The Fast Fear Technique

(from NLP, The New Technology of Achievement)

This technique is great for any situation, memory, or event where you want to remove strong negative feelings. It can also be used on less intense, unpleasant, uncomfortable memories. It's best to have someone read this to you until you have it memorized. Keep in mind that this process is supercharged in the hypnotic state, so if you want to go through this process in hypnosis, please give me a call or email. I'm here to help!

1. Fearful Situation. Take a moment and think of a situation that makes you moderately fearful, afraid, or uncomfortable. Think about it just enough to get a little bit of the feeling of fear or being uncomfortable.

2. Movie Theater. Now, in your mind's eye, imagine you are sitting in a large movie theater. See yourself up on the screen in a still picture just before you had the fearful response for the first time. (If you can't think of the first time you had this fear, think of the most intense time that you had this kind of fear or uncomfortable response.)

3. Leave Your Body. Now imagine floating out of your body and go up into the projection booth (or back ten rows in the theater) so that now you can look out and see yourself watching yourself on the screen. So you're watching yourself watching a movie of yourself.

4. Watch a Movie. As you watch yourself watching yourself, begin to run a black and white movie of what actually happened in that fearful or uncomfortable situation, and see yourself going through that experience. Continue to watch the movie from the projection booth, until you reach the end of the situation when the trauma was over, and you can tell from your movie that you're safe and secure. Now stop the movie and make it into a still picture of yourself after the trauma was over and you're safe.

5. Run the Movie Backward. Now leave the projection booth, step into the still picture on the screen, fully associate into it, and go through the experience backward, in color, just as if time were reversed and you were being pulled back through it by a giant vacuum cleaner. Do this very fast, in about 1.5 seconds. Do this step several more times. When you're finished, shake your arms and take a deep breath.

6. Checking. Now, think of the experience again, and notice how you feel. In your mind, rate the fear or uncomfortable feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst. If it's more than 2, repeat the whole process, being careful to do each step thoroughly.

Some situations do have inherent danger, so it's important to be cautious as you test the change you've just made in the real world.