The Cedar Ridge Secret:  How the Fears Chart operates on the principle of the "Law of Attraction" News   

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Posted by Jessica Purrcell on 04/04/2007    

The Cedar Ridge Secret
How the Fears Chart operates on the principle of the “Law of Attraction”
By Robert Nielson, Program Director
04/04/2007

A new book & DVD entitled The Secret has recently received considerable media attention, including being featured on Oprah.  I think it conveys a wonderful message about the ‘Law of Attraction.’  This law has great potential to help the people who follow its suggestions.  I also think its value for a person’s mental health is far more potent than any material gains this principle might facilitate.  Although there have been many other books written about this concept, The Secret delivers the message with great impact.  I showed it to the students here at Cedar Ridge, who received it with great enthusiasm.  I have never experienced this before with any other presentation.

Through my background as a hypnotherapist I have long been familiar with the ‘law of attraction.’  I established Cedar Ridge in 1996 based on a strong belief that people attract into their lives that which they hold in their minds, and to which they give their mental energy.  At our therapeutic boarding school we centralize a lot of treatment interventions around what I term the ‘Fears Chart.’   The students here can attest to the fact that I have emphatically stressed the message, “When you avoid something (an emotion or a behavior), you attract that which you fear.”  Conversely, when a student ‘approaches’ that emotion or uncomfortable situation, they attract to themselves that which they desire. 

Avoiding behaviors are strategies that these teens apply in order to seek relief from uncomfortable situations, situations that, through conditioning, result in triggering the ‘fight or flight’ response.  Unlike a rational concern for situations that might represent a legitimate threat to health or safety, these avoiding behaviors are based more on psychological perceptions of threat due to previous sensitizing events that threaten how a person is accepted by others. Students identify these “fears” as 1)fear of rejection, 2) fear of abandonment, 3) fear of failure, 4) fear of not being good enough, 5) fear of not being in control, 6) fear of looking like a fool, etc. 

These situations could possibly result in a threat to one’s physical self.  For example, a rejecting parent could withdraw resources or nurturance from a young person not capable of taking care of themselves.  Dissatisfied peers could react with physical aggression.  However, the real threat of harm is usually low enough that the act of avoiding is not warranted as it only makes matters worse in the long run.

Change is much easier to manage based on what one is for rather than what one is against, and I could simply call the ‘Fears Chart’ the ‘Courage Chart.’   Doing so would acknowledge that ‘approaching’ behaviors, the kind of responses that serve to desensitize one’s fears, are responses that trigger the latent fears aforementioned.  Approaching takes courage, since ‘approaching’ triggers the associated fear(s). As I have previously stated, the Fears Chart was developed for teenagers living in a therapeutic milieu.  Helping these students adopt a proactive stance toward approaching requires that they first understand how their attempts to fix their lives by persisting in strategies that resulted in gaining an immediate sense of relief inevitably made their situation worse.  Life became worse in the way these persons felt about themselves, worse in how other people related to them, and worse in the way they were creating a reality that could be described as being caught in quicksand. Because these students were seeking immediate relief from their fears, every response the students used to try to feel better resulted in them feeling like they were just sinking deeper.

This principle can be illustrated by analyzing how a student might choose to behave in a certain manner to fit into a certain peer group.  If the behavior compromises what is truly in the best interest of that person, we term the strategy as “going out for acceptance.”  Say, in this instance, a male teenager gives in to peer pressure to smoke pot.

Commonly, this strategy is based on a “fear” of not being adequate enough to merit acceptance without compromising his best interests.  The fear of not being adequate enough to earn acceptance without compromising himself reflects that person’s core belief regarding his acceptability.  The act of ‘going out for acceptance’ is triggered by the threat of unacceptability and reinforces the core belief of having to compromise his best interest in order to gain acceptance.  This core belief also is telegraphed to the people around him by to his behaviors and body language. The peer group then begins treating that person in a manner consistent with these perceptions.  Now his core belief of non-acceptability is reinforced not only from his intrinsic motivation but from his interpersonal interactions with the peer group.  This further fixes the person’s responses, resulting in others concluding that his young man is insecure and treating him accordingly. 

As a pecking order becomes established, those peers with whom the young man started smoking pot in order to fit in continue to use peer pressure to maintain the terms of the relationship.  The terms of the relationship become, “Do what we want you to do, or else we will exclude you from our group.”  The more the person accepts and acts on the terms for inclusion in this peer group, the stronger the habit becomes and the stronger the belief becomes regarding their unacceptability. Once this pattern of behavior is established, other similar decisions are far more likely to occur, resulting in more and more compromise of self.  With every compromise (avoidance behavior), the young man’s self-esteem continues to erode further and further.

This is a good explanation of how these youth attract what they are afraid of by “avoiding” rather than by dealing with situations in a manner that helps them grow more confident in managing difficult situations.  At Cedar Ridge we have been able to tie almost all maladaptive behavior to patterns of “avoiding” situations that students feel insecure about being able to handle appropriately.

In order for a person to attract into their life the circumstances that they want, then they must “approach.”  In the case of the young man who was ‘out for acceptance’ and compromised his best interests in order to be included in the peer group, an effective approach would be to stand his ground when encouraged to smoke pot.  Given that this person had doubts about his acceptability, declining to smoke pot would require some courage on his part.  The peer group would probably reject the young man as they would probably not be comfortable with anyone who wouldn’t conform to the group engaging in smoking pot.  Regardless of the rejection, the group would have to respect the courage of the person who stood up for a decision that was in his own best interest.  This probable begrudging respect might be concealed from the person, but it would be respect nevertheless, and, given enough time, the individual members of the group would be inclined to convey that respect whether they were aware of it or not.

Having stood his ground, the young man, after feeling the anxiousness of the confrontation, then begins feeling a sense of inner satisfaction.  His action reinforces a belief that he can hold his own when similar situations arise. Acting in his own best self-interest begins a desensitization of his fear of unacceptability.  As the fear of unacceptability lessens its grip, his confidence begins to gradually increase.  This leads to a difference in the way this person acts around others.  In turn, others respond to this person with more respect and treat him in a way that denotes that he, indeed, is acceptable.

These examples explain the “Law of Attraction” in a way that doesn’t need any magical or metaphysical component.  These elements are hard to prove or disprove.  As soon as someone asserts that “thoughts are things” which then create reality, many people want to argue with this assertion.  In my previous practice as a hypnotherapist, clients often asked me to help them attract outcomes they desired by taking them through a process of visualization and affirmations under hypnosis.  I have witnessed many intriguing outcomes that would tend to validate the process.  For example, one woman who wanted to find her “soulmate” brought a lengthy description of the man she wanted to attract into her life.  I felt that her criteria were too narrow and specific regarding this person’s physical characteristics and personality traits.  Normally, a person would allow some flexibility when turning a desire over to their higher consciousness (or however one wants to see a higher power).   Within two weeks my client reported that she had located her soulmate and brought him with her for me to meet.  The way this gentleman matched-up to that picky list of criteria was uncanny.  I was curious about how well these two would get along as I knew this client well, and she was prone to struggle in relationships.  These two were a couple seemingly very happy with each other for as long as I tracked their relationship.

This case history illustrates how thoughts create reality.  Here again, phenomena like this can be understood through processes that don’t need a magical explanation.  People tend to notice what they expect to notice; this process of selective perception is always operating in our unconscious. Perhaps, in this case, my sessions with this client combined with her heightened belief system, thus freeing her mind to be able to focus more precisely on the goal of attracting a specific kind of boyfriend.  Maybe she was able to capitalize on the moment when random events brought her into proximity with this potential soulmate.  Instead of passing over a chance encounter, she acted on her mental conditioning and initiated contact with the person she believed was the man of her dreams.  She recognized the situation that would result in getting her what she wanted and then acted on that situation.

Regardless of whether or not thoughts have a magical quality that helps create reality or whether thoughts as well as actions simply affect the decisions we make in bringing to reality the focus of our thoughts, acting on the principles of the Law of Attraction is a useful discipline to bring about the changes someone wants in their life.  In closing, let me just add that I especially like the comments about forgiveness and gratitude.  Certainly these are powerful therapeutic principles that we all can benefit greatly from practicing.