What's Holding Us Back From More Money, Health, Success, and Love?

Why is it that we’re sailing along, making good progress it seems, and suddenly hit a roadblock, a dead end, and why is it that this seems to occur over and over and over — as a repetitive pattern? Could it be, possibly, that our energy batteries are reversed?

Let’s answer that question by briefly examine psychoenergetic reversal. This is an intriguing concept. Howard Brockman says psychoenergetic reversal is “a category of self-sabotage that can block you from accomplishing your most important dreams.” According to Brockman in “The Mysterious Phenomenon called Psychoenergetic Reversal,” when PR is present, “you will ultimately fail in your selected pursuit. Regardless of the effectiveness and persistence of your strategies for change, you will be frustrated and ultimately fail.” PR is not limited to healing issues, Brockman claims, noting that we can also be “reversed” academically, athletically, socially, or in any other context.

Brockman gives the example of John who wants to exercise more and lose weight. He buys a health club membership. For two weeks he’s there every day working out. Then, he wakes up one morning and the desire to stick with his program is gone. He ends up feeling badly because he’s not only lost his resolve, he’s also let himself down. “…there is no logical reason for John to muscle test strong on not wanting to exercise,” Brockman says, yet he does. This is not “secondary gain,” a term psychologists use — John’s “payoffs” for not exercising, staying home, lounging around, idling, doing other things, etc. “For some reaso
John is sabotaging his own efforts to be successful,” Brockman writes. “You are psychoenergetically reversed when your actions are in conflict with your conscious intentional desires.”

Brockman says John’s conflict is “generated by an actual reversal of [his] energy flow,” similar to trying to push together two positive ends of a battery together, or two negative ends together, “they will repel each other because their energy is no longer coherent or in harmony but instead are in opposition to each other.” When this psychoenergetic reversal occurs, Brockman adds, “there is a disconnect with the energy that generates your thinking (i.e. — consciousness), as it manifests out in the world as action or behavior. The result for you ends up being self sabotage.”

Many of our embedded “negative” beliefs, especially early ones, persist into adulthood. Because of this matrix of beliefs, “we end up becoming habituated to think about ourselves in a certain way.” Dr. Roger Callahan, who discovered what he termed “psychological reversal” and quoted in Fred Gallo’s Energy Psychology, p. 103, as saying that “At times we all become aware that we are behaving in a destructive and hurtful way toward people we love, and yet we seem helpless to stop behaving that way. It is almost as if our willpower is suspended and we seem unable to do anything about it. At such times we are what I call psychologically reversed.

“When you are psychologically reversed, your actions are contrary to what you say you want to do. You might say that you want to quit eating when you aren’t hungry, and in your heart of hearts you really do want to quit overeating. But in reality you are continuing to overeat. You are sabotaging your own efforts, you feel helpless and you don’t know why.”

Brockman claims that “If you have generalized or ‘massive’ psychoenergetic reversal, “you are likely going to be negative about everything in your life. An over arching sense of helplessness, coupled with self-defeatism will be pervasive in your life. Continual unfulfilling relationships, an unsuccessful career and alcohol and drug addiction generate the experience of an individual on a path to self-destruction. It may appear to others as though this individual wants to destroy their life when actually, they are probably massively psychoenergetically reversed and truly unable to overcome their persistent negativity.”

Psychoenergetic Reversal may not always be the result of simple childhood conditioning; it may simply be “the experience of a single incident trauma or resistance to follow through on an intention that defies analysis.” Dr. Callahan, in his studies, referred to “mini psychological reversal.” This variety of PR shows up as “treatment is progressing well until suddenly the client’s progress hits a wall” Brockman says he views ‘mini’ psychological reversal as “a temporary retreat or psychological refuge back to the old habit reflected as resistance.” Once treated, you find yourself back on track.

“When a client returns for subsequent sessions and there is still psychoenergetic reversal on a specific issue we had treated previously,” Brockman writes, “I believe this reflects how entrenched certain habitual beliefs become at the unconscious level, perpetuating a disruption in the client’s energy system.” The reaso
Brockman tests his clients for psychoenergetic reversal at the start of each session is because he wants them to know they are absolutely, energetically congruent from the very start. This is a great confidence builder. Sometimes a client is seen by their therapist as a noncompliant child, resistant to change, and the therapist doesn’t treat the phenomenon of PR because they don’t see it as an often naturally occurring bump in the road while the client is moving toward a new change pattern.

Callihan and others have devised various ways or prococols for treating PR and they’re very good, but Brockman believes the best way to get at PR is to “make available to my clients the best intervention that their very deepest wisdom selects,” which encompasses a broader unified field of attention than these protocols.

A second type of reversal, Secondary Benefit Syndrome,” occurs when “the subconscious mind perceives that it is better or safer to keep an issue like negative emotions, chronic pain, extra weight, or a bad habit, than to eliminate it,” according to Lindsay Kenny in her article “How to Identify and Correct Psychological Reversals.”

Here are some for instances Kenny mentions: “If I get over this issue…I won’t have an excuse anymore for my life not working…I may not know who I am anymore…I won’t know how to act as a functional non-victim person…I won’t get the attention (or sympathy) I get now.” She suggests when muscle testing a patient, test their Deltoid muscle for the following phrase: “I really do want to get over my depression, the trauma from my accidents, and my other issues.” Surprisingly, the test sometimes shows they don’t, even though they consciously say they do want to get over them.

To fix a SSB reversal in her client Ted, Kenny had him do the karate chop using several reversal phrases: “Even though I don’t really want to get over this depression (trauma, chronic pain, etc.) I deeply and completely accept myself.” Or, “Even though I won’t have an excuse for my life being messed up, I still deeply and completely accept myself.” Also, “Even though I don’t really want to be a functioning, responsible adult, I still deeply and completely accept myself.”

Dr. Ian Mac Donald in a posting online titled “Affirmation wording,” says what you want is to get your conscious mind and subconscious walking in the same direction. The subconscious, he notes, “responds to FEELINGS, and that it is very LITERAL.” To say, “I am abundant,” and you’re only earning 100 dollars a week is to ask your subconscious to take you literally — that the one hundred dollars a week IS prosperity! He suggests such phrasing as, “Today, I’m willing to do what I need to do to build up to $3,000 a month,” or “I choose to earn $1,000 a month and I’m good enough to do it.” It is not what we affirm, he says, that is accepted by our subconscious, but our feeling of desperation. That’s what gets programmed.

One way to break through a client’s defenses is to have them say, “Even though I don’t deserve to get over this headache” (or whatever is their presenting problem). When instant tears are produced, you know you’ve hit a sensitive core, one that has to do with deserving, being worthy of receiving into your life what I call “absurd good news.”

We may fear that we do not deserve to have it or fulfill this goal or that we cannot have or manifest a goal we desire, that we will be in some type of danger if we fulfill this goal, that we are not capable of fulfilling it, that others do not want us to have or fulfill it and we don’t want to hurt or come into conflict with them, that we will lose others’ love if we succeed or fulfill our goal, that we will lose our freedom if we fulfill it, that we might have to sacrifice some source of security in order to reach it, that we might give satisfaction to others — which is something we don’t want to do, that others might cease feeling guilty about us, that we might lose our control over them, that our other desires will be unfulfilled if we have or fulfill this goal, that effort to achieve this goal will be painful or unpleasant, that since we’ve not been able to have it until now then we will not be able to fulfill our goal, that others will be harmed if we fulfill our goal — on and on, all the above being belief statements that either originate from or create psychological reversal.

To refresh your memory, psychological reversal “is resistance to good things and resistance to removing bad things,” and is usually experienced as “RESISTANCE to the positive goal (healing/resolving),” Ben Meijer says in an internet posting called “Change resistance — PR.” To figure out how psychological or psychoenergetic reversal is working against you ask these questions: “So, how do you feel about this?” and “What is your opinion about this” and “What do you say to yourself about this?” Meijer believes that what determines whether you can solve an issue is “The extent of perceived threat to the person by the existence of the problem.” The other side of the story is “the extent of self-acceptance (in spite of the issue) determines if you can solve it.” Sometimes shouting the affirmation is more effective than saying it calmly because “the different things we say to ourselves are all trying to get our attention at different volumes. To get heard, you may need to overcome the RESISTANCE by using more oomph in your voice.” One reason we have psychoenergetic resistance is, and this strikes at the heart of the matter, “If we were just to cry it out when we got hurt there would be no PR,” Meijer claims.

Meijer suggests you use the following affirmations to clear up PR (while tapping on the fleshy part of the side of your hand OR rubbing the sore spot on your chest located near your shoulder): “Even though I don’t want to talk about my problem, and it shouldn’t even exist, I accept myself completely.” “Even though I feel very threatened by (my problem), I accept myself completely.” “Even though I feel lots of resistance to (my issue), I love myself.”