Category: depression

Luca is on the cutting edge of solving depression and addiction once and for all

Luca is on the cutting edge of solving depression and addiction once and for all

“Hello,

My name is Luka Pecel,

My battle with alcohol and depression was a long, demoralizing, and futile fight that by age 44 had left me for dead. I had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, had been deemed a lost cause by friends and family, I was arrested several times for DUI’s, and had been to countless hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Feeling hopeless and alone, I was finalizing my plan of escape from the world. By the Grace of God, I found Luca Bosurgi. What happened next changed my life forever, and I promise it will change yours too.           

I had been through a decade of traditional cognitive therapy with virtually no results. Looking for answers, I traveled and searched, assiduously investigating every self-help movement that was available. Time and time again, I found myself back in an even deeper depression, with a bottle at my bedside. It wasn’t until Luca explained to me his groundbreaking discovery of AED (adult emotional dependency) that I understood for the first time what my problem had been all these years. It was like the weight of the world had been lifted off me. There is so much more to say about my many amazing discoveries, life-changing lessons and eye opening experiences.

 Luca Bosurgi’s twenty five years of experience and training, prodigious faith, and revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology of the mind are going to help change the world for generations to come, as they have done for me.  I was lucky enough to get this help. I truly believe that Luca is on the cutting edge of solving depression and addiction once and for all. This is something the world needs right now, and with God’s blessing, we are going to do everything in our power to help spread this technology.” -Luka

Luca Bosurgi answers Quora’s questions about the mind, anxiety, fear, depression, addiction, etc.

Luca Bosurgi answers Quora’s questions about the mind, anxiety, fear, depression, addiction, etc.

How do you eliminate pointless fear / general anxiety without medication?

Luca Bosurgi

Luca Bosurgi, Mind Fitness, Life & Spiritual Coach
Reader’s question – I have read and in the process of rereading your book, “The Mind Shaman”.

Reader’s question – I have read and in the process of rereading your book, “The Mind Shaman”.

I have read and in the process of rereading your book, “The Mind Shaman”. You have described my challenges as if you know me. How can I, a ten year old (50 real years), get the help to change my life? What can I do for myself to effect real change?

Answer:

Hello,

let me highlight several important points coming from the Bosurgi Syndrome theory:

1. we have 3 dimensions: body, mind and spirit (self). Body exists and functions in the real world. Mind provides the best and safest mechanisms for body functioning. Spirit (self) has a role of an executive function which keeps you on track to achieve your goals and purpose;

2. mind has a service function supporting the spirit (self) and helping it to achieve the goals. The mind is not meant to lead. It relies on the leadership of the spirit (self) or, if it’s not there, of somebody or something else (e.g. work, beauty, etc.);

3. overextended codependency happens because the mind relies on the leadership of somebody or something else

4. in order to clear the codependency, leadership and responsibility needs to be moved from the external world to spirit or self.

You may be discouraged by several failures and lost trust in yourself (of your spirit). You need to start building this trust by creating small successes and accomplishments. This will start creating confidence and make you believe that you can.

Start from your goals, from your purpose, why are you here? And what talents do you have to help you accomplish this purpose? This will bring meaning to your life.

Then create a specific description of how you want to be in 2-3 years from now and build a very specific plan of how to get there. It takes time and thinking, but it is worth it. Accept the fact that no one is going to do it for you and no one will make you happy, unless you take the responsibility for it. Stop thinking like a victim, no one owes you anything, but you can take whatever you want. Guide yourself with your future goals, if you keep looking back, your past will keep determining your future. If you aspire to achieve something what you really want, your future will start determining your present. Stop creating stories why you couldn’t achieve the result, it keeps you in a bad place, what matters is if you have done something or not.

Take a piece of paper and write down all the good things you have in your life, is your situation really the worst? Every evening for two weeks write all the goods things that happened during that day. This will shift your focus from negative to positive.

And finally look around and see who is your crowd? Are they happy and successful people or someone who complains? Happiness and success are contagious as well as unhappiness and bad habits. Work on your environment and make sure it supports your goals, not drags you down.

If you take these steps, you are leading, taking responsibility for yourself, your life and your happiness.

I’m also referring you to this article on our blog that you may find helpful.

 

 

Create no more pain in the present

Create no more pain in the present

“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more ore you are free of pain, of suffering – and free of the egoic mind.

Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and
remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as
threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.

Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world, but there comes a point
where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.
The mind, to ensure that it remains in control, seeks continuously to cover up the present
moment with past and future, and so, as the vitality and infinite creative potential of Being,
which is inseparable from the Now, becomes covered up by time, your true nature becomes
obscured by the mind. An increasingly heavy burden of time has been accumulating in the
human mind. All individuals are suffering under this burden, but they also keep adding to it
every moment whenever they ignore or deny that precious moment or reduce it to a means of
getting to some future moment, which only exists in the mind, never in actuality. The
accumulation of time in the collective and individual human mind also holds a vast amount
of residual pain from the past.

If you no longer want to create pain for yourself and others, if you no longer want to add
to the residue of past pain that still lives on in you, then don’t create any more time, or at least
no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating
time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the
primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now,
have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to
deal with the practical aspects of your life situation. Always say “yes” to the present moment.
What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that
already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always
now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life – and see how life suddenly starts working for
you rather than against you.

The present moment is sometimes unacceptable, unpleasant, or awful.
It is as it is. Observe how the mind labels it and how this labeling process, this continuous sitting in judgment, creates pain and unhappiness. By watching the mechanics of the mind,
you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be. This
will give you a taste of the state of inner freedom from external conditions, the state of true
inner peace. Then see what happens, and take action if necessary or possible.
Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen
it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will
miraculously transform your whole life.”

Ekhart Tolle “The Power of Now”

Front Cover

Elena’s story – the temporary drive offered by fake identities or safe zones

Elena’s story – the temporary drive offered by fake identities or safe zones

From the book The Mind Shaman part II –

“Elena was born twenty-nine years ago in the violent town of Medellin in Northern Colombia. She was the fourth of five kids; her mother died giving birth to her last brother, and her father was a gang member—angry, drunk, and terribly violent. She grew up with a schizophrenic grandmother that didn’t allow the kids to wash—ever! She never took a proper shower for the first six years of her life, and her clothes were always terribly dirty and broken. This made the interaction with her peers almost impossible; she was so dirty and smelly that when she started school, all the other kids ran away from her, holding their nose, laughing and mocking her. One day, a bunch of kids locked her and her twin brother in a bathroom and, with the garden hose, sprayed them so violently that her torn clothes fell off in pieces, and she found herself half naked in front of all the children. By the time that one of the nuns intervened to stop the cruel torture, the damage was done.

She never recovered from the shame of that day. In reality, she never recovered from the shame and rejection from each day of her childhood. Scared, lonely, unloved, but incredibly intelligent, she got her nun teacher’s attention. They practically adopted her and fostered her, cleaned her and dressed her decently. She also got her twin brother to be fostered with her in the school convent. The nuns were hard but straightforward and fair, which was a great upgrade from her earlier life. She was very smart, so she understood early in her life that education was the only way to escape the ghetto. She was committed to using all of her resources for studying. Elena was fourteen when she left the convent. The nuns wanted her in the order, but she knew that it was not for her. She just wanted to escape from the town that killed all three of her elder brothers as well as her father in the horrible cartels’ war, which was inflaming the town in those years. The crazy grandmother was certainly not an option; therefore, she accepted a ride from the priest of the convent and moved with her brother to the capital Bogota.

The priest was a good man and knew Elena and her brother well. He appreciated the talents of the young woman and introduced her to one of his friends, which owned a shoe factory in the south of the town. She was young but talented with numbers, so she got hired in the administration and her brother in the production. It was a dream for the young Elena that, unfortunately, only lasted a few months. Her brother Pablo got accused of stealing tools from the factory. He wasn’t a thief, but he couldn’t prove it, and both of them got fired. From then on, for the next three years, they did all sorts of jobs to survive, pushed around in dreadful and scary dorms. Fortunately, Pablo was a big guy and protected his sister. Elena didn’t forget her commitment and carried on studying in the public library and, after strenuous hard work, received a diploma in accounting. This allowed her to find a job, save enough money, and fulfill her dream to immigrate with her brother to the US.

Most of her strength was coming from desperation and her determination to reach a place where she could feel safe. From birth, she fought like a warrior, and despite her constant fears, crippling anxiety, and chronic shyness, her powerful intelligence got her to the US. They landed in Miami, with a tourist visa and a small amount of money, and instead of trying to get fake IDs and being robbed by the local Latino mafia, she was smart enough to invest her money to learn the language. In less than three months, she found a job in accounting, where they accepted her without a working visa, and she started building a life for her and her brother. Unfortunately, one year later, on their twenty-first birthdays, her brother got in a fight and was deported. She found herself alone for the first time, so desperate and scared that she thought about killing herself. Only the thought of her brother back in the ghettos of Bogota gave her the strength to move on and to try to get him back.

She got married in order to get a green card and had to live with that man for a while. The guy turned out to be horrible, and after months of harassment, one day, while drunk and angry, he raped her with the excuse that she was his wife. Elena was very religious and prudish and had never been touched by a man before. She was saving herself for the man who would marry her for love. She felt horribly violated in her body and soul. She lost it and tried to kill herself by jumping from the building. Fortunately, the flat was on a lower floor, and she landed on a canopy with just a few bruises. To avoid getting in more trouble, the guy stopped harassing her, and after a few months, she got her precious green card. She came to LA soon after, invited by a Colombian friend working as a nurse in a hospital. She saw the opportunity, and she decided to stay in LA, working and studying to get a nursing degree. She got the diploma after three years and immediately got a job in a private clinic. In the meantime, she brought Pablo back with a student visa on fake credentials. She had to travel to Bogota to get him to come; he was too scared to travel alone. From then on, life got much easier. She found Pablo a place to live, and she found a more lucrative job in a major hospital.

She finally got to a point in her life where she felt that she had arrived, and so she relaxed. Her desperate drive suddenly stopped, and so did the little confidence that made her go forward with so much determination. Her shyness and fears became so severe that she couldn’t talk to people, and she didn’t feel safe to leave home alone. Pablo had to drive her to the hospital every day, walk her to her ward, and pick her up from there at the end of each shift. This got progressively worse up to now. Even today Pablo was in the parking lot, sitting in the car and waiting for her. When she was told about this opportunity by a nurse colleague, a young Mexican girl that Luca had helped for similar issues, she saw a possible way out, and she went for it—and here we are.


“To understand Elena’s transformation, we need to talk about fake identities. People in codependency typically need two elements to feel safe: leadership and safe zones. Each one of these can partially or entirely substitute the need of the other. We talked extensively about leadership, but what are the safe zones? There are two types: the physical safe zones, such as a home or a trusted friend, and the mind’s safe zones (or fake identities) that are areas of life where people in codependency feel confident and strong. These are typically related to success, wealth, beauty, or a specific skill, such as a sport or academic ability. People suffering the Bosurgi Syndrome feel safe only when they are in their safe zone. When they are out of their safe zone, they regress like a lost kid. In contrast, when adults are off codependency and enjoy their real identity, their skills, beauty, or success represent a great pleasure and satisfaction and not a needed place for the mind to feel safe.

“Let’s analyze what transformed Elena in the last two days. Did Liam fix her in the first session? No, he just renewed her trust in her safe zone as a smart student. At a very young age, after terrible abuses, Elena discovered her intelligence and the power of education. She made the unconscious decision that seeking education and using her brilliant mind will protect her from more abuse and poverty. Thus, she committed her life to study. She felt confident and safe as a student in any situation where she could prove her intelligence and learning skills. Her trust in this safe zone has been confirmed throughout her life; she saved herself and her brother many times because of her education.

“Her identity as a brilliant student kept her going with no fears until she confirmed herself as a nurse. At that stage of her life, she relaxed, and she stopped studying. She didn’t need it anymore, but she didn’t realize that in doing so, she came out of her safe zone that kept her survival system quiet for so many years. She could have tried to study in order to grow further in the nursing profession, but it wasn’t something that stimulated her mind. It was routine work that actually depressed her brilliant mind. Despite her good job, the brother next to her, and, finally, a bit of tranquility, her still active codependency deprived her from a lifelong safe zone and made her feel terribly unprotected, unsafe, and lost.

“On Monday, Liam reactivated her student’s mind. He challenged her with a complex lesson about the mind, and he asked her to cooperate with him in the healing. Thus, she walked straight back into her safe zone, reacquiring confidence and a sense of safety. Today she came in strong and ready to progress with her learning. That’s why she asked you several questions that you answered brilliantly. You will see that in the next session, she will want to know more, and I suggest that you carry on stimulating her brain with further knowledge and involvement in the process. This will grant her enough stamina, confidence, and, of course, knowledge, to get to the click and release her codependency. After that, she will never require a safe zone again. She will almost certainly progress with her studies to become an informatics genius, but it will be a pleasurable choice and not a need that comes from fear.

 

Survival System, our essential ‘safety software package’.

Survival System, our essential ‘safety software package’.

From the book The Mind Shaman-

“Let’s first explore the survival system and how it operates. This is an essential ‘safety software package’ operating from your unconscious mind that has the top priority task of protecting you from any physical or emotional danger. It has been your best friend and your worst enemy. On one hand, it has been a lifesaver—protecting you from physical and emotional damage, but on the other hand, it has been the cause of most of your fears, anxiety, and depression.

“It sounds like a crazy contradiction, but you will get it as we will explore this system further. Our survival system operates like most commercial security systems available on the market. It compares all the data collected by our senses (as well as our thoughts and emotions) with a list of possible threats. In the case a match is found, it responds by using a priority defense protocol. Here are two examples of commercial defense systems that operate in a similar way. First, look at how your antivirus protects your PC. It constantly compares all the files that you download with a list of already discovered viruses and takes a defensive action every time a match is identified. Now look at the safety system used by the army to protect a post in a war zone. It works in a similar way. Radar and other equipment and detecting devices are constantly scanning the air and the ground according to a list of all possible threats. If they encounter a match, they automatically trigger a real-time defense protocol that may include alarms, offensive responses, etc. Another good example is our own immune system that filters everything that enters the body against a list of previously identified threats and tries to attack and destroy the recognized hazards.

“Let’s re-look now at our own safety system. Our brain constantly collects and processes millions of data derived from three typical sources: (1) the external data captured by our senses: eyes, ears, smell, taste, touch, psychic, etc.; (2) the internal data generated by our body—the list of these are endless; however, the ones perceivable are physical pleasure, pain, and discomfort; and (3) the self-generated data originating from the mind such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions. All of this data is filtered by the survival system and compared with a list of ‘dangerous’ items. If a match is identified, the survival system will believe that you are in danger and activate a defense protocol. The defense protocol typically consists of a shot of cortisol in order to sustain a fight-or-flight response followed by a warning, such as anxiety, fear, or panic. This is lifesaving in case of a real threat. If, instead, this process is triggered by mistake thousands of times a day, it can seriously affect your quality of life.

“You may wonder how this can happen if the mind is so perfect? The answer is simple. The survival system relies on a list of threats built throughout your life. This includes the period of pre-birth and childhood—periods where your mind is not developed enough to understand what is really dangerous and what is not. Therefore, we rely on our parents’ and caretakers’ guidance. If our folks or teachers are scared or angry or abusive people or just unable to create a safe environment for us, our assessment of danger is confused, and many things that are virtually safe are going to be listed by your young mind as dangerous. Some of these ‘dangerous items’ may be current in our daily life, so they will be constantly engaging your survival system in a totally unnecessary and highly crippling defense process. Imagine the nightmare if, in the army post that we mentioned before, all the sirens and the defense responses are constantly engaged without actual threats.

“Safety is the first priority, because it is survival, and so our brains allocate as much energy as is required to keep us safe. This is perfect in a real emergency situation because it is all about surviving the danger. But it becomes extremely challenging if this process is constant and unnecessary. It reduces the power of the brain that can be used for daily tasks. People affected by an overactive survival system use only a fraction of their thinking power since the rest is engaged by the survival process. This creates issues with procrastination, lack of creativity, resistance to engage in new projects or developing the existing ones, learning, and loss of energies to the extent that can lead to depression. Depression is lack of processing capability in the brain to accomplish the daily tasks, since virtually all of your brain’s resources are being used to fight or flight false threats.

“How can we fix that? Most therapies focus on providing coping mechanisms to help you to live with some of those ‘dangerous items’ as best as you can or they try to desensitize you by making you accustomed to experiencing these triggers without responding to them. We do something much simpler and certainly more effective—we clear from that list all the items that are not dangerous. This disengages the brain from all that unnecessary work. This is a rather simple procedure that I guess most people will use periodically in the future in order to reset their list of fears. It doesn’t make any sense to carry the fears and anxiety that we developed when we were babies or kids throughout our adult life.” – The Mind Shaman

Billy, the gay Navajo – an other story of adult codependency (Bosurgi syndrome)

Billy, the gay Navajo – an other story of adult codependency (Bosurgi syndrome)

From the book the Mind Shaman –

Billy is a very smart gay guy and also very funny . His life story was tough, sad, and very complex, but he kept it light, making constant jokes about his fears as well as the mediocrity and ignorance of his family. He was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His father was a training officer for the National Guard, a military-trained bulldozer: big man with huge fists, no feelings or emotions, harsh with his family in the same manner as he was with his cadets. His voice was so sharp and loud that Billy was still getting the creeps today just thinking about it. His mother is a full Native American from the Navajo tribe and was very submissive and kind, ready to do all that was in her power to please the husband.

Billy was the third of three boys. His brothers were the spitting image of their dad, playing with guns and fighting all day long. He was like his mom. He liked art, sewing, and painting. His mom was a great artist, and he learned the magic of colors and forms from her. But they had to do it in secret because his father would not consider the option that one of his kids might not enlist in an armed service. For him, art was for women; guns were for men. When Dad was home, Billy was constantly terrorized, hiding and walking on eggshells to not get him angry. All three kids had to endure physical punishment for every tiny mistake they did, which meant holding a standing position for hours, running around the house many, many times with no access to water, or fasting for an entire day, and so on; and this started from when they were still toddlers. The two older brothers got stronger and angrier. Billy, instead, got weaker and more sick, fainting all the time, horribly slim because he couldn’t hold food in his stomach. The constant pain in his gut provoked by his relentless fears brought him to the emergency room several times. The army doctors always thought that it was a bug in his stomach, and they sent him home with some useless pills.

He really tried to be like his dad, but it was not his nature. He just wanted to have a quiet life painting and sewing. But that was not allowed; he was a man! His illness and his passion for art provoked endless bullying and mocking from his brothers as well as constant very hurtful remarks from his Dad. He didn’t mind to be called “girl” or “daughter” by his father, but he suffered thinking that he let his dad down. He loved and admired his dad, and he would have cut off his arm to be loved back, but his father was too stuck in his soldier’s mind to understand the “different” beauty and powers of his youngest son. So he gave up on him and ignored him from the age of five. The pressure was gone, but the rejection that came with it was so devastating for the little Billy that his health got worse. His mother worried for his life and sent him to her parents in a tribal village a couple of hours south. There, Billy started a new life, and for the first time, he felt accepted and loved. His health improved dramatically, his stomach stop hurting, and he made friends, kids just like his loving nature, playing and doing art stuff. He started school in the local Navajo school. He was shy but very sharp, and the teachers liked him, but in some ways, he felt different from all the other boys. He felt much more in tune with the girls of his class, although somehow attracted to some of the older boys.

Around eight, he started experimenting with a couple of older boys, enjoying giving them pleasure. It was natural to him but also very confusing, and he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. His grandparents were old and still attached to the Navajo tradition that teaches to respect everyone without discrimination but to not discuss sex. They were good people, and they loved him dearly, but they weren’t equipped to give him much leadership or direction. He couldn’t talk with his parents either; his father would have killed him, and his mother was too scared and probably too depressed to deal with something like this. So Billy kept his painful secret to himself, feeling terribly guilty, as well as like an outsider with his peers. He returned to being sick, re-experiencing his old digestive problems and the constant pain in his guts. He felt that this was God’s punishment for his attraction to men, and he stopped seeing the kids that wanted sexual favors from him. Of course, he felt more isolated than ever, and only the passion for painting, sewing, and creating forms and shapes kept him going.

Around ten years old, the entire village was aware of Billy’s sexual nature. It was obvious by the way he talked and moved, and as much as everybody liked him for his kindness and skills in the different arts, every day he felt more excluded and despised for being gay. His breakthrough in accepting his sexuality came with a medicine man, a two-spirited person, a nadleeh. This was a famous healer that moved to the village the same month that Billy finished middle school. He was a Navajo, gifted with special powers and highly trained in his medicine, but also a guy that knew too well the struggle of being gay in his tribal traditions. He became his mentor and made him accept himself as a human being and his sexuality and healed his physical and mental struggles. This guy was the first real guidance in Billy’s life, and his presence and leadership had such an impact that Billy grew physically and mentally, becoming a man capable of taking care of himself.

When Billy graduated from high school, his mentor, attracted by Billy’s intelligence and skills, offered to train him in his medicine to become a healer. He loved the man, but he wanted out from the tribe and the judgment. He also wanted to develop his artistic skills and make some money with it. Billy jumped on a bus and travelled over twelve hundred miles to San Francisco. He was still very shy and fairly anxious, but the excitement of being free to be himself with others like him made him overcome all his fears. The first evening in town, he met Dino, the love of his life, a much older man, experienced, powerful, rich, and the owner of a fashion design company. His dream came true. One day in Frisco, he found all that he had desired: a leader, a father, a luxurious life incredibly different from his past, a man to love, and a job as fashion designer. This lasted just over three years. On his twenty-first birthday, Dino decided that he wanted a younger boyfriend and dumped Billy. In twenty-four hours, Billy found himself heartbroken, homeless, and jobless. It was totally unexpected. He thought that Dino was sharing the same love that he felt for him and their union was for life. He didn’t think about saving money or preparing a “Plan B”.

Fortunately, he immediately got back working, as he was already a great and established designer. Fashion designers fought to hire him. But that was the only aspect of his life that kept going in a straight line. Emotionally and physically, he was a mess. He felt totally lost and terribly sad. His digestive system started freaking out again, and he started losing weight and feeling sick all the time. For two years, he changed many partners trying to get back what he had lost with Dino, but each time was a further confirmation of his unlovability as well as his inability to be happy. Around twenty-four, sick and tired from rejection and physical and emotional pain, Billy went back to his tribe and his mentor in order to find himself again and get some rest from the constant misery experienced in his life. In the meantime, he made a decent amount of money, so he arrived with beautiful gifts, and the village welcomed him like a hero. But after a few weeks, he ended up hanging out with only his mentor and a couple of local gay guys, which in some ways was expected, and he was fine with it. He wasn’t there to build a new life.

Bored but restored, after a few months, he again left his mentor, the old grandparents, and his Navajo refuge. Determined to create a life for himself that no one will be able to mess up, Billy decided to find a business partner and create his own label. He already knew many people in the industry, but he couldn’t trust any one of them, so he sought an investor. Unfortunately, instead of looking for a pure financial investor that would finance his business, he searched for a father that would lead him as well as finance his venture. He did this in the gay world, but this time in Los Angeles, and he fell in the same trap of several years before. The new guy, much richer than Dino and totally in love with Billy, gave him a label, invested a ton of money, and enabled him do what he desired the most—creating collections.

Billy was a genius as a designer but totally inexperienced in the business of making money with fashion. He designed beautiful collections, but they were unsuitable for creating any cash flow, and he failed season after season until he gave up. His boyfriend was rich enough and still terribly in love with Billy, so he didn’t care about losing money with the toy that he created for his lover. But Billy couldn’t bare the shame of his fiasco and left the business and the guy. He wasn’t really in love with him anyway; he just enjoyed his paternal protection. Back to square one and too ashamed to retreat to New Mexico, Billy entered in to the worst period of his life. He worked as a freelance, making the minimum required for survival, and started drinking, smoking, taking a lot of drugs, and sleeping around with as many guys as he could. He was in West Hollywood every night, partying and burning his talent as well as his brain cells. He was twenty-eight when he fell on the floor of a bar one night, totally drunk, releasing blood from every cavity of his body. In the ER, they found his gut perforated as well as his blood infected with HIV.

At first, he decided to die and then to live. The deadly virus was probably just what he needed to appreciate life. He cleaned himself from drugs and casual sex, and he got back to designing in a stable job, managing a totally new type of life. This was last year, and he’s kept clean, sober, and single, too worried to infect someone and too ashamed to fall in love. He also kept his job despite his constant anxiety and fears. It doesn’t pay much, but he can’t get much more in his state of constant mood swings and recurring depression. One of his best friends, a well-known publicist, told him about Luca a couple of months ago, and here he is, and . . . he jokes about all this. Respect the man! I would not be capable of joking for sure.

And . . . here we have another victim of the Bosurgi Syndrome. This guy with a different dad and a different mom would very likely be Valentino number two. Instead, he is here joking about his life’s fiasco. Maybe he is still in time to do something great. I’m sure Carla will do the magic! I wonder if I will be able to follow the impact of this work on our clients in the next part of their lives. It would be very rewarding as well as a great matter for a book or a show. We should probably consider this as one of the Bosurgi Syndrome Institute spin-off projects. I should talk to Luca about it.

Carla ended the first part of their work, telling Billy about their targets: “Our goal is to provide you the tools you need to become self-sufficient. We need to clear your codependency, and consequently your fears, anxiety, and need for external leadership, in order to enable you to create a successful fashion label with someone that knows how to run that business. This will allow you to capitalize on all your past experiences and mistakes, providing you with what you desire the most, the ability to create, to succeed, and to reach a powerful state of unconditional happiness. Correct?” Over these words, Billy changed expression stopping his jokes, looked Carla with the expression of a kid, betrayed already too many times, and asked with a little voice, “I wish! Do you really believe that could be possible? I’m rotten inside now. Isn’t too late?”

Carla took his hands smiling and promised that she will get him there in just a few weeks. Billy started crying quietly, almost ashamed to be emotional. He used his jokes to keep some power, but now he felt good to let go, surrendering all his power to Carla.

From the book the Mind Shaman

Morgan – a story of a super model suffering Adults Emotional Dependency (AED)

Morgan – a story of a super model suffering Adults Emotional Dependency (AED)

From the Mind Shaman – Morgan is only twenty-nine years old.  Born in San Diego, California, from hippie parents living in a commune, drugs, nudity, and free sex were around her throughout her childhood. She saw her parents having sex in between them and with many others from as far back as she can remember. She tried marijuana before talking, and she was initiated to sex herself when she was nine. Her life was fun though; she learned surfing when she was a toddler, and she lived always out and about with sheep and chickens surrounded by a lot of dancing and music. She grew up like a wild creature, everything was allowed, as long as it would not hurt others or nature. But certainly, she didn’t receive any structure, direction, or leadership.

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The many identities of an actor

The many identities of an actor

From the book The mind Shaman

Born and raised in Orange County, his parents were very proper middle-class people, rich enough to own a nice house with a pool and nice cars. They supported him in their own way throughout his life and they still are. It would have been a perfectly normal life if Danny didn’t have an older brother that made his childhood miserable, making him feel ugly, dirty, sloppy, and incapable. From his earliest memories, his brother constantly bashed him with the meanest comments and bossed him around, using him like his personal slave.

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The real cause of PTSD – the Bosurgi Syndrome

The real cause of PTSD – the Bosurgi Syndrome

From the book The Mind Shaman-

“Julie, let’s talk briefly about your case. Richard is a twenty-five-year-old young man who served as a US marine for four years, deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He came back to the US in 2011, all in one piece, highly decorated for his bravery in battle, but soon after he returned, he developed what it is commonly called PTSD. In the last two years, he has been highly depressed and twice attempted suicide.

“The actual trend in psychotherapy is to focus their healing on the traumatic memories assumed to be the origin of the disorder. In my opinion, they are focusing on the wrong culprit. The PTSD, in most cases, is caused by the Bosurgi Syndrome, triggered or enhanced by the traumatic events. Millions of people with the Bosurgi Syndrome feel like they are in a mental state comparable to PTSD, but they don’t have an actual trauma to blame.

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The Survival System

The Survival System

From the book The Mind Shaman

“The survival system is one of the most powerful and complex software applications of our mind. It has the task of protecting us from every possible physical and emotional risk and damage. Its actions are considered priority in the behavioral system since our life may depend on it. How does it work? It is database driven and uses a pre-compiled list of threats to spot and prevent danger.”

“Let me expand on this: from the time that we are in our mother’s tummy, our survival system collects a list of items that are considered dangerous. These may be all sorts of things like thoughts, feelings, emotions, people, animals, objects, sites, or some combination of those. Everything that may represent a threat is listed in it. I call this list the ‘database of the unsafe.’ This list is being constantly compared (24/7) with all of the data that we receive from our senses and our thoughts and covers every physical and emotional aspect of our daily life. If a match is identified, our survival system will believe that we are in danger and initiate a survival protocol.”

“Imagine seeing a tiger approaching. Your survival system will immediately associate the beast with danger and will start providing you a series of instinctive reactions to promote your safety.”

“Let’s carry on with our explanation. When the mind receives the warning of a possible threat, it will instruct the brain to evaluate the danger, and if it’s identified as a real threat, it initiates a ‘fight or flight’ strategy. This needs to be fast, and it’s done with top priority over all the other behaviors since it may save your life. Therefore, as soon as the defense protocol kicks in, the brain releases cortisol which is the fight-or-flight hormone, and also releases a warning to advise you of the danger. According to the level of hazard, this warning will create in you either a feeling of danger, anxiety, fear, or panic. In the rare case that we are confronted by real danger, this is lifesaving. If, instead, it is constantly triggered by false threats obliging the brain to overwork and constantly release cortisol and warnings, it becomes crippling.”

“According to my research, depression is the consequence of an overworked brain due to an overloaded survival system constantly reacting to false threats. Imagine that your brain has a CPU like a computer, which, like your Mac, is limited in its processing capability. Our brain is powerful and certainly oversized for our daily tasks, but imagine the overwork that it has to do if it’s forced to cipher through thousands of survival warnings on top off its current daily load. Like a computer that is processing too much data, the brain would have to slow down or crash. In order to avoid this, it’s obliged to make a choice between the survival requests and the daily tasks. Naturally, it prioritizes the first since survival is paramount to our existence, and it delays all the rest. This will reduce the processing time devoted to all the daily current activities to the extent that you will feel overwhelmed, confused, tired, compelled to procrastinate everything that is not essential, or, worse, it will make you depressed.”

“But what are these false threats? These are items in the ‘database of the unsafe’ erroneously listed as danger—typically the results of unconscious decisions made at a young age when we didn’t have the required experience or tools to properly assess our experiences. Or they may be correct assessments of threats that are now obsolete such as threats that were only dangerous in the first part of our life. I’ll give you a couple of examples of false threats: You are a young child and your mother constantly warns you to be careful around people because they can be dangerous. You may falsely associate people as threats, and every time that you are around people you will feel unsafe. Or you felt very hurt by your dad’s rejection and you may associate rejection as threat and therefore constantly fear rejection.” – The Mind Shaman

The Bosurgi Syndrome

The Bosurgi Syndrome

From the book The Mind Shaman –

“The Bosurgi Syndrome is a condition that describes an overextended codependency. Codependency is a natural stage in human psychological development and occurs in childhood. As part of our survival system, it acts to keep children psychologically dependent upon the parents in order to keep the children safe while they are physically and mentally vulnerable. It also allows children to be receptive to their parents’ tutoring and leadership. In essence, it is a tool offered by nature to our parents to protect, educate, and raise us. It also keeps us close to our parents so that we don’t wander away from home at an early age when we are not equipped to navigate the world.

“The codependency period starts at birth and ideally continues until puberty, around the age of twelve to fourteen. During the codependency period, the developing mind of the child is dependent upon the parents for leadership, security, validation, and guidance. Ideally, the parents will give the child leadership, unconditional love, validation and precise guidance, and will teach the child how to lead itself so that the child can begin to exit codependency around eight years old. The full transition to complete self-leadership should occur around puberty. Correct termination of the codependency period allows the young adult to become emotionally independent and equipped to lead and live an efficient and balanced adult life.

“The codependency period is naturally terminated by the mind, when the mind detects that the self-leading learning process has been completed. The mind will not terminate codependency until it is unconsciously confident that sufficient self-leadership is in place. Codependency may remain active in some cases throughout an adult’s entire life.”

“Liam, have you ever asked yourself why puppies are anxious when they are separated from their mother? The answer is at the base of my discovery. All mammals during the first vulnerable and inexperienced period of life are forced by nature to seek the protection of adults, typically their mother or both parents. This is a natural instinct that makes the puppy feel unsafe and anxious if it is unprotected—it is called codependency. Codependency is a healthy temporary instinct, part of the survival system, which disappears automatically when the puppy becomes a self-sufficient adult dog, able to be independent and protect itself.

“In the human, the codependency is much more sophisticated. It is active during our first twelve years of life with a variety of restrictive feelings. It makes us dependent on our parents because it is unsafe to be out in the world on our own. It makes us feel anxious and insecure if we are left unprotected. We look up to adults, and we seek their guidance and leadership. We need a lot of love and validation. So we act in ways to please grown-ups. We resent it if we are unguided, and we feel unlovable and not good enough if we are rejected. This instinct is supposed to weaken around seven or eight years old when we start developing our own reasoning process and it should terminate at puberty.

“During these first twelve years, nature has entrusted our lives to our parents. They are our protectors, tutors, guides, and source of love and validation. We depend on them to do their job. We deserve to receive their leadership, to constantly feel safe and to get unconditional and unlimited love, validation, and guidance.

“Unfortunately, many parents are unable or just unqualified to offer proper parenting to their children. The consciousness revolution of the sixties has dramatically transformed our society, making this task much more challenging than ever before. The result is that many kids grow up without the fulfillment of their basic emotional needs and without a good leadership model that can be replicated in the process of becoming adults. The consequence of this is that many young adults are reaching puberty without the leadership tools required to take charge over their own mind, which has been dependent upon their parents since birth.

“So at the time that they are supposed to become independent, they don’t have the self-leadership tools to do it. Their mind consequently doesn’t feel self-lead, and it makes the decision that it is unsafe to give up codependency. It holds onto it. The consequences are devastating. People grow in age, size and experience but the codependency is still active making them feel like a ten-year-old kid unsafe if unprotected, and always in search of external leadership, love, validation and guidance. Remember that codependency is the software program that is supposed to get you safely from age zero to twelve. If the program does not terminate, the body grows, but the mind keeps running assumptions that you are still a child.

“Imagine a ten-year-old girl looking like a thirty-year-old woman that is living an adult life. She feels inadequate, like a child in an adult world, terribly anxious because no one is protecting her, and tries to please other adults to get some love and validation, constantly facing the fear of been rejected, judged, or abandoned. She may also be angry and resentful because she is not receiving the care that she deserves. Sound familiar, Liam? This is the condition described by the Bosurgi Syndrome.”

“The Bosurgi Syndrome is an unnatural human condition that is the result of lack of self-leadership. Our mind is always seeking efficiency and likes to stay abreast with nature. So with enough discipline and education, people affected by the syndrome can establish the self-leadership required to beat the condition. It will take time, but it is certainly possible. Liam, if you want to help your friends affected by the Bosurgi Syndrome, teach them some of the lessons that you will receive during the next sessions. You will be surprised to see that several of them will get it and come out from the Bosurgi Syndrome as if by magic.”

“My school is progressing fast, and I hope that in a few years we will be able to open centers throughout the world. In view of the magnitude of the problem, this is just a drop of water in the ocean. My hope is that the leading schools of psychology will acknowledge the existence of the Bosurgi Syndrome as one of the main psychological issues of this era. This will focus the psychological research to explore my methodology as demonstrated on a large number of cases and provide the clinical statistical work, the rate of success, and the permanent results required to demonstrate the validity of the therapy. For this purpose, I can offer clinical researchers hundreds of clients that have seen major permanent changes in their lives because of CognitiveOS Hypnosis. Unfortunately, the scientific community’s validation process will be very slow and terribly argued, but I hope that one day the medical community will eventually realize the gravity of the problem and start thinking about the available solutions. We have, with CognitiveOS Hypnosis, a very effective method that could offer many licensed professionals a new set of tools to be able to beat the plague of codependency.

“I also hope that more mind researchers, after having embraced the concept of the Bosurgi Syndrome, will find other methodologies able to deal with codependency permanently. Of course, prevention will be the real solution. The Bosurgi Syndrome can be avoided altogether with careful parenting and education. This should become one of our government’s major efforts. It can also be easily treated as soon it manifests itself during the initial stages of the teenage period. I have great success with teens. They are fast and wonderful to heal. My hope is that we will see teams of psychologists helping teenagers to come off codependency.” – The Mind Shaman

A case of Bosurgi Syndrome explored

A case of Bosurgi Syndrome explored

From the book The Mind Shaman –

“Let’s redefine the issue in order to identify the steps required to clear it. Nineteen years ago, baby Liam was born. His mind was equipped by nature with a temporary instinct called codependency. This instinct had the task of protecting Liam during his period of physical vulnerability and allowed his parents to raise and educate him. To limit Liam’s freedom and make him dependent on his parents, codependency restricted Liam’s mind with tools such as lack of self-confidence, anxiety if unprotected, search for external leadership and validation, etc. This is a totally natural process that requires a precise parental response in order to provide the expected results. It is supposed to disappear at puberty, when it is no longer needed.

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A personal story

A personal story

competition

Hello,

My name is David. I am a CognitiveOS Hypnotherapist. I am happy to be able to write this story about how I came to appreciate life and everything about it. It hasn’t been easy and it took me quite a bit of turmoil and suffering, but I did it. I’m looking at all of my experiences now with a deep sense of gratitude. I was able to learn so much and arrive to this place of happiness. It is so liberating to be able to say that I love life and believe it. I never thought that I would ever feel this way. I have been on such an amazing journey to discover this that I would like to share with you my personal story about my past struggles and my solid resolution to them. Perhaps as you read you can identify with some of these struggles and, if you do, I can tell you with a deeply true heart that you can find healing and empowerment the way I did, through CognitiveOS Hypnosis. I believe in this so much that I have left my previous life behind to become a CognitiveOS Hypnotherapist.

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The Mind Shaman a novel about Luca Bosurgi’s work

The Mind Shaman a novel about Luca Bosurgi’s work

tms-cover

Luca Bosurgi, the founder of the Institute, has just published his new book about the young man who is trying to become happy and independent, but is caught in the emotional vicious cycle of ups and downs, in which downs take the significant part of his life. He finally breaks free going through the CognitiveOS Hypnotherapy and clearing the Bosurgi Syndrome, the cause of his anxiety, depression and fears.

The book is written as an interesting novel which reveals the inner workings of the mind and the mechanisms to fix them. The book is available on Amazon and is very helpful for those who are looking for personal growth, a different perspective on therapy, and wants to understand some aspects about the healing power of the clinical hypnosis.