Transformation Through Action

The Transformation Handbook
by Jan Maizler, MSW, LCSW

(Page 2 of 3)

The core of transformation by action is the profound self-challenge that comes with recognizing our fears, realizing the costs of having avoided those fears, eliminating our fears against them, facing them, and conquering them.

Our reflexive reaction to fear is to avoid it because it is uncomfortable. The first part of this transformation process is to treat fear as a sensation to be regulated rather than a sign of danger. As we begin to modulate the sensation of fear, we begin to transform our actions.

Once we begin to recognize our fears, we start to recognize the costs of having avoided those fears. For example, someone who fears water may never learn to swim or enjoy water sports; someone who fears flying may limit their travel opportunities; someone who fears intimacy may never fall in love.

ACTION STEPS

These are the action steps that will transform us as we face and conquer our fears.

• discomfort tolerance
• good threat appraisal skills
• mastering the flight or fight reaction
• deep breathing
• visualization
• meditation
• here and now thinking and behavior
• partialization

Discomfort Tolerance. We can transform our actions with increased reassurance when we realize that repeated exposure to something feared produces greater comfort. This helps us realize that discomfort is often a temporary existential state. The anxiety that may be felt in new situations is easier to face when its mind/body impact is cushioned by the awareness that there may be no real threat and when its discomfort is tolerated wisely and patiently.

For example, if a person has been too frightened toassert themselves in most situations, facing up to that which has been avoided will be more successful if they realize that the fear of the discomfort that once stopped them was based on an inaccurate appraisal of threat. This furthers the ability to face the discomfort they avoided, and is a new found realization of the discomfort's limited life. This gives immediate benefit of involvement in real constructive change by their actions. And by simply adding one new behavior, they become more than they were.

The Appraisal of Threat- Stabilizing our relationship to fear or anxiety involves increasing our skills in the appraisal of threat. The first step is to determine whether the threat is a real danger to us. Threat can arise from within us, such as chest pain, or outside of us such as a car screeching behind us. The second step of threat appraisal is to use logic and rational thinking to determine whether the stimulus can be dismissed or whether it needs attention, what kind of attention, and how much.

Mastering the Flight or Fight Reaction- Understanding fear involves understanding that our evolutionary mind-body endowment carries the capacity to generate those feelings and sensations when we feel threatened. In transformation through action, efficient fear management involves handling our evolutionary capacity and reflexive tendencies towards flight or flight in the face of threat.

Nature gave us the adrenaline to turbocharge our Body's efficiency in reacting to potential dangers. The heart and lungs speed up. Excretion may occur to expel disposable weight and to increase mobility. This is often understandable as primitive man attempted to flee from, or kill a larger predator. Millions of years later, we still have adrenaline, yet our modern life has brought different threats, that may not necessitate fight or flight. The management of fear demands we modulate our evolutionary tendencies towards global reaction. We still run the risk of falling prey to needless adrenal activation under the influence of external stressors or through reckless imaginings.

Deep Breathing-Control of the physical organismic state through deep diaphragmatic breathing perhaps had its origins in yoga long ago. Deep breathing is a learned skill and can be an effective self-soothing tool for transformation through action.

The essence of deep breathing is slow, deep, belly breathing. This is in contrast to the shallow rapid breaths of fear, tension, and aggression. Breathe into your stomach, allowing the abdomen to push out on the inhalation, and in, on the exhalation: this is opposed to the confrontational politics (chesting) of chest inflation. With practice, you will learn to expand the intervals between the in breath and out breath. This process induces mind-body calmness.

Visualization - Visualization is the creation of an intentional inner experience that is based on an actual scene or event that recollected or constructed by your intentful imagination. In transformation through action, visualization can be used to calm yourself by creating serenity-inducing scenarios within, such as picturing yourself in a quiet pasture, or on a peaceful beach, etc. Visualization can also be an aid in transformation through action when your intentionally-created inner experience become affirmative rehearsals and programming for desired behaviors. An example of this might be visualizing yourself successfully giving a speech in front of an audience.

Visualization augments transformation through action.

Meditation - In contrast to visualization, meditation is an emptying and calming of the mind. Your mind produces so many thoughts and pictures that can potentially affect your serenity. Meditation involves the learned skill of combining deep breathing with inner calm emptiness or with a simplifying single sound to make serenity an achievable repeatable state. Meditation is an important tool in transformation through action because you can use acquired inner calm to face many previously uncomfortable situations. Giving a speech before hundreds of people is made easier by inner calm.

Here and Now Thinking and Behavior- Here and now thinking and behavior focuses the mind to the task at hand. The mind can be controlled, modified, talked to and structured to avoid runaway imagination anxiety. It can also be soothing for you to involve your mind-body in structuring and productive tasks-at-hand whenever appropriate and necessary. For example, when stalled in traffic, take out a tape recorder, play some music, sing a song, or call a friend. Do not allow your mind to stray into reckless imaginings, like this could take hours. Focus on making the most of this moment. These simple steps and behaviors help transform us from adrenal tyranny to adrenal mastery.

Partialization - Partialization is one of the greatest tools in transformation through action. It requires no deep analysis or understanding. You simply take things one step at a time.

Partialization is the learned skill of breaking down a task, goal, or quest into more manageable, smaller units which follows a logical sequence. We realize that not only does a journey begin with the first step, but a journey can only be taken one step at a time, and we take first things first.

Transformation through action avoids the past and the future. It is riveted in the present moment.

A HERO FOR YOURSELF

A hero embodies transformation through action. The traditional hero is a person judged by others to have acted in a courageous, self sacrificial way. Their act is often considered beyond the call of duty, and one that others might turn away from. The archetypal hero experiences a universal, symbolic fear and confronts it in themselves. They act despite fear because of a heightened sense of self-belief and/or intent, having somehow to overcome or transcend prior personal concerns. We should be able to see that we can be heroes for ourselves by managing and mastering the fears that kept us self-jailed prisoners: our new actions are new behaviors and make us transform into more than we were.

About the Author

www.relationshiphandbook.com
Jan Maizler, MSW, LCSW, is a veteran psycho- therapist practicing in Miami, Florida. He has authored six books and over eighty articles.