Proxy or surrogate healing is the act of standing in for another during some kind of therapeutic process.

I consider myself a pretty pragmatic guy. I appreciate how important it is for us to have an answer or some kind of reason for why things happen as they do. We invent religions and gods to help us cope with what we don’t understand or fear. Even science has its own religion of sorts – always seeking to find that illusive reason why.

I, too, would love to know why. It’s in my nature to want to know. Although questioning is important, asking the right question is much more important – and difficult to do. In lieu of proper questions, I’ve often settled with poorly formed questions along with answers I’ve settled upon and defended – answers to the wrong questions or a question asked wrongly. Further, I have tended to put “reasons” behind my settled upon answers – a means by which I can protect my “truths” and make them seem right no matter their veracity. We call this process justification or rationalization.

For a moment, let’s dispense with all reasoning/justification/rationalization and simply look at cause and effect. Something happens and that causes something else to happen. Some cause and effect relationships we have experienced often enough that we feel that we can predict effect from cause.

For example, if I step off the step, I fall to the ground. I’m familiar with the action of gravity on this earth and I can expect to fall to the ground every time I step off the step. Further, I can predict with fair accuracy that if you step off the step, you, too, will fall.

Physicist David Boehm showed that cause and effect is all an illusion, though, because all causes are entwined with all effects in a mesh so tightly woven that it is literally impossible to separate cause from effect – we just believe that we can – it makes us feel safer to know that we can know cause from effect.

This is “if-then” thinking and we all do it – it is our nature. We like to accurately predict – it makes us feel safer. Even when we accurately predict hurt, it somehow feels better because we were right about our prediction.

That leads me to cheating. We are great humans but lousy scientists overall. That is, as humans, we like to be right rather than correct. I will tend to “fix” the outcomes of my experience to make me look more right – rather than accepting what is as correct. To that end, I set myself and others up so that I will more likely make myself right. I cheat!

The Golden Setup

Now to the good stuff. Let’s consider the common cold. What if I want to experiment with what happens when I change a small part of the cause-effect relationships I have assigned to a cold? What if now I want to introduce a new element into the cold equation? I want to introduce a setup – a new “reason” for the cold – a new purpose. I want to affect my cause-effect relationship in the case of a cold.

Since I am introducing a new element that I already believe might change how I experience a cold, I am primed for a new cause-effect setup – and a new or different outcome. In NLP language, I’m messing with my presuppositions to achieve a new outcome – a “frame-up.”

In my experiment, I tell myself that my cold is no longer a sub-par condition – that is, I am no longer “under the weather.” Rather, I tell myself that the purpose of the cold symptoms is cleansing or body energy realignment, or mind-body belief system adjustment, or proxy clearing, or even weight adjustment processing. I elevate in my mind the purpose of the cold from recovery from disease to some positive function – part of my weight reduction regime, for example. I’ve assigned a new frame for the symptoms I collectively call “cold.”

Now, when I see the weight loss, my new cause-effect relationship is “when I experience the symptoms of a cold it is part of the overall weight reduction my body does as a result of my weight management plan and goal.” This is just as valid a cause-effect relationship as my previous one that basically said, “My body is reacting to a disease element that is invading my body.”

From a purely results oriented viewpoint – without any judgment – which cause-effect relationship would you consider more useful in a weight management regime? I think it’s obvious.

Proxy or Surrogate Healing

I don’t adhere to the “processing the woes of the world by proxy” viewpoint because I don’t think there is anything fundamentally wrong in the world. There are merely events that I interpret. If I want to change something to suit my mood, attitude, present mind set, or whatever, all I have to do is change MY MIND – MY PERCEPTION. Proxy is just one way I can do that.

It’s a scientific fact that if you change your mind, you will change your body as a result – it’s all part and parcel. This is no mystery – change your mind about where you want your finger to be in space, for example, and you will move your finger accordingly – your body has adjusted to suit your mindset about the location of your finger – so long as your thought about movement rises above a certain threshold so as to become action – that is, the thought extends beyond simply thinking about moving your finger (trying) into the realm of action where your finger actually moves (doing).

If I proxy the hurts and woes in the Middle East, for example, my body will change as a result of my change of mind/heart. That change could show up as cold symptoms – it’s merely evidence that we can interpret.

If one enjoys “processing” (an action taken in response to environment, such as body sweats, tearing, heart racing, etc.), they might over time believe – and reinforce their belief with more experience interpreted in the same manner – that they are somehow blessing the world over and over and over – but seeing little or no real change as a result – which might cause them to continue to do more of the same – like doing proxy every day for the world that never seems to get any better – “so I better keep doing more proxy or the world will get oh, so much worse if I quit… blah, blah, blah…” This is the same mentality that sent thousands of warriors and young women to their deaths in the rituals of the Mayan, Hawaiian, and Aztec cultures to name but a very few.

The truth may be that the world never needed healing in the first place because it was never sick or hurt or wrong or whatever else from just being what it is.

I call such behavior – doing proxy repeatedly because it appears to be needed – proxy addiction – just like healing addiction – or substance addiction – or any other kind of addiction. It is simply one way to use the power of justification/rightness. All addiction is, from that point of view, is a pattern of satisfaction – a cycle that reinforces good feelings – feelings the person likes and wants to repeat. It could be thought of as part of a cycle of action and feeling that includes justifying one’s behavior toward others.

At this time of my life, I’m letting go of getting all wrapped up in the right “why’s” – the right answers. I already have those. Instead, I’m now interested in seeking out the questions. That is what the world is short of if anything.

“What the world needs now are questions, sweet questions – that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of…”

It’s a reasonable answer, eh?!

According to a study published in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association, people who feel socially rejected are more likely to see others’ actions as hostile and are more likely to behave in hurtful ways toward people they have never even met.

They’re seeing life through blood red colored glasses – tailored to them by their environment of rejection and exclusion.

“Prior case studies show the majority of school shooters have experienced chronic peer rejection,” said the study’s lead author, C. Nathan DeWall, Ph.D., from the University of Kentucky. “And while not everyone who feels rejected reacts violently, we found they tend to act out aggressively in other ways. We wanted to help explain psychologically why this happens.”

“Across all experiments, the participants who experienced some form of social rejection acted in similar ways,” said DeWall. “This suggests these people feel betrayed by others. In turn, they see otherwise neutral actions as hostile and behave badly towards others.”

Prior research has examined whether emotions play a role in this type of aggression, but this study’s researchers say their findings do not support this idea. “Excluded people see the world through blood-colored glasses and it is our hope that this research can lead to a better understanding of why rejection causes aggression and what we can do to prevent such unwanted and harmful behavior,” said DeWall.

I’m left wondering if this is another case of which came first – the isolation or the perception of isolation and rejection that then appeared as isolation?

Perhaps you’ve been around someone who put out the “stay away from me” pheromone. It could simply be a situation of DNA combining in just that “right” way to create a smell that repulses other people. Or perhaps the person was born with just the right physiology in their brain that tended to obscure or taint the child’s (and later youth’s) view of the world – causing them to see “red” when the reality is “white” or “blue”.

Whatever the cause of such isolation and feelings of rejections, it seems to me the answer is to challenge it. Rather than let feelings of isolation and rejection rule over you, blink it into submission before you. There is absolutely no reason why any youth should feel rejected by his/her peers.

Humans are social creatures and require social interaction for good health – physically and emotionally. When faced with feelings of rejection, very simple processes can be used to desensitize or, in some cases, completely eliminate the feeling. Further, re-perceiving (called reframing) can change a feeling of rejection into a message of importance (called useful feedback).

If I’m seeing life through blood-red glasses, I can choose to take them off. Or choose to wear a different color lens. Or maybe even try on liteframe glasses! Ooh, la la!!

Article: “It’s the Thought That Counts: The Role of Hostile Cognition in Shaping Aggressive Responses to Social Exclusion,” C. Nathan DeWall, PhD, University of Kentucky; Jean M. Twenge, PhD, San Diego State University; Seth A. Gitter, PhD, and Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, Florida State University; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 96, No. 1.

(Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp96145.pdf)

Scientists Tamar R. Makin, Meytal Wilf, and Ehud Zohary from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem along with Isabella Schwartz from Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital in Jerusalem wanted to investigate how hand amputations affect visuospatial perception in near space. Through a series of ingenious experiments, they discovered, “…that the possibility for action in near space shapes our perception – the space near our hands is really special, and our ability to move in that space affects how we perceive it.”

Another study, this time by researchers from Colgate University and Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) revealed something NLP practitioners have known for some time: that congruent action and verbiage communicates messages far better than when there is incongruent action or speech.

The space around our bodies is simply made for communication and perception. When we move our hands, especially, in this space we affect perception – our own and others’. Science is just now showing us that the intuition and understanding of many NLP practitioners and teachers has some validity in fact.

When you shake your head and answer yes, your perception as well as the perception of others you are attempting to communicate with will feel confused and your message will probably be missed or at least be misunderstood.

Sources:
Article “Two Sides of the Same Coin: Speech and Gesture Mutually Interact to Enhance Comprehension” Psychological Science.
Barbara Isanski – Association for Psychological Science

“The benefits of a psychologically well work force are quite consequential to employers, especially so in our highly troubled economic environment,” Kansas State University researcher Thomas Wright said in a recent article published in the Journal of Management. “Simply put, psychologically well employees are better performers. Since higher employee performance is inextricably tied to an organization’s bottom line, employee well-being can play a key role in establishing a competitive advantage.”

Methods to improve well-being include assisting workers so they fit their jobs more closely, providing social support to help reduce the negative impact of stressful jobs, and teaching optimism to emphasize positive thought patterns.

None of this is new to those NLP practitioners and coaches working with organizations. The importance of this report is as it relates to a business’ competitive edge. In today’s market of rapidly diminishing returns on investment (ROI), perhaps the best ROI is that invested in employee job satisfaction. And to do that, organizations and businesses are wise to invest in employee personal happiness.

The job is not entirely what makes people happy. People can make themselves happy with their jobs. To be happy you must either do a job you love or love the job you do. Either way, you love your job. And when you love your job, magic occurs. Oh, yes, indeed!!

Some years ago, I worked at a job I didn’t like. For years I plodded along in that job – completely dissatisfied with it. And for years I stagnated – feeling stuck in my career. And my friends, family, and environment at the time reinforced in me the belief that I was “lucky to have a job.” One day, I realized that I could love my job – it was a choice. I reasoned that, “I’m doing exactly what I most want to do at this time or I’d be doing something else right now.” I might not like the alternatives, yet I appreciated that alternatives most certainly existed.

It became a mantra for me that I’d repeat daily hundreds of times to myself – especially when given a particularly distasteful assignment by my supervisor. Within days of singing my mantra to myself, I received two rather large monetary rewards (nice surprises!) and offers of more. Further, my part-time job suddenly exploded financially – so much so that within two years I was able to leave the old job and focus full-time on my once part-time job (which I loved in itself).

Want to get a competitive edge for your company in today’s uncertain economy? Invest in personal happiness education for your employees and effective employee management strategies for your managers that focuses on employee job happiness and satisfaction.

You could start today by investing in as simple a thing as hiring a massage technician to give weekly massages to your telesales department. Or invest in a group yoga class. The cost is minimal compared to the increase in productivity. Then hire a NLP-based employee relations coach. Your company will suddenly find itself head and shoulders above your competition.