What’s Different about the Four Blinks Version of Flash: A Deeper Dive

For more see: This version of Flash has an easy, simple, working mechanism… that just works. The Four Blinks Version of Flash has a clearly articulated working mechanism that shapes everything that is in there and it also explains why other things aren’t in there. It emerges from very simple concept from Bruce Ecker that humans heal when we activate difficult content and then sit with experiences that contradict the expectation in the bad memory. Experiences, not knowledge, that contradict. In Flash approaches, we do this hundreds of times in a single 30 to 40-minute session. Yes, Bruce Ecker is primarily interested in shifting whole neighborhoods of cognitions and to do that, the disconfirming information has to be precise. In Flash, the disconfirmation can be general. In fact, Flash approaches can inform other memory reconsolidation approaches in that if you want to resolve a single memory faster, you need a large number of disconfirming experiences in a short amount of time. And, in this conceptualization, the blinks when you are in your calm/disconfirming experience split a 30-second exposure of the experience into six five-second exposures. If you do not blink in Flash approaches, the memory still resolves, just much slower, because it takes longer to get to hundreds of exposures to the calm scene. Yes, seeing a video of a bubbly hot pizza coming out of the oven over and over is disconfirming enough to process memories of childhood sexual abuse. This conceptualization is elegant and guides every single word in the Four Blinks Version of Flash treatment guide. In the Four Blinks Version of Flash we do not check the SUDs. Flash approaches tend to fail when we overactivate and the purpose of checking the SUDs in EMDR is to activate. I use the deli slicer metaphor in working on the memory. In this version of Flash, we do not container the memory once we start working on it. In fact, we are only working on one microslice of the memory at a time. In fact, we are only bringing into working memory one tiny piece of the memory at a time. While Flash will generally work if you ask the client to container the memory, this version of Flash is guided by this understanding that are bringing only a microslice of the memory into awareness at a time. Lightly activating the memory allows us to quickly container it and allow all of our attention to be available to the calm scene, over and over. This version of Flash is parts-centric. There is parts language built into every core step. It’s 2023. Get consent. This version of Flash has the body on the radar at all times. When other versions of Flash reliably end with a SUDs of 1, 2, or 3, often this is because the body isn’t on the radar. This version of Flash has the built-in Shop Vac resource to quickly get distress from overactivation out of the body as quickly as possible. This version of Flash anticipates that clients may over-activate and has clear instructions in the script for dealing with overactivation with the requirement to teach all clients both the Shop Vac and sensory grounding prior to working on any memories. We have been trying to heal for as long as we have been human. There are two pages in the script that guide clients on how to do self-administered Flash when the therapist believes that may be appropriate to help manage what may come up between sessions. Clients have been trying to heal forever, they have just been doing it using very inefficient cultural strategies. This is a highly effective strategy for clients to use between sessions and is built around two resources that I want them to be using anyway if they are triggered by memory… out of the understanding that they are going to dancing with this content until it gets recontainered in their limbic brains anyway. If how you are already doing Flash works great, keep doing that. If you aren’t seeing you clients fully resolve memory 90% of the time in one session, take the training, take the free consultation, and be in touch. I will work with you almost endlessly and for free until you see what see. That Flash is the closest thing we have to a combination lock to unlock trauma. Three rounds to the right, two to the left, back to the final number, click. If you are not seeing that, there are ways to do Flash better.