Let Go!

Length: 5 minutes

Goal: To let go of daily stressful experiences

Source: Bilateral Sensory Input (exercise recommended by my father) and Neuro-Language Programming (NLP) 

Exercise: 

Step 1

Find yourself a comfortable position and close your eyes.

Focus on the situation visually: 

Where were you? How did the place look? What were you doing? Were you alone? If not, who was with you? What happened that upset you? How did you react to the situation?

Step 2

Focus on the situation emotionally: 

What was the emotion associated with your reaction?

On a scale 1-10, how did you feel?

Step 3

Take a mental picture of that situation and frame it.

Reduce the size of the picture and project it onto a mental screen/white wall.

Watch yourself from a distance of a couple of meters (as if you were sitting/standing watching it unfold on a tv screen).

Step 4

Apply Rapid Eye Movement:

Alternately look to your left and right sides, 12 times each, for 12 seconds.

Take a deep breath.

Step 5

Open your eyes for a couple of seconds.

Count backwards slowly from 5 to 1.

Step 6

Recall the picture of the past experience that you projected onto the screen/white wall in your mind.

Recall the visual details of the framed picture and yourself at a distance.

Place the picture on a mental train and imagine the train traveling to your right in the distance, getting smaller until it becomes a dot, and vanishes.

Take a deep breath.

Step 6

Check-in:

On a scale 1-10, how do you feel? 

Repeat the steps in 3 days until you are satisfied with where you are on the scale. 

My Explanation

Let It Go

Source: Neuro-Language Programming (NLP) and Rapid Eyes Movement (REM) 

When we experience any trauma, being it a little “t” trauma or an intensive “T” trauma, the challenge is to make sure our mind doesn’t stay stuck in the event that caused the trauma. Because if we do, as the brain does not distinguish real from imaginary nor past / future from present, it believes that our being is still in that event and therefore relives over and over the trauma. When we are stuck in that event, the brain continues to spread the message to our body that we are in danger. And what happen when we are in danger? 

“The moment we react to any condition in our outer world that tends to be threatening, whether the threat is real or imagined, our body releases stress hormones in order to mobilize enormous amounts of energy in response to that threat.” (Dr. Joe Dispenza in Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing the Uncommon, 2017)

You know when suddenly it comes to your mind someone or some situation from your past that you thought you were over it, getting yourself wondering for some moments “Why on earth would I think about this person now?” or “Wow, for long time I didn’t recall this…”. The odds are that you are not over it.

So, how do you test and check if you are totally over it? Well, this is how you do it: close your eyes and recalling the situation check where are you in the situation. Can you watch yourself from a distance or are you watching the situation through your eyes? If the last case is your case, I have some news for you: you are NOT over it! It is still so real for your mind that you are living it over and over, without having conscience about it. It is as if an “iteration” would be running in your mind’s software, stuck in time, just waiting for you (your conscient part) to solve it and close it. 

There is some mind tricks we can apply so little ”t” traumas don’t evolve to intensity “T” trauma. And the “Let It Go!” tool is one of my number one trick. 

As an engineer I like equations. Here is one of my favorites which allowed me to understand how can I trick my mind in cases of little “t” traumas:

We perceive the world through our five senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste. If during that perception (event) we experience an emotion, that emotion is attached to the group of images, sounds, smells, sensation and flavors that compose that event. Then, our mind saves every data perceived by our five senses during that event and attaches the emotion we felt in the same “package” of that memory. It is like if we would have our own gigantic data base of memories.

Let’s take the example of a past challenging meeting: the first part of the above equation refers to the place where you were and with whom you were (image), what sounds you listened (voices, sound), the room temperature (sensation), and even any smell or perfume you recognized. The second part refers to the emotion you felt during the event. The combination of both results is your memory of that event.

Our brain is an amazing and complex organ, having more switches than all computers on Earth:

“One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor (with both memory-storage and information-processing elements) than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth.” In https://www.cnet.com/news/human-brain-has-more-switches-than-all-computers-on-earth/ , Stephen Smith, Standford University School of Medicine 

However, the brain does not distinguish real from imaginary nor past / future from present, what some would identify this fact as a brain limitation, I like to call it a brain advantage. Why is this an advantage? Because we can easily trick the mind till a certain level, of what really happened in a past event. So next time our mind searches for memories as lessons learnt to help us dealing better with future events, it will find a new version of that specific memory 😉

Actually, this is how Bandler and Grinder got to help people around the world with NLP.  

Neuro Language Programming “Is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States in the 1970s. NLP’s creators claim there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic) and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming), (…)”  (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180411090441.htm)

NLP allows us to replace the first part of the above equation, and to certain degree, the entire equation itself. That is the aim of the exercise “Let it go!”. By improving the input of the equation, its final result will also be improved. So next time our mind is triggered to find back a certain memory, and be stuck in a certain loop of repetitive negative thoughts about an event, it will not access the initial painful version of related memory anymore. And then, it might happen that you stop even caring about that event at all. If that happens, congratulations! You just allowed yourself to embrace peace as the real healing has been unlocked.