The first thing to put into your past and keep there are the bad suggestions that others have shared with you. I once had a client whose name was Myra. Myra was a cute twenty-three-year-old girl but she had a poor opinion of herself that she dressed herself up like an ugly muffin and put on the worst horn-rimmed glasses you have ever seen.
She seemed to do her hair by driving in a convertible and letting the wind pile through it. When she came in, she told me that her problem was that she was lonely. The truth was that the only reason she was lonely was that she believed, as her therapist had told her, that she had low self-esteem.
When I asked her how she knew she had low self-esteem she said, Well I just feel nervous around people. The truth is nobody ‘just’ does anything. As I began to explore a little closer, I said, Well, how do you know how to feel nervous? Do you feel nervous when you’re in a closet picking out a shirt? She replied, No and I said, Well, how do you know when to feel nervous? She said, The voice tells me. So I said, Which voice? She looked at me and said, The voice inside my head.
I said, Is it your voice? and she said, Well it’s inside my head. So, I asked, Does it sound like the voice you have on the outside? and she said, No. I said, Does it perhaps sound like your mother’s voice, or your father’s voice, or your sister’s voice, or friend’s voice at school? And she says, Well, I’m not sure whose voice it is. It’s been there so long. Then I said, So long. I like that phrase. So Long Voice.
I asked her, What exactly does the voice say? and she said, The voice tells me that I’m nothing. The voice tells me I’m ugly. The voice tells me that no one will love me. We could spend hours, in fact we could spend years, going back into her childhood finding out where it came from and why it came but I frankly didn’t care. When you want a guide to changing your behaviour, you’re looking for quick ways to make quick changes.
In Myra’s case, I simply had her turn the volume of the voice up. She turned the volume of the voice up and moved the voice closer. The voice was actually on the left hand side and it sounded as if it was about twelve or thirteen inches away. I had it get closer and louder and she felt even worse. Then I had her move it further away and off into the distance and it diminished her feelings.
Next, I had her change the tone of the voice because I asked her a question. Did you ever hear somebody talk that you absolutely didn’t believe? For example, Richard Nixon popped into my mind. I remember Bill Clinton telling me how he did not have sexual relations with that woman and, as he said it, I knew he was lying. As she listened to the voice, I had her slowly change the tone of the voice to somebody she absolutely distrusted and wouldn’t believe.
I had her move the voice around to the back of her head so that it sounded like it was further and further behind her. Now, by doing this, not just once, but several times quickly, she got control over what was creating the bad feelings.
She hadn’t tried to be pretty. She hadn’t tried to speak in a cheerful voice so that she would meet nice people. Instead, she had always sought out the people that would reinforce the beliefs that she already had.
It was important not just to give her control over the voice but to change her entire belief because years of experience had taught Myra that she was a worthless, ugly, nothing of a person and the truth is that was the biggest lie of all. So, she had to think of it all as lies. When I got Myra to think differently about this old negative voice, changing the tone so that it sounded completely untrustworthy, it allowed her to be free. She managed to change how she felt about herself because she no longer took seriously her own self-criticism. Instead, she became happier with who she was.
What I like to do is to ask people what the biggest lie they’ve ever been told is. The one that, when they figured out it was a lie, was so much of a lie that even when they think about it now they get angry about it.
I elicit the submodalities of that just as we did in the inventory part of this book earlier. Stop now and think about something you no longer want to believe. Just like Myra, I want you to go through your list and find out first where is the voice? Where is the picture?
I want you to take the thing that you want to get rid of and I want you to compare it with the biggest lie you’ve ever been told. Compare it with the one you’re the most angry about. Go back and forth and notice the differences in the locations of the images. Notice the difference in the size of the pictures. Whether they’re movies, whether you see yourself in them. All the same distinctions that we went through in the inventory.
When you find the difference, I want you to take the thing that you no longer wish to believe and push it all the way off into the distance, move it over and pop it up on the other side so that when you look at it you know it’s a lie and you’re angry about it.
Then it’s time to build a new belief. What would you like to believe? If you build a belief that you, like every other human being, are entitled to be happy, and are entitled to make friends, that will be much more useful. You still have to have a reference structure. You have to look at yourself and see yourself the way you’d be if you had grown up with this useful belief.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
