Bypassing the Past with Hypnosis and NLP – Making a New True Story

Let's all blame Freud for some bad hypnosis.

People have been influenced by Freud's ideas to think that their past controls their current life. In Conversations with Richard Bandler, Bandler tells the story of a client who was making himself miserable by dwelling on past hurts to the point that it was interfering with his life.

Richard had a few questions.

“If you don't like your past, why not change it?” The man's response was that it is not possible to change the past.

The next question was, “If you dislike your past so much, why are you living there?”

One of my clients had a bad childhood experience with a horse. Taking a page from the NLP playbook, I had her go back and relive the experience in her imagination with the understandings and resources of an adult. Of course, she had a much different experience the second time around. With a little rehearsal she developed a new and much more satisfactory memory.

Then I asked her which memory was real. She replied, “The new one.”

Obviously, from her answer, she knew what had actually happened. What she meant was that the new memory had become the one that was emotionally real.

So, with only a little bit of help from hypnosis and a little touch of NLP, my client changed her past. And, that is the story of how she lost her fear of horses.