Over this last year especially I have had so many Ask Sue questions about an NLP approach for agoraphobia that I have decided to write this up. Not sure if there is an increase in agoraphobia which would not be too surprising given the world events of the last couple of years. Or whether it is because it has appeared in others questions and people reading about it have been prompted to ask for themselves.
There are some things that cannot be established in the same way as one to one face to face counselling session but nevertheless I do believe that we do have all the resources that we need. And if you are looking for a way forward then you are more than half the way there.
Use these steps in whatever way works for you. The underlying principles are more important than any precise steps. It works if you try it get some feedback try something else till you have reached the outcome that you want for yourself. And that is the starting point.
- What is your outcome? Now that might seem obvious and to this question many people will reply ‘well not to have this phobia!’ but that is not an outcome. An outcome is not something that you don’t want but something you really do want expressed in the positive. So start by writing down what you do really want for yourself and what is it like as you imagine yourself achieving that. If you can’t yet imagine the ultimate outcome imagine a step towards it and write that down.
- The next step is to imagine the scenario that causes you the issues but to imagine it in a way that you can handle without the emotions. So imagine that you are in cinema and you are in the audience or you are the projectionist – someone outside of what is happening on the screen. On the screen you are going to put the scenario of yourself in the situation that has caused you the problems and you might put that scene in black and white without sound if that helps to you look at yourself in that way. If you are still feeling emotions that you don’t yet know how to handle you can give yourself another level of dissociation by imagining yourself watching yourself in either the audience or in the projection box watching yourself on the screen. This way you are two levels removed from the scene itself and the effect of this is to disconnect you from your feelings in relation to this time. Experiment with this now.
- Watch the scene unfold on the screen with you in it.
- As you watch yourself think of what skills or way of being or attributes you would like the ‘you’ on the screen to have – in other words identify what resources you want you to have there in that situation.
- As you do this imagine the you in the audience or in the projection box giving each of these resources in turn to the you on the screen. Note what effect that has each time you do that. How does the you on the screen change? Do this until you identify that the you on the screen has all the resources that you need and you can watch yourself go through the scenario OK.
- What is that like?
- What is the effect of this process for you now?