me a while to think of it.

The Smashing Pumpkins Oceania: Violet Rays

Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/smashingpumpkins/violetrays.html

Me: I know this isn’t your kind of music, but can you listen to this whole song and really focus on what it makes you feel?

Zero 7, Throw it all away

Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/zero7/throwitallaway.html

B: OK, done.

– Up until now there has been very little information of real use, and I am still a little unsure of what is going on in her mind. The idea of asking so many of these questions  is to try to lower the defenses. In other words reducing the effect that her “Reason” has on the decisions she makes, and trying to get her to just say the first thing that comes to her mind. The reason I asked her to listen to a song, that was specifically chosen for this purpose was to create a form of dialogue, and to see how her mind registered an alternate sensation, one that I wanted her to feel. In this song the course is “throw it all away, never needed it anyway”. I am trying to see how she reacts to being told to let go, even if she isn’t actually being told to physically do that. But we are finally at that point once you see that there is less of a decision-making process in the answers the subject is giving you, this is the moment when you can actually get the mind to start telling you what the problem is if you know what to look for.

Me: Now I need you to choose 1 of these 3 colours, again not from personal preference, the one that stays in your mind:

B: This is hard, purple.

Me: I had a feeling you would say purple, because of the last song you said was called “Violet Rays”. I think I have found your current main problem or preoccupation…

Me: The last question will be after listening to that song, recommend me another song that springs to mind, not because i will like it, just because its springs to your mind

B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEgXDhiayz4

Within Temptation – What Have You Done (feat. Keith Caputo).

Me: (taken from the song) ”What have you done? What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?” Is that what you would live to say to me? okay, so now let me explain what this means.

Me: our mind can be grouped in to feelings and thoughts, the two aren’t totally compatible, but say something like a car and a bike generate similar sensory information, they both move, they both carry us, we can feel vibrations created by the ground, this is an example of how I group things. So when you wanted to listen to that song, its in part because you like it, but its also because part of you is feeling that same way, it’s very hard to think of something that we aren’t currently experiencing. Most of the lyrics can be adapted to what you are feeling, they are representations of your internal dialogue also, while you are slightly consciously making these decisions, it’s still easy to see what it is that you are thinking about, by trying to find a context that explains everything you are experiencing.

Me: Once you get good at being able to see this, you will be able to understand why you are experiencing certain emotions, your mind talks to it self, and while it seems totally random, they are actually connected. But you do need to work on it, the better you get at it, the less likely you are to experience the more random thoughts. For instance just seeing a billboard that says something, can actually do this in a false positive sort of way, because in a way its true, you experienced it, the mind isn’t very good at differentiating between the two. I guess the best example of this is a horror film, you know it isn’t true but you can’t help but to be scare, the more instinctual parts of the mind fall for this but we are taking advantage of this fact to see what is going on with you.

Me: I will explain what it is  about the colour purple is important in a sec

B: Yes…it’s just that everything feels so random right now. I used to find meaning in everything. But now it’s all just ‘things’.

– This is probably the most common thing someone would say to you, regardless of if they are experiencing problems or not that everything seems random. That is because this code I created didn’t exists before, why metaphors did, and they are very common associations that we can all make, I have taken a lot more in depth view of the sensory information generated by just about everything, numbers, colours, objects, by then analyzing them using various methods including statistical probability I was able to figure out what they all relate to. It’s my way of mapping out the complex webbing that our brain is made of, which is why I also consulted with a couple of neuroscientists while doing this.

– I have a belief that the further our feelings get from the thoughts we compare them to, the higher level of separation we experience. The easiest example of this is “letting our hearts guide us”, this is exactly what this is about. Our heart is part of the sensory information that is generated to form feelings. Those chemical reactions are feelings, the more we ignore them or don’t see the meaning in them, the more separated we are. Again using the examples of artists, they usually are guided by their hearts because they only have a small level of separation between the two. This small amount of separation is what makes their artistic abilities so great. In the case of B, she is an artist by trade, and has been unable to create any work for a while.

Me: So think about a fever, In the case of a fever we have one because our body is already fighting an infection, it’s a way of making us consciously aware of this fact that our body is experiencing a form of difficulty and that we need to  react to consciously to keep it under control. I believe that most (if not all problems) of a psychological nature are the same, our body knows what the problem is, where it is located, and it’s trying to fight back to contain the problem, A lot of the repetitive or unwanted thoughts created are the same as the fever we get, as if our mind was trying to make us consciously aware of what was causing the problem. However this part of the mind is quite primitive  and it needs the assistance of the more intelligent parts of our mind to make sense of it. When we are depressed, part of what generates those feelings (chemical factors put aside) are the same as a fever, and correcting the problem can alleviated it a lot quicker, which is what psychologists attempt to do, however we are covering the basics of this to understand why this system works.

B: Yes. That’s brilliant.

Me: it can be very hard to decipher some times, but the colour purple relates to love, I could spend a lot of time explaining it to you but you responded to purple more than the other colours, because its an indication of where your mind spends the most amount of time at the moment.

– The representation of different colours is an example of the actual code, if you are interested in the theory behind colour and it’s relation to the code, you can check outthis post. The reason why I stuck with it was because she mentioned it a couple of times, in the song she selected and the colour that she choose. In the beginning we want to try and get as much information that is raw out there, then once we have this information the next step is to reanalyze it to find coincidences or other attractors (attractors are a part of chaos theory, which is one of the sciences I use  a lot in my work). Essentially we are looking for anything that stands out or is mentioned more than once, from the values we can usually find the cause behind why the subject is so attracted to them. I am really good at doing this mind you, other people may need to do it for longer to get a better picture, with B I was pretty sure, by this point what her main preoccupation or unwanted thought process that was creating her emotional state was.

B: I know (should know) the meaning behind colours. Purple is spiritual love.

Me: correct, however I have found that it has a deeper meaning than that, its love in all senses, but more in particular, statistically for women, it represents… sorry, I am just going to say this bluntly, and while the factors causing it are a lot more elaborate then this, purple usually means, a yearning/need to have children. This is in women, for men some colours have different meanings.

B: Oh god.

M: yeah, don’t take it the wrong way, it’s more complicated than that.

B: …You are right. Completely right.

Me: This part of your mind, it on has a few ways of expressing things so I know this what you must be experiencing is very complicated, and its not as simple as just having children, but is that chain of thought that for some reason you are drawn to.

B: Recently having children is all I can think of. But I know intellectually it is the absolute worst move.

– You could see how something like this could get overlooked in therapy. A therapist if told this, may consider it to just be a passing phase, something biological, or even something that is just happening to her because of the situation, a sort of desperation to find an answer. Also the patients own unwillingness to express these feelings, given in this case she knows it to be intellectually a bad idea, could mean that she wouldn’t be very forthcoming about it in the first place. This is one of the benefits of my system, it highlights what the strongest problem is overall, it doesn’t matter if that week something serious has come up which has distracted the subjects attention, overall, whatever you spend the most amount of time thinking about, or what has the strongest effect on your emotional state, will be the first thing that stands out. Once resolved, after about a week, the next problem will become the most obvious.

M: so relationship, marriage, is something that relates to this that your body feels is the core problem, it could be as simple as the relationship you have with your parents, a possible problem with you reproductive system or anything that could be associated to this, this is looking at it generalizing but I am pretty sure I know what it is in your case.

B: Interesting.

Me: Well what I find interesting, and I do this a lot by reading the news paper, but when people have serious mental breaks (not of the drug educed or biological illness kinds) you can actually see what caused them to break by what they decided to do. It appears the more you “lose” control of yourself consciously, the more apparent what you problem is becomes, and you become more “subconsciously” driven. I then compare this to how the news story evolves, and 9 times out of 10 once the precipitating causes are brought to light by who ever investigates it, it’s usually turns out to be the case.

B:…I can’t work out exactly how you did it, but it just feels freaky to me right now that you were able to work that out. I’m not the type of person to get ‘clucky’. It’s been so bizarre.

Me:  yes, but also relating to the picture, of the road, you want to move on with your life, you want more, in particular love, and a child can also have a symbolic meaning to something you create

B: YES. I want to move on…

– This is why it is important to gather so much information. You need to be able to relate to one problem back to just about everything they have said. It’s the context that fits the problem with the highest amount of accuracy that is the correct one. Purple can also mean pain in love, which would be the next one I feel could be related to all of the examples she has given me. However statistically this is only comment for men, and not so much for women.

Me: either a job or business you really want to do, or creating more art work, something that is YOURS that you create with love (metaphorically this is the same thing as birth) i’m sure you are good at that  so the only advice i can really give you, your mind is talking to you, every day, try and listen to it again like you used to, if a song pops in your head, listen to the lyrics,it may be your mind try to communicate an important message to you

B: …I like it. I used to do that believe it or not. I was the one my friends would go to if they needed help decoding messages. Maybe I’ll get to that place again.

Me: Yes, if you already have this ability you will find it very easy.

– Really this wasn’t anything to special or that hasn’t been done in one way or another before. I did teach her a few methods to help her do this on her own so that she could continue to alleviate her problems for herself. After almost a year has past, she is doing so much better, she can’t even imagine undertaking the medication routine she once used to. While this took a lot of hard work on her behalf, and regular therapy session, the recovery was amazing and something that has really stuck with me.

Final observations and comments:

The ideas are quite simple and as I have already stated it can become a form of self therapy that just about any one can do, to help them find happiness in life, and lead them back on a never ending path of self discovery. Our intuitions can be so intelligent and see more than we can consciously acknowledge at times, this gives us a way to deal with the sensory overload that we are becoming exposed to more and more in our current society.

You will actually be surprised by some of the observations you can make for yourself, sometimes the hardest thing to do is look at what we do wrong, and what is preventing us from moving forward. This system can help there also, and it can alleviate these feelings really quickly. While people who are experiencing a lot of problems may require a bit of work to get rid of the feelings that have backed up, once the path has been cleared it becomes less and less necessary to consciously do this, and more automated.

This process can not only be used in therapy, but it has a lot of other applications, one that springs to mind quickly for me is the application in forensic science and police investigations. The same principles can be applied, and a lot can be found out about the person by using this methodology with the added extra of the code. Hopefully I will be working alongside some other psychologist soon to further grow the amount of evidence for this system, while this isn’t the only testing I have done, I would really like in the future for other people to test it extensively.

With the book I am working on at the moment, it will contain all of the basics of the code, and associations that people have, which is the only component you would need in order to be able to test this. A lot of examples of the code can be found on my WordPress, with more examples of how to apply it.

If you are interested in a sensationalized version of what I do, the show Hannibal which covers the forensic side of things, and the show Perception which covers the mental illness side of things are two great examples of this that are fun to watch.

 

Related articles

• Real life psychoanalysis and the code – understanding your patients thoughts and feelings. (syntheticorder.wordpress.com)
• The universal “language”. (syntheticorder.wordpress.com)
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• Psychology’s brilliant, beautiful, scientific messiness. (blogs.scientificamerican.com)