(Difference between revisions)

Current revision as of 16:01, 29 October 2007

This process applies V/K dissociation to a phobia or trauma.

• Establish rapport with your client.
• Ask them to think of their phobia breieifly and fleetingly. This is so you can calibrate the state by observing their physiology.
• Break state!
• Establish a "safety anchor". Elicit a powerful positive state from a remembered experience when they felt safe and secure. Anchor this kinesthetically on their arm. Tell them that if they ever need to stop the process and return to the present state then they have that anchor. You can hold the anchor throughout or only use it when needed.
• Set up the dissociation by asking the client to imagine themselves in a film theater or watching television. They have complete control over the film and how it appears. They may want to make it appear in black and white or as a small, fuzzy picture - they control their critical submoldalities of the picture.
• Ask the client to select the reel of film or vide from their life that contains the trauma or the first powerful experience that set up the phobia. It may not always be possible to get the earliest occasion of a phobia, but get one that is intense and the earliest they can remember.
  Help the client to maintain their dissociated state. Ask them to watch the reel of film. Ask them to see themselves on screen from just before the start of the film (when they were safe) to after the incident had happened (when they were safe again). It may be helpful to watch the movie in black and white on a small screen if size and color are critical submodalities. If necessary, double dissociate the client - ask them to watch themselves watching themselves on the screen. Maintain the state by using the right language: "Here and now, watching that person there and then on the screen..."
  This step is complete when the client can watch this incident on screen without going into the phobic state. Watch them carefully. You will have calibrated the state in step two.
• Break state.
• Help them learn from that experience. What was important? Has there been anything positive about that experience or about the phobia?
• Tell the client to pause the film at the end. Now have them associate into the movie at that point and run the movie backwards fast at least three times.
• Break state.
• Repeat steps nine and ten twice more, so they will have associated into the movie running backwards fast at least three times.
• Test and future pace. How do they feel now? Sometimes it is possible and appropriate to test the phobia for real at this time. The phobia should be gone or greatly reduced.
• Ecology check. If the phobia was sever and affected many area's of the client's life, they may need to rethink how to act in certain social situations. For example, a fear of open spaces may have severely limited their social life. You may need to give them extra resources to deal with these ecology issues. There are also real considerations of safety. If the client had a phobia of snakes, they may have lost the phobia, but they still need an appropriate respect for snakes, perhaps even fear. Fear is a natural response - snakes can be dangerous.