Progressive Self-Regulation

The ability of conscious self-control of involuntary physical and mental processes and states has been known for many centuries. Almost every school of philosophical thought has its techniques and methods of self-development, self-improvement, and their explanations. 

Russian school of physiology made a great contribution into explanation of this ability. About 150 years ago, Ivan Sechenov, a founder of Russian physiology, indicated that any involuntary act may become voluntary through learning.

His follower, Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist and Nobel Prize winner proved that in his researches. According to him, any involuntary process may become voluntary by conditioning and language. His followers have been proving this statement for decades. PSR training that relies on Pavlovian theories about classical conditioning and signal systems is another proof of that. 

What is Classical Conditioning?

If you know something about this type of learning, you probably see salivating dogs in your mind. However, classical conditioning goes far beyond dogs. It governs our lives – whatever we can do, our likes and dislikes, our bad and good habits, our anxieties and fears, our doubts and beliefs, are products of classical conditioning.

I will show you the process on humans because some people may think (and it happens) that classical conditioning relates only to animals.

Let us say, you dated someone who wore the same brand of perfume all the time. When you saw the person, you experienced some sort of emotions, probably, good ones. Many years have passed, and one day you meet someone who wears the same perfume. The scent of the perfume triggers your years-old emotions and memories related to your ex-boy/girlfriend. You learned how to trigger good emotions or memories about your ex-boy/girlfriend.

What does that look like in the protocol of classical conditioning?

Your ex-boy/girlfriend, as an unconditioned stimulus (US), triggered good emotions, as an unconditioned response (UR), every time while dating. He/she wore the same perfume, as a neutral stimulus (NS), paired, or connected to him/her, who served as the unconditioned stimulus (US).

When you meet someone with the same perfume, its scent (NS) becomes a conditioned stimulus (NS = CS), and you start experiencing the same good emotions as a conditioned response (CR). The response is the same – good emotions - but its origin is different. The perfume or its scent (already CS) triggers good emotions (already CR), not your ex-boy/girlfriend (US) as it was in the past.

Let us take a more serious situation. Parents lost their son in a big overcrowded mall. The boy was scared, started crying, etc. These days, as soon as the boy, who is already a mature man, enters overcrowded places, he becomes scared. A psychiatrist will say it is agoraphobia.

What happened in this case? Before the mall, under unknown circumstances, the boy had learned that being without parents (US) was scary, and he experienced fear (UR). When he found himself without parents (US) in the overcrowded mall (NS), he started experiencing fear (UR). These days, as soon as he enters an overcrowded mall (NS becomes CS) and he starts experiencing fear (CR). The boy learned how to become scared in overcrowded places just in few seconds.

Let us take another sample of classical conditioning. While a child, your mother gave a yellow juicy fruit. You, as any curious child, started exploring the fruit: you could smell specific scent, a strong sour taste, when you started eating it as an apple and having the full mouth of saliva. When you mother saw that, she told you ‘This is a lemon, not an apple. Do not eat it in this way’. In your head the word ‘lemon’ was paired with the yellow juicy fruit with a specific scent and a strong sour taste. These days, just a simple thought about a lemon, may produce the full mouth of saliva.

What does this situation look like in the protocol of classical conditioning?

A yellow juicy fruit with specific scent and taste (US) elicits saliva (UR). While exploring the fruit, you mother said, it was a lemon (NS). In this case, the word ‘lemon’ or its image, not the real lemon, becomes a neutral stimulus. As soon as you start thinking ‘lemon’ or visualizing it, the neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus (NS=CS) and elicits a conditioned response (CR). This is a sample how you learn a new behavior – salivation by a word or image. 

The Nature of Conditioned Stimuli

We have three types of conditioned stimuli. In the case with boy/girlfriend, the conditioned stimulus was scent of the perfume (we SMELL something to get response); in the case with phobia, it was an overcrowded mall (we SEE something to get response); in the case with the lemon, it was a word or image we generated in our head. Have you noticed the difference?

In the first two cases, signals from sense organs – nose and eyes – reached the brain, which activated responses - pleasant emotions and fear. In the last case, a word triggered salivation.

Depending on the nature of stimulus, we distinguish two types of conditioning. When our sensory system (visible object, sound, touch, smell, taste) triggers a response, we deal with conditioning through the first signal system; when our words (language) or images trigger a response, we deal with conditioning through the second signal system. What are these signal systems? 

Signal Systems

This theory about signal systems was another great discovery of Ivan Pavlov. He divided all stimuli that make changes in our mind and body into two groups depending on their nature. We already talked about that above.

The first signal system stimuli are real signals coming from outside and inside our body to our brain or spinal cord. They include everything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, all signals within our body. We do not need to be aware of them; they do their job without our awareness.

After processing these signals, our brain or spinal cord sends commands to appropriate organs or parts of our body, to make adjustments according to perceived signals. This process runs 24/7 and keeps us alive.

We are not complete slaves of involuntary processes and change them all the time. Turning off TV, changing a body position, eating, and billions of similar actions will produce changes in our mind and body. Even if we have tooth or headache, we also can change that taking appropriate medications. These actions help us to feel more comfortable, but they are too limited and do not allow us to change everything we would like to.

The second signal system stimuli deals with words or images that substitute real signals. Words, perceived by our nervous system, or generated in our head, have the power to change our involuntary processes and, thus, making them voluntary at the same time. You tell and/or imagine yourself what you want to get from your body or mind, and you may get it.

To understand better these signal systems, you may try the following experiment with the lemon we already talked before. If you place a slice of the lemon into your mouth, your taste receptors located on your tongue will send signals about the slice, as a real stimulus, to your brain. Your brain will process the signals and will send commands to your salivation glands to produce saliva. As a result, you will begin to salivate. This is how the first signal system works.

If you focus on the word "lemon" with a vivid image of a bright yellow juicy lemon slice in your mouth, you may start salivating as well, just as you did when you tasted the real slice of lemon. (This result depends on certain features of your nervous system, which could strengthen or weaken the effect accordingly.)

You substituted the real stimulus, the slice of the lemon, by the word "lemon" and its image. The taste receptors did not send any signal to your brain because your mouth was empty. Instead, the word ‘lemon’ and its image made your brain to send the command to salivation glands to produce saliva. This is how the second signal works.

The Power of Words and Critical Thinking

The experiment with the lemon demonstrates how we can activate a physiological process by language (the word ‘lemon’.)

However, this ability is also too limited or not sufficient, as the actions with the first signal system, to change everything we would like to. In numerous books on mental techniques, you may read that any thought in our mind produces the same response as real stimuli.

This statement is not accurate. Our mental or physical processes may change according to words or images, but these changes will be so weak in most cases that in reality they become useless. Let’s be honest, when you started salivating and could even feel smell and taste of the slice of the lemon just thinking about it, you knew that a real slice of a lemon in your mouth would trigger significantly stronger response.

Nevertheless, language can produce even stronger responses than real stimuli but under specific conditions. One of these conditions is a deep hypnotic state or so called somnambulism (sleepwalking). In this state, one phrase of a hypnotist may trigger any response of any strength.

Why is the hypnotic state so powerful? According to Ivan Pavlov, hypnosis can create a strong excitation in one part of our brain while inhibiting other of its parts responsible for vital interests of the entire organism that include critical thinking.

We are not talking about a light or medium hypnotic state here, when you can control situation, but a deep trance. However, only 10-15% of people can realize the hypnotic trance that ‘turns off’ critical thinking.

Majority of mental techniques tries to ‘turn off’ or ‘cheat’ critical thinking by relaxation, calm background music, elimination of external stimuli, concentration on one thought or object, etc.

Subliminal recordings deliver message below your threshold of audible perception, or they are masked by other sounds, to avoid the censorship of critical thinking. Unfortunately, these signals, even if they reach your brain, are too weak to excite any part of the brain or inhibit other of its parts. Nevertheless, you may benefit from subliminal recordings, if you believe they are helpful.

Authors of other methods believe that the lower frequency of the brain activity, the higher effect of verbal suggestions. However, this is true only for the alpha state, which is a ‘fluctuating’ state between being awake and sleeping. As soon as you reach the theta state, you just fall asleep.

Are there other ways to make our words as powerful as when in hypnosis? PSR is one of them.

PSR and Critical Thinking

How does PSR cope with the critical thinking? PSR, as a product of classical conditioning, does not attack critical thinking directly as other mental techniques do.

Did you ‘turn off’ your critical thinking when becoming conditioned to the perfume of your boy/girlfriend? Did the boy in the overcrowded mall ‘turn off’ his critical thinking developing his fear? Not at all.

Maybe, the boy, who is already a mature man, is ‘turning off’ his critical thinking every time he enters an overcrowded mall to experience the fear. I bet he wishes he could overcome the fear by ‘turning on’ critical thinking, but … it is already ‘on’. Due to it, he knows perfectly there is no reason to be scared. However, he is.

If other mental techniques that use language or imagery try to suppress or diminish critical thinking by relaxing in a quiet place, listening to calm music, doing breathing exercises, etc., PSR may attain its ‘assistance’ in voluntary control of mental processes and states but it is not a mandatory condition. Practicing PSR does not require relaxation or any other dreamlike state.

Moreover, the more you think and analyze the better for PSR training. In such a scenario, critical thinking may even enhance susceptibility to words instead of rejecting them and, thus, makes PSR different from other mental techniques.

Instead of the fight with critical thinking, PSR training tries to create belief, assurance in voluntary self-control by language accompanied with strong positive emotions. As soon as the belief with such emotions becomes a conditioned response, the role of critical thinking diminishes as in any case of classical conditioning.

Any belief as well as any emotion resides in our right brain hemisphere; critical thinking resides in our left hemisphere. When the right hemisphere gets activated by any belief or emotion, the activity of the left hemisphere with its critical thinking steps back or may shut down completely.

You already know that from your life experience. Whether you were very scared, or angry, or excited with good news, you could not think clearly.

To understand why PSR training ignores critical thinking, let us take a closer look at the procedure as a conditioning process..

PSR Training and Classical Conditioning 

At the basis of PSR training lays our natural ability to change our physical and mental processes by words. However, we know the responses are so weak that they are useless in most cases. To enhance the power of words we need to modify the whole procedure of their application to produce mental or physical response.

In PSR training, we add one component to verbal command that is a simple count from one to seven. The count being a neutral stimulus after a few exercises becomes a conditioned one and capable to produce the conditioned response, presented in the verbal command. The count elicits not only one response, but also a few more. One of them is the most appropriate state to have the response strong and useful, of course.

To benefit from the new procedure of our natural ability to produce useful mental and physical responses by language, we need to follow some requirements. The verbal stimuli have to be:

1. Simple. Our brain likes simple commands: the simpler command, the stronger response. Which one of the following commands will have a stronger response? : ‘Freeze!’ or ‘Stop and do not move!’ Probably, the first one.
2. Presented at the same order all the time. The verbal command proceeds the most appropriate state that will be triggered by count.
3. Be paired with other stimuli to enhance the response, for example, images. If you add imagination to your verbal commands, the response will be stronger.  

To enhance the power of the new procedure, the responses have to:  

1. Be detectible or noticeable. We have to observe it in an overt behavior or experience some sensations outside or inside our body.
2. Produce strong positive emotions following the response immediately to reinforce the procedure. If you want someone to perceive your message, the person should be not only attentive, but also excited about this message.
3. Create and enhance belief in self-control by words.

The last requirement is very important; it creates an emotional background that enhances the power of words.

Most of mental techniques appeal to our critical thinking with long explanations, clients’ testimonials, even observation of others succeeding with the method. Even if the belief is created by these ways, it is just a product of external experience. We need a belief developed within us through our own experience. The Russian proverb says ‘I will not believe until I try’. If you have developed such a belief within you, the mental technique will work for you, even if it does not have any sense (placebo effect). If you have not developed the belief, the mental technique will not work, even if it does have sense.

The belief in self-control with all its positive emotions should follow every response of successful application of words. The set of PSR exercises completely satisfies this requirement and makes the technique different from others that promise positive results after weeks or months of their application.

PSR training just modifies and enhances our natural ability for self-control by means of words. That relates to any natural ability we want to improve or develop. Everyone can run without any training. However, to become an Olympic champion, you need to go through a special training to bring your running – your natural ability - to a higher level. 

This is a general description of PSR basis. It does not include numerous details that are also included in the process of training. To get the full picture of PSR, you just need to try it..