Quick getting rid of stress
Close your eyes and remind a stressful situation. Try to imagine this stress inside your body. How does it look like? Like a black dot? A heavy stone? Hot jelly? Take a good look at it, because it’s about to disappear.
In this article I will present you an extremely effective technique of getting rid of negative emotions, such as stress, sorrow, anger, etc. As it turns out, human brain has a visual representation of each of those emotions. Changing this represantation means changing the emotion itself. Prepare for a pleasant experience and let’s do it!
This technique is based on submodalities, a term used in NLP. What are they? In a nutshell, submodalities are the parameters of the images we create in our heads. The image can be big or small, bright or dark, colorful or black&white. It may be accompanied by loud or quiet sounds or a feeling that something is heavy or light. Those examples of features of images, sounds and feelings are submodalities.
By changing those submodalities you can change your emotions. In a way, your brain codes and stores every emotion that appears in your body. It has a visual representation of each of those emotions. Even if you’re not aware of them right now, during this exercise you’ll be able to describe precisely every emotion you’re working on.
When I practice this with the participants of my trainings, the results are always tremendous. What’s interesting, every person has a different representation of stress and other negative emotions. The process always looks different, but the result is the same - a feeling of peace, relief and relax.
Doing this exercise, focus maximally on your inside and observe your body. An emotion you’re working on may be anything - a black dot, a grey ball, a piece of metal. Be opened to this experience and write down every visual, audible and kinesthetic feature of this emotion.
And this is how it works:
1. Imagine a situation in which you are stressed/nervous/worried/anything. Visualize it very accurately - see what you’ve seen back then, hear what you’ve heard, get into the flow. Try to feel this emotion that you want to get rid of. Take the next step only when you actually feel it inside your body.
2. Where exactly do you feel this emotion? Specify this place in your body, point it with your hand.
3. Now, describe this emotion. How does it look like? First of all - what form does it have? Is it a solid body, a liquid or a gas? What is it? Now use the submodalities list below:
a. visual: shape (circle, square, no shape?) size (show it using your hands), colour, does it move? (how fast, in which direction?)
b. kinesthetic: severity, temperature, structure of surface (smooth, harsh)
c. audible: does it make any sound? what’s it’s volume, pace, tone?4. Now grasp this emotion, drag it out of your body and put it in front of you. When the emotion is outside of you, it doesn’t have any influence on you.
5. Change every submodality of this emotion into the ones you’ll like. A new form of this feeling is supposed to be pleasant and relaxing. Go through every submodality, change it in a desired one slowly and carefully.
6. Look at this new emotion and ask yourself: does it look exactly in a way I want it to? If yes, go to point 7. If not, get back to point nr 5 and add whatever you’re missing.
7. Now grasp this new feeling and put it into your body, replacing the old one. Try to feel how pleasantly it settles inside, relaxing your whole body. For a moment, imagine how this emotion takes up the residence there.
8. Imagine the stressful situation from the beginning of this exercise once again and observe your feelings.
You may have a problem with point no. 4. It may be rooted deeply or have a form that’s making it very difficult to take the feeling out. That’s ok, there’s a way to deal with it. Imagine that you have a tool - scissors, knife, whatever. Use it to drag the feeling out. Try to make the process entertaining - a lot is dependent on your imagination.
Use this technique as often as possible. After some time it will become a habit and the whole process will become automatic. Set it as your current goal, because making this a habit gives you a great control over your own emotions. And that means a significant improvement of the quality of your life.
So, finish reading and practice this technique. Let us know about the effects!