Hi all,

I wanted to ask about something I've been experiencing while learning some of the skills. A lot of it might just be distorted expectations.

I am having a great deal of difficulty, as of yet, applying some of the tools that generate strong positive feelings and emotions. For example, self-anchoring. The steps are fairly simple: Pick a resource state, elicit it, anchor it, and test. I think it's in the elicitation part that I have a lot of trouble. Let's say I pick motivation. I then think of a time when I felt motivated... and then make the images bigger and more vivid, etc. But as I do that, I never feel like I've increased the feeling of motivation to the point where it's strong enough to anchor. In fact, it barely changes.

The same thing goes for the whole "spin your feeling" thing. I don't think I've ever noticed my feelings having a "spin" to them that I could speed up to really increase them.

I can think of tons of exercises like those that I've tried a few times, with pretty much no results. Like I said, it might just be slightly distorted expectations, but in a way, I feel like I'm a bit numb to these things. Maybe I just need better inner awareness.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's had these sorts of difficulties when starting out. What are some tips for how I can get past this hurdle and really experience these things fully?

cheers

Hi Rep,

There are many many submodalities to tinker with. Sounds to me like you have just not found the critical ones for you with respect to the states you want to anchor, yet. State awareness and anchoring can also be a subtle process as well as dramatic.

While it seems like bigger and more vivid images are something of a generalisation and work for many folk, there are other popular tweaks that work for many, and for some the key changes are more obscure or even paradoxical. Association vs. disassociation both auditory and visual can be good ones if you want to enhance and anchor desirable kinaesthetics for example, but its really about tinkering until you find out what works best for you. Pay particular attention to associated physiology of you can.

What NLP material are you using ? Better still, practice with someone who knows a bit if you can.

As regards spinning feelings there was a long and at times informative thread here.


Spinning Feelings --- an Advancement for NLP?

Good luck

MH

hmm yeah i had problems like this too, that i'm only really starting to get over. traditionally, emotional stuff has been my challenge as well.

total shot in the dark here-- you might be trying to apply some sort of cognitive idea of how things should work over your natural processes? I find that I got a lot more out of anchoring when i forgot all about it and just paid attention to my feelings. the thing is, anchoring is a totally natural process -- in fact, it's how we WORK on a deep level -- our body stores emotional charges to shit. seeing THAT, without the desire to change it or impose some sort of system, helped me a great deal, because i got off of this idea of 'techniquing' myself, and started appreciating the natural flow of my body... which nlp is a good descriptor for actually.

maybe that fits, maybe it don't. i'm still new too, really.

Team up with someone, they can elicite the desired state, you revivify the state, they can calibrate and watch for the peak, they can anchor that state for you and test it. Once you have experienced that process it is easier to do yourself.

Today I was working with a young horse rider who is a scared of her horse. She was on the horse and a bit tense looking. She began to tell me all about how she rode on her holiday. I elicited that the horse was a racehorse much bigger than her horse, that she went very fast on the beach, how confident she felt, how exactly she balanced and how thrilled she was with her skills. As we conversed she completely revivified the best parts of the experience and I anchored this to her on her own horse and to my voice and a hand movement.

For example I asked about what kind of tack, turned out to be the same high tec' saddle as her own, how the reins felt, how the holiday horse smelt, stride size, responsiveness, ear shape, neck length and so on. She began to giggle and relax, the holiday horse experience was transferred to her horse giving her a new sensation and confidence. When she was at the peak of each of the states of confidence, success, alertness, excitement, and joy I said Kewl in a particular tone ( a word she uses herself) and swung my hand forward. Later in the lesson when I said kewl she lit up again and so I could fire her positivity and confidence whenever I thought she needed it. A hand swing would normally worry her as the horse reads it and goes faster but because I had associated it with the holiday gallop on the beach my hand swing made her grin and think forward.

We had a great session mainly because of the use of anchoring and she gave herself and the horse 9/10.

Thanks for the insights, everyone. John: You're not too far from the truth, and the principle of "just let go" has been a recurring one in my life in recent times. I'm working on it.

About noticing submodalities and what the critical/relevant/useful ones are to me: How do I do that without distorting the results? What I mean is, there's kind of a Heisenberg thing going on here. If all the submodalities are happening subconsciously, then doesn't paying conscious attention to them change them somewhat? I'm sure the locations of where I picture someone I like versus where I picture someone I dislike differ, but if I'm consciously thinking of two such opposite people, with the goal of noticing the different submodalities, then I detect no difference in submodalities. I don't construct voices/sounds from different areas, or put the pictures in different areas, etc. This might go back to "just letting go" though. I wish I knew how haha.

Two possible solutions to that I've found:

1) Don't worry about it, and just catch myself doing it naturally. It's like eye accessing cues. If I'm consciously constructing sounds or images and trying to see where my eyes go, they go nowhere. But sometimes, I catch myself looking up when I'm thinking deeply about some problem. Maybe I need to extend that to submodalities.

2) Stop worrying about where they appear, and be okay with the conscious distortion, and focus on where things feel more comfortable (i.e. "where does it feel more comfortable to put the image of someone I like?" etc.)