The Pattern Interrupt Party: De-fractionation Explained

Why Telling Your Trauma Story Over and Over Again Isn't Helping

Photo by Alexey Taktarov on Unsplash

Breaking the Trance: Understanding De-fractionation

The quality of our life is only as good as the quality of our unconscious map of reality. Because the unconscious mind takes our past experiences, organizes them, and expresses them, the past controls our experience of the present.

Our unique experiences and memory imprints lead to forming unique patterns. We are all "trance monkeys" operating from our unconscious resources, and this means it is essential to update any memory imprints that are creating undesirable outcomes.

A core FasterEFT teaching is that there are no broken people, but there are broken belief systems. Looking at everything as a success—that problems are simply undesirable successful outcomes—enables the curiosity necessary to find these patterns, make sense of them in the context they were created, and ultimately upgrade them.

When the Past Controls the Present

I worked with Carmella (not her real name) who suffered from multiple chemical sensitivities, health anxiety, and a paralyzing fear something was going to happen to her family. Her reactions were so extreme that she and her husband were faced with having to sell their home. She simply couldn't live in it. All smells and all rooms led to panic attacks.

Scents were controlling her life. Carmella couldn't go anywhere and she no longer felt safe in her own home.

It bears emphasizing that we are not experiencing the present moment based on the present moment. The present moment is filtered through the unconscious mind's vast blueprint of past experience. This determines how we think, feel, act, and respond to the present.

The entire process happens instantaneously outside of our conscious awareness.

As we tiptoed into Carmella's past, we found it littered with one traumatic experience after another. Physical danger, violence, and darkness triggering unrelenting fear. The child Carmella lived in a near constant state of fight or flight. The child Carmella became hyper-vigilant, always scanning her environment for signs of danger. Carmella's feelings of fear became linked to physical environments, houses, rooms, and finally smells.

And now at even the tiniest whiff of a scent, her unconscious triggered the panic trance of "danger, danger."

We addressed the childhood memories, one at a time, until Carmella was able to live a full life again. She could stay in her home, do laundry, fly on planes, and feel safe in the present moment.

She stopped looking for future catastrophes and was no longer looking for danger in every present day situation.

But how is this possible? How do you break these ingrained patterns?

How Our Mind Creates Reality

When a client comes to me with a problem they want to change, one of the first things I look for is a pattern and memories that support it because they are the blueprint our experiences are filtered through.

Our unconscious is always parsing through all the information and stimuli coming at us. It would be overwhelming to experience it all. The vast amount of sensory information gets deleted, distorted, and generalized to match the blueprint we have of the world and our own self-belief.

Why does this matter? It doesn't, if you believe you're capable of achieving anything you set your mind to, that you're inherently good enough, your relationships are thriving, you're a success in work and life, plus you can handle whatever life throws at you.

But that’s not the map of reality for most people!

This parsing of information and stimuli functions as one big confirmation bias based on our map of reality, our blueprint. It allows in more of what we already believe to be true about ourselves and the world.

Here's the kicker: whatever contradicts your beliefs will be filtered out of your awareness.

Some information is completely deleted. For example, I used to believe my mom never smiled (I've heard this same thing from countless clients about people in their lives).

That's right, deleted from my awareness because it was not in alignment with my imprint of mom.

Other information is distorted to match your blueprint. For example, a comment about "Did you use a different spice in this?" becomes "This sucks, you can't cook," and you’re suddenly in the express lane of your failure trance, again.

Lastly, generalization happens, like when one bad dating experience leads to 'all men are terrible,' or a single mistake convinces you that you're destined to fail forever.

Our felt experience reflects the quality of our internal map of reality: our blueprint.

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Work With Me Personally

If you're ready to:

• Break free from limiting patterns that keep you stuck in anxiety, fear, or pain

• Release traumatic memories that are controlling your present experience

• Create a new internal blueprint that supports the life you truly want to live

I invite you to schedule a personal breakthrough session where we'll create a customized plan to transform your unconscious programming. (Note: This will be a conversation about investing in your transformation. If you're not open to investing in yourself if the value is there, please don't book this call).

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De-fractionation: Breaking the Trance

Memories are real, fixed, and permanent, right?

Once, I thought so. And then I learned de-fractionation from Robert Smith in my FasterEFT training. It was a game changer.

But first, we need to back it up and discuss fractionation, which is a term used in hypnosis.

What is Fractionation?

Fractionation is a process of bringing someone in and out of trance which conditions them to become better at entering a trance state. Through this repetitive process, the mind is able to return faster and go deeper into trance each time.

When I look back on the years I spent in therapy, I feel this is what I was doing week after week. Continually going into my childhood trance, interrupting it, returning to go back into it faster and deeper as I told the old stories over and over. As I went deeper and deeper, my painful childhood trance became stronger and stronger.

How De-fractionation Works

De-fractionation is a skillful reverse engineering of fractionation. It's a process of repeatedly interrupting a trance (a memory) with the intended result of changing the memory. The strategic interruptions create shifts and changes in how we perceive the memory.

Robert Smith calls de-fractionation "a pattern interrupt with a desired outcome."

Pattern Interruption

How do we interrupt a memory with de-fractionation?

First you aim at the problem (notice how you know a memory, for exapmle, bothers you). Next you create a change of focus, and the possibilities are unlimited:

• Repeat a tongue twister

• Ask a question that directs the mind somewhere completely different

• Call out three things you see in your environment, three things you hear in your environment, and three things you can touch/feel in your environment. Then shift your focus to a memory that feels good (we call this a "happy memory" in FasterEFT).

In FasterEFT, we also frequently pair meridian tapping (which originates from Gary Craig and Emotional Freedom Technique) with strategic call-outs (such as: "Release and let it go, it's safe to let it go, just let it go") to interrupt the trance, redirect attention, and give a positive suggestion.

Real-World Examples

To use a metaphor, this process is like scratching an old vinyl record until it won't play anymore and you have to play a new one.

When you do this repeatedly, the negative memory can no longer hold itself together, painful emotions dissipate like mist, and the unconscious mind updates perception. It feels like magic.

This process of de-fractionation demonstrates a crucial principle: when we understand how our mind naturally learns and creates patterns, we can use that same mechanism to unlearn old patterns and create improved ones.

What makes FasterEFT particularly effective is how it integrates this understanding with practical techniques like meridian tapping, which I'll explore in my next article.

Your Turn to Reflect

Take a moment to consider your own early programming. What's one pattern in your life that might make more sense now, knowing how our minds create associations?

Share your insight in the comments below, your experience might help others recognize their own patterns.

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Coming up next in this series: What meridian tapping is and where it comes from, how FasterEFT differs from traditional approaches, the basic process explanation, and a simple starting point for readers.