A reality is some kind of aggregate structure, an association of many different components, that constitutes the world that the person perceives.
Any component of a reality can be regarded as a whole in itself or as a part of some bigger structure. It has both independent existence and is dependent on other circumstances. It is what we can call a Holon, something that is both a whole separate unit and a junior part, depending of how we look at it.
So, a reality consists of a lot of Holons with associations between them. We can say that the Holons are in themselves associations. That is, we decide to group a certain chunk of stuff particularly closely together and pretend that it is one thing or concept.
Before we get too deep into abstraction, let's have some examples. Joe is a person with a certain reality. That is, Joe has past experiences that have taught him certain things, and given him certain types of behavior. He has considerations about what the world around him is, and he sees it through certain perceptual filters. When Joe drives by the golden arches of McDonald's on the street certain associations in his mind become active. It triggers memories of the many times he has enjoyed a meal at McDonald's. It connects the taste and feel of a hamburger with his current state and he becomes hungry. Certain bodily movements have been associated with each other to mean "drive a car", so Joe turns the car into the parking lot quite automatically. And it seems perfectly real and normal to him to go through the actions that gets him a burger in his hand. After eating it he concludes: "That was nice", which is another set of associations.
A great number of things are associated in the mind. Perceptions, concepts, memories, words, feelings, considerations, identities, etc. But it is not just limited to what one has stored up inside one's "mind". One can associate other people in various ways, any part of the external world can be associated with any other part, and with any part of your inner world. Past, present, and future events in multiple dimensions can be associated with each other in an endless number of ways. A tremendous complexity is possible.
But, in all simplicity we are only talking about associations.
A person associates things a certain way. That is how she maintains her reality. Now, if the person comes in for processing it is probably because she wants to change something. She is not quite enjoying her reality as much as she would like to, and she would like for it to change.
There is nothing wrong with having a reality. All that might be needed is for it to be reconfigured a little bit. That is just a matter of optimizing the associations.
A person considers herself to be associated with certain things (people, places, subjects, behaviors, feelings, thoughts, etc.). And she considers certain things to be associated with each other in various structures. Other things she considers to be dissociated from herself, or dissociated from each other. And what she considers to be "things" in the first place are associations of certain qualities and symbols.
If Joe comes in for a session, maybe he wishes to handle that he gets "nervous" when he is "under pressure". First of all he associates some symbols with each other. "Nervous" is connected with "pressure". That doesn't tell us much though. Next step would be to find out what kind of package is behind each of those two entities. What package of perceptions constitute the state of "nervous"? What package of events, perceptions, thoughts, etc. constitute the package of being "under pressure"? Gradually we find out more and more about what Joe has associated with what. That will most likely give us a clue about what should be associated differently. To simplify things, maybe we find that Joe associates "pressure" with somebody saying words like "rush", or "hurry" to him. We can rewire those associations so that Joe might consider himself an active, valuable person because people give him responsibility for important matters. As to the nervousness we might find that the state Joe was talking about was one he had 20 years ago when he had a stomach ache. When we do some incident clearing on it the two things become dissociated. And we might help Joe to associate with some more useful feelings as a replacement. After we have done these things Joe will probably consider that his situation has been handled. What we did was to rearrange his associations.
This rearranging of associations we can call RESOCIATION. I just made that up, I couldn't find it in the dictionary, but it is pretty obvious. So, processing is basically about resociating stuff so that it is more optimum.
That is about the most simple and elegant model I have ever bumped into. It covers not only transformational processing, but anything that works (or doesn't work) in any therapy or practice whatsoever. It doesn't require you to believe anything weird in order to change. Actually anything you might believe would just be an association anyway, so it is also subject to change if it doesn't serve you.
Usually it is your internal reality that you would want to change, even when it might seem otherwise. Like, if you have trouble with "cars" it isn't really the cars that is the trouble, it is the associations you have made internally between perceptions, incidents, feelings, symbols, etc. In order to change this stuff you must first exteriorize it so you can consider it separate from yourself. When you have the associations clearly in view exterior to yourself you can then see what they are and you can change them to something better. Then you can again interiorize the associations and get on with your life.
This is a very simplified sequence of steps for change, then:
1. Notice an indicator that "X" needs to change.
2. Exteriorize your internal reality about "X" from yourself.
3. Perceive what associations the reality of "X" is made out of.
4. Change the associations of "X" into something you would rather be: "Y".
5. Interiorize the reality of "Y" back into yourself.
Or more simply: