Consider the role of frames upon frames in the Movie Rewind pattern (Phobia Cure). It works because we layer level upon level of resources upon the original primary state.
Level 1: Primary trauma thought.
Begin with a “negative” thought that sets off all kinds of painful emotional reactions.
Pick a “thought” of a memory that “rattles your cage” so much so that you can’t even
“think” it in a calm and rational. This presents the primary state or experience. In it you find that you have become wired (so to speak) to react semantically to an “idea.”
Just the idea of the trauma upsets you and your entire body and neurology becomes reactive. It is this thought, this representation, that we will be dealing with.
Level 2: Calm distance.
Imagine putting the “thought” that upsets you on a mental screen and stepping back from it as if in a movie theater. When you have located the memory, turn it into a black-and-white snapshot of a scene at the beginning of the traumatic event. Freeze-frame this scene and hold it there as you take your seat in the 10th row.
Here we are meta-stating the trauma thought with distance, stillness, and black-and-white coding. All of these higher ideas about (meta) to the first level thought induce messages of comfort about it.
In NLP this has been called a “dissociation” step, yet it involves so much more. It certainly does have the effect of stepping back and out of a felt memory. And as a result most people feel some relief. Yet we have not so much moved to “not feeling”
as we have to “feeling calm” and “feeling distance” about the memory. We have begun to layer thoughts and feelings upon the trauma memory that gives it a new texture– a new feel. But it doesn’t end there.
Level 3: Increased distance and protect and control.
Now imagine yourself and feel yourself float out of your observing self and up to the projection booth. From there you will be able to see the back of your current self watching the old memory representation as a black-and-white snap-shot on the screen.
Touch the plexiglass that separates you from the auditorium knowing that you’re safe here in the projection booth.
This so-called “double dissociation” steps back two times to apply all kinds of resources to the original thought that we have not actually “thought” about yet. All this is preparation (pre-framing) for thinking. ere we have continued meta-stating our old memory with more distance and protection behind a plexiglass. And because in the projection booth we can edit the film– we bring editing skill and power to bear upon the old memory, which gives us the sense of power and control.
Meta-Levels
Layers of More Distance
Thoughts/ Protection
Feelings Control over your own Images
about Distance/ Comfort
the Black-and-white Snap-Shot
Primary State
Traumatic Memory
Level 4: Controlled viewing and fast rewinding.
Now you can turn on the movie (intentional control) and let it play out. Just watch it in this black-and-white movie of your past. After the traumatic scene is over, let it play until you find a scene of comfort where you’re okay, freeze frame that scene.
Then, step into that scene of comfort and run it backward while you are inside seeing, hearing, and feeling everything run backwards. Let this happen so quickly that it only takes two seconds.
Here we layer onto all of the other layers of awareness cues like the images being black-and-white that we are observing “the past,” and that we’re in control of editing our memory. Then, after we meta-state the memory with comfort, we add a very strange layer of consciousness as we rewind the movie. Bringing backwardness or fast reverse to our memory really layers on some weird thinking and feeling. For some this will interrupt, for others it will spread comfort backwards through the past, and for yet others it will confuse and mess up the old strategy for trauma. Talk about more layers and frames that texture the old trauma. And yet we have not finished.
Level 5: Clean slate and directiveness.
After the first backward super-rewinding process, do this 5 more times. Clear the screen of your mind, start with the scene of comfort, step in, rewind. In this step, we layer onto everything ideas of a clean slate and we bring that to bear upon the memory. This interrupts things and it directionalizes our minds.
Coherent Movie Theater Metaphor Directionalilzing the Brain
Clean Slate
Rewinding in Super-Fast Speed
Meta-Levels Controlled Viewing
Layers of More Distance
Thoughts/ Protection
Feelings Control over your own Images
about Distance/ Comfort
the Black-and-white Snap-Shot
Primary State
Traumatic Memory
Level 6: Meta-stating with a coherent metaphor.
The whole set of the meta-level states that you have added one upon another in this process has all actually occurred inside of a metaphor—the metaphor of a movie. In other words, you also brought a movie show situation to bear upon the thought–
which enabled the other moves (stepping back and back, altering the visual and auditory components, running it backwards, etc.) to occur without really noticing.
True enough, a negative memory doesn’t stand a chance. We can’t track that many levels and so the first meta-levels begins to “collapse” or coalesce into the primary state thereby texturing and qualifying the memory in new and more resourceful ways.