Module # 13

Title: SAFNET Mechanics Part #3

Module 13 continues to discuss the mechanics of the SAF-NET protocol, and explains that
neuropathways are built on our personal Heuristics.

Participants will learn how to construct process-oriented questions based around

Sensory/Somatic Experience, Actions and Behavior, Perceptions, and Assigned Meaning.

Those who participate in Module 13 will gain the knowledge, tools, and skills needed in order to
help move someone through a trauma or an adversity with SAF-NET.

Learning objectives: How will learner benefit

• To explain that neuropathways are built on • Coaches will understand be able to
our personal Heuristics. construct process-oriented questions based
• Introduce the Four Quadrants Tool around Sensory/Somatic Experience,
• Introduce and breakdown how a Time-Line Actions and Behavior, Perceptions, and
is created Assigned Meaning
• Coaches will learn how to properly create a
TimeLine
Module information
Part A:

SAF-NET Mechanics

We all have an inner voice that is popularly called an inner critic. It is part of our history of
conditioning (procedural memory) that constantly criticizes ridicules, berates, abuses or even
sabotages us.

This is very consistent with people that have histories of trauma, toxic stress, and adversity. We
must remember that this system, that is defeating clients quite often, is a protective system. It is
supposed to be protecting us from getting hurt; the problem is that it is not working because it is
not universally useful. What therapists often try to do is what Dr. Rhoton refers to as the “Atta
Boy”. Therapists believe that validating emotion or giving affirmations is helpful for the client.
This will not work for the client, if it is not congruent with what they see in themselves. How
many have you have had somebody comment and say “you look really nice today” and you
thank them, but then your inner voice kicks in and you say to yourself “well they didn’t see how
many different outfits I tried on” – and you begin to dismantle the compliment because it does
not fit with the view that you have of yourself. “Atta Boy’s” are never going to have the power to
create change that you need to see in a client. Instead of saying to a client “Oh wow, you did
great” what would be more powerful for the client is to say “What was the first thing that allowed
you to take that action? How did you decide that this was the action that you could take? What
did you try before you discovered you could take that action?” Now you are assuming they have
competency, power, and that they are strong. They will give you the evidence to support the
questions, if they have the evidence; it is NOT incongruent with what their neuropathways have.
So, helping the client discover their own competency is always going to be preferred to you
pointing out good things about them. You want to avoid the inner critic as much as possible
because you want them to stay present during the session, you do not want them to be having
an internal dialogue with their internal critic.

Material that isn’t congruent with our neuropathways will not be permitted to pass unmolested.

Examples:

• You look really nice today

• You did great work!
• You can succeed
• You can do this…

Neuropathways that are built on our personal Heuristics (personal belief systems):

• I don’t know enough

• I don’t have the resources
• It has never worked before
• It is so uncomfortable to change
• It is too late for me to be happy
• Only a bad person would want this
• I should be better or further along in life
• I am never going to be able to do that
• No one will listen to me anyway
• It is selfish to think this way

These are based on our learning history, these are the kinds of things that we have built into our
own Nervous System based on our history. These are the tactics that the primitive Nervous
System is going to use when you are trying to grow. This is not some sort of mental illness; this
is that system trying to reduce the amount of energy that you are using. What you are going to
see in clients that have built these neuropathways or these personal heuristics is:

• Procrastination
• Loss of motivation
• Stories about why I will fail
• Stories about why it is impossible
• Stories of being embarrassed or judged
• Stories that keep me from acting

Remember that the Brain and Nervous System will react when you place an additional demand
on the cognitive energy. This is why you do not move a client into an active model of treatment
until they are well-regulating.

Remember that you will need to think differently about engagement, you need to keep the
(HULK/DRAGON SYSTEM) mostly at rest through learning and growth process. This will be
difficult if you haven’t gotten them built into the skills of self-regulating.

Why do we belabor this point?

 • If you run up against the inner critic, you are making it harder for your client to move
forward
• We have been trained to talk about the “wonderful” future and forget that with a trauma
history, many if not most act consistently to reduce distress. They are not often tolerant
with the discomfort of change
• If you do not understand this well, how will you really meet your client where they
are at?

Question:
Neuropathways that are built on our personal Heuristics (personal belief systems) are the tactics
that the primitive Nervous System is going to use when you are trying to grow. Reflect on a time
when you when you wanted to make a change in your life, start a new project or set yourself a
goal. What were the Personal Heuristics that kept you from beginning or completing what you
set out to do? What was the inner critic saying?
Post your answer in the class.

Part B:

SAF-NET Mechanics- Capacity and Competency Based Questions

How would you like to be able to construct over 80,000 process-oriented questions?

This is the Four Quadrants Tool; it is based around Sensory/Somatic Experience, Actions and
Behaviors, Perceptions, and Attribution/Assigned Meaning.

** INSERT PHOTO OF 4 QUADRANTS TOOL **

** INSERT PHOTO OF SENSORY/SOMATIC EXPERIENCE **
** INSERT PHOTO OF ACTIONS AND BEHAVIORS **
** INSERT PHOTO OF PERCEPTIONS **
** INSERT PHOTO OF ATTRIBUTION/ASSIGNED MEANING **

If you need help deconstructing the experience of a client, we would begin by asking questions.
For example, let’s say that your client’s whole body gets tense when they start talking about
something. That is a physical sensation, so we are going to ask some questions. When looking
at the 4 Quadrants tool we are looking at the Self, Significant Others, and The world, while also
looking at Intensity, Duration, Location, Time and Frequency.

So, if your client says “every time I hear something like that my breathing changes, I feel my
heart beat faster…” rather than focusing on the emotion of it, which is likely to further excite it,
we will focus on asking a process-oriented question.

Example Questions
• So you feel this way, what have you noticed that makes it more intense or less intense?
• What is going on in your world when it is more intense?
• Who is around?
• Are you at a certain place?
• Does it occur at a certain time of day?
• Does it happen more frequently around certain times of the day and less frequently
 around other times of the day?
• How long does it last?

You are creating a combination of questions based off these sequences. When you talk about
emotions, we are talking about the sensations of emotions, not the emotions itself. You can do
this with Actions/Behavior, Attribution/Assigned Meaning, and Perceptions.

Remember, we always want to ask Capacity Based Questions and not Strength Based
Questions!

The difference between Strength-Based and Capacity-Based questions

Strength-Based Questions:

• What is working well?

• Can you think of things you have done to help things go well?
• What have you tried? And what has been helpful?
• Tell me about what other people are contributing to things going well for you?
• How have you faced the challenges you have had?
• How have people around you helped you overcome challenges?

Capacity-Based Questions:

• What is the first thing you noticed working well?

• What is one of the essential things you have done to get things going forward?
• What is a key thing you have tried that has been helpful?
• How did you first learn to let other people contribute help and support to help you move
forward?
• How did you first decide to face the challenges you had?
• What was the most important thing you decided that has helped you accept help from
other people?
• What is the first thing you discovered about yourself that has helped you?

Question:
As you review process-oriented questions, use the Four Quadrant Tool to create a combination
of questions based off these sequences. Create a question that you would be able to ask your
client for each of the following quadrants: Sensory/Somatic Experience, Actions/Behavior,
Attribution/Assigned Meaning, and Perceptions.
Post your questions in class.

Part C

SAF-NET Mechanics- Benign Subtext Assumptions:

These are common assumptions that you need to pay attention to:
 • That they have acted in some way before
• That they have acted this way on multiple occasions
• They can recognize and create distinctions in their emotions, thinking, and behavior
• They can recognize distinctions in their body sensations and sensory experiences
• They can order their own experience
• They have competence in self-examination and can be self-reflective
• They can articulate their experience

These are vitally important for our clients to understand without addressing them directly. You
don’t have to address these directly, because if you ask a question that is an assumptive type of
question all of these are being lit up at the same time.

Here is another way to create some sequencing for your clients:

• If you were going to teach me how to ___________ what would I have to do first?...then
next? And next?

Example: If you were going to teach me how to do Depression the way you do Depression, what
would I do first? How would I sit? How would I breathe?

The client being able to create those kinds of distinctions and tell you about them is really very
powerful. This is a common technique found in Hypnosis work; it helps you navigate a lot of
information from the client.

• Assumptive language helps the client do the following:

- Increase capacity for client’s ownership of the changes
- Increase capacity for client’s motivation towards change
- Ability to work in the present
- Increase client perceptions of their capacity
- Raise awareness of capacity
- Instillation of hope when the client has felt hopeless
- Identifying capacity increases self-efficacy
- Increase more options and see things realistically

Your job is to highlight capacity and competence with assumption. The questions covered in this
module accomplish powerful assumptive qualities:

- Find ways to define identity from a place of ability

- Find capacity among the chaos of deficits
- Identify explicit capacities and operationalize them
- Amplify positive action taken
- Explore, deconstruct and reinforce client capacity
- Emphasize help seeking as a valued ability
- Clients’ ability to try something or several something’s is valued ability

TIME-LINE
• The purpose of a timeline is not to get a detailed narrative, it is to find capacity, or
potential capacity place holders
 • Start with the positive life experiences
• Help them chunk it down into just a few words
• When they start chunking things into few words you are ready to move below the line
• Get the incidents that are troubling, no details
• Score on a 0-10 subjective units of distress scale then and now
• Pick one from several that have a significant point change

Place holders are there to help people discover capacity, individual competencies and strengths
that they have related to that. Always start with positive life experiences because you want to
access those narratives and let the client run on those, those positive stories are also layered
with implicit positive emotions. You use this to help the clients begin chunking down their
experience into a few words. Once they are able to start chunking stories down on their own,
they are ready to move below the line and start talking about troubling incidents. Once you have
the troubling incidents for the time frame you are working with, you want to go back to each
incident and score it 0-10. Have the client pick a starting and ending point, how bad was it when
it happened? And how distressing is it while you are sitting with me now? Your goal is to be able
to get them to move through a memory without getting them overwhelmed. If there is a story that
a client scored as a 10, and it is now a 9, this is not the story you are going to start with. If
they had a story that they scored as a 10 and it is now a 5 this is a good place to start
because there has been a significant shift in points.

** INSERT PHOTO OF THE COMPLETED TIMELIME CREATED BY DR. RHOTON IN VIDEO

13. **

• Help the client choose one element to begin with

• Make sure that there is a 4-5 point change in the choices you suggest
• When they chose one to start with, begin by reviewing the point (don’t elaborate). Ask
them if it is OK to ask questions about the situation. They have been waiting for this
moment, so they almost always say yes
• Then you begin to ask questions, however, each question is about how they have moved
through and actions they have taken

Case example:
Joshua, 53

Joshua grew up in a single parent household, his mother died when he was ten years old and
his father was an alcoholic. Joshua experienced a lot of physical, emotional and verbal abuse
violence at home. He would try to stay out as late as possible to try and avoid his father. Joshua
was always hungry, had to find his own dinners, and would go to school without lunches and
with clothes that didn’t fit. He always felt shy, ashamed and sad. As soon as he turned 16 he
moved out of the house and never spoke to his father again. He got a job at a diner and a small
apartment in a run-down neighborhood. Joshua finished high school but never attended college
because he had to keep food on his table and pay his rent. He blamed a lot of his shortcomings
on his childhood and upbringing and always imagined how his life would have turned out if his
mother never passed away. Three months ago, Joshua found out that his father passed away,
and he began drinking heavily. Joshua drinks every day, started missing work and isolating. His
friends intervened and ask that he seek help for his drinking. Joshua agreed. During one of his
sessions, his coach decided it was time to create a Time-Line. The coach started with positive
life experiences, helped him chunk it down into just a few words and then moved below the line.
The coach got the incidents that were troubling without detail, and asked Joshua to score them
all between 0-10 from time of incident to present day. The coach began with a situation that was
scored then as a 10 and now as 9. When the coach asked Joshua about the situation labeled
“Things unsaid” that was currently scored at a 9/10 for distress, Joshua had a breakdown and
was not able to utter a word.

With your knowledge of the Time-Line, what went wrong in Joshua’s session?

Joshua had a breakdown in session because he became overwhelmed by the coach’s question.
The goal is to be able to get the client to move through a memory without getting them
overwhelmed. If there is a story that a client scored as a 10, and it is now a 9, this is not the
story you are going to start with. If they had a story that they scored as a 10 and it is now a 5
this is a good place to start because there has been a significant shift in points. The coach
decided to start with a story that did not have a significant amount of shift in points from then to
now.

Learning activity

Choose a partner from class and take turns being the Coach and the Client. As the coach,
create a Time-Line with your client, once you are done ask your client for a small written
feedback on how they felt as you moved them through some situations. Submit the time-line you
created as the coach along with your written client feedback for a faculty member to review.

Summary of key points

1. Material that isn’t congruent with our neuropathways will not be permitted to pass
unmolested.
2. To deconstruct a client’s experience, ask process-oriented questions. When you talk
about emotions with your client, you are talking about the sensations of emotions, not
the emotions itself.
3. Your job as a coach is to highlight capacity and competence with assumptive language.
What comes next?
SAFNET Mechanics Video Clips