NLP Dissociate - Fading Away Bad Past Events

Ever get that “Groundhog day” feeling about past events where you’re reliving all the past pain in glorious vivid detail?

If so, then there’s a few different tricks you can play on your brain so that it learns that the event is now in the past and therefore (until we discover time travel) will have to stay there, unchanged.

Your mind thinks that it is being helpful by reliving this past memory.

At the moment, you’re storing the movie of this bad past event and replaying it more often than television repeats the show “Friends”…

While you get practice, think of a past event that was just slightly upsetting – stubbing your big toe on a stone, getting caught in an unexpected downpour of rain, that kind of thing.

Now start replaying the event and on your mind’s DVD player, hit the pause button so the memory is now frozen. If you can’t do that totally, don’t worry. It’s OK if the “pause” isn’t 100% effective, so the movie just creeps forward one frame every few seconds.

While the movie of the event is on hold, in your mind’s eye, step out of the image so you’re just an observer. See yourself in the scene, frozen in time like a photo.

Next, fade the colour out of the image so that it’s black and white, like an old movie. It may also help to blur the image so that it’s out of focus. You can also make the image faded – like a photo that’s been left out in the sun for too long.

If there’s any sound still going on, press the “mute” button in your brain.

Then in your mind, either step back further from the image or move it further away. Eventually it will be so small that it’s like a small star in the night sky but without the twinkling. Just a small white dot about the size of a speck of dust.

If, in the future, you ever have cause to think about this past event, you’ll now only ever see it when you are stepped back from the event and then the event will only show as a small, black and white, still image.

Don’t spend too long doing this!

Your mind gets bored easily. So do the exercise quickly.

Don’t worry if you can’t see the image picture perfect. You’d be locked up in a padded room if you were able to visualise past events as though they were real! It’s enough just to get a sense of the event. The more often you do this, the easier it gets.