Customer Reviews

What Freud Didn't Know: A Three-Step Practice for Emotional Well-Being through Neuroscience and Psychology

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This is the best psych book I have read in decades. A slim volume that packs a wallop.

This gem of a book is a must for the professional therapist, as well as the lay readers who want to change old, outdated scripts in their lives. After years of reading either dense scientific treatises, or light-weight fuzzy-headed self-help books, it is a delight to have in one volume the neuro-science and its application. Behaviors that range from ancient marital arguments all the way to PTSD can be dealt with using Stokes' step-by-step awareness techniques.

Dr. Stokes has packed his book full of the latest research and, more importantly, simple, clear steps for implementing the research findings. His writing is filled with the wisdom gleaned from his years of experience with clients. Not content with applying these scientific theories to his own clients, he joined with other practitioners in a monthly roundtable to hone the efficacy of his 3-Step Practice for Emotional Well-Being. The result is a set of steps that you or I can take, today, in our lives, to begin to change old habits of thought and action.

Dr Stokes presents an effective 3-step practice to reduce or eliminate chronic, troublesome, inihibiting emotional reactions he terms amygdala scripts. The technique uses the latest findings in brain science and combing through years of referenced research in the effective clinical techniques from the various schools of psychotherapy such as insight, mindfulness, and cognitive therapy in an integrative simple recipe. I highly recommend this book from having experienced the effectiveness of Dr Stokes 3-step practice. I consider this book revolutionary in moving us towards fulfilling the promise of psychotherapy. The book puts in clear perspective the nature of recurring emotiomal issues explaining how the older and newer parts of the brain are involved without labeling symptoms as some sort of pathology.

Recently I met Tim Stokes, the author. In our conversation he explained to me the basic concepts in his book. I was intrigued enough to buy it, and I'm very glad I did.

In the preface Tim describes his journey to creating this remarkable three step tool for emotional well-being. Briefly, because of his interest in the richness of the human experience, he became a clinical psychologist, specializing in insight-oriented psychotherapy. However, he also has a background in the physical sciences and was drawn to understand the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy. In addition, he explored neurobiology beginning in the late 1990s. He writes, "The more I learned about brain physiology, the more I began to suspect that neurobiology and a great deal of clinical research dovetailed to a surprising degree, affording new insights into the psychological change process."

From this rich stew of clinical experience, psychological research about effective interventions, and neurobiological research, Tim designed a three step practice that he explains clearly in this easy to understand book. I worked with the practice as I read the book and found that a long-standing pattern that I have addressed for years shifted both easily and, it seems now, thoroughly. It also opened later into another pattern I had not previously accessed in such depth. The hold of the second pattern has also shifted.

Tim's three step practice begins with a focus on the body and the activation of what he calls "an amygdala script." This concept is key for the practice, and Tim explains it fully in the introduction and in the first two chapters.

Very briefly, the amygdala is a small almond-shaped part of the brain that belongs to the limbic system, the part of the brain that we share with reptiles. It records memories of painful events, but only in bare outline, not with historical details. Often called emotion memories, Tim refers to the activation of these memories, or "seed images," as an amygdala script, because the script programs our behavior without our conscious awareness.

To explain a little further, one of the amygdala's major purposes is to alert us to any situation that bears a resemblance to the seed image and to activate the flight, fight, or freeze response without delay. It bypasses our more analytical processes in order to protect us. We are glad we have amygdala scripts in case that flash of orange is a tiger about to pounce. But, the amygdala will also hijack our capacity for higher reasoning even when we are safe. We might, for example, think "Tiger," feel fear, and flee when, in fact, the flash of orange is really Aunt Martha's sundress.

Tim has identified three components of amygdala scripts: a felt experience, that is, a reaction felt in the body; the use of a seed situation as a template laid on the current situation; and, beliefs about oneself and/or others.

The practice that Tim has designed is supported by psychological and neurobiological research and addresses all three components. For the felt experience he suggests using mindfulness to become more aware of the experience in the body. Having learned what the bodily experience is, he comments, you can then activate it and work with it at will.

To deconstruct the template laid on the current situation, Tim suggests an insight-oriented practice that distinguishes the present from the past.

Finally, for the erroneous beliefs about oneself and/or others Tim offers the cognitive tools of identifying and acknowledging an old belief, and then practicing warmth and empathy for the self who believed it. Tim's thorough and patient description of how to accomplish the three parts of the practice is the core of the book (Chapters 3 through 7).

Tim closes with a chapter for therapists and another dedicated to distinguishing between scripted and unscripted emotions.

I highly recommend the practice and the book to anyone with interest in psychological matters and to anyone who is suffering with any type of emotion, such as fear, depression, anxiety, guilt, anger, sickness at heart, or queasiness in the belly.

I very much agree with the two previous reviews! I found this to be an extremely helpful and well written book. The explanations and exercises are very clear and available. I'm not a therapist, just a lay person, and I found the book in language that is very accessible. Even the chapter that was written specifically for therapists I found very clear and of great interest. Practicing the exercises has been stunning. There is an efficiency that is quite remarkable as I have found myself in situations that in the past had proven to be very difficult to negotiate are now more than manageable. Dr. Stokes' explanation of how the amygdala functions and leads to behavior that we have come to call neurotic has, I believe, enormous implications, both for the field of psychotherapy and in the arena of spiritual inner work. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for psychotherapists, engaged lay people and spiritually inclined folks that have found themselves facing inexplicable blocks to greater opening.

This book's 3 step process for gaining emotional well-being resonated with me. I already had some understanding of the purpose and power of the amygdala region of the brain but this book helped explain it in terms that made it quite comprehensible. I have utilized Dr. Stokes three-step practice successfully and am feeling much more peace and well-being in my life as a result of these exercises. I highly recommend the book to anyone who finds themselves "emotionally trapped" by their own amygdala scripts.