My 14-year old niece asked me if I could hypnotize her to forget a boy she dated over the summer. This was her first "love." She has had boyfriends in the past, but she was really hung up on this one. She says she begins to think about him when other guys show interest in her and this prevents her from moving on. Any ideas?

Hi Tony,

Maybe....

Have her remember what times stood out for her as memories of this chap and get her to see the person from the 3rd persective, maybe as as if watching it on TV. Then gradually break down her association with the story by playing with the submodalities. Have her see it in black and white, maybe change the soundtrack and eventually push the image into the distance and watch it from there. You could even use a Swish pattern to swap memoried that pop into her head with something that she wants to focus herself on, maybe the doing well on her exams or whatever. You may get the passion for one event spilling into the other? just an idea.

Maybe get her to write a story about the event and make her aware of when the start of the ending begins. Maybe seeing the story finishing will highlight the 'ending' of the story and again offer her a little distance.

You mention that she asked you to make her forget, maybe an option could be to reframe the situation as the 'perfect summer love relationship' and make links to other fads and short lived passions she has had. This may allow her to remember the positives of her romance and ensure it stays in the right context as simply an enjoyable experience.

For what it is worth, my first love is still my only true love, I was 12 and can remember those butterflies with great clarity. The happiness and pain of that experience I believe becomes a great and important learning opportunity for all of us, feeling the 'hurt' in this safe environment may (excuse the cliche) be an important character building opportunity for her and an opportunity for you to help her manager those feelings in a positive manner. Simply forgetting the scenario will also forget all the happiness and progress she made as a young women.

Any help?

Thanks,

Matt

russianbear wrote:

My 14-year old niece asked me if I could hypnotize her to forget a boy she dated over the summer. This was her first "love."

If she forgets him, she won't learn from her experience.

Teach her how to learn from her mistakes rather than to suppress them, and she'll be much better off in the long run. Hurt a little more now, hurt a lot less over time.

Andy Austin has an interesting chapter in his book about deletions. You have to be careful about that sort of thing! Without realizing it, important learning can be deleted as well!

I'm with Matt on the reframing. Turn it into something more useful!

Be well, and at peace,

Phil

Hi Tony
All three post have great points, reframing it it to something positive and like Michael and Phil pointed out, learning from the experience is also important.

I think that it is just as important to allow her to learn and grow at the pace and speed that she is ready to grow. Its no use trying to have her process stuff she is not ready or wanting to process. In this case she has asked to forget him, perhaps this is what she needs to learn to do on this occassion, and since she asked you perhaps its also a chance for you to learn.

A great oppotunity for you to use your skills to help her help herself.

Have a great day

Frederic

My 14-year old niece asked me if I could hypnotize her to forget a boy she dated over the summer.

Hi Tony, just a thought: instead of hypnosis, you could try the Threshold Pattern. Bandler also refers to this pattern in the context of hurting relationships like the one your niece has had. But if you think you are proficient in hypnosis and confident about it, please go ahead.

russianbear wrote:

My 14-year old niece asked me if I could hypnotize her to forget a boy she dated over the summer. This was her first "love." She has had boyfriends in the past, but she was really hung up on this one. She says she begins to think about him when other guys show interest in her and this prevents her from moving on. Any ideas?

When she looks back over her life and at the relationships she will have had, in 20 or 30 years time, how will she be able to see the distinctions between those that were good and the not so good?

Deleting the bad will also have an effect on the meaning she ascribes to the good.

John

By the time you're middle aged you've learned everything trouble is remembering it

Thank you everyone for your replies and, please, if there are any more, keep them coming.
While my niece asked me to help her "forget" the boy, I never actually considered doing that; I don't think it's beneficial. What I was thinking was exactly what you all have suggested, make it a learning experience. I guess my goal is to get her to a point where the idea of that relationship stops interfering with her moving forward.
A very, very good friend of mine, and an NLP expert has sent me a pattern to use utilizing submodalities, etc.
Once again, thank you all for coming to my aide.

Read the book LEAVES BEFORE THE WIND -John grinder & U will get a detailed example of such a woman who was unable to forget a guy with whom she was obessed. In that Case example its explained how to make her forget that guy

im not as experianced as most (probably all) of the guys on this forum, but from what iv been playing with recently i might be able to offer some fresh perspective.

have you gone into it with her and found out how its stopping her moving forward?
last person i spoke to that had a problem like this pictured the memory directly in front of them, right in there face. i found moving it to where it was supposed to be on their timeline, and changing it to a polariod in a photo album worked exceptionally well.

either way, you need to find out how it stops her moving forward, and how she is hung up etc before you can decide what you need to do.

hope that helps. if anyone disagrees, i'd be glad to learn from what you have to say so i can learn from it too!

Hey All

Am new here also, I have to concur with Rick on this one.
The main thing you need to find out is HOW it is holding her back, there may be one thing or multiple things which can stop her moving forward. They may be trivial or seem trivial but the way her memories are stored make it much harder for her to move forward.

I highly believe and trust NLP can change lives, however I am torn on this one, do I think it can be beneficial? absolutely. but I think talking with your daughter would be the way to go not start playing with her memories and experiences. Ricks solution will work as I have used it before, but until you know HOW it is holding her back moving the pictures and memories and storing them, may only be a short term solution. as the real problem may still be located deeper inside as it may be an issue which has not been faced.

All the best with your search.

Craig

russianbear wrote:

A very, very good friend of mine, and an NLP expert has sent me a pattern to use utilizing submodalities, etc.

Now that you mention it, I did work with someone regarding grief. Someone she loved deeply had died many years before, and she still felt it as if it were recent.

I elicited her submodalities for him and for someone for whom she had successfully grieved, and led her through a swish. She had immediate relief.

My wife, Connirae and I developed a systematic and dependable pattern for resolving grief, based on "mapping across" submodalities, that should be in everyone's "toolkit." A (free) article describing it in great detail can be found at: Steve Andreas Home

Thank you so much Mr. Andreas. I'm a big fan of all of your products, especially "NLP: The New Technology of Acheivement." I look forward to reading this article and applying the information.

If the breakup was 'traumatic' for her then the "Fast Phobia Cure" can reduce the emotional charge without reducing the access to the memories or the learning.

Greg

Greg,
The break up wasn't exactly traumatic. It's one of those things, on an intellectual level, she knows she has nothing in common with this boy and doesn't want to be with him, however, on an emotional level, she's attached to him and that interferes. She asked me for help with this. I gathered the ideas my friends from this site gave me and told her when she's ready to work on it, I'm available. I'll let her come to me.

Hey Big Guy,

Luckily the break up was not traumatic, but I bet for her it seems like the end of the world... Remember being a teenager and getting dumped? How did it feel at the time? It sounds like you will have leverage as she knows there was not a good basis to the relationship.

I would run her through the fast phobia cure or something modified from this not because of any trauma but just that all she probably needs is disassociation from the feelings more than anything else and this will do it as good as anything will.

Find some way to have her see herself in the pictures when she thinks of this guy and move the pictures away from her use analogue submodalities to make changes to her internal images. change the distance, drain out any colour and make them dimmer etc.

If it's working with you she is bothered about put her on the phone next time we are talking I will see if I can do something from the other side of the pond for her a lil Xmas present from England

Jason

Several have suggested using the phobia cure for this girl, but that would be a mistake, and also fruitless, because of the structure of grief.
The phobia cure is useful for unpleasant feelings, especially fear.
However, in grief it is not the presence of unpleasant feelings, but the absence of pleasant ones, that is the problem--and this is not just linguistic juggling.
This is similar to the difference between disgust and hunger. Disgust is the presence of something unpleasant, and hunger is the absence of something pleasant. The cure for disgust will not work for hunger, and vice versa.
The phobia cure is a bit like vomiting, which can be useful for nausea--but totally useless for hunger.
A grieving person is already dissociated from the pleasant feelings that they had with the lost person, and that is how this girl is "hung up" on the boy she loved--she is yearning for the feelings she had with him (even though "intellectually" she realizes that "they have nothing in common.") To try to dissociate her even more would not be helpful.
Resolution comes when the person realizes that they can have the good feelings without the person, and use those as a way of searching for a replacement experience in the real world, as described in the article linked in my previous post.
(Grief resolution is something that my wife Connirae and I modeled very thoroughly some 20 years ago, and first published in our book, Heart of the Mind)
Steve Andreas

aikijason wrote:

Hey Big Guy,


If it's working with you she is bothered about put her on the phone next time we are talking I will see if I can do something from the other side of the pond for her a lil Xmas present from England

Jason

That's bringing out the big guns.

Mr. Andreas,
I confess, I have your book "Heart of the Mind." I just haven't gotten around to reading it yet, which I don't understand because I've heard it's a great book. I will look up grief resolution, however.
Like I said, however, she initially asked me to help her with this. Since then, she has been resistent to work on it with me, and I don't believe in attempting to force anything on anyone.