breaking the emotional association

[Ralph]

I'd like to share with you the method I use for making peace with the past and reacting to what is differently. It's probably nothing new to anyone that heard of NLP but repetition is the mother of skill.


Our thoughts trigger our feelings. I mostly think in images because I'm a visual kind of guy, but all kinds of senses can represent a thought. The thought has a feeling connected to it. This connection can be broken by creating new connections.

Think about it - how do you get something created? You experience a strong emotional state and link it up to anything that's extraordinary in your environment. If you experience excitement, passion and attraction while looking at a girl, you'll fall in love. If you puke eating salad, they'll never taste the same way again.

So, if you want to change the memory that for example makes you feel embarassed, here's what to do:

Think of that memory, see the image in your mind, hear the sounds, get yourself there. While seeing it, put in some funny elements. Maybe see people with clowny faces and huge fake banana-sized smiles. Hear a stupid circus music playing in the background. See everything in pink and orange. You get the idea - see the old image in new colours and environment. If it's a movie, play it backwards. Make the image smaller and darker. Play with your imagination until thinking about that memory makes you smile. You'll get good with it in time.


Recently I fell in love with a girl from my school and thinking about her kept bugging me. I felt all the chemistry when I saw her on the corridors. I decided to stop and replaced the associations in 15 minutes of a boring lessons. People thought I fell asleep, but hey! It was worth it! Now looking at her makes me smile Much easier to pick her up than if she made me sweat



Enjoy taking conscious control over your emotions


Ralph

[firebird]

so, essentially, brainwash yourself. i know s.p. endorses this - i read the article. personally, i find it ridiculous. did you ask yourself what your embarrassment says about your self-esteem, etc? or does that not seem relevant. i'd geniunely like to know more about why you believe this works and what is to be gained long-term. perhaps you can tell me more as you continue to work with it.

[Ralph]

Originally Posted by firebird

so, essentially, brainwash yourself. i know s.p. endorses this - i read the article. personally, i find it ridiculous. did you ask yourself what your embarrassment says about your self-esteem, etc? or does that not seem relevant. i'd geniunely like to know more about why you believe this works and what is to be gained long-term. perhaps you can tell me more as you continue to work with it.

Brainwash myself? I rather call it taking conscious control over what how I feel about my life and external events. It's one thing to get a message out of the emotions - and I make sure I do. But sometimes I just get stuck with the same annoying emotions and can't get rid of them, even if there is nothing more I can intellectually learn from them. Sometimes a thought triggers a feeling and I'm forced to think this thought a lot.

I remember when me and my GF broke up, we'd still have to see each other on school corridors. Everytime I saw her, my stomach would go nuts and I'd get depressed. Would it be OK to ease myself off that feeling? Of course!


What's gained? Control over my emotions of course. I want to feel great about my life therefore I won't let my emotions go nuts. Human brain is an incredibly stupid machine - if left working by itself, it'll do a lot of wrong associations between emotions and events. If taken conscious control of - I can anchor positive states to use at leisure and get rid of the negative associations.

You can have the greatest life you want, but ultimately, it's how do you feel about it that determines whether you're successful or not. You can't always change external events. You can however always change how you feel about them. This is the way to do just that.

[firebird]

thanks for sharing your reasons for using this technique. it definitely gave me something to think about. questioning others about why they do what they do inspires me to challenge my own ideas.

i understand the purpose is to take conscious control of one's life - most definitely a worthy pursuit, but to what end? to never feel pain again?

my doubts about the benefit of this technique: seems to me the approach is rooted in immediate gratification and not tending to the root cause of the uncomfortable, undesireable emotional state that is experienced. the approach is based on altering/eliminating the emotion itself (the effect) when there is a root belief (the cause for the unwanted emotion) that influences the reaction to a circumstance and produces the unwanted emotion. will you spend 15 min however many times per day ad infinitum killing off unwanted emotions with the root cause still firmly in place? i don't know much about these emotions you don't want to experience, but the one thing i do know is that it's easy to feel crummy. you may have noticed capitalist societies thrive off of the low self-esteem of its people while the people/corporations offering immediate gratification antidotes such as meds, porn, and the quickest-path-to-enlightenment are living high on the hog because of the high demand for the need to feel good. not tomorrow, today.

you mentioned "the human brain is an incredibly stupid machine" - did you mean to say that? i find it utterly incredible, a mysterious machine - it's only the information that is stored in it, the thoughts/beliefs/etc that are often quite stupid and useless and apt to cause misery. the brain is so incredible and so pliable that your consciousness/mind/whateveryoucallit is remapping/reprogramming your brain by manipulating memory/stored info so that you no longer feel sweaty and embarrassed when you see this beautiful girl (it's still working, right?) and to no longer feel heartbreak when seeing your ex girlfriend.

my concern is that fundamentally this technique creates a gradual fragmentation of the self and we become a puddle with wacked-out, mismatched mental associations. you say you get the message from these unwanted emotions - in my experience it's only until i tend to the damaging belief giving life to it, then it's gone. poof.

but really, what do i know? i'm just stabbing in the dark like anybody else. at least, that i know....

but, most importantly, all of this philosophical mumbojumbo aside, my question for you is: did you begin using this technique for fear of being hurt or rejected by this girl who you've fallen in love with (so you say), especially after the heartbreak you went through with your ex? i ask only because both examples you shared were re romantic relationships, so i suppose this is top priority. if so, forget the rest of this and start investigating your heart. love can be experienced only to the degree we are willing to be vulnerable. and the good love will bring its fair share of hurt, i'm sorry to say, but it's worth it.

[Ralph]

Originally Posted by firebird

thanks for sharing your reasons for using this technique. it definitely gave me something to think about. questioning others about why they do what they do inspires me to challenge my own ideas.

i understand the purpose is to take conscious control of one's life - most definitely a worthy pursuit, but to what end? to never feel pain again?

my doubts about the benefit of this technique: seems to me the approach is rooted in immediate gratification and not tending to the root cause of the uncomfortable, undesireable emotional state that is experienced. the approach is based on altering/eliminating the emotion itself (the effect) when there is a root belief (the cause for the unwanted emotion) that influences the reaction to a circumstance and produces the unwanted emotion. will you spend 15 min however many times per day ad infinitum killing off unwanted emotions with the root cause still firmly in place? i don't know much about these emotions you don't want to experience, but the one thing i do know is that it's easy to feel crummy. you may have noticed capitalist societies thrive off of the low self-esteem of its people while the people/corporations offering immediate gratification antidotes such as meds, porn, and the quickest-path-to-enlightenment are living high on the hog because of the high demand for the need to feel good. not tomorrow, today.

There's a whole lot of things we can't do anything about except changing the way we feel about it.

For example, I recently broke up with my girlfriend. I knew that we're far beyond forgiveness and starting over, so missing her was totally useless and very disempowering emotion that I felt every time she was around or I thought about her (quite often!).

Another example - current Polish president really sucks. Lots of people in my environment get stuck complaining just for the sake of being together and feeling bad about the same thing. But why be miserable every time you see his round face in TV or hear his name if you can just get rid of the negative feelings associated to him?

Originally Posted by firebird

you mentioned "the human brain is an incredibly stupid machine" - did you mean to say that? i find it utterly incredible, a mysterious machine - it's only the information that is stored in it, the thoughts/beliefs/etc that are often quite stupid and useless and apt to cause misery. the brain is so incredible and so pliable that your consciousness/mind/whateveryoucallit is remapping/reprogramming your brain by manipulating memory/stored info so that you no longer feel sweaty and embarrassed when you see this beautiful girl (it's still working, right?) and to no longer feel heartbreak when seeing your ex girlfriend.

What I meant is that the brain is so easy to be fooled and influenced. It can't really tell the difference between reality and vivid imagination. It'll anchor the feelings to anything extraordinary going on when I experience them. It's so eager to anchor feelings into events, both when influenced by marketers and ourselves. So easy to manipulate if you know where the buttons are.

So, you're right and thanks for pointing that out - brain isn't stupid as incapable of great things, it's easily influenced or fooled.

Originally Posted by firebird

my concern is that fundamentally this technique creates a gradual fragmentation of the self and we become a puddle with wacked-out, mismatched mental associations. you say you get the message from these unwanted emotions - in my experience it's only until i tend to the damaging belief giving life to it, then it's gone. poof.

but really, what do i know? i'm just stabbing in the dark like anybody else. at least, that i know....

but, most importantly, all of this philosophical mumbojumbo aside, my question for you is: did you begin using this technique for fear of being hurt or rejected by this girl who you've fallen in love with (so you say), especially after the heartbreak you went through with your ex? i ask only because both examples you shared were re romantic relationships, so i suppose this is top priority. if so, forget the rest of this and start investigating your heart. love can be experienced only to the degree we are willing to be vulnerable. and the good love will bring its fair share of hurt, i'm sorry to say, but it's worth it.

The romantic relationships examples are close to me because that's by far the most emotionally intense area of my life. I put more time into my business but I don't feel so strongly for it. Emotional mastery isn't crucial to maintain my business or health.

I use this technique because I believe that quality of actions I take comes from the quality of the emotional state I'm in. I feel lousy - I do lousy things. I can come up with all sorts of reasons to explain my lousiness (I feel bad because this and that).

Basically, I'm all into living the most intense and amazing life possible. I want to stretch myself to the fullest potential and then stretch the potential itself. I figured that I need some system to manage my emotions if I'm going to experience massive frustration and rejection connected to trying new things (especially those that others consider impossible) and failing. My metaphor for life is that it's a play. I really love acting and it's 100% about managing your state. So this kind of thing really juices me up.

Yet I'd rather apply the 80/20 rule here. Let's focus 20% of time on the problem and 80% of the time on the solution. Bad feelings are part of the problem and are really important part of fully grasping it. However positive emotions are part of the solution and I'd rather experience them 80+% of the time when I deal with my problems.

In other words, I can't come up with and apply a good solution when I'm still driven by the same negative emotional patterns. At certain point, I got to say to myself "let's get up and break out of it".





Now the most important part of my message

I really appreciate your posts Firebird, you reminded me of an extremely important thing.

DON'T USE THIS TECHNIQUE INSIDE THE RELATIONSHIPS OR YOU'LL SHIELD YOURSELF FROM SHARING LOVE


I once did just that (I forgot) to erase some pain connected to someone and then I felt strange emptiness. After a few minutes of looking into that emptiness I realized that I just killed all the attraction for the person I was in relationship with. It felt so dull, grey and empty compared to the previous emotional intensity.

Back then, I buried the images under a huge boulder. Worked perfectly, the emotional triggers disappeared. When I wanted them back, I just removed the boulder and everything went back to normal. My brain was actually stupid enough to take the boulder literally and when I removed it, everything under it was still fine and operating


Cheers
Ralph