NLP To Over Negative Emotions

By Luis Murphy

Anchoring is one of the fundamental methods in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) - a powerful psychotherapy technique that seeks to improve a person's life by helping them over come negative thinking and self-limiting thoughts and feelings. Anchoring helps the patient master their emotions and overcome self-defeating behavior. Because it focuses on the root cause of the problem, rather than just seeking to treat the symptoms, NLP and anchoring are a long term solution. All you need is the desire to change and the desire to improve.

Emotions and emotional reactions are all caused by something - and that something is called a trigger. Before you can be in control of those reactions you must identify what that trigger is. It will be different for everyone. When seeing an NLP practitioner, the first thing they will do is help you identify your trigger by asking you targeted questions and carefully listening to your responses. They will be looking for key words and phrases and will then ask deeper questions until the trigger is exposed. From there, they will begin helping you anchor that trigger so you will no longer have a negative reaction to it.

The trigger stirs an emotional response from memory. A painful trigger is attached to a painful memory. A happy trigger is attached to a happy memory. When you are experiencing an inappropriate emotional reaction to a trigger - getting angry when you encounter a certain trigger and being unable to control that anger - it is important to anchor it to something else.

In anchoring a trigger, we are changing what emotion is attached to it. An NLP practitioner is likely to use therapy to anchor a trigger than makes you angry to something you feel neutral about. It is likely not appropriate to attach a trigger that makes you feel angry to something that makes you feel happy as that would create a completely different type of inappropriate reaction. For that reason, a neutral reaction is more desired - perhaps choosing something that offers a calming an effect to the patient.

Many anchoring techniques utilize visualization as a beginning point. The patient is made to visual what makes them angry and then visualize the thing that makes them feel calm. It's important to think of nothing but those two things, being careful not to allow the negative emotion - rage, in this case - to attach to the calming device. In time, the trigger will automatically be associated with calm instead of rage. - 32509

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