Programming: To Re- or to De-?

Over the years of practice, I’ve seen dozens of different approaches. Some work in the short term, some only produce an effect as long as you keep feeding them, and some actually change the structure of your reactions. I’ll explain the difference as simply as possible.

In general, all approaches to working with the “mind” can be roughly reduced to two types — reprogramming and deprogramming. What follows is my personal view on this.

So, reprogramming is an attempt to change a person by installing new behavioral models “from outside.” This includes affirmations, suggestion, hypnosis, “25th frame” techniques (once especially popular), various forms of self-programming, and much more. The idea is simple: in one way or another, we try to embed a new behavioral pattern into our life.

However, reprogramming usually does not eliminate the underlying causes of the original problem. Figuratively speaking, it’s like trying to paint over old cracked walls with fresh paint. Yes, for a while it will look clean and decent. But when the paint starts to peel (and it will), the old crack will show up again. Because it was never removed — it was just covered up.

This is one of the reasons why affirmations often turn out to be ineffective in the long term. As long as you keep reinforcing the new formula with daily repetition, there may be an effect. But as soon as that reinforcement stops, the old behavioral patterns — backed by experience, beliefs, and thousands of repetitions — return. The problem hasn’t gone anywhere. It was just pushed aside and masked. And sometimes even amplified by internal conflict.

Think about it: where do the beliefs come from that people try to replace with a “conscious belief” in something new? These beliefs didn’t appear out of thin air. They were formed over years, sometimes decades, starting in childhood. And they were reinforced by experience — otherwise the psyche wouldn’t hold onto them.

But then a person latches onto an idea like “everything depends only on us” (which is, in general, a reasonable idea), gets inspired, and immediately receives a “ready-made solution”: a free course, a meditation, an audio track, a set of phrases to repeat every day for two hours — and “everything will change.”

This is where the substitution usually happens. The idea itself may be valid: yes, your internal state influences a lot. But the proposed “solution” is often a trick, because instead of real work you’re offered to simply replace one belief system with another — as if that could be done with a snap of your fingers.

How exactly is that supposed to work? How do you replace a mature, stable mental “forest” — built over years, dense, reinforced by experience — with a handful of new thoughts? Usually the result is one of two things: either a collapse after a month or two, when the motivational fuel runs out, or a growing internal conflict if you keep stubbornly trying to force the “new program” without removing the old one.

There is also a different kind of approach — what I would call “deprogramming.” This is real work on solving problems, not masking them and not learning to “live with it.” You face the problem directly and gradually take it apart. When the problem is resolved, it stops reproducing itself, and you move on.

Solving a problem is not about “pushing through” or worshipping willpower. Ideas like “I must be stronger than this problem” or “a man shouldn’t give in” are actually just another form of reprogramming — and in its crudest version: self-violence instead of removing the causes.

Solving a problem is also not endless chewing on it, not “admiring the trauma,” and not intellectual games around the issue disguised as work. It is a concrete working process: look at the problem, find the causes, identify the key links, and eliminate them one way or another.

Examples of a deprogramming approach include BSFF, EFT, and other techniques where a person deliberately reduces reactivity and untangles causes, rather than simply trying to cover them with a “correct behavioral model.” Any system where the work is done with root causes and internal material, not with a polished facade. Once the old junk is cleared out, you can calmly build new behavioral patterns. Until then, it’s usually a war between the “old” and the “new” in your head — and the old usually wins, because it’s backed by real experience.

I also tend to classify hypnosis as more of a “re-” method than a “de-” one. In some cases, it may be useful in a narrow sense. But I personally stand for awareness, rationality, sobriety, and clarity. And hypnosis is not about that: it involves influence without transparency, and a person often doesn’t understand what exactly was “installed” in them and on what basis.

To sum it up. Reprogramming doesn’t interest me, although I admit that in some situations and for some people it may be useful as an auxiliary tool. What interests me is freedom. And freedom is impossible without clearing out the junk in your head.

Only real liberation from the old mentality can produce a serious result that doesn’t fall apart over time. Accordingly, all the techniques I use and describe here belong, in my classification, to the category of deprogramming. We empty the mind’s “trash can” — rather than repainting its contents or trying to put a nice wrapper over what’s already there.