Our brains learn both consciously and unconsciously and create reflex actions as response to the environment. We become trained to respond so some things without even think.

But some times those reflexes persist when they are no longer necessary.

I have this problem with temporary situations creating a permanent imprint in my mind long time after the situation no longer exists.

For example, some years ago my wife’s grandmother was suffering the last stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She was almost blind, but she didn’t remember it, so she would try to walk, trip and fall. We tried many ways to restrain her but she always managed to wander in the middle of the night and bump into something. During that time I developed a kind of sixth sense that would make me jump off the bed every time she made a noise.

Now she has been dead for some years, but I still wake up startled when a cat jumps down the coach in her former room. It takes me a few second to remember there is cause for alarm. It’s like the mechanism created back them is still active and I don’t know how to turn it off.

I know Satanists use ritual to purge themselves of some unwanted remains of religious and societal conditioning.

I would like to know if any Satanists here have experiences deprogramming unwanted reflexes off their system.

Hm, standard extinction training is the best solution I know of. I suppose what you would need to do is get a recording of some suitably loud noise (but not so loud that it would normally wake someone up) and set it to go off every so often through the night. I'm not sure how often it would need to be but I'd guess somewhere between every 10 minutes and every hour.

After a week or two your mind should adjust to being awakened by the noise and stop waking you up. That's the theory, anyway.

Thanks for the idea, but I don't mean just that particular case, but in general. How to deal with conditioned reflexes in general.

Have you thought of programming your wakeup to not respond to cirtain sounds? One of the things about our mind is that we can control what we respond to. Sounds are but one of many things that are a conditioned responce.

That is one of the things that seperates us from the lower thinking animals. We can program our responces, it sounds like you need to reprogram your sound responces.

Think in your sleep, without me being awake what could make such a sound? Also think it can't be your wife's grandmother, as she is dead. Does the noise require me to get up? if not stay asleep.

You might need to change the wording to suit you, as this does work. We can think about what is going on around us, and know exactly how to respond.

I have done this and know it works.

Well, some "reflexes" are genetic (all "real" reflexes are, but learned actions that are done more or less unconsciously are also referred to as reflexes), and impossible to get rid of. (The one that doctors test by whacking your knee with the little mallet comes to mind) But for learned reflexes, or ones that we're born with but can get rid of (such as the reflex in infants that will cause them to make a suckling action if you stroke their cheek), psychologists generally remove through extinction training.

The basic idea is to present whatever stimulus causes the reflexive action in a manner or setting where the response would be illogical, socially unacceptable, or otherwise "wrong" to the subject. For instance if the subject has a profound fear of snakes, and you hold up a plush snake at them, the subject's subconscious may recognize the object as a snake and attempt to invoke a fear response, but the subject's higher brain knows it's just a stuffed toy and can suppress it much more easily than if a live snake had been presented. The idea (in the case of phobias) is to slowly work your way up the spectrum to a more and more realistic representation of what the subject fears as the subject learns to cope with each one, until you get to the feared object itself.

With other reflexes it might not be so much about "working up" so much as simply placing the subject in a condition where the stimulus is triggered, but it would be completely unacceptable for the response to be invoked. An example may be people who can't use public restrooms. Just fill their bladders up and shove them into one and lock the door until they use the toilet. This probably isn't the best method for getting rid of that particular response, but it's an example. >.>

In either case the idea is to show the subject that the response is not a necessary reaction to the stimulus. So however that is best accomplished is usually the way it's done.

I think the word your looking for is compulsion.

Now, for that specific situation, The trick might be to condition your mind to remain alert to unusual noises -for safety reasons, while still screening out general background noise.

Perhaps you can leave a television or radio on all night for a while, and eventually replace that with a small fan that generates white noise.

But generally speaking, ameliorating an undesired compulsion can be easily achieved through hypnosis.

Cheers

Interesting topic.
I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
I find that those conditioned responses, especially the ones caused by tragic past events, can be your worst enemies. And not just by depriving you of sleep, but also by depriving you of many other valuable things in life.
Some of those conditioned reflexes have become a way of survival (be it physical or emotional), and it requires a lot of self conviction to deprogram them.
As it has been mentioned, cognitive-behavioral psychology is the most efficient way to go when it comes to conditioning.

Personally though, being the analytic mind-fucker that I am, I believe in the process of mourning: purging myself of anger, sadness and guilt by "accepting" the wrong that has been done to me and "letting go".
I guess that it is a form of ritual.

Of course, the more superficial kinds of conditioning (such as- being afraid of dogs after being attacked by one) are truly best handled by exposure therapy.

I am not an expert...I only play one in my head...however, the very fact that you are conscious of what you want to achieve is the first step. I doubt there is one thing you can do that will instantly "cure" you.

I am going through something kind of similar...perhaps. I would suggest reminding yourself, as you try to go to sleep, that you hear noises, and there is no reason to respond unduly. Given time, I would imagine it will decrease.

You may be familiar with the basic concepts of NLP (you can find a good introduction here ).
What happens in these cases of reflexes is that we create an "anchor": a sound, a kinestetic sensation, an image or virtually anything becomes connected to some kind of emotion, so, every time we perceive the same thing we experience the same emotion. Sadly what happens is that quite often anchors are negative ones, as in your case. Though we can easily create positive anchors that delete and replace the negative ones.
How you do that? Very easy. What is the good emotion you are looking for? In your case could be calmness, or relaxation or sleepiness (it's up to you to find what you want). Create this emotion within yourself. Let's say, for example, the emotion is calmness; remember an occasion in which you felt this at a very high grade. Remember very well what you felt in that occasion, what you were experiencing at that time. Re-create it again in your mind, recreate the physical feelings that for you are connected to calmness. Intensify them, and when they are very vivid and intense for you, only at that point, create the physical anchor. Use the same sound, or image, or feeling that creates your negative feeling, but this time experience this physical feeling while experiencing the positive emotion you have chosen.
At this point the two are connected: you basically created a new connection, positive and useful this time, between a mental state and a physical feeling. This will delete completely the old connection.
The process can be repeated as many times as you want.
You may find much more information about this anchor tecnique in all the vast NLP literature.
Hope this can help.

I guess I failed to explain myself clearly.

The case of the old lady falling down was an example I used to illustrate the way you develop a reflex as response to a situation. That is not the problem I have, it was used as an example only. The particular reflex I want to eliminate is a different one, not related with cats jumping down the couch in the night.

I'm grateful for the answers I'm getting, but what I really wanted to know was if someone here had used Greater Magic to address a problem of this kind, in the same way some use the Black Mass to ritually wash away the last emotional remains of a religious upbringing.

Well, I'm sure Greater Magic could certainly help in getting rid of unwanted reflexes, but due to the nature of how reflexes are wired in the brain I don't think a ritual alone would be enough to rid yourself of one. You can most certainly supplement your efforts to get rid of the reflex with ritual, but it's gonna take good old fashioned psychology to get the ball rolling.

While I understand your problem,to the extent a perfect stranger can,I don't think it would be very safe to program yourself to not wake up when something goes "BANG" in another room of the house.

What if just this one time it were an intruder? There is a reason we wake up when we hear loud noises,survival instinct.

Unfortunately we live in a world with criminals,who would rather take what you worked for,even at the expense of spilling your blood,rather than work for it themselves.

I would look at this little "speedbump" as more of a fortress wall.

Old_Pig I have not read any of the other replies, sometimes its better to offer some fresh perspective. I do however have extensive training in martial arts, and a technique I use when training others to overcome the reflex action of 'flinching' (read cringing) when suddenly attacked is by repeatedly striking at them when they are not expecting such an action until it becomes wired in their brain to respond appropriately.

It sounds as though you are having a similar reflex action which has developed from your desire to protect your relative from physically harming herself.

Another technique, used in this case to help individuals overcome their fear of the pain of being struck by an attack is through the process of repetition but this time allowing the student to become conditioned to strikes landing on the student in a controlled manner.

So... What I am saying is that you need condition yourself over a period of time so that the brain can re-wire itself to not repeat this unwanted behavior pattern.

I would suggested having your partner and/or some trusted friends agree to surprise you suddenly and also subtly on a regular basis until you feel as though you have overcome your problem.

Of course this should be done in a sensible and appropriate manner and not overdone to an extreme because that flight or flight response is there for a reason and that reason is self preservation.

Sorry for the delay, I wanted to consult a Psychiatrist I know and get some names for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson

Watson and Skinner (And their influences like Pavlov, if his name rings a bell) are the men to read for behaviorism and reflex study. To abridge everything they wrote as it pertains to your interests- Desensitization by repetitive confrontation. If you want to stop flinching, get someone to startle you over and over again. But behavior therapy goes a bit more in depth than that, and the writings of those guys will explain how, and get into application toward other situations (Sitting in a small room doesn't help all claustrophobics, it just makes their lives hell and they need other treatment). If you'd like me to ask the aforementioned shrink with more specificity than an internet forum allows, feel free to PM me.

If you seek a pure Greater Magic solution, or this is only a theoretical sort of thing, their work will still have some ideas. Ritual might even be the mitigating factor in repetitious stress failure- If the claustrophobic performed a ritual to enter, remain in, and leave the room that supplemented their strength to bear being there and motive for repeating the experience, it may work after all.

Interesting territory, at least to me. If the info is for your own practical application, then we share art as a ritual medium. Rather than confront it yourself, Pinton might be a good "Guinea" pig.

Overwrite your negative associations with those of sexual arousal.

It's quite simply accomplished when you have a spouse or partner bump and slide onto you in the middle of the night.

Quickly awoken, alert, and aroused.

Rinse and repeat. Problem solved.