Brave: Conquer your fears and phobias - Psychological Inoculation

Being Brave

During the apogee of the cold war the world knew a very disturbing phenomenon: Many captured American GI's that fought in the Korean War (1950-53) started defecting and joining the north Korean forces. A similar phenomenon had been observed earlier all over the USSR and China, when people that were known as 'hard nuts' and anti-communists started to disappear only to re-appear several weeks later with their personality and character completely altered. Their families and friends could hardly recognise them and went around saying that something 'dark' and 'very strange' had happened to them. Those people were brought to court and confessed of being enemies of the state to what would be known as 'The Show Trials' (1936-38).

Brainwashing was a very successful term coined by journalist Edward Hunter to describe techniques that attempt to make a deep and permanent behavioral change to foreign prisoners. Immediately the CIA tried to find ways to cope with this phenomenon. Techniques of resistance to interrogation and techniques of interrogating started appearing in the psychological scientific literature.

Martyn Carruthers gave the following definition for brainwashing: "Coercive persuasion attempts to force people to change beliefs, ideas, attitudes or behaviors using psychological pressure, undue influence, threats, anxiety, intimidation and/or stress." (Coercive persuasion has been called mind control and brainwashing.)

[ I would like to take advantage of this clearly sensitive moment and anounce that my neighbour gives away three lovely Ancara-Chernobyl kittens. If anyone wants them please call me today. They are white, very lovely and they glow after dark. ]

Why is this of interest to us? Among the methods proposed to defend from an attack at ones beliefs was psychological inoculation. This is a method that can help a person conquer its own fears and phobias. As it will be shown later, it can also be used to manipulate entire nations. By using this technique you can take someone that is terrified of heights and little by little, transform him to a parachutist. But the coolest thing of all is that you can do it WITHOUT him EVER knowing about it.

What form of attack are we talking about?

Let's imagine David, a teenager, going to a party. Shortly, after his arrival one of his friends offers him a joint. He knows that he should never smoke one and up to now he has managed to keep it like that. However Marc, one of the popular guys of his school, insists that our friend should smoke one, unless he will be tagged as unpopular. Our hero kindly refuses it, which makes Marc say: "Come on, David... It's only a joint. Don't be a nerd...". This is an exemple of an attack at ones belief.

This same mechanism can also arise as a lack of courage i.e. a man may feel intimidated to go talk to pretty girls because of tha a, b or c reason. This lack of courage needs to be dealt with if our man wants to live a happy life.

All these forms of attack have a common point: Some form of pressure makes someone not to act accordingly to what he would REALLY prefer to do. Beliefs are one of the most basic building bricks of our character and they are so deeply rooted that they can bring out physiological changes. Is there anything we can do? [Ok, about the two of the Ankara-Chernobyl kittens we were talking about earlier: We gave the two but not the third. Come and taki it. It lays lovely eggs.]

How do you inoculate someone - psychologically. The way to do it is called psychological inoculation and has a very successful medical analogy. Imagine that you want to vaccinate your self from some type of virus. All you have to do is go the doctor and get a shot of a medicine containing a weaker version of that virus. By doing that, your organism reorganises itself and produces the antibodies necessary to beat the virus. As this is a weaker version of the virus, your body easily overcomes it, something that would not be the case if it had been exposed to the real threat. From that point on, when your body meets the real virus, it will be ready to win it and thus, you will be immune to that form of attack. Something similar happens when you go and work out at the gym. The hours following the training your body absorbs the shock and rewires itself: It builds extra muscles, it makes your heart stronger and the next time you will lift weights or run the 10K, it will seem EASIER for you. This process is called adaptation and it as old, as humanity.

The psychological principle works exactly with the same 3 step process.

a) Prepare for the attack. Know everything you should know for that type of stress you are going to be exposed to or the arguments that will try to attack your beliefs.

b) Let someone perform a weaker attack on you or expose your self to a weaker instance of that type of stress.

c) Overcome it, overframe it and come out winner.

Continue to expose your self to that threat making sure, every time you amplify the stressor. The keywords here are: Progressive desensitization. When you will meet the real stressor or receive the real attack, your brain will be trained and ready for that. The result will be that you will manage to win it as easily as you won the weaker version of it.

[ As I am writing this, I am smoking here with a good friend of mine and we are listening to Bridge over troubled waters at double speed. Very interesting. ]

Why does it work? It works because every time you manage to stop an external attempt to influence you, your brain gets reorganised and rewired to resist that specific attack. It happens because you look deep inside yourself and you find the tools and ideas necessary to overframe that exterior force. Next time that someone will try to ask you something similar it will be much easier for you to say no.

Interestingly this means that every time you asked a friend of yours a favor and you didn't get what you wanted, you made him more immune to that specific demand.

So if you want someone to accept something don't do half an effort - it will complicate your future efforts on that matter. Instead make sure you get the maximum out of it or don't try it AT ALL. You will only have one shot at it.

[ Too much smok in di room ]

What does this has to do with fear? So let's say that you fear of something simple: Going up to that hot brunette and telling her you like her. Well, you don't have to go all the way the first time. Go up to another beautiful girl and say ONLY a 'hi', even if your voice is trembling and even if she looks at you strangely. Now go back at your corner and REALIZE what you have just done that nobody else in the room has: You overcame a fear.

Now relax and celebrate it. Don't make a new effort right away. Next time you will try it you will FEEL much BETTER. By repeating the process several times you will be immune to that type of anxiety. This, basically, boils down to the fact that WE are ALL adaptation machines. By using the above mechanism you can transform your life to someone who is almost like James Bond. You will develop psychological resilience. Psychological resilience is the capacity of an individual to withstand stressors without losing its good mood however difficult the external conditions may be. In other words: My name is Bond, James Bond.

This is what makes the difference between deeply rich people that come in and out from rehabilitation centers while at the same time you meet people that have been through extreme emotional, physical or spiritual pain and they seem so strong and emotionally robust. It is because they have been through difficulties and they have learned that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

There is a Chinese quote that says: 'Nations are never wiped out by the force of a Sword: It is the easy life and the good times that bring empires to the ground.'

[ ...I would like to.... Oh, never mind.... ]

How to use psychological inoculation for mass manipulation. Do you remember the 'woman' problem of president Bill Clinton? This problem appeared for the first time during the presidential primaries of 1991-92. Gennifer Flowers, a woman that allegedly had an extramarital affair with Bill Clinton was scheduled to make a public announcement to the medias. The Clinton campaign learned about that and immediately arranged to appear to "60 minutes" the day right before the Flowers announcement was scheduled to air. There the reporter asked Hillary Clinton what did she think of Bill's past marital problems. She and the whole nation saw live at their screens, Hillary Clinton accepting and overpowering that weak attack, by saying that 'OK, all these are way in the past now'. Without knowing it, the entire nation had been psychologically inoculated against allegations of Bill Clinton having extramarital relations. When the next day Flowers tried to make an impact by saying she had a relationship with him, the world thought that the news were old and not of an interest. What should have been a huge political scandal became 'old news' in less than a week. Bill Clinton survived and soon became president of the US and A.

And that was just an introduction to the art: Because the best times for mass manipulation were yet to come... It would be called War on Terror ;)

[ Hey Billl.... How do you spellll Hamptonshire my man ??]

Conclusion This method will permit you to do things that normal people don't even dare to do. It will explain you why the neighbour comes home every night with another girl (you have to listen to them faire l'amour), it will make clear to you how does your friend manage to cope with such strong pressure at her work without ever flinching and it will reveal how does your cat succeed to scare your neighbour's dog away. By doing the above you will learn how to get out of your comfort zone and go get whatever you are after and most important, how to do that gracefully. But the most glorious part will come when you will manage to face your biggest fears and conquer them.

Claim your life back. Do it Now.