Emotional Management with NLP

Contrary to popular belief, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is not a form of therapy, although therapists who use it achieve impressive results. It’s not a sales training program, though salespeople who use it also see remarkable outcomes. It’s not a self-development tool, but those who use it for personal growth again achieve impressive results. And it is never, under any circumstances, something to be studied independently or remotely. NLP works too well to be safe in unskilled hands, so it’s best to learn under the guidance of experienced and qualified trainers. Would you learn scuba diving from a neighbor who once spent a week in a pool? This article discusses some assumptions present in our culture and how, using information provided by NLP, you can learn to change them yourself.

NLP studies how we construct our thoughts, how we know what we know, and how we create our experiences. Of course, our subjective experiences differ from anyone else’s. Likewise, the subjective experiences of any other person differ from those of others. However, all our thoughts, emotions, memories, and dreams are made up of images, sounds, and sensations. The differences in our experiences arise from the myriad ways we can arrange these sounds, images, and sensations, as well as what we focus our attention on.

Many people in the West find it easy to see their mental images, or can be taught to do so quite easily. Everyone creates mental images; the only difference is that some people haven’t yet learned to notice them. Think for a moment about your own mental images of things you like. Are they in color or black and white, still or moving, close or far, large or small, vertical, horizontal, or panoramic, and what’s in the center? Do you see the scenes as you saw them then, or do you see yourself in them, like in a video recording?

All these are examples of how we can do the same things differently from others. You can change the meaning of an experience by changing one of these characteristics. If you pick something you like, see what happens if you bring the image closer or make it bigger. You can move mental images just by thinking about it. If you like the result, keep it; if not, return it to its original state and see what happens if you make the color more vivid. Change one characteristic at a time and return to the original before making the next change. Of course, if you find one or more options you like better than the original, keep them. Be careful to remember which changes you make, and if you do something you don’t like, immediately return to the previous state. Make sure that, in the end, the experience is at least as pleasant as it was at the start.

For most Westerners, images are the easiest thing to notice and change, which is why we start with them. You can learn to do the same with sounds and feelings, moving sounds to another place, changing their speed, pitch, or volume, as if you had a good mixer. You can intensify or weaken sensations, change their texture, ramp them up or calm them down, slow or speed up their tempo, move them, make them bigger or smaller, or even remove them altogether.

You may notice that if you change a parameter of an image, the sounds and feelings also change, or if you change a certain sound parameter, the image and feelings change accordingly. Finding your unique distinctions means finding a quick way to influence the system (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic) that is hardest for you to change. For example, if you moderately liked an image, but liked it more after making it bigger, you changed your feelings by changing the image. If the image was blurry with distorted sound and a scratchy feeling, maybe it will come into focus if you make the sound clear, or the feeling will become smooth if you change the sound.

In Western culture, there is a common belief that sensations cannot be changed at will and that emotions are also unchangeable. There’s a related myth that anyone who can change their emotions is a hypocrite, a fake, selfish, or a deceiver (or, more recently, not “blessed,” repressed, or “not ready for change”). In most cultures, there’s a belief that one of the systems (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic) cannot be controlled, but not everyone finds sensations the hardest. For example, Native Americans are famous for changing feelings and sensations as easily as Westerners change images or musicians change sounds.

For Native Americans, visible mental images are considered visions sent by their gods and thus have religious significance. The Sun Dance and Vision Quest rituals are specifically designed to increase the chance of seeing mental images. Both rituals involve bringing the initiate to such extreme discomfort that most Westerners would find it unacceptable. For Native Americans, with their ease in managing sensations, the pain control they exercise during the ritual is a way to shift their attention and alter their state of mind enough to allow them to see images. This works because it makes normal use of their preferred system (sensations) impossible, so they have to do something else (see). Since the ritual is religious or spiritual, it’s acceptable in their culture to see images in this context.

The Western equivalent is the “personal development” market, bungee jumping, drugs, and religious rituals. Westerners evaluate intense and religious experiences by the intensity of the sensations they feel at the moment. Some call these emotions… but emotions are made up of images, sounds, and sensations; it’s just that for Westerners, sensations are the most convincing.

The ability to feel what you want, when you want, is a very useful skill. It frees us from the costly search for thrills. Experiencing something once is enough to add the sensation to your personal library. Then you can change it, intensify it, or reshape it in any way, playing with the images, sounds, and sensations it was originally associated with. You can also create a library from scratch, using appealing elements of ordinary pleasant experiences, enriching and mixing them to your taste. You can do this as described above, through images and sounds. Just recall a pleasant episode and make it bigger, brighter, more vivid, and maybe slow it down a bit. As you work with sensations and get used to it, it will become easier, and you’ll learn to change them directly.

The Next Step: Direct Emotional Management

There are two simple ways. The first is good for neutralizing any uncomfortable emotional reaction. If you’re laughing at a funeral, crying at work, or angry at an innocent person, a quick way to neutralize any of these reactions is to push the image far away or shrink it to the size of a postage stamp. You can always return to it later, regardless of whether you know what’s in the image. Make it small enough or far enough away, and for most people, this will reduce its intensity.

To evoke a specific emotional reaction when you don’t have one, recall or imagine a situation that triggers that emotion, and make the image big, bright, and close. This is great when you need to thank someone for a wonderful gift, or if you need to create remorse when you’ve broken your mother’s favorite vase (even if you hated it for years). Have you ever wished for patience when teaching a child or an animal? Want to say “no” to someone so they know you mean it? Find a memory with the required quality. Make the image big, bright, and vivid—and the desired feeling will appear.

The second way to manage emotions involves working with sensations more directly. Leslie Cameron-Bandler, in her book “The Emotional Hostage,” describes seven changeable components of any emotion. These include rhythm, tempo, intensity, time frame, and personal involvement. Cameron-Bandler suggests changing sensations just as we changed images earlier in the article. For example, anxiety usually has a fast, uneven rhythm and always relates to the future. If you slow the rhythm to a steady 120 beats per minute, the feeling will change and become more comfortable. If you imagine yourself in the future, past the anticipated event, the anxiety will disappear. Remember how you worried last time, and how acceptable that event seems now, looking back.

Guilt and shame require personal involvement. Guilt happens when you act against someone else’s values and it bothers you. Shame happens when you act against your own values and there’s no higher value to justify it. If you change the time frame, there will be neither guilt nor shame, since you haven’t done anything yet. You may find you did it intentionally, in which case you acted according to your values, or you made a mistake, which happens, and we learn from mistakes. The consequences may be sad or irreversible, but they can become acceptable. Another option is to reduce the intensity and perhaps change the rhythm to a dance beat. In any emotion you want to change, take its most noticeable feature and alter it. See what happens. To intensify an emotion, take its component and increase it. You can create your own thrills!