We feel guilty when we think we have done something wrong or have in fact done something wrong. This could be wrong in terms of illegal or immoral or it could be something that does not correspond to one of our values.
It is an ‘away from’ emotion, negative and in its own way abusive if we carry the guilt with us from the past as baggage into the future. Although we are not time travellers like Doctor Who and can’t go back and put things right we can time travel in NLP along a time line.
Exercise
First think about what your life would be like without this guilty feeling. You need to imagine letting it go and being without it because if you can’t visualise that, it will be hard to let it go. Imagine not feeling guilty and how great that will feel.
Now imagine a time line stretching out in front of you on the floor with the future in front of you and the past behind you.
Then go to the place on the line where you experienced the situation or event that you feel guilty about.
Associate into it. That means really imagine you are there now experiencing all that happened. You are the age you were when it was happening. This might mean you have to think yourself younger so picture yourself at that age wearing whatever you would have been wearing then and picture the scene.
When you’re ready, imagine floating up above your time line and looking down on the scene you have painted. I want you to disassociate, see the scene as someone else would see it. You are the age you are now. Do you see it differently now. What do you learn from it? We’re looking for the positive intention of the guilty feelings. What can we learn from the guilty event that we can bring into the future as a positive learning?
Let the emotions disappear as you disassociate and just look for the learnings and the understanding. You may find that at a conscious level you can extract the learnings or it might be subconscious that as you take the learnings you just feel relieved of the guilt.
Now move back to the place in the line where you started and experience being free of guilt.
It is an ‘away from’ emotion, negative and in its own way abusive if we carry the guilt with us from the past as baggage into the future. Although we are not time travellers like Doctor Who and can’t go back and put things right we can time travel in NLP along a time line.
Exercise
First think about what your life would be like without this guilty feeling. You need to imagine letting it go and being without it because if you can’t visualise that, it will be hard to let it go. Imagine not feeling guilty and how great that will feel.
Now imagine a time line stretching out in front of you on the floor with the future in front of you and the past behind you.
Then go to the place on the line where you experienced the situation or event that you feel guilty about.
Associate into it. That means really imagine you are there now experiencing all that happened. You are the age you were when it was happening. This might mean you have to think yourself younger so picture yourself at that age wearing whatever you would have been wearing then and picture the scene.
When you’re ready, imagine floating up above your time line and looking down on the scene you have painted. I want you to disassociate, see the scene as someone else would see it. You are the age you are now. Do you see it differently now. What do you learn from it? We’re looking for the positive intention of the guilty feelings. What can we learn from the guilty event that we can bring into the future as a positive learning?
Let the emotions disappear as you disassociate and just look for the learnings and the understanding. You may find that at a conscious level you can extract the learnings or it might be subconscious that as you take the learnings you just feel relieved of the guilt.
Now move back to the place in the line where you started and experience being free of guilt.
This is taken from 'Be a happier parent with NLP' if you'd like me to send you a free copy of the first part of the book please use form below.
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