Emotional Intensity Amnesia:

Sandy, a 50-year-old woman, came to me for the treatment of low self-esteem and social anxiety.  She had previously come to me for four sessions of traditional talk therapy.  She reported that the talk therapy had been valuable to her.  However, it appeared that the issues related to her social anxiety were not responding to talk alone.

Sandy truly wanted to increase her self-esteem and to reduce her fear of being alone.  However, her social anxiety was making her fear even worse.

I asked her to identify a particular memory of an event that she thought might be connected with her fear of rejection in social situations.  She told the story of a specific incident in which a favorite sister was extremely cold toward her.  She identified this event as the first in a series of events in which her sister became increasingly cold and rejecting.  This has now resulted in her only having limited contact with this sister.

When recounting the event, Sandy became very tearful; she clenched her fists, sank down in her seat and said that she did not feel comfortable thinking about it.  She reported that the intensity of her distress on a zero to ten scale (where zero means the issue does not bother you at all and ten represents something that bothers you as bad as you can imagine) was at a level ten.

I then introduced her to the Quick REMAP 4-point Rapid Relief Protocol.  I showed her where the four acupressure points were and asked her to pay attention to the feeling in her fists, in her body and the tearful sensation as I guided her through the process of treating her emotional pain with Quick REMAP.

After we finished a brief amount of treatment, I asked her how intense her feelings about the event were then.  She said that the intensity had dropped to a level three.

I then introduced her to three additional acupressure points.  We were then actually working with the Quick REMAP 8-point protocol (minus one acupoint).  Two of the new acupoints were located on the foot and another acupoint was located on her head.

Once more, I had her focus on how she felt in her body and on the part of the event that still bothered her.  After this treatment sequence, I asked Sandy to think about the event again.  This time she shrugged and said, "Well that was six years ago.  It really doesn't bother me anymore."

Her distress was completely gone and she appeared to have forgotten the level of emotion she was experiencing only minutes earlier!  It was as if she had amnesia regarding the emotional impact of the event.  She could still remember the event—but she had no recollection of the painful emotions associated with it before treatment with Quick REMAP.

Since this was my first professional experience with this procedure, I did not know to have her fill out a pre-treatment psychological test.  Therefore, I did not have any documented evidence to show her in order to remind her of how she had been feeling just before the treatment.

I have performed this treatment several times with other clients since this psychotherapy session.  The outcomes for the other clients have been nearly identical to what Sandy experienced.  However, I now always perform a pre-test and post-test in order to avoid the amnesia effect that I observed with Sandy.

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