Enhance your Lifestyle with NLP+ © Series: Part 29

By: Shantanu Das Sharma, Sr. Associate Editor, ICN Group

Quick recap of what we have covered in Part 28

Four Steps to Creating a Powerful Anchor

Step 1. Get into an Intense, Fully Associated State

Step 2. At the Peak of the State, Apply the Anchor

Step 3. Break the State. Then, Repeat Steps 1 & 2 At Least Five to Ten Times

Step 4. Test the Anchor

The Keys to Anchoring

Key 1: Intensity

Key 2: Timing

Key 3: Uniqueness

Key 4: Replication

Anchor Yourself for a Successful Outcome

Create New Powerful Anchors in Other People

Anchoring… To Fall In Love Again!

How to Collapse a Negative Anchor & Install an Empowering One

7 Steps to Collapsing An Anchor

Step 1. Decide on the negative state to be collapsed

Step 2. Decide on the Positive States Needed

Step 3. Elicit the Different Positive States and Anchor Them

Step 4. Fire Off Both Positive & Negative Anchors

Step 5. Release the Negative Anchor

Step 6. Continue to Hold the Positive Anchor for 5 Seconds and then Release

Step 7. Test it Out

When Dealing with Phobias: The Ultimate Anchors

In traditional psychotherapy, it is believed that a phobia takes years to cure. This is especially so with deep rooted phobias that the person has suffered with for years. However, with the right strategies, you can eliminate a lifelong phobia within 30 minutes.

During my interventions and excellence adjustments, I have helped eliminate people’s phobia of snakes, mice, heights, water and public speaking. You see, a phobia is nothing more than a very big negative anchor.

Normally, a phobia is an intense fear linked to a particular stimulus, like heights. A true phobia is one where the person starts getting into an intense and uncontrollable state of fear and they exhibit this fear by sweating and shaking and sometimes bursting into tears.

As we mentioned before, it is difficult to eliminate a phobia just by using the ‘collapsing anchors’ technique on its own. Why? Because with a phobia, the negative anchor is so strong that it will collapse the positive anchor. For example, if you had a phobia of the stage and starting to snap your fingers to fire off ‘confidence’, the state of fear will get linked to your original positive anchor of snapping the fingers. To eliminate phobias, you must use a combination of techniques that incorporate sub-modalities, anchoring and the distortion method.

This is known as the Fast Phobia Cure, and it has five major steps.

Step 1. Test the Phobia

First, put the person in contact with whatever is creating the phobia in order to measure the strength of the phobia. For example, if it is a fear of snakes, bring the snake to the person and see how the person reacts. The reason for doing this is so that when the person has been ‘cured’ of his/her phobia, you can see the dramatic change that has taken place. Now, take the stimulus away (i.e. the snake) so that the person is far from it.

Step 2. Create a Series of Resourceful Anchors

In order to collapse the phobia, you need to create in that person, a series of very powerful anchors. These resourceful states could be ‘confidence’, ‘complete relaxation’ or ‘humor’. Now, get that person into each of these states and, at the peak, anchor the person by saying something positive and touching them on the shoulders. For example, get the person into a very confident state, and anchor it. Next, get the person into an intense humorous state and anchor that as well. Use the same anchor (touch on the shoulders), to stack all the three resourceful states.

Step 3. Do a Double Disassociation

Now, because a phobia is usually very intense, just thinking of it will trigger fear. It order to avoid this, we need to get the person to do a double disassociation. In other words, he is disassociated twice from the experience. This is how we do it.

‘Imagine that you are in a movie theatre, sitting right in front of the big screen and you are watching a movie of yourself in the past. Now, from your seat, imagine yourself stepping out of your body and floating all the way up into the projection room. ‘From the projection room, I want you to feel that you are safe from the fear. Now, on the screen, I want you to see a movie of the time when you first had this fear (of snakes or whatever phobia you have). Maybe it was the time when you first encountered a snake.

As the person is seeing these past experiences, we keep firing off the resourceful anchor (i.e. touching him on the shoulder) in order to put that person in a powerful state.

Step 4. Change the Internal Representation of the Past Experience

Remember that what causes the state of fear is the way the person has represented the experience of the past. We need to scramble the past experience by changing the sub-modalities of the pictures, sounds and feelings. We need to represent it in a way where it becomes fun and even humorous. This is where we can use lots of reframing as well. We could say:

‘As you see the snake in front of you, imagine that the snake is smiling at you. See the snake sticking out its tongue, this means it wants to greet you and make friends. Imagine the snake saying, ‘I’m scared. Please hold me. The reason I move around so much is because I want to get to know you’. Imagine the snake having the voice of a cute character.

As you see yourself holding the snake, imagine that it is a warm-blooded creature with texture you like to stroke, such as soft silk. As you see yourself holding the snake, see and feel yourself having lots of fun! What would you say or do in order to make this really fun?’

As you do this, keep firing off the anchor of ‘confidence’, ‘humor’ and ‘relaxation.

Step 5. Re-associate Back into the Experience

When you see the person feeling very good, very comfortable as they use their imagination to change their internal representations, get him or her to slowly associate back into their body. You tell the person:

‘Imagine yourself drifting down from the projector booth into your body in the cinema seat. How does that feel? Now, imagine yourself being associated into the movie that you see on the screen. Become fully associated into the experience as you play with the snake. Feel the confidence and the fun.’

Once the person is able to stay in a positive state while imagining the experience in a disassociated way, you know that the phobia has been neutralized. You can then go on to test it for real.

Step 6. Test it!

Ask the person to come back from the experience. Now, take the snake to the person slowly and, as you do this, keep firing off the resourceful anchors as you had done earlier. If you have gone through the process successfully, the person will find that the phobia has been neutralized. Remember anchoring is a process that all of us are subjected to all the time. If we take conscious control of what we are neurologically linked to, then we can be constantly anchored to positive states. And it’s only in these positive states that we are driven to reach our goals!

Do note that some steps will vary if you have a phobia that is more specific, i.e. you have been bitten by a snake before. In this instance, you will have to use a distortion technique. We will discuss about this later.

(I facilitate Thought Leaders, Change Makers; Professionals & Business Owners translate NLP concepts into actions to achieve and elicit personal excellence. I conduct NLP Lifestyle Coaching Certification programs for individuals, corporate and celebrity clients. In the next article, you will learn about The Transformation Of Meaning. And after that you will come to know in subsequent articles, how you can utilize concepts of NLP+ in all walks of your life to replicate the success blueprint of a winner mindset to win through life.  So, stay tuned every Monday & Friday and fasten your seat belt to ‘Enhance Your Lifestyle With NLP+’)

Shantanu Das Sharma, Creator of the concept NLP Lifestyle Coaching with NLP+, Founder of Neuromind Leadership Academy is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author, NLP Lifestyle Master Trainer & Coach, Clean Language Facilitator & Strategic Interventionist.  

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