The Secret of Safety: Rapport with Self & Life

What’s got you spooked?

“Genevieve” has been struggling with depression. She came to me asking for that to change. She quite understandably doesn’t want to experience the depression.

We carefully unpacked the process through which she, in particular, gets herself to the place of being depressed. It starts with a difficulty in her life that she doesn’t feel she can navigate. A part of her unconscious says to her “This is going to end in annihilation.” This generates terror, and an all-out-effort on the part of her entire consciousness to avoid annihilation. It has come up with a lifelong useful response: Get depressed instead. If she gets depressed, shuts down, pulls the blanket over her head, then the situation eventually passes, and on the other side her unconscious can say “Wow, that depression stuff really works! Look, I live to see another day!”

When we unpacked all of this, Genevieve could thank herself for the depression: it had been fulfilling an intended positive outcome for her. Depression may be lousy, but it usually ranks higher than annihilation, right? And no way would changing the depression ever be allowed by the unconscious, because that would open the door to annihilation. Ironically, appreciating the depression and our brain’s resistance to changing it is the first step in moving forward in a new way, without depression.

What’s got you spooked?

You may not think you’re spooked, but if you are stuck in any way about something you would like, but haven’t been able to change it, your unconscious thinks that something is dangerous about that change that must be avoided at all costs.

Your unconscious is spooked. And you know the worst part about that? Underneath all the layers, we are actually spooked about ourselves and about life itself.

How so?

• It is us, after all, who are reaching for the new thing that scares us so much.
• It is life, after all, that is offering us those things we most want but which have us so nervous about change.

Life itself is scaring me. I am scaring me.
I am out of rapport with myself and life.

Rapport is the experience of feeling deeply safe with another person. In order to have change, we need rapport with ourselves and with the universe to keep ourselves safe through the process. For Genevieve to stop having depression, she needs to be in rapport with her whole self which is doing its very best to take care of her. Appreciating the frustrating choices our brains have chosen over the years can be challenging, but it is one of the necessary steps to deep and permanent change work.

We can begin to learn how to feel safe with ourselves and the world no matter what new choices we make about what we would like. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) offers our brains a better offer than the ones they have become accustomed to, so that change can feel deeply safe.

At my June 6th workshop, “The Secret of Safety: Rapport with Self & Life,” you’ll experience some of these NLP exercises, and leave feeling a new sense of confidence about reaching for what you would most like in life.