Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Tearing Out Pages from Your Life Book


During my recent hypnotherapy practicum, one particular tool (more like a metaphor) drew my attention. It was in line with my future book project on “Coping with Realities”. The tool was an aid to deal with past painful emotions or memories. If not properly dealt with, these become heavy baggage with a grave negative impact on one’s personality, emotions, and behavior. The general gist of such a hypnotic exercise is to bring awareness that whatever already passed is past; and cannot be changed. What we can certainly change is what we can do now. The exercise works best if you are a visual person and have the ability to imagine taking a trip through your mind’s eye into the unconscious mind. A hypnotist can guide you through, but you can also do it alone. It goes something like this:

Take some time to relax a bit, relax, yes, breath, relax, more and more…..
Close your eyes, and then imagine you could scan the inside of your mind. You’ll have all sorts of ideas that flow in and out; come to the spotlight then fade. That’s your conscious mind. It has only a limited amount of information lying in your immediate awareness. Scan your mind further. You’ll find a corridor leading to a closed door; one that only you have the key for. As you open that door, you’ll find a big dark room. You can barely see that its walls look like a vast library with books arranged all over. You can smell antiquity in that room. You can hear very faint voices from your past echoing. You feel cool in that room; not cold, not hot. Look around. That’s your unconscious mind. It’s your whole life kept in record in there; organized perfectly in order. You can hardly remember all the details each small book has, but in these, all your past experiences are documented. These have shaped your present automatic habits of thought, behavior, feeling, skills, reactions and even your perception. All constitute your implicit knowledge. Whatever you’ve learned in the past was largely at this unconscious level. Your unconscious mind is very secretive (it wouldn’t easily disclose the books to your conscious mind; hence, the locked door). It is also very clever at disguising and distorting many experiences (especially traumatic ones). You can, nonetheless, access all this data; albeit, with some difficulty.

Keep imagining…. There’s a long reclining chair in that room. Next to it, a big hard cover book rests on a side table. That’s the summary book of all your life experiences. It includes all past episodes assembled in chapters. Lie down on that chair. Hold that book and look inside. Flip through those pages. What do you see? Some pages are probably colorful carrying many wonderful memories. Others are dark and gloomy involving hurtful experiences. Pause a bit on those. Do you really need to leave those dark pages in there? They spoil the whole book of your life. You’d rather have it all colorful, don’t you? They’ve had their negative impact, but that’s long gone now. Look thoroughly for these episodes and decide that you don’t want to see them as part of your life any longer. Let’s tear out those pages! Yes, each and every one of them. Do it with force! Are you through? Your book is missing some pages now, but you have many more white pages to fill with colorful bright images and memories from now on. Wouldn’t you want to do that? Close that book now and carry those torn pages as you walk out of that room. Lock the door and choose to dispose of these in the closest recycle bin you can see in your mind’s eye. Come back from your short journey to where you are now gradually. Slowly open your eyes. You’re fully alert at this moment and feel fantabulous in every possible way, aren’t you?

There….. If you follow these steps while taking your time, I bet it brings you much relief and drastic life changes. This is how you deal with harsh realities that are past and gone. You can’t change these, but you can eliminate their negative impact by dragging them out of that store. They don’t need to define your life. You choose to let these go and free yourself by forgiving. Look at you! You have reassumed control over your life course at present. No such past episodes matter any longer. Your unconscious mind wants to be your best ally; befriend it. It’s only the vast library that helps you easily act, feel, perceive, and react. How else do you think you learn? When what you learn sabotages your growth, revisit your unconscious mind and do what’s necessary to remove that imprint from your life book. Tear out those dark pages. What’s important now is to author the rest of the blank pages with only good memories and bright colors….

Voila…. Just by reading this, you have indulged in some sort of self-hypnosis :) and if you had let yourself imagine the whole scenario, it would have definitely put you in a more empowered mind set :)

8 comments:

  1. Thanks Dania for the trance ! :)

    I am however an auditory person. Could you kindly suggest a similar scenario for people like me who find it hard to visualize ?

    regards

    khalid

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks forleaving a comment Khalid :)
    You can be more of an auditory person, but you still can engage other senses :) How about you record this scenario in your own voice (while inserting the necessary sound effects) and then listen to it again while engaging some of the other less dominant senses :)
    It will work. Give it a shot and please let me know how it goes :)
    Dania

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Dania
    I have been reading about NLP and one of the things I came across was how to develop your visual sense. I've done the exercise you mentioned and it was useful. I have to say that the more I read in NLP the more I get more intrigued. I used to think that it was some kind of pop psychology and has no scientific bases. I think it is more than that and Erickson- who I think is the father of this discipline- was a real genius. I am reading these days "Get the life you want" by Bandler. It is a good book for a beginner like me.

    I notice that you are an educationalist as well and your students' testimonials are excellent...Do you have give your students any NLP advice to improve their learning and preparation for exams?

    I've found this book on NLP and accelerated learning but it is too big !! What do you think?

    http://www.oxyshare.com/get/137711199444cdea5ba1687/How To Get Ahead.pdf.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi again Khalid :)
    So you're more into NLP: that's great. It's a life changing field. I found out that I use a lot of NLP without realizing until I started reading more about it :) I got introduced to it through Anthony Robin's book: Awaken the Giant within. I highly recommend this book. In fact I am getting an NLP certification in September (and got loads of pre-ceourse material to prepare before then) :) :)

    As for my students, yes, I often equip them with a lot of life skills to help the overcome their challenges. Unfortunately, very few take those NLP techniques seriously and apply them. I wrote a post "the Hulk exercise" earlier and this greatly help on any endeavour that requires concentration (scroll down if you'd like to have a look at it). I got great feedback by those who applied it :) :)

    As for the link you provided, it does not direct to a book (unfortunately). I am wondering what went wrong :(

    Thanks for leaving those comments Khalid :) I'll be off on a vacation for a week. Keep reading ;) Readers are leaders :) you've got all to gain and nothing to lose :)

    Take care :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Dania,

    Thank you for the post. When i read the title i remembered that i have torn real pages from my dairies when i found myself stuck in emotional misery. I wanted to cut all the links to the days that i suffered so that i never look back at these pages. After tearing these pages i have burned them. It was the first time i burn anything but it felt strangely relieving and i now moved on.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear Anonymous,

    Thanks for taking the time to write this comment. I am so glad you are reliefed and have moved on :) Turning out those dark pages is, indeed, magical :) And it probably is the only thing we can do about things we had little control over in the past. The better news is that we can do a lot about our future.....

    Bests on your journey forward :)

    Dania

    ReplyDelete
  7. In fact I do :) I am a certified practitioner, but I wrote this post even before my certification :)
    Thanks for your comment :)

    ReplyDelete