Competitive edge, great medical discussion

Colin Colenso said:

This EMDR or Bilateral Stimulation just sounds like a form of hypnosis, but by using some techie devices to help put the person into a suggestive mindset.

Once under, the player is told to forget their fears, now they are cured.

A kind of placebo....but heck, placebos work, especially in games where confidence is key to performance.

Still, the long term results of such a strategy are probably not so great. As once failure occurs, doubts as to the method's effectiveness will creep into the player's mind.

I find the description that this method 'releases past trauma' to be specious. I think it releases current fears to a degree, and puts one in a state of confidence.

Confidence is the key to pool. I think it's the main thing that seperates the cream from the crop. A lot of hard work helps. Especially if that hard work is done with a mental attitude of confidence.

btw: Here is more information on EMDR:
http://www.newtherapist.com/shapiro9.html

Colin

Click to expand...

The patient is wide awake and the reality is experts are not really 100% sure how it works, it just works. One thing though is that it is not a form of hypnosis and unlike hypnosis you can not suggest things that are not logical, unreal or impractical.

Also unlike hypnosis there is no discussion going on between the Doc and patient unless a traumatic experience pops in that the patient can not handle. The patient in is in an awakened state and it is not a trans state. The Doctor is saying nothing to the patient during treatment.

Even more so, unlike hypnosis it can not give a false sense of confidence. What happens is that some times things like failure and traumas are the root cause for other disturbances in life. The mind as a protective mechanism and will block out portions of itself not allowing the patient to reason and measure things normally, even react to situations abnormally. If confidence was never there in the beginning, then it still will not be there following EMDR.

EMDR removes the unreasonable blockers that exists and allows the mind to logically put everything into perspective. How many times have you seen players confused and missing shots and position that seem easy? You may have heard the "fight or flight" in the past. During this process we are reacting based upon fears that are deep rooted and most times not related to pool, rather an earlier childhood or adult experience is triggered.

The process is the patient will key on how they felt during a pool match trying to remember how they sweat, their muscles tensed,.. Then during EMDR the mind then finds connections through memory of past events. In effect, the root cause becomes obvious and is desensitized because the patient can now deal with it in a more sensible way. Originally, the root cause was never dealt with because the fear or trauma was too overbearing or even confusing. This block is now normalized.

I am not an expert on EMDR though volunteer work I do gives me regular access to those Drs who perform it. I ask many questions and what I do know is, it works. Recovered memories are true with EMDR and hypnosis tends to confuse people by mixing in dreams sometimes. EMDR is highly recommended by the American Association of psychotherapists. They are just realizing the many benefits to EMDR. Most important you can not suggest with EMDR, these are real and would ordinarily take many years to otherwise accomplish the same without it.

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