Post by donq on Sept 8, 2022 14:19:46 GMT
show me your hiccup, right now!
Most people try to eliminate a motor tic by trying to suppress it. Sometimes willpower fails and the twitches continue despite all conscious efforts to suppress them. On the other hand, trying to make the tick occur, practicing it, will sometimes make it go away.
The ordinary hiccup shows the futility of directly opposing an unwanted impulse. Struggling against hiccups typically does not make them go away; it makes them continue.
However, when people forget about having the hiccups, or put their attention onto something else, then the hiccups tend to go away. Even more interesting: hiccups sometimes go away if a person is challenged to produce them.
That may not work more than once, because it seems to depend partly on novelty or surprise, but it is worth trying (and very amusing when it works). When somebody complains of hiccups that will not stop, command that person to produce a hiccup, right now!
Often that stops the hiccups. Whatever is happening in that process, it seems very similar to the intent behind paradoxical therapies. At the least, this strategy changes the relationship between conscious will and the intruding neural event, and sometimes that is enough to break up a stalemate.
from Seltzer, L. F. (1986). Paradoxical Strategies in Psychotherapy.
Most people try to eliminate a motor tic by trying to suppress it. Sometimes willpower fails and the twitches continue despite all conscious efforts to suppress them. On the other hand, trying to make the tick occur, practicing it, will sometimes make it go away.
The ordinary hiccup shows the futility of directly opposing an unwanted impulse. Struggling against hiccups typically does not make them go away; it makes them continue.
However, when people forget about having the hiccups, or put their attention onto something else, then the hiccups tend to go away. Even more interesting: hiccups sometimes go away if a person is challenged to produce them.
That may not work more than once, because it seems to depend partly on novelty or surprise, but it is worth trying (and very amusing when it works). When somebody complains of hiccups that will not stop, command that person to produce a hiccup, right now!
Often that stops the hiccups. Whatever is happening in that process, it seems very similar to the intent behind paradoxical therapies. At the least, this strategy changes the relationship between conscious will and the intruding neural event, and sometimes that is enough to break up a stalemate.
[This is called "paradoxical intention" in Paradoxical Therapies]
