What’s Different about the Four Blinks Version of Flash: A Deeper Dive
This version of Flash has an easy, simple, working mechanism… that just works.
The Four Blinks Version of Flash has a clearly articulated working mechanism that shapes everything that is in there and it also explains why other things aren’t in there. It emerges from very simple concept from Bruce Ecker that humans heal when we activate difficult content and then sit with experiences that contradict the expectation in the bad memory. Experiences, not knowledge, that contradict. In Flash approaches, we do this hundreds of times in a single 30 to 40-minute session. Yes, Bruce Ecker is primarily interested in shifting whole neighborhoods of cognitions and to do that, the disconfirming information has to be precise. In Flash, the disconfirmation can be general. In fact, Flash approaches can inform other memory reconsolidation approaches in that if you want to resolve a single memory faster, you need a large number of disconfirming experiences in a short amount of time. And, in this conceptualization, the blinks when you are in your calm/disconfirming experience split a 30-second exposure of the experience into six five-second exposures. If you do not blink in Flash approaches, the memory still resolves, just much slower, because it takes longer to get to hundreds of exposures to the calm scene. Yes, seeing a video of a bubbly hot pizza coming out of the oven over and over is disconfirming enough to process memories of childhood sexual abuse. This conceptualization is elegant and guides every single word in the Four Blinks Version of Flash treatment guide.
Other working mechanisms that are not endorsed in this version of Flash is that it works because we are disrupting working memory. But, I don’t want to do anything that distracts you from your core task of finding your way back into the disconfirming experience. You can have your clients to bilateral, but it’s an extraneous variable. In this version, I promise that bilateral is not an active ingredient. If you absolutely love Yankee Doodle, you can have your clients hum it. You can try to have them hum it backward, but it is not going to help them find their way quickly and efficiently back into the active ingredient of the positive/disconfirming state. Do you know what happens when you do things, like with EMDR 2.0, and directly distract the client from the activation that you just guided them into? They are very likely having an experience that is different than the expectation in the bad memory. So, it is entirely possible, that our disrupting working memory approaches work because the client is having a disconfirming experience, rather than the memory is somehow being nudged by these disruptions. Which in the end simply means that in the end, Bruce Ecker, is again right that humans heal when we have experiences that disconfirm the expectation in the bad memory… or as van der Kolk says in the most quoted line in The Body Keeps the Score, for the “body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma.”
Phil Manfield, who developed Flash, appears to be moving toward a subliminal activation working mechanism. It may, in the end, be productive, but that’s not what I’m trying to show people how to do. I’m showing them how to activate the memory very lightly and sit with different experiences since every transformational psychotherapy involves some level of activation and engagement with the memory content.
This working mechanism that I endorse added benefit of being something that you already know. How have you gotten past something? As a human, when you have gotten past something, you have done so by having experiences that are different than and disconfirming of the experiences in the bad memory. We heal relationally from our relational wounds. Parts work works because it encourages the system to have experiences that are different than the expectation in the bad memory.
From the very beginning, this version of Flash has been viewed as a potential approach to psychotherapy.
The early articulations of Flash were simply wrong about Flash’s potential. When you do Flash approaches well, the memory resolves and resolves using every metric that we would consider that memory resolved in EMDR or any other transformational psychotherapy. I used to go out of my way to make the case that Flash fully resolved memories. You simply need to see it. And, if Flash resolves memories then this is a way that humans can heal. If this is a way that humans can heal, then we need to be helping people do that. Flash can turn any resource into a transformational trauma therapy. You can narrate, you can dance, you can pet your dog under his chin, you can rock a baby or imagine rocking a baby. If this is a way that humans can heal, then it has to become a psychotherapy. David Archer’s newest book, Racial Trauma Recovery, articulates an anti-oppressive Flash-based psychotherapy…. It’s the first book-length conceptualization of Flash as a comprehensive approach to healing that I’m aware of.
In the Four Blinks Version of Flash we do not check the SUDs. Flash approaches tend to fail when we overactivate and the purpose of checking the SUDs in EMDR is to activate. I use the deli slicer metaphor in working on the memory.
In this version of Flash, we do not container the memory once we start working on it. In fact, we are only working on one microslice of the memory at a time. In fact, we are only bringing into working memory one tiny piece of the memory at a time. While Flash will generally work if you ask the client to container the memory, this version of Flash is guided by this understanding that are bringing only a microslice of the memory into awareness at a time. Lightly activating the memory allows us to quickly container it and allow all of our attention to be available to the calm scene, over and over.
This version of Flash is parts-centric. There is parts language built into every core step. It’s 2023. Get consent.
This version of Flash has the body on the radar at all times. When other versions of Flash reliably end with a SUDs of 1, 2, or 3, often this is because the body isn’t on the radar. This version of Flash has the built-in Shop Vac resource to quickly get distress from overactivation out of the body as quickly as possible.
This version of Flash anticipates that clients may over-activate and has clear instructions in the script for dealing with overactivation with the requirement to teach all clients both the Shop Vac and sensory grounding prior to working on any memories.
We have been trying to heal for as long as we have been human. There are two pages in the script that guide clients on how to do self-administered Flash when the therapist believes that may be appropriate to help manage what may come up between sessions. Clients have been trying to heal forever, they have just been doing it using very inefficient cultural strategies. This is a highly effective strategy for clients to use between sessions and is built around two resources that I want them to be using anyway if they are triggered by memory… out of the understanding that they are going to dancing with this content until it gets recontainered in their limbic brains anyway.
Despite my deep love of doing Flash in this way, I’m not arguing and I have never argued that this version is better than any other version. I’m just claiming that this is one way to do Flash well. It is built around an understanding of how humans heal that already makes sense—we’re just not used to doing it in this way. The treatment guide is comprehensive and provides needed resources that should be important for doing any type of trauma work. This version of Flash has an explicitly developed and tested container and it is built especially for my clients with really extreme trauma. It stresses the importance of outsourcing the calm scene to a video on YouTube or related service for clients with really complex trauma.
This version of Flash is open. It is not copyright. People may own their individual copyrighted scripts, but if this is a way that humans can easily, reliably, and predictably heal nobody owns this. It is already in you. It is your birthright and yours as a function of being human. You can use it, you can train it, you can research it, you can modify it, and you can use it to develop the psychotherapy that will change how mental health services are delivered globally in the 21st century.
If how you are already doing Flash works great, keep doing that. If you aren’t seeing you clients fully resolve memory 90% of the time in one session, take the training, take the free consultation, and be in touch. I will work with you almost endlessly and for free until you see what see. That Flash is the closest thing we have to a combination lock to unlock trauma. Three rounds to the right, two to the left, back to the final number, click. If you are not seeing that, there are ways to do Flash better.
Four Blinks Version of Flash: An Open Approach To Trauma Reprocessing 