Working with Problems
Over time, you will begin to notice one thing: a significant portion of current — and even “past” — problems turns out to be largely constructed by the mind itself. But this understanding cannot be reached immediately or directly. You have to get there through actual work — dealing with problems one by one, while at the same time discovering your own psyche from some rather unexpected angles.
There are no unsolvable internal problems. Any problem either falls apart, transforms, or loses its significance — provided that it is actually worked on. The speed of this process varies: some things go away quickly, others slowly, some require repeated returns. But there are no fundamental exceptions here: if a problem exists as a stable mental object, then it has a structure — and therefore it can be dismantled.
At the same time, you should not expect the result to be constant euphoria or a continuous feeling of happiness. More often, the state becomes more neutral, even, and calm. Sometimes — a bit sad, sometimes — quite pleasant. But there is one effect that almost everyone reports without exception: the amount of intrusive mental clutter, endless rumination, and dramatization drops sharply. The mind becomes much less engaged in self-sustaining creation of problems “out of nothing.”
Decomposition as the Basic Working Principle
If all practical work with problems were reduced to a single word, it would be decomposition.
Any “big problem” appears unsolvable precisely as long as it exists as one solid, charged lump. The task of the practice is to break this lump down into its component elements and work with them separately. This is where TS automation saves a huge amount of time and effort.
Take a hypothetical problem as an example: “I feel sick of my job.”
At the first step, it can be processed as a whole — for initial charge reduction. Then attention naturally begins to latch onto details:
• colleagues are irritating;
• the boss triggers anger or fear;
• it’s hard to get up in the morning;
• a sense of meaninglessness and lack of fulfillment;
• a feeling of being “stuck”;
• and so on.
For different people, the “key” lies in different places. For some, it is conflict with authority; for others, an unmet need; for others, old associations and transfers. The material itself begins to guide the process: attention is drawn to where the charge is strongest.
As a result, what looked like a monolithic, chronic problem gradually turns into a set of specific elements. And suddenly it turns out that:
• someone is stuck because of an unresolved personal conflict;
• someone is simply engaged in the wrong kind of work;
• for someone, the figure of the boss activates old school or family patterns;
• for someone, it is enough to change conditions or boundaries.
After the mental charge is discharged, the solution often becomes obvious and does not require “heroic effort.” The problem ceases to be a problem and becomes a situation.
Basic Work Scheme
In simplified form, the strategy looks like this:
- Decomposition: breaking the problem into emotions, thoughts, associations, significant elements.
- Passing these elements into processing — manually or through automatic protocols.
- Initiating processing, most often before sleep.
If the problem is deep and multi-layered, the cycle may repeat several times — this is normal. The process is automated, and as internal tension decreases, understanding comes on its own, without effort and without “forcing insights.”
Important: it is not necessary to analyze every problem to fully understand its origin, meaning, or “lesson.” That is excess work of the mind. It is enough to turn one large charged construct into a set of separate elements and pass them into processing. The rest will be handled by the system.
The ability to automate this process is, in my view, the key feature of TS. This is what distinguishes the system from most methods that rely on endless analysis and manual digging.
By the way, in the free section of the website (link at the end of the book), several hundred protocols are available — essentially ready-made decompositions of typical human problems.
What Happens Next
At a certain stage, you may no longer need any special processors at all. It will be enough to simply direct attention to a problem or state — and it will begin to lose density and fall apart on its own. At that point, the word “problem” itself gradually loses its relevance.
When exactly this will happen is individual. Much depends on how strongly the personality tends to hold onto beliefs and constructs, which will be discussed in the next chapter.