Movie Technique
Find the specific incident. Your movie with the beginning middle and end. Make sure it is relatively short...keeping to the section that has the emotional intensity. Rate the intensity on a 0-10 scale.
1) tell the story in first person 'I'
2) see your movie on a screen across the room. tell the story in
black and white and third person 'she, he,'etc. do this until it feels comfortable in third person.
When you think about Black and White...remember the movie Wizard of OZ? You meet Dorthy in B&W, and everything is drab, grey, grainy, flat and not vibrant at all. Then when she is in OZ...everything is beautiful, colorful, vibrant, her shoes are red, the road is yellow, her dress is blue, you can see the auburn colour of her hair...etc. Or, take a color picture from a magazine that is really beautiful to you...and then Xerox it and make a B&W copy....compare the two. This is what we are asking you to do when you switch to the Black and White version.
3) tell in B&W third person BACKWARDS. truly backwards, like you are searching in rewind on a DVD. People walk backwards, food is eaten in reverse, conversations run in reverse, etc.
4) tell the story as a technicolor cartoon inserting cartoon characters for the people. (the players are still there...kind of like a cartoon/real person morph)
5) tell the story with in technicolor, with cartoon characters backwards.
6) Just tell the story with music playing/overlaying it. MOVE YOUR BODY with the music. It can really help. Benny Hill Theme music is FABULOUS. Can Can music is great too. Chubby Checker...For the music, the other person can hum it...or you can just have it recorded and play it. You can have it on your IPOD/MP3 or on a Cd etc.
7) tell the story in the 'as if' frame. Once you have reduced your emotion significantly, then rewrite the story the way you would have liked it to happen. It can be fantastical or grounded in reality. Give yourself a
good resolution...an empowering and nurturing resolution.
You do not have to do each version. Do the ones that appeal to you...Certainly you have to get the story straight first before running it backwards.
Telling the story in third person dissociates the story teller from it..by switching from 'I' to 'she'. Then they further dissociate them selves from it by adding cartoon characters and music overlay. Now if the incident is horrific, like abuse or a bomb blast etc...you must use your judgement...technicolor and cartoon characters would most likely not be appropriate. However, you can do the B&W movie over and over in third person forward and backward. You are making new associations with the memory. Totally jives with my Neurobiology background. You are causing a
pattern interrupt.
This is how I got my daughter into the tapping...the whole cartoon characters /backwards and music. She thinks it is so hilarious and fun. Great for when kids have nightmares, too.
Just think...
Shrek, Fiona, Popeye, Olive Oil, Lightening McQueen, Sylvester, Tweety, Wicked Stepmother, Fairy Godmother, Cinderella, Snow White, the Seven Dwarves, Kiki...Nemo...Porky Pig...the list is endless. A older client of mine used Charlie Chaplan and another used Pippi Longstocking. Dora and Diego, Bugs Bunny, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Eyeore, Piglet, Rabbit and Owl
Trauma Buster/Movie Technique~the NLP way.
Linear Mode
