All reprocessing “work” in Flash is done while the client is experiencing a calming scene. Step Two is where we develop this calm scene. Again, Steps One and Two are the hardware of this approach and we’ll use that hardware over and over in subsequent Flash sessions.
The experience can be imaginary, in the form of a video or picture, or can be a process that the client is actively doing–like petting an actual dog or rocking real baby, see Demos One and Five for pets and actual babies).
The therapist will eventually (in Step Four) guide the client to make a series of rapid blinks while experiencing the calm scene, so the calm scene will need to be something the client can go in and out of quickly. The scene can be anything that is calming, relaxing, distracting, compelling, or interesting. It needs to be compelling enough to catch the client’s attention and cause an experiential shift that is different than the expectation/schema in the bad memory.
The calm scene, which Phil Manfield calls the Positive Engaging Focus, can be almost anything. These are examples:
The client watches a beautiful, relaxing, or funny video on YouTube or another service.
The client remembers a salient scene from a vacation.
The client rocking an actual baby or petting an actual dog (or memories of those activities). Or, the client watching a cute video of her dog or pet.
The client playing a musical instrument (or imagining playing one if the client has those skills).
The client imagines cooking his favorite recipe (getting out the recipe, etc). Or, watching cooking videos. Or the client brings their favorite sandwich to session and spends 35 minutes smelling it and taking little bites of it.
The client with piano training imagines playing their favorite piece of music on the piano.
The client listens to a song that has a long history of inducing peace and relaxation.
The client watches videos of food (hot pizza coming out of the oven, etc). Assess for disordered eating beforehand.
With a child client, have the client find a video of their favorite YouTuber playing their favorite part of their favorite video game.
If the client has complex trauma or a client comes to a session already flooded, it is highly recommended to outsource the scene to a YouTube video. Anything that the client finds relaxing can work. It is difficult for many clients with complex trauma to create and notice a rapid shift in affect if the calm scene has to be created through imagination in the five seconds between “blinks.” A client with a pervasively traumatized system is likely has a very busy head. The first choice with complex trauma should be to outsource the calm scene to a video that the client selects.
Verify that the client can “go into and load up the senses of the calm place” before proceeding. Verify that the calm scene induces a calming, comforting, amused, distracted, or relaxing state.
Parts Language: Does this scene/activity/video work for all parts of you? Do any parts need a different kind of calm scene? On occasion, different parts of the client will use different calm scenes in a parallel way (like you are teaching and using this resource in a group setting). See podcast episodes about working with client parts.
Step One (Part Two): A Container for Body Distress
Teaching the Shop-Vac Resource
This information is in the script, but I’m also walking you through it here.
Many other versions of Flash produce sessions that end with residual distress and often it is not clear why. This version of Flash is grounded in memory reconsolidation as its working mechanism, which has its focus on the client experiencing the calm scene in ways that are disconfirming the expectation/schema in the bad memory. If the client is having body activation from the memory, the client may be having a confirming experience of the expectation in the bad memory (“I’m feeling how I felt when the bad memory was happening”). Body activation is a problem in the Four Blinks Version of Flash for this reason. When it appears, the client should be instructed to tell you, so you can help them “scoop” it out and put it in the container or Shop-Vac it out and push the Shop-Vac canister out of awareness. In Flash, the goal is to process the traumatic information as information and not as distress.
As with all resources, it is a good idea to develop and practice this resource before it is needed. It is very difficult for clients to learn a new resource when they are flooded or in significant trauma-related distress.
Script: Have you ever used a Shop-Vac or a large coin vacuum at a carwash?
Can you imagine holding the hose of a vacuum with one hand and feeling its suction with the other?
Can you imagine it picking up a small pile of dirt or sand?
If you quickly scan your body right now, can you find a knot, pressure, tension, or emptiness, even if only a little bit?
Can you imagine the “gunk” of that going into your Shop-Vac hose and just try to see the stress or feelings leaving those places and going into the hose like it is colored smoke? Note: It is not important that the client feel it all (or even most of it) go away. The Shop-Vac can become a ritual-like resource that may help direct attention and awareness away from that triggering sensation in the body.
Good. Can you see the canister of the vacuum get pushed far out of awareness… just send it several hundred miles away?
Extended Step One Script: Develop a Container (Client Can Reuse Between Memories and Sessions)
If Flash is a way to process traumatic information without distress, but there is distress in traumatic information, it is helpful to have a place for the distress to go that is external to the client’s nervous system. This may sound bizarre, to separate activation from distress, but that’s what makes Flash effective. If the distress and the calm scene are both in awareness, Flash will not work, or will work at a crawl and leave substantial debris.
The container in EMDR Therapy and Flash therapy have similarities and differences. They are similar in that both are boxes that hold difficult stuff. In EMDR Therapy, we may scoop residual distress up once at the end of a session, see it go into the container, close the door, and leave it there. In this version of Flash, the container will be used every time we quickly check the memory and all distress will be routed directly into the container, much like a hot potato might be tossed into a casserole dish. Since we may be checking the memory 30-45 times in an average Flash session, we need a new and empty container to come each time (we’ll talk about why in Step Five). Note that we are working on the memory only one microslice of it at a time. The whole memory is not containered, only the right now microslice. They’re not telling you what they are containering, but if they did, it would be something like: “It’s the way he’s looking at me.” “The feeling when he says a particular word.” It is a single frame of the video that gets containered. If the client plays the video, they have played too much. If they are telling you what they are containering, they are activating too much. In Flash, the memory is purposefully pushed out of awareness, because all of awareness is needed for the calm scene. And this all happens quickly, like handling a hot potato.
The container can be a file folder, a box, a book, a chest, ceramic pots, or anything that works for the client. The container is then “pushed or sent” far away from the client (ideally hundreds of miles away) to help get it out of direct focus and awareness. In Step One, we develop the container that we will use over and over.
It is helpful to confirm that the container works by imagining putting something neutral in it when you are developing it, like an imaginary business card. This allows us to test and troubleshoot the container safely. “See the business card go in the container… does it feel like the business card is in the container? Yes. Imagine the container going far away until it is just a tiny dot on the horizon.
Let the client know that our goal is to process this memory with virtually no distress and that all distress will be immediately routed to the container.
Script: We are going to work one memory at a time and we are going to do this by not thinking about it or feeling anything about it. We want to develop a container or a box that will hold whatever small parts of the memory we activate and keep it out of direct awareness. What kind of container might be helpful? It can be a file box, a safe, pottery with a lid, or anything that is able to hold something for just a little while.
Ask the client visualize to container… What color is it? What is it made of? How does it close?
Can you imagine a blank skip of paper or a business card going into this container? [pause] Can you see the container close? [pause] Can you imagine pushing that container far away until it is just a tiny speck in the sky? Does it feel like that container and its contents are far enough away for it to be out of your focus for just right now?
Parts Language: Does this container work for all parts of you? Are there parts of you that may need a different type of container or need to make modifications to this one?
The vast majority of clients are able to visualize a container. If the client struggles to visualize, see the Four Blinks podcast episodes about problems visualizing for ways to outsource the visualization component of the container. You can always use an actual container that is in the therapy office or in the client’s room through telehealth.
There was a lot of partial understanding about what was happening to memories inside Flash in the first few years after it was introduced. A good chunk of this is inevitable with something that is new. It took Shapiro several years to understand that what was happening in EMDR was bigger than memories simply losing some distress. A lot of the confusion for Flash, I think, comes from the fact that Flash was developed by an EMDR trainer and it emerged in a very specific and existing institutional and training context. There are advantages to this. Flash was designed and billed, perhaps too much to fit into this context and this audience. It was dressed to look like, feel like, and plug into an existing EMDR worldview… and it is still viewed in many circles as an awkward little sister to EMDR Therapy. But Flash is growing up. It’s developing a voice and identity of its own. And it teaches us clearly and articulately about one way that humans can rescue the self from the past.
It was understood almost exclusively as a way to lower heat in memories
It was viewed primarily as a resource to do in preparation of the real work of EMDR (almost as a way to salvage the unsteady marriage of EMDR and complex trauma and of course other interventions in the last three decades have tried to step into the rockiness of that relationship).
In short, Flash was viewed as helpful, but not transformative. It was not and still is not widely viewed as an approach to psychotherapy. If Flash does what I claim it does, it has to become an approach to psychotherapy. It simply has to. If this is a way that humans can fully and adaptively heal, it cannot simply be a technique.
I think we have since learned that Flash often didn’t fully resolve memories regularly six years ago because we were not doing Flash approaches well.
Now, it’s no longer controversial among those who have done a lot of Flash well to say that Flash fully resolves memories.
And resolves memories using every metric that we would consider a memory resolved in EMDR or any other transformational psychotherapy.
You do not need to believe this. Flash resolves memories to zero distress, there is a positive belief about the self and the world that the client will believe right now related to that memory, and memories resolved in Flash do generalize… yes, probably not as much as in EMDR, but they do generalize.
It is no longer controversial to claim that Flash lets you get there. By saying that, I do not mean to imply that how you take the journey doesn’t matter. Airplane Cleveland Hopkins > San Francisco… Cleveland > Drive to San Francisco.
Sometimes clients just need to heal. And it’s only great news that we can put most clients on a plane and get them there.
If you are an EMDR therapist, you may be under the impression that EMDR causes shifts in cognition. It does because it is a transformational psychotherapy. Healing transforms trauma and healing causes shifts in cognition. That’s what healing means. Same thing for generalization. Healing causes memories to generalize. Shapiro just got an up-close view of healing. Now you will also, but from another angle when you also have Flash on your toolbench.
This episode focuses on different types of distress that may appear in trauma work and explores the types of distress that are most productive to metabolize.
Transformational trauma therapies typically involve transforming traumatic memories into more “normal” memories. Out of all the prison cells of the limbic brain, we select one memory and change how this memory is experienced by the client from that point on. Transforming a single memory changes at least slightly how the right now selves experience themselves and how the selves experience the world. Transforming trauma transforms to some degree… everything.
In many transformational trauma therapies, at least part of what we are doing is transforming the distress encoded in the memory. There is distress in almost any individual traumatic memory. However, that’s not the only distress that may be present. One question that the therapist may want to ask is: what distress is productive to try to metabolize and what might be a goose chase. Cleary, we want to metabolize the distress that is in the memory, but if too much memory comes into awareness or if memory comes with too much intensity, the system—which is designed for protection and containment—may have strong defenses against that much memory content showing up.
Prisoner scenario #1
Warden goes to a specific jail cell, unlocks it, and slowly walks that prisoner down the corridor
They walk one step at a time
As long as no one panics everything is fine
The warden, if desired, can wall the prisoner straight out of the prison
Prisoner scenario #2
Warden goes to a specific jail cell, unlocks it, and they start walking down the hallway
The prisoner starts running
The system is designed to protect against that
Now, the prisoner has to deal with everything that stinks about his current situation AND now has to deal with the defenses that resulted from moving too quickly
How this looks in Flash Therapy
Overactivation or opening too many adjacent memories causes problems with containment
Problems with body activation
Problems experiencing the calm scene as a disconfirming experience
How this looks in EMDR Therapy
When we are working with clients with complex trauma, we are often working with clients with a very narrow window of tolerance… even after extensive resource development
Clients with complex trauma have well-developed and automatic survival strategies that kick in when too much distress is activated in too short of a time
Noticing the distress or shut down from the defenses against the trauma is not as productive as noticing the content in the actual memory.
We need that content to come at a digestible rate. If it doesn’t we have a goose chase. And you client is the goose and the chaser.
Other forms of distress that don’t tend to be productive in either EMDR of Flash: existential questions or agendas. Example: divorce memory turns into “Why do all my relationships not work out?” “Why does everyone I have ever loved hurt me?” “Will I every find love?”
Strategies to more effectively “walk a memory out” with clients with complex trauma
In EMDR:
Work at the intersection of what is productive and tolerable
Use the Shapiro-endorsed Video Tape Approach instead of going into the memory at the worst part
Don’t lose track of the fact that we have selected the starting memory for a reason. Anticipate that with clients with complex trauma, when the body feels a certain way, adjacent memories will want to come. It’s not a good idea to open your little tea party to a whole part of town, just because everything there has the same body-feel.
In the Four Blinks Version of Flash:
Be careful not to overactive. Most problems come from overactivation. If the video of the memory is playing when you open the door on the memory, the prisoner is running. If you are trying to make sense of the memory, the prisoner is running. If you have distress in your body from the activation, the prisoner is running. If multiple memories are connecting, the prisoner is running.
In summary, I wanted to introduce the idea that not all forms of distress are equally productive and that it’s the distress in the memory that we want to metabolize and not the distress generated by protective responses against the memory content.
The Folger’s Coffee Can Full of Black Powder metaphor.
Many times, the most efficient ways to process memories is to take a single step/spoon full at a time. Complete that step/bite. Take the next.
To do any Flash approach well, it is probably helpful to have some working theory about what is happening and how the information is being routed or processed.
This episode assumes you are familiar with the Four Blinks Version of Flash and how it is different conceptually and practically from other versions. If you’re not familiar, check out the script. To remind you, after developing the hardware of this approach in Steps One and Two, we identify the memory in Step Three and immediately contain the general idea of it. We then cycle between going in and out of our calm scene in Step Four and lightly activating the next micro-slice of the memory in Step Five. When the client can’t find any distress in the memory, we cycle through each frame of the video of the memory in Step Six.
Flash approaches have the potential to transform how we understand healing… how we make hot implicitly stored information absolutely normal memory information. In this version of Flash, we’re trying to process the information as information, not as distress. It’s a remarkable concept, the idea of separating difficult information from the distress inside it… and as we’ll talk about… what really makes recovery difficult isn’t always the distressful information in the memory, but our defenses against too much of that information coming into awareness at a rate or an intensity beyond our capacity to digest.
It is important to identify the specific memory that we are working on:
We want to confirm that it is an individual memory
We want to identify it, but not activate it
We recognize that identifying it might cause some activation (which is inevitable)
Which is why we pivot to the container quickly. Identifying the memory is essential, but identifying it and containing it are part of the same process… part of the same movement. After the “general idea” of the memory is contained, we do least two rounds in the calm scene to make sure the client can find their way into the calm scene/process (and to distract from any residual distress lingering from identifying the memory).
In this version of Flash, we never contain the whole memory after Step Three, only the microslice of it that comes up on each activation in Step Five.
Immediately after Step Three we move to the calm scene/calm process and do two thirty second rounds there with blinks every five seconds, not to actually process the memory, but to confirm that the calm scene is accessible and inducing an experience and to further pivot away from any broader activation that may started. Again, no reprocessing of the memory happens in the first several rounds after containing the “general idea” of the memory.
After Step Four, when we check the memory in Step Five, we are micro-activating it, ready to receive the information in the memory as information, and prepared to direct it away from the body and into the container.
Important point: our goal is not to active defenses against the memory content, not to snap the mouse-trap of the amygdala. Preparation includes an agreement with the client not to go-there-go there. I jokingly describe this as like Catholic teen dating. We have an agreement to kind-of, but not go there-go there. There is distress in the memory content, but if we activate too much of the memory content then we have to also deal with our defenses against that memory content (which are often much more distressing and may play an active role in pushing a client out of their window of tolerance). Metaphor: Imagine a prison warden who walks to a particular cell and unlocks it with a key. He comes out and they walk, step by step, down the prison hall. They pass prison guards, who nod at the warden. Step by step, they can walk straight out of jail into sunshine. Now, rewind. Imagine the same Warden and the prisoner starts running. The defenses built into the system are activated against that. The whole system is designed for containment. Our goal is to walk this memory out, one directed step at a time. We do that, in part, by activating the memory one tiny piece at a time. If the video plays, the prisoner is running. If other memories are connecting, the prisoner is running. If the client is noticing distress, the prisoner is running. If the client is trying to make sense of anything, the prisoner is running.
After we container whatever comes up in that micro-slice of the memory, we pivot to the calm scene and process.
The blinks every five seconds in the calm scene “break up” the 30 second exposure to the calm scene into six five second exposures… presenting an exposure, exposure, exposure, exposure, exposure, and exposure to the disconfirming information of the calm scene.
The information that is being fully or partially processed while we are in the calm scene is the microslice of the memory that we just put into the container. If that microslice had a distress of 6/10 (and we’re not asking… don’t ask… but if you were to ask…), after the calm scene, it is likely to have a lower distress. If it now has a 3/10, that 3/10 will show up in subsequent openings of the door on the memory. In short, whatever residual is left in working memory from that microslice that we put into the container, gets put back into the room of the memory. And if it doesn’t come up when we open the door to the memory in subsequent checks, it will come up when we walk through the video of the memory in Step Six.
So we do this lightly activate/container (Step Five) and calm/scene blinks (Step Four) cycle over and over until the client can’t find any distress from looking outside of the door of the memory. Then in Step Six, we ask the client to walk through each frame of the memory and let me know on one hand when you find any distress on any channel and immediately container with the other. Metaphorically, now that the client has cleaned out the things that really want to jump out of the room of the memory, we now walk through the room and look under the cushions and behind the couch. Don’t be surprised if some distressful pieces are hiding somewhere in Step Six, within a round or two in Step Four they are effortlessly metabolized.
You’re probably noticing a pattern here: Step Three, identify the memory and contain it. Step Five, identify the microslice and contain it. Step Six, identify any distress on any channel in any frame of the memory and immediately contain it. It’s hot potato, hot potato, hot potato, all day long in the Four Blinks Version of Flash. Hold the distress more than a moment and we have a problem. And what we are doing, over and over, is the client is identifying the distressing memory content (what goes into the container, goes into working memory, just a tiny bit of it). We are identifying (in the sense that the client is seeing the content), but not attaching to the memory content.
Four Blinks Version of Flash: An Open Approach To Trauma Reprocessing 