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How to Get Over Feelings of Anger, Fear, Sadness, Hurt, and Guilt

We have all suffered losses, whether from breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, the loss of a pet, or the loss of a family member. And, we have all done things we didn’t intend, hurt someone else, became angry, or were scared about something, perhaps lots of things in this economy! The churches have a large establishment centered around forgiveness; we forgive others for things we think they did to us, and we ask forgiveness for things we think we have done to others. The process of forgiving, and being forgiven, is a powerful one.

We find solace in that we can finally put to rest things that have been on our minds. The churches, though, deal almost exclusively with forgiveness – and there is much more that we can do. When an event occurs in our lives, the only meaning the event has, is the meaning we give it. When someone throws a chair through a plate glass window in a store, is this good or bad? Most of us would say ‘bad’ – but what if the store is on fire and the door is bolted? Now it is ‘good’! Events have only the meaning we give them. When a loved pet passes away, we can choose to be sad, or hurt, or any of a wide range of feelings about the event.

But the event, in and of itself, has no meaning; it is just a fact of life. We choose how we feel. If we disliked the pet, perhaps coming from a previous marriage, we might feel relief knowing we won’t have to deal with the animal anymore. If we have become attached, though, we might feel a terrible sense of loss. The point is, we get to choose how we feel about each and every event in our lives. We need not suffer forever about things that happened in the past. The church has the right idea; we need to face what happened. However, events, and the emotions associated with them, are locked away in our memories – we may even have forgotten about many events, but the associated emotions still trouble us, whether we know it or not. Our minds are incredibly powerful; our subconscious, or unconscious mind, is far more powerful than we can even imagine. It examines these old memories (unconsciously!) and re-presents them for evaluation from time to time in an attempt to resolve any issues associated with the event. Some of the NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) presuppositions of the unconscious mind are as follows:

1. Reality is our perception of reality; not reality itself. Everyone has a different perception of events, with different associated meanings. Tons of information comes to us through our senses – we filter this information to deal with it consciously, by generalizing, distorting, or deleting information. The unconscious mind sees it all, though.

2. The meaning of our communication is the response we get. There is nothing negative, only feedback about what we are doing. If we need a different result, we change our approach.

3. Flexibility is key. The approach of NLP is to increase choice. If we have more choices, we can make better decisions. When we look at a past event, we may initially think that we have no choice but to feel how we feel about it. We can choose how we feel. We have choices.

4. Although we may feel like crap, none of us is “broken”. We are all simply responding to events based on our personal map of the world and our beliefs. We can decide to change our beliefs or our map of the world to something that will serve us better.

5. Modeling a behavior we admire will lead us to feel better about ourselves. We can choose to wander around in a funk, or we can model the person who appears to be happy all the time. Soon we will be happy all the time! (This leads to a discussion of archetypes and how they can help us make better decisions, but that is for another day)

6. The unconscious organizes and stores memories, and re-presents events to our conscious for resolution. This is the key to timeline therapy and the release of negative emotions. These are only a few of the presuppositions of the unconscious mind and NLP; and I have taken liberties in stating them. However, they are the important ones in terms of understanding why we respond to past events in the way that we do. There is an an easy way to directly ask the unconscious mind to re-examine each and every event, retain the substance of the event, the things we need to learn from them, but release any negative emotions associated with them.

The process of doing this is an aspect of Timeline Therapy. It is a process facilitated by a certified timeline therapist (and generally NLP Master Practitioner), which takes about an hour. We take a mental journey back in time, examining our memories of events, looking at them from a different perspective to see what we should have learned from each event, then proceeding along our timeline back to the present, releasing any negative emotions from each event as we return. We often play some appropriate music, and as the music plays, the practitioner will guide us on a thought journey back in time to discover events we need to re-process, events we need to look at again to learn what we must learn from them before the negative emotions can be finally released.

As a result of this simple process, we often see a relaxation in the face, relaxed lines and muscles, sometimes the process appears to take years off of our appearance. The best part is that afterward, we often feel a great sense of peace and calmness. Many of us with negative feelings try to push them down and bury them; or talk about them endlessly, often involving alcohol or other state altering substances; or we can go to counseling. How about spending an hour with a time line therapist instead? Check out http://www.Premotional.com

Patrick Harvey is an SRI certified Master Neurostrategist and NLP Master Practitioner. To consult with Mr. Harvey, contact him at harvs@yahoo.com. Consultation may be in person, via phone, or via email. Personal and business coaching is available. http://www.Premotional.com or MStrategist on Twitter.

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