Eliminate Fear

Of particular interest are the techniques for overcoming fear. All fear really is, is a warning signal that you’re about to experience something that you’ve anchored to pain. A phobia is the same thing but with a much stronger anchor. So all you need to do to overcome fear is to break that anchor - change the feelings you’ve associated with that situation. This is called “dissociation”.

So without further ado, here is the NLP Fast Phobia/Trauma Cure! This is a dissociation technique that relieves fears/phobias and removes unwanted emotional residue from a traumatic situation.

• find a place free of distractions where you can concentrate.

• relax.

• anchor yourself to something that gives you powerful feelings of confidence, power, safety, etc.

• imagine yourself sitting in a movie theatre. Take some time to experience this fully. Examine the decor, the
screen, the people seated around you.

• pick an experience that you want to dissociate. For a fear/phobia, if you don’t know the original trauma that caused your problem, just think of any time when you experienced the unwanted feelings.

• take a “snapshot” of that experience and place it on the screen.

• take some time to examine the submodalities of the image. Alter them so that the image is less intense (make it black and white, dim, small, far away, two-dimensional, and if it is from your own eyes, change it so that it is from the viewpoint of a passing stranger, or a bird, or God).

• now make the snapshot into a movie where all the frames have the same qualities as the first one. It’s important that the movie not be about something you’re afraid of, but about you experiencing the thing you’re afraid of.

• imagine yourself floating up out of your body into the projection booth so that you’re looking down at your body in the theatre.

• start the movie from up there in the projection booth. Remember, you’re watching yourself sitting in the theatre, watching a movie.

• Once the movie is done, float back down into your body. Then, imagine yourself stepping back into the
experience.

• The first time this experience happened, you were overcome by the feelings these stimuli caused and were unable to evaluate the situation properly. This time, as an observer, go back over the experience and re-evaluate it, seeing it as it really was.

• Now, imagine the movie “rewinding” in your mind. See all the events happen in reverse. When you’re finished, jump back to the end and rewind it again, but faster. Keep rewinding the movie until you can do it in the space of about a second, then rewind it again at that same speed five more times.

• Take some time to enjoy not being afraid or upset any more
Now for some notes. It’s essential that you remain impartial (emotionally detached) throughout the movie. If you find yourself still experiencing the fear, you’re going to have to experiment with it a bit until you get it right, especially if you have a very vivid imagination. Remember to stay in your seat and don’t become part of the movie till it’s over.

Some things you can try:

• play around with the submodalities; the ones I gave might be wrong for you.
• imagine that you’re in your seat sideways and watching out of the corner of your eye.
• imagine that your best friend/loved one is there watching it with you.
• imagine that there are a bunch of clowns in the theatre with you, or in the background of the movie (don’t do this if you’re afraid of clowns)
• imagine that the person in the movie is you but the person in the theatre is a stranger, or vice-versa.
• imagine that the movie has subtitles and/or silly piano music playing at the same time.
• imagine you’re driving along a highway and the movie is playing on a drive-in way off in the distance.
• imagine the screen is loose and flapping in the wind.

Be creative. This technique WILL work under the right conditions, but it’s different for everybody.

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