How to Actually Do DNRS Wrong
An overwhelmingly common worry that many have about doing DNRS is that they're accidentally doing the program wrong. As a perfectionist who desperately wanted to heal and do it "right," I knew that fear.
But generally speaking, that is just not possible--if you do what the program says to do, you literally cannot do DNRS "wrong." Many worry about missing a word or choosing the wrong word or missing a step in the practice or missing a POP (a term that the program explains) or missing one day of practice. But that does not at all equal doing the program wrong--don't miss the forest for the trees, or the leaves, or the veins in the leaves.
That said, there is one sure-fire way to do DNRS "wrong": by not actually doing it.
If you only do half of the steps of each practice round, if you come at it half-heartedly and already defeated, if you only ever do the practice for a few minutes a day instead of the allotted hour, if you only do it a couple days a week or a few days a month, or if you give up before the minimum 6 month goal.... In short, if you don't take it seriously and just simply do not do it. That would count as "doing it wrong."
And good news to all afraid that they're accidentally doing it wrong: those are some pretty drastic underachievements that anyone who's worried about doing it "wrong" probably isn't even remotely close to falling into.
Some obvious, bonus ways to do DNRS wrong include doing exactly what the program instructs against:
... Things like:
- talking about symptoms and how you're doing,
- continuing to be negative in words and thoughts,
- still thinking of and referring to yourself as a warrior or overcomer or someone who is healing (aka not sick but not healthy and still struggling--more on that in this post),
- assigning ownership to symptoms and illness-related words like "my trauma," and
- trying to retrain your brain around things that you assume must be part of your daily life forever, like trauma responses, sensitivities, and other symptoms.
When you start fearing that you might be doing the program wrong or that seemingly delayed improvements mean it's "not working" (which then leads you to fearing you're "doing it wrong"), but you are doing it exactly as described by Annie, remember this:
Your desire to heal must be greater than your fear of it not working or your fear of "doing it wrong." All that is up to you is to heed what's taught and do your best--and your best will increase as time goes on.
Please remember that the 6 months will pass anyway. You can pass it in paralysis, afraid to try and fail; you can pass that time in practice but fear that it won't actually work and that you're doing it wrong; or you can pass it doing the program faithfully and expectantly. It will pass at the same speed--and it is up to you which you comes out at the other side of those slow but fast 6 months: the same suffering you, or a brand new you.
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More to see:
My DNRS FAQs | all my DNRS posts | the DNRS website