Inquiry · “You Are Not Your Thoughts”
Shapiro's Floatback & Touchstone
To trace a present-day emotional overreaction back through its image, negative belief, emotion and body sensation to the earliest ‘touchstone’ memory that set the pattern — making the unconscious root of a current trigger conscious.
Floatback & Touchstone in 6 lines: Take a present overreaction. Pin down its image, the negative belief about yourself it carries, the emotion, and where it sits in your body. Holding all four — especially the body feeling — let your mind float back to the earliest time you felt exactly this way. The early memory that surfaces is the touchstone — the root the trigger echoes. The goal is understanding, not blame: what couldn’t be processed then. Track triggers between times in a TICES log (Trigger / Image / Cognition / Emotion / Sensation). Always close with a calming tool — and do deep work with a therapist.
What it is
In Getting Past Your Past (2012), Francine Shapiro — originator of EMDR — teaches lay readers a piece of EMDR’s case-conceptualisation: how to find the “touchstone” memory behind a present-day overreaction.
EMDR’s underlying model ( Adaptive Information Processing) holds that when an experience can’t be fully processed, it gets stored “stuck” with its original image, belief, emotion, and body sensation, and later situations that resemble it re-trigger that whole package.
The Floatback is the bridge: you take a current trigger, set up its image / negative belief / emotion / body sensation, then let your mind float back to the earliest time you felt the same way.
The early memory that surfaces is the touchstone — the blueprint. You track these triggers between sessions with a TICES log. Shapiro’s framing is striking: the aim is not to blame people for your pain, but to discover what couldn’t be processed then that can be processed now. This entry covers the self-inquiry/insight use only — reprocessing the touchstone is full EMDR done with a clinician.
The Method
A. The Floatback (to find the touchstone) 1. Pick a current trigger. Choose a recent situation where your reaction felt bigger than the event warranted.
- Set up the present disturbance — the TICES components: - Image (T): the picture that best represents the worst of it now. - Negative Cognition (C): the negative belief about yourself it carries — “I’m not safe,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m powerless,” “I’m unlovable.” - Emotions (E): name the feelings. - Sensation (S): where you feel the disturbance in your body, and how strong (you can rate distress 0-10, EMDR’s “SUDs”).
- Float back. Hold the image, the negative belief, the emotion, and especially the body sensation, and let your mind drift back: “When is the earliest time I can remember feeling this same way — this same feeling in my body and this same belief about myself?” Don’t force a memory; let one surface.
- Note the touchstone. An earlier event — often from childhood — usually comes up carrying the same belief/feeling/sensation. That’s the touchstone: the root that the present trigger is echoing. You now understand the pattern (its origin), which is itself often relieving and clarifying.
- Stabilise to close. Because this can stir distress, end by using a self-control tool — the Safe/Calm Place, Lightstream, or Spiral — to settle. B. The TICES Log (ongoing self-tracking)
Between formal sessions, keep a weekly log. For each disturbing experience, jot brief notes in columns: Trigger / Image / Cognition (negative belief) / Emotion / Sensation, plus a 0-10 distress rating.
Over time the log reveals the recurring negative beliefs and the cluster of triggers feeding off the same touchstone(s). (Sourcing note: the touchstone concept, the image / negative-cognition / emotion / body-sensation set-up, the floatback “earliest time you felt this way” instruction, the TICES log columns, and the “not to blame but to process what couldn’t be processed then” framing are Shapiro’s documented EMDR method as presented for self-help in Getting Past Your Past. Faithful paraphrase; no long quotation.)
Source & Lineage
Francine Shapiro (1948-2019), originator of EMDR (1987) and its Adaptive Information Processing model. Touchstone identification and the Floatback belong to EMDR’s Phase 1 (History-taking / case conceptualisation); the affect bridge behind the floatback is an older hypnotherapy technique (Watkins) that EMDR adapted.
The TICES log is EMDR’s standard between-session tracking tool. Shapiro brought all three to the public in Getting Past Your Past (2012). The “early memory sets a self-belief that present life re-triggers” logic overlaps strongly with schema therapy and cognitive core-belief work.
The Traditions' versions
Affect bridge (hypnotherapy, Watkins) — hold a present feeling and let it lead back to its origin; the direct ancestor of the Floatback.
- Schema therapy / core-belief work (CBT) — current triggers expose early-formed negative self-beliefs and the memories that seeded them.
- Inner-child / origin-memory work (psychodynamic & humanistic) — tracing an adult reaction to a formative early scene.
- The Work (Byron Katie) / inquiry methods — interrogating the belief behind a charged reaction (different mechanism, same target: the belief).
- Journaling / trigger logs (CBT thought records) — the TICES log is a structured cousin of the CBT thought record.
Common refinements
Trying to reprocess, not just map. This entry is for finding the root and understanding the pattern — not for grinding on a traumatic memory alone. Reprocessing is clinician work.
- Forcing a memory. Let the body sensation + belief lead you back; don’t manufacture a “correct” childhood scene.
- Treating the touchstone as certain fact. It’s a working hypothesis about a pattern; memory is reconstructive. Avoid building blame or certainty on it.
- Skipping closure. Always end with a stabilisation tool — surfacing roots can stir distress.
- Vague TICES entries. Keep them specific and brief; patterns emerge from the recurring negative belief, so log it every time.
- Doing it alone with major trauma. Get professional support.