COCT MINISTRY
CHURCH OF COGNITIVE THERAPY
The Church Of Cognitive Therapy (COCT) aligns with global entheogenic spiritual communities that explore the sacred use of psychoactive substances beyond recreational contexts. The church emphasizes safety, ethical guidelines, and holistic mental and spiritual well-being while integrating traditional plant-based sacraments with therapeutic and spiritual objectives.
COCT Ministry is a modern entheogenic secular, religious, and spiritual movement that blends cognitive psychology, shamanic wisdom, and ceremonial plant medicine, offering a structured yet flexible path toward personal enlightenment, spiritual connection, and introduction to a global community of participation.
COCT Ministry is a pastoral trauma healing platform originally organized to heal veterans with PTSD, cancer, and addiction in 2003. Its origin was constructed using cognitive therapy, neuroplasticity, ancient ceremonial indigenous practices, and aligning with the animist belief in a Universal Divine Life Force that animates all things. These practices and beliefs were instrumental in curing a long period of depression and trauma for the organizer. The ministry's lineage is heavily rooted in veteran-to-veteran-led religious and spiritual practices.
PTSD Jar Therapy is effective for managing severe traumatic events
PTSD JAR THERAPY
PTSD can be managed safely and effectively with-in a short period of time even for those whose suffering is severe. Managing it works for combat veterans with 0-100% disability and everyone else. It is so simple most have an issue just starting.
We must always remember PTSD is something that we must managed for the rest of our lives, but that dose not mean it has to manage us the rest of our lives. This is a safe and effective tool for PTSD management.
PTSD jar therapy is based on classical conditioning, which can trigger an alternative (safe) response to your traumatic event. By triggering a different response to your traumatic event it allows it to move to a safe area rather than triggering an emotional reaction that can be explosive and dangerous to anyone around you.
Setting it up
What I will need
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pen
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small notebook
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large wide-mouth mason jar
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safe place
Your Traumatic Event
Think about the event in detail, then write it down in a small notebook that can fit in a large wide-mouth mason jar
This step is the most difficult. Recalling traumatic events is not something people like to do. Most people would rather do anything before recalling some event that has paralyzed themself in some way or another.
Write It Down
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Write the event down in the small notebook
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Place it in the jar and seal the lid
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Place jar in a safe place
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A safe place should be somewhere you know no one else will have access, but where you can get to it later
How it works
When you flash on the traumatic event, then imagine it being written in the small notebook. Then imagine the small notebook being seal up in the mason jar and the jar being kept in a safe place. After a 100 times of repeating this process your mind and brain will create a safe sealed location in your brain for this event and will allow you to begin managing your life again free from the chaos that comes when we allow these events to dictate our emotional behavior. This exercise is called classical conditioning.
What is Classical Conditioning
Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)
Classical conditioning is a reflexive or automatic type of learning in which a stimulus acquires the capacity to evoke a response that was originally evoked by another stimulus.
Contributors
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Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936)
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John B. Watson (1878 – 1958)
Key Concepts
Several types of learning exist. The most basic form is associative learning, i.e., making a new association between events in the environment[1]. There are two forms of associative learning: classical conditioning (made famous by Ivan Pavlov’s experiments with dogs) and operant conditioning.
Pavlov’s Dogs
In the early twentieth century, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov did Nobel prize-winning work on digestion[2]. While studying the role of saliva in dogs’ digestive processes, he stumbled upon a phenomenon he labeled “psychic reflexes.” While an accidental discovery, he had the foresight to see the importance of it. Pavlov’s dogs, restrained in an experimental chamber, were presented with meat powder and they had their saliva collected via a surgically implanted tube in their saliva glands. Over time, he noticed that his dogs who begin salivation before the meat powder was even presented, whether it was by the presence of the handler or merely by a clicking noise produced by the device that distributed the meat powder.
Fascinated by this finding, Pavlov paired the meat powder with various stimuli such as the ringing of a bell. After the meat powder and bell (auditory stimulus) were presented together several times, the bell was used alone. Pavlov’s dogs, as predicted, responded by salivating to the sound of the bell (without the food). The bell began as a neutral stimulus (i.e. the bell itself did not produce the dogs’ salivation). However, by pairing the bell with the stimulus that did produce the salivation response, the bell was able to acquire the ability to trigger the salivation response. Pavlov therefore demonstrated how stimulus-response bonds (which some consider as the basic building blocks of learning) are formed. He dedicated much of the rest of his career further exploring this finding.
In technical terms, the meat powder is considered an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the dog’s salivation is the unconditioned response (UCR). The bell is a neutral stimulus until the dog learns to associate the bell with food. Then the bell becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS) which produces the conditioned response (CR) of salivation after repeated pairings between the bell and food.
John B. Watson: Early Classical Conditioning with Humans
John B. Watson further extended Pavlov’s work and applied it to human beings[3]. In 1921, Watson studied Albert, an 11 month old infant child. The goal of the study was to condition Albert to become afraid of a white rat by pairing the white rat with a very loud, jarring noise (UCS). At first, Albert showed no sign of fear when he was presented with rats, but once the rat was repeatedly paired with the loud noise (UCS), Albert developed a fear of rats. It could be said that the loud noise (UCS) induced fear (UCR). The implications of Watson’s experiment suggested that classical conditioning could cause some phobias in humans.
Additional Resources and References
Resources
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McSweeney and Murphy: The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Operant and Classical Conditioning.: This brand new book contains an up-to-date, inclusive account of a core field of psychology research, with in-depth coverage of operant and classical conditioning theory, its applications, and current topics including behavioral economics.
References
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Mackintosh, N. J. (1983). Conditioning and associative learning (p. 316). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Pavlov, I. P., & Anrep, G. V. (2003). Conditioned reflexes. Courier Corporation.
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Watson, J. B. (2013). Behaviorism. Read Books Ltd.