by Julie Davis

Here is a protocol for assisting someone with feelings of abandonment that has been developed and useful with NLP. Sometimes clients, when changing a behavior or chronic habit, feel a sense of loss or abandonment when this changes. There is sometimes a need to fill this void with something more useful.

1. Using a kinesthetic anchor, have the person locate the feeling just before the binge starts. To do this, have the person remember the last binge. Anchor. 

2. Have the person make a picture of the feeling - V/K Dissociation (the picture can easily be a metaphor for the feeling or a real picture - what is the person seeing visually - Vi - at that moment). 

3. Project the picture of a screen outside of the person. 

4. If the picture is still moving, FREEZE the image. (For example, if the person is making a picture of fire works, have them freeze the image.) 

5. Create a container for the image. Ask the person to create a frame for the picture, or, if the image has changed and a frame is not appropriate, have the person do something to contain this frozen image. 

6. Take the image home. Have the person reassociate with the frozen image by either bringing in the frozen image to fill the void or actually drawing a picture and then framing it. Then hanging it up in their home. There can be many inventive ways to metaphorically fill the void but it seems to be most important to freeze the movement and then create an image to fill the void.

Julie Davis, NLP Counseling for Health and Well-Being is a psychotherapist. She can be contacted at 791, Avenue du General Leclerc, 92100 Boulogne, France. Telephone: 1046216429; Fax: 0147611969.