Free Yourself from Fears (9 page)

J Other people say that the future is most important. The past gives us resources to achieve the future we want. Our present desires depend on our future goals.

All of these views have some truth, but none is the whole truth.

Perhaps St. Augustine had the best insight in the quote at the FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

beginning of this chapter. The present can change our view of the past and open a new future that we never dreamed was possible. Equally, it can shut off future possibilities.

We are always in the present, and can choose to make the past or the future alive by thinking about it now.

The circles test

There is an interesting exercise developed originally by Thomas Cottle to discover how people approach time. It is known as the

“circles test.” Try it now. Draw three circles in any way you choose and label them, one representing the past, one representing the present, and one representing the future. Arrange these circles however you want to show the relationship between the three.

Draw your circles here:

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FEAR IN TIME

Now look at what you have drawn:

Which is the biggest circle?

This can give an indication about which of the three you find the most important.

Where are the circles?

The usual arrangement is for the past, present, and future circles to go left to right, in the same order as we read.

Do they all overlap? Is one circle detached from the others? Which circles have the biggest overlap?

What does this tell you about the way you see the past, present, and future interacting?

Unreal fear in the past

Unreal fear can come from the past. For example, a person may think back to something awful that happened and feel frightened again. An extreme case is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where a person has had a traumatic experience of war or torture, abuse, or extreme fear, and the memory continues to torment them, sometimes for many years afterward. They cannot deal with the trauma; the body replays it to try to master it. PTSD is beyond the scope of this book, but there are NLP patterns that have been used with good results with victims of torture and abuse (see the reference section on page 241).

Fear of the past usually comes from reviewing an unpleasant experience and feeling anxious about it; for example, giving a very bad speech and wincing every time you remember it. These memories can still intrude in the present and create anxiety. The following NLP pattern can help get rid of this anxiety and stop it spoiling your life in 65

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

the present. You cannot change the past, you can only learn from it.

This pattern helps you do that.

Skill for freedom

Learning from the past

This pattern helps you to learn from the past instead of being afraid of it. It is not suitable for a bad trauma or phobia.

1 Think back to the experience that still makes you anxious. As you do so, stay outside the experience. Make sure that you see yourself in that situation as if on a television or movie screen.You are dissociated from the picture.

2 As you watch this memory unfold from this dissociated point of view, notice what happened at the time, what other people did that contributed to the situation, and how it was impossible for you to control it all.

3 Come out of the memory and start to analyze what happened. How might you avoid similar circumstances in the future?

4 What were you trying to achieve? What did you want to happen?

5 With the benefit of hindsight, how should you have acted in order to get what you wanted?

6 Relive the incident again in your imagination
the way you wanted
it to happen. See yourself doing things differently so you get the result you want. Stay outside the experience; watch yourself acting in the situation on a mental screen.

7 When you are satisfied, imagine stepping into the situation and relive the incident in your imagination, the way you wanted. Be back there, 66

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seeing through your own eyes, acting the way you should have acted and getting the result you wanted.Then blank your mental screen.

8 Do the last step at least five times, reliving the event in the way you would have preferred it to happen, and then blacking out your mental screen at the end of each replay. Do it faster and faster each time.

9 You have just created a new learning experience from the old fear experience.

10 Finally, imagine a similar situation that you might have to face in the future. Rehearse it in exactly the way you want it to happen, associate into the experience, imagine yourself there seeing out of your own eyes and acting in the way you want. Feel it in your muscles.This mental rehearsal will prepare you for the future and ensure that you will not make the same mistake again.

Association and dissociation

The above pattern uses dissociation to separate you from the fear.

Dissociation is one of the most important resources against fear.

When you are
dissociated
, you are outside the experience. You have feelings about the experience.

When you are
associated
, you are inside your body looking out through your own eyes. When you are associated, you feel the feelings that go with the experience.

Being associated is like being in the thick of a game; being dissociated is like seeing the same game from the substitutes’ bench.

Association is good for enjoying pleasant memories and pleasant experiences. Dissociation is good for keeping a distance from feelings and learning from experience.

When you are in thrall to unreal fear, then you are associated into your mental pictures and this stimulates the fear response. Many of the mental strategies to deal with fear rely on your ability to dissociate from your mental pictures and look on them objectively.

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FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

Think of a pleasant memory.

When you think back to it, check what sort of picture you have in your mind.

Are you associated, seeing out through your own eyes?

Or are you dissociated, seeing yourself in the situation?

Whichever one it is, change it and try the other way.

Now change it back to what it was.

Which way do you prefer?

For most people, being associated brings back the feeling more strongly because they are inside their body and so more in touch with their feelings.

Mental rehearsal

The last skill for freedom also used mental rehearsal to help shape the future in the way you want. Mental rehearsal is very important in NLP. We will use this many times in patterns to get rid of unreal fear, because unreal fear is based on imaginings that make us feel bad. We can replace these with imaginings that will make us feel good. When you mentally rehearse what you want, bear the following principles in mind:

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Be clear and specific about what you want
. Imagine it in as much detail as you can.

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Relax
. Relaxation enhances the effects of mental rehearsal.

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Focus on the process as well as the result
. Concentrate on mentally rehearsing everything in detail and the goal will flow naturally from the process.

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Use all your senses
. The more senses you use, the more powerful the rehearsal will be. See the pictures as clearly as you can. Hear the sounds. Feel your body movements, including your sense of balance. Add tastes and smells if they are appropriate in the situation.

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Practice
. Perfect practice makes for perfect results. The more you use mental rehearsal, the more skilled you will become and the better it will work for you. Mentally rehearse the goal at least five times over the course of three days.

Fears of the future

Unreal fears are usually about the future—what
might
happen.

Unreal fear, like disappointment, needs adequate planning. As long as you are afraid of the future, it has not happened. This is reassuring. Being afraid of the future does not help; you need to change the way you think about the future to stop feeling afraid now, in the present.

The way to deal with fear of the future is to
act
. The following skill for dealing with future fear applies to many different fears. Use this pattern before any event that is making you anxious. During the actual event (for example if you feel afraid during public performance or flying in an airplane) you need to use the other skills such as relaxation (see page 212).

Skill for freedom

From fear to action

1 Acknowledge your anxiety.You feel afraid: do not try to deny it or argue it away.

2 Take some immediate action to calm the anxiety. Relax, slow your 69

FREE YOURSELF FROM FEARS

breathing, listen to relaxing music, or otherwise distract yourself. Fear and anxiety make it difficult to think clearly about an issue.

3 Realize that whatever you are afraid of has not happened yet, therefore it exists only as a possibility in your mind. Later you will look back on this fear and laugh.

4 Remember times when you were afraid but everything turned out well.What can you learn from those situations that will help you in this one?

5 Find out what you are imagining that is generating this unreal fear.

What pictures are you seeing?

What do they look like?

What sounds are you hearing?

What are the qualities of the sounds?

6 Once you are aware of exactly how you are creating the anxiety in your imagination, disrupt the pictures and sounds. Blank the pictures.

Turn the sounds off, just as you would with a TV program that you do not like.

7 Think about what you want to happen. Make it as clear and specific as possible.

8 Plan some action steps to make that outcome more likely. It is essential to
do
something. Only by taking action can you eliminate unreal fear.

9 Mentally rehearse what you want to happen, not what you fear might happen.

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Worry

Unreal fear of the future often appears as worry.

Worry is a choice, not a necessity. It can also be a habit. Worry does have a positive intention—to prepare you for the future and resolve the situation. Many people think it is good to worry, it shows that you

“care.” However, there are much better ways to show you care for someone than making up bad futures for them. While you manufac-ture bad possibilities, you remain powerless.

Worry has certain characteristics:

J There is a lot of thinking, but no action.

J Worry puts you in the spotlight so you feel responsible for what happens. But at the same time, you are powerless; you do not know what to do.

J Worry is not directed at a goal, it focuses on avoiding bad situations (which you create because they have not yet happened).

J There is no check from the external world. The moment you have information from the external world, you do not worry, you act.

The structure of worry

Once you understand the structure of worry, it will lose some of its power because now you know what is happening and you can stop it and move in a more constructive direction.

Worry always has the same structure. First, there is a trigger event that usually leads to some internal dialogue: “What if X were to happen?”

This internal dialogue usually leads to constructed pictures of the bad event described by the internal dialogue. These pictures are usually bright, colorful, and draw you into their story. You associate into them and once you are associated, you feel anxious, they are really happening now in your imagination.

Overleaf is the antidote to worry.

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Skill for freedom

From worry to action

1 Become aware of your internal dialogue. Instead of asking “What if X

were to happen?” ask instead “What will I do if X happens?”

This has three effects:

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It puts the events into the future.

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You dissociate from them.

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It changes your attention from the events to your actions.You can now plan what to do.

Sometimes this is enough for you to recognize the ridiculous scenarios and to stop spinning in the worry loop. However, if the scenarios are serious and likely and you need to plan, go on to the next step.

2 Make some dissociated pictures of what you can do to help the situation—see yourself in the pictures doing what is necessary to deal with it. Choose one possibility that makes you feel good.

3 Mentally rehearse that plan—imagine yourself taking that action.

Associate into this plan, feel yourself there doing what you have decided. After that, you can stop worrying because you have decided to do something to help yourself.

If you cannot find any plan with which you are completely satisfied, then pick the best you have. Sometimes it is enough to get more information about the situation.

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Hold Us Hostage

I have had thousands of problems in my life—most of which have
never happened.

MARK TWAIN

UNREAL FEARS ARE THOSE WE HAVE LEARNED to create in response to anchors. Once we understand how we
learn
them, we can use the same mechanism to
unlearn
them with NLP.

NLP proposes that we create unreal fears through our mental strategies. A strategy is a series of thoughts: pictures, sounds, or feelings with an outcome. The key to getting rid of unreal fear is to change your strategy.

Here is the basic strategy that creates unreal fear: J React to an anchor from the outside world.

J Make bright, colorful, moving pictures of events that you do not want to happen.

J Associate with them so you feel you are inside the mental picture you are creating.

J Try to fight the feeling, when you should be dealing with the process that generated the feeling.