So much of present day unhappiness for my clients is due to past events that are completely over and done with. This is deeply frustrating, but it is utterly compelling—we can’t just drop that past pain by saying so, even as we realize that it does no good to keep having it. It’s like a cat that will start to complain and bother you as soon as you stop petting it, or a child that can’t be soothed. There’s always more.
What if we finally got to a point where there wasn’t any more? Where the pain as it was is entirely completed and done? We could look at that past experience with respect and honor, but we wouldn’t have to be in it anymore. It would be past.
Everyday on Facebook I receive well meaning quotations that imply we can do that just by willing it, but the truth is we don’t go to therapists and practitioners to be told to get over it. If that worked, we would have done that long ago. We’re not stupid!
Something is neurologically stuck; we can’t unplug the stream of painful associations. It’s on “go” and we don’t know where the off switch is.
When a gazelle is chased by a predator, its stress response is fully on. But when the predator is evaded and the threat is over, its neurology is designed to reset and allow complete relaxation. The threat is now in the past. Back to grazing!
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), that’s what we do. We let your neurology know it’s all over. It’s never been your fault that the pain has persisted—truly, it’s kind of a bug in human brains, the result of traumatic childhood imprints that has a hard time being flushed out (gazelles just don’t have the neurology to have traumatic childhood imprints—are you jealous?).
But these imprints can be rewired, and as it turns out, it’s not really difficult to do. It may take a little while, but it’s not hard. We just let your brain know, it’s over, it’s done, good job for making it through, but now is different, and we can have a human’s version of grazing—happiness, strength, and readiness for life.
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