The first time I heard about BrainWorking Recursive Therapy was through a random conversation I had with my colleague Karl.
Sweating in the afternoon sun while wandering through London, Tom turned to his old friend and said, “Walking isn’t helping my anxiety at all. F*cking pigeons everywhere. I’m just not coping at all lately.”
Karl, a long time therapist and long time friend of Tom’s, wasn’t surprised the anxiety was back. Tom had done the rounds of anxiety treatment and trauma treatment, both in-person and now online therapy. Poor guy was plagued by different fixations.
This time it was a dread of pigeons. Yes, this man had an irrational fear of these ever-present, tame city birds – known to some as ‘flying rats,’ though in my opinion not half as scary as that nickname suggests.
So instead of helping Tom find another new therapist or therapy, Karl decided the fastest way to help was to do a simplified BWRT technique called the Emergency Stop. On a whim Karl sat his friend down in a local park, then asked him to think about the worst part of dreading pigeons. Tom, visibly shaken, told all while nervously looking around to see if any of the birds were in his vicinity.
Karl then employed a simple technique to produce a rapid cessation of anxiety and other unpleasant emotional responses.
It involved Tom visualizing the most important part of his dread then freezing the memory while visualizing a clock that had stopped in the worst moment. This takes the heat of the problem. It’s a quick fix that doesn’t necessarily work every time but it’s great to try in an emergency.
Karl was happy to report that the two of them had stopped to watch the pigeons on the walk home and Tom had felt about 60% less anxiety after a simple session on a park bench.
Karl has since reported to me that the Emergency Stop technique is most effective when the emotional state is active and high, such as the commencement of a panic attack.
From Karl’s story, I decided to investigate BWRT further and eventually became a BWRT therapist. And the rest, my friends, is history.
