In Prediction Error Minimisation theory, a key reason for the brain to work hard to avoid a prediction error, is because a prediction error is costly. It has a metabolic cost - the brain has to provide the energy required to reorganise itself to accommodate the newly perceived information.

This seems to apply well to the outcomes of inner inquiry. It is important, when engaging in inquiry, to have sufficient emotional resources available. Simple prediction errors (such as witnessing magic tricks) don’t require a huge amount of resource. However, more substantial prediction errors can require significant energy and time to adjust, as myself and many practitioners of Direct Pointing can attest. This can be experienced as a sudden rush of energy being available for an extended period, or equally as an uprush of tiredness lasting days or months.

in Lisa Feldman Barrett’s How Emotions are Made, I have been finding it explains more and more, and have been using it effectively in a range of therapeutic scenarios. After sharing my take on PEM, I know it is also being used in therapeutic contexts around pain and sleep disturbance.

How does this work? It can work at a number of levels of depth.

At the most simple, in a single session, I can lead a client through a simple exercise or two. I ask them to imagine something they struggle with, then ask them to notice how they feel about it - both physically (e.g. tension) and emotionally. Then, perhaps, I might invite them to notice how their thinking is affected by this. Then I might ask them how pleasant or unpleasant the thinking is. Then how pleasant and unpleasant the emotion and sensation is. Then, finally, which is less pleasant.

Now, there’s a specific outcome guiding me here, but it doesn’t matter whether they find it. What typically comes of this is people see how their experience is made up. They may also see how an expectation was wrong. E.g. it is common for people to assume that the emotion is more painful, but typically the thoughts are more so. (One client reported being able to get to sleep without 45mins of tossing and turning, just after doing this exercise).

So there are some very simple exercises that highlight the way our inner life is made up to a client. The aim here, is to trigger a Prediction Error event - that is, the brain has to rewire itself, adjust to a different way of perceiving something of our inner life.

For some clients, it seems that just one or two sessions (maybe 30mins) is sufficient to bring about a meaningful change to their experience of life - once a Prediction Error event has occurred it appears to persist longer than, say, the impacts of Mindfulness meditation.

Taking this further, we can start to look at emotions and positivity. In many psychological conditions, we give more attention to the negative in experience than the postive. Some simple exercises can help shift this balance, bringing greater ease. Again, the aim is to create a simple prediction error event, not necessarily in terms of how a client experiences something “bad”, but in terms of its relative size in relation to other things.

In this process, I am attempting to bring about a prediction error event for the client. That they see that something they had assumed is not actually correct. That way, their brain cannot but reorganise itself to take that observation into account.

This process goes deeper though. There are superficial prediction error events (e.g. witnessing a magic trick), then there are deeper ones (e.g. the one described above). Yet, it can go deeper still, particularly when it touches on the subject of identity.

As a client explores their inner world, and the relationships between different parts of that experience, I tend to ask them to notice who is doing the noticing. There is an observer observing experience. Then there is experience. Perhaps quite a few independent aspects of experience. But once we notice the observer, we also notice that there is an observer observing the observer. The client starts to see, in direct experience, that this matter of “who am I” is less straightforward than previously assumed.

Yet, it is extremely valuable to understand that, triggering such prediction errors has a metabolic cost. And because of that, it is important to make sure that the client is sufficiently emotionally positive, or more particularly, sufficiently emotionally resilient, to take any shock they may sustain from the surprise of it. Fortunately, there are many valuable tools that can be used to aid this preparation, many of which I am integrating into The Odoki Method.