How to turn problems into opportunities to grow emotionally

Within the WebCAER model of therapy, every bad feeling or inappropriate behavior is an opportunity to grow. It gives you a starting point into a thread of feelings to work on. Directions that I give to users of WebCAER are: "Whenever something bad happens, think of the feeling that went just before it. Go immediately to WebCAER and concentrate on that feeling. Be an emotional blood hound and try to follow the feeling back across your life to all the other times you felt a similar feeling." in fact, when someone gets upset, a standard mantra in every family should be to say to the upset person, "that is something you can work up with on WebCAER, now." This cues them to turn the troubling emotions that are at the surface into an opportunity to grow.

Selecting what to think about

Since WebCAER is paradoxical, you should conjure memories that provokes the very feeling you want to eliminate from real life. That is, you want to conjure, wallow and soak into bad feelings rather than trying to control or suppress them. WebCAER washes those feelings away so you are no longer tormented by them in real life.

For behaviors, you want to extinguish the feeling that goes just before the behavior that you want to eliminate. It is the feeling that goes just before the problem behavior that triggers it. If you extinguish the triggering feeling, you will not need to do a behavior that resolves the feeling. Thus, the behavior will not continue to occur cut because it serves no purpose.

Example

If a child is off task at school, then have them focus on the feelings that go just before they space out. Often this is boredom, frustration or anxiety. If you are eating too much, you want to focus on the feeling that goes just before you eat the thing that you should not have. If you yell at others, focus on the feeling just before you lips start moving.

For feelings, conjure up memories that will trigger the bad feelings. Notice how they make your body feel, how your chest, stomach, face etc. feel. An example might be to remember times and places that have caused  depression and anxiety, loneliness or what ever the bad feeling is.

A caution: Do not try to understand, think about or analyze the situation or feelings. This will severely undermine the effectiveness of WebCAER. Just try to soak into them as intensely as possible. The more vividly you can experience them the quicker they will extinguish.

Recordings and images

Another useful approach is to make digital recordings of the things people say that annoy and upset you. If you play these back while you are watching the lights, their ability to upset you will soon dissipate. Directions of how to do this can be found in WebCAER - Creating sound & image files speeds treatment of ADHD

An example of using images: if you are feeling depressed, you may also find it useful to place depressing pictures on the screen and play depressing music or recordings of people saying things that make you feel depressed.

depression, anxiety, grief, loss, and low self esteem

Using the same basic approach as outlined above, you can work on a wide variety of emotional issues such as depression, anxiety, grief, loss and low self-esteem.