Back to Index
Method "one" is doing the therapy pretty much as Ellie suggested. This page merely elaborates and expresses how I've done this.
Expressing anger can be difficult for some people in the beginning. You might think that by expressing anger, you are just making yourself more angry - and therefore it's better to avoid this emotion all together. However, if you are to get well quickly, you must understand that you are merely becoming aware of the anger that has been stored inside of you all your life. It was always there - only now you are aware of it. You will go to your grave with your anger unless you start releasing it. The amount of anger stored inside us is much greater than most people will ever realize. The good news is - the amount of repressed anger is finite.
Here are some things to keep in mind when using RST
(1) Take the time to really understand the process. Don't just skim over Ellie's website and conclude that "I just need to beat the crap out of a pillow". You must take the time to read through the forum archives to get a full grasp of the therapy. Yes, it's easy and intuitive once you learn it. However, this is all new information, and most people will find it very alien in the beginning. We are working against decades of miss-information from traditional psychiatry. In Ellie's own words:
"It is a simple concept, but requires you to study it a bit to get the idea" (forum message #628)
You should spend at least a couple of hours reading through Ellie's archived forum, before beginning. You can download the short version of the archives at www.gocure.com. If you do not take the time to fully understand this process, you may give up too soon because you practiced it wrong - and thus saw no results. Believe me, I know. I almost gave up myself after practicing it wrong for the first three weeks. However, once I did it correctly, I saw results in a few minutes. Pretend the forum archives are like a book. You wouldn't start any other therapy without spending time reading the book, and this shouldn't be any different. Ellie wrote a book, but couldn't get it published before she passed away. I do not believe there was any valuable information in her book that was not already expressed in her website and forum.
(2) Don't give up too soon. This process will take some commitment. You are learning something new that will eventually become intuitive to you. Practiced correctly, you should see some results within a couple of weeks.
This therapy will work for anyone who takes the time to learn it correctly - and commits to it.
(3) Don't orchestrate your sessions of redirecting - as the only way to do it. In other words, don't just plan the time to do it. You must adapt this method to your lifestyle so that you can do it anywhere, anytime symptoms are triggered. Setting aside some time to redirect is not a bad thing - in and of itself, if that's absolutely the only way you can get started. But eventually, you must learn to do it whenever anger arises throughout the day. Do not take the the following attitude:
"Hmmm, let's see, I have 15 minutes free every evening between 9:15 and 9:30pm. That's when I will try this redirecting stuff".
That being said - if you can make yourself angry just by thinking about someone from the past, then doing it at a planned time should work. The key is, you must really be angry at the time you use RST - or you must be able to find some anger behind your symptoms after you start a session of redirecting. Sometimes just being physical and picturing someone from the past will bring up anger at will. Not everyone is good at this. If you can, you are lucky. I am not good at this. I pretty much wait until I experience anger to redirect. This is why I've been creative with this method, so I can do it almost anywhere, anytime.
It is our daily subtle angers that give us the connection to all our past traumas and abuse - and allows us to discharge the suppressed anger associated with those traumas. Your mind wants to heal itself - let it.
This is Ellie's great gift. We don't need an expensive therapist. We can be our own therapist twenty four hours a day.
(4) Make sure you redirect at the correct person/scene. I grew up in a stable two-parent family with no mental or physical abuse from my parents. Since Ellie said we should usually redirect our anger at our parents, I automatically assumed that is what I should do. I assumed there was some suppressed anger towards my parents - that must have occurred before conscious memory - perhaps something they did unintentionally. Problem was - the anger wasn't really connecting. Also, because I was only redirecting late at night (the first three weeks), I wasn't really angry at the time. That's why I failed at RST in the beginning. It's likely the majority of people will easily be able to redirect at their parents. But if you are like me, you won't - and will need to find another target.
Because I couldn't connect any real anger to my mother or father - I started redirecting at someone else. I simply scanned my history and chose one particular person that had actually caused me a lot of anger and rage. What I was actually doing was - redirecting towards a similar story. A "similar story" is simply an incident that was similar in nature to the original trauma. When we redirect at a "similar story", we are also discharging anger from the original trauma. This is why we don't have to remember the original trauma for RST to work. Unless you have lived in a sheltered cave, you will have many similar stories. I redirected at this one similar story for months. This was a person who only goes back about eleven years in my life.
You may wonder what's the best way to hold a picture of someone while redirecting? It seems there are several ways to do this:
(a) Hold a still picture of the person, like you would look at a photograph (not moving).
(b) Imagine yourself being violent to the person in some way - perhaps doing to them what they might have done to you. Some people will not be able to be violent in their imaginations. That's OK, you can use (a).
(c) Imagine the original scene where the trauma took place - if you know where it occurred. In other words, should you try to imagine the surroundings where the abuse took place? Should you try to imagine yourself at age ten if that's when the abuse occurred?
Are all three ways equally effective? To be honest, I really don't know. What I know for sure is that method "b" and "c" worked for me - so I stuck with it. I really don't know if method "a" is just as good. Ellie's writings seem to imply she used method (a), so I suspect this will work as well.
(5) You should practice this therapy throughout the day. Don't interpret this as meaning it will take an hour a day. Far from it. I rarely spend more than a total of fifteen minutes/day. My redirecting tends to come in micro-blasts that last a few seconds or minutes. I usually redirect several times a day. Occasionally (maybe once every two weeks), I don't redirect at all. My body seems to tell me that I should take a rest from redirecting on occasion. Some people seem to be able to redirect for very long periods in one session. If you are one of these people, you may heal quicker than I did. The amount of anger that your mind offers up at any one time will vary from person to person. My anger comes up in short blasts, but my wife's anger lasts much longer and she redirects in longer sessions.
(6) Come up with your own creative ways to redirect. Ellie's suggestions for releasing anger were only starting suggestions. As you can see below, I took Ellie's principles and adapted them to my own lifestyle. This is another important principle to redirecting:
You must adapt this method to your own lifestyle so that you have several ways to redirect throughout the day as symptoms and anger occur - even when you are in public.
(7) Make sure that when you redirect, you keep doing it until it seems that there is no more anger left - until next time.
(8) Look for your feedback mechanism - so you will know when you are redirecting correctly. What do I mean? In my unusual case, it was an immediate reduction in one of my symptoms. Ellie said that most people will feel some sort of "high" after redirecting successfully. I don't experience this very often. My wife is able to break (end) depression within an hour of redirecting, and this tells her it's working. Look for your own feedback mechanism that will communicate to you that real healing is taking place. Look for some symptom to subside - or an unusual feeling of calm. This will tell you exactly what scene/person is working best while redirecting.
(9) Crying: It has been my experience over several months that:
(a) Releasing anger will quickly begin to heal our mental/emotional problems - but will not resolve physical problems.
(b) Crying will begin to resolve the majority of our physical symptoms - if the damage is not too far progressed or permanent. Exactly what physical symptoms will be resolved is hard to say - and will require a lot of feedback from people. If you want to know what kind of physical symptoms can be resolved, you will want to read books by Arthur Janov, who has documented the kinds of physical healings that take place from people who have successfully gone through primal therapy.
Many people (especially woman), will be able to cry right from the beginning as they use RST. This means your physical symptoms can begin to heal from the beginning of this therapy. If your crying does not start until the "grief period" (as Ellie calls it), physical symptoms may not begin to heal until you are closer to postflood.
(10) So - what about the raw food diet Ellie promoted? The therapy still works even if you don't adopt a raw food diet. I am doing my best to eat well, but going to an all raw food diet is not easy to do. I bought a few books on raw food (like the sunfood diet system), and have visited some raw food forums. Seems that it takes the average person about 6-12 months to go all raw if they commit to it. Try eating only raw for one week and you will see why it is so hard.
(11) One other thing I need to mention. It has been my experience that redirecting anger at people in the present also works. This pokes a small hole in Ellie's theory - as Ellie implied this wouldn't work. Some people, like my wife, have a difficult time connecting anger to the past. As I said before, the first scene I redirected at occurred about eleven years ago. I must assume that if I knew about RST eleven years ago - and discharged my anger at those people in private (at the time it occurred), it would still work. If redirecting anger at an older scene works now - why wouldn't it have worked when it actually happened? We are all beta testers with Ellie's theory. Perhaps the answer will be more evident later.
=====================================================================
As I became more creative with RST over the months, below are many of the ways I discharged anger:
(1) Beating on pillows in our spare bedroom, using a bat. Not a real bat, but one that was almost full size but made out of plastic. It's a little heavier than a simple child's bat, but not a heavy as a real bat (much safer). Trust me, from personal experience, you want to be careful when swinging things. You can easily hit things you didn't intend. I also keep a pillow in my car. This too can be used when you need to pound on something at a stoplight or after you pull over
(2) Using a squeeze ball. This has proved to be a very valuable aide. This particular ball is made out of a gel-like material that is perfect for squeezing, pulling and twisting. I use it at work and in my car. At work I can hold it below my desk and redirect while appearing to be working on something else. No one is the wiser. In the car, I can squeeze it while waiting at a stop light or driving on a street with little traffic. Use your own common sense when redirecting while driving - obviously it could be dangerous if you are not aware of what is going on around you. However, traffic seems to hit a chord in almost all of us, and driving stress is too valuable an opportunity to pass up.
(3) Water bottle. I've taken a plastic coke bottle and filled it about 3/4 to the top with water. There is just something therapeutic to me about shaking this bottle in both hands. I discovered this aide a while back when drinking those small orange juice boxes with the attached straw. I would pull these out of the fridge and give it a good shake before opening. When I would shake this orange juice box, I would naturally slip into redirecting. It then occurred to me. . ."why not take an empty bottle and make it for permanent use when redirecting".
(4) It is common for me to redirect while watching TV. Let's face it, there is almost always something on TV that can push our buttons (anger). Perhaps politics, or something in a movie. When laying on the couch, I have the option of using my water bottle or squeeze ball. Sometimes one feels better then the other. At other times, I will just kick my legs out in the air - without even getting up.
(5) Fortunately, I had a couple of years of Karate when I was younger. Throwing kicks and punches in the air is very common for me while redirecting. If only I had a room with a punching bag. The one advantage to not having a punching bag - is that I can show people it's not absolutely necessary, especially for those of us who don't have an extra room in our house.
(6) My wife uses boxing gloves to pound on a pillow in our spare bedroom. She also likes to pound her squeeze ball on the steering wheel while driving.
(7) Redirecting at the movies. I've redirected during several movies like "Enough" and "Panic Room". I would take my squeeze ball and imagine myself beating up the bad guys. I'm not imagining someone from the past, but it still works. Any movie that can trigger emotions in you - can probably be used for redirecting.
Remember, don't assume that a session of redirecting must be some big, huge session with screaming and yelling. There are many, many small angers that occur throughout the day. Many words describe this more subtle anger - like "ticked" and "bugged". A snide comment by a co-worker is an opportunity to release a small amount of anger. Perhaps you stubbed your toe on the coffee table? That will likely make you mad almost instantly. Go ahead and get it out.
I almost never scream or yell out loud while redirecting, because I live in a single level condo with common walls. I don't have a place where I can yell loudly in private. If you have a place where you can yell all you want, you are luckier than I am. Any yelling or screaming can be done silently in your mind - and I do a lot of that. I have never been able to master pure "mental" redirecting as Ellie talks about. Perhaps you can. I just seem to need some form of physical release - however small.
A phrase may come to mind while you redirect. Don't try to force one. It may come all by itself. The phrase could be something like "stop hurting me", "get the F away from me", or "you never listen to me". Whatever it may be, it will have a connection to the original trauma. If a phrase doesn't come to you, don't worry, the therapy will still work.