Peta Heskell is known as The Original Flirt Coach and has been on just about every TV and radio show you can imagine. Her expertise is all things relationship and uses flirting as a powerful metaphor for effective communication whether that's with loved ones, friends or in the workplace. If there are relationships in your life that are holding you back (or making you eat) then Peta can help you…and make it fun...
In time it’ll seem less painful. Everyone goes through it. You’ll grow out of it. Oh yeah!
If you’ve ever had your heart torn out and thrown on the floor, you’ll remember how empty those phrases sounded at the time. You might know it’s true, but you don’t really believe it because of how you feel at the time.
Relax because I’m not going to give you nice words. I’m going to give you some practical things you can do to alter the way you structure your memories.
Wouldn’t you like to be able to think of past hurt and not FEEL the pain so badly. Would you like to be able to think about what’s in store for you in the future and FEEL hopeful and even excited. You can learn to do it and all you have to do is follow a few simple instructions. Is this magic? NO, but it’s the next best thing.
FACT: We experience every event in our lives through through our five senses. We use our senses as a translator to create awareness and memories.
When we recall past experiences we use our senses to recreate them in our mind. We make images, we hear sounds or say things to ourselves and we might or might not imagine a smell or taste something. How we actually recreate those experiences will have a direct affect on what kinds of feelings we get in our body.
We don’t just make pictures. We make ones that are very big or colourful or small or black and white. We all make our own individual pictures of the same event. We don’t just hear sounds. We hear loud or quiet ones, we hear voices that are whiny or pleasant.
When you think of a past event that makes you feel some unpleasant emotion, you will be constructing it in your mind probably by using a combination of visuals and sounds.
We remember events in two different ways. One is as if we are seeing ourselves in an event, like watching ourselves at a movie. The other is like actually being back in that event as if it’s happening to us and we are seeing it through our own eyes.
When you see it through your own eyes, it’s much stonger and creates more powerful feelings. When you see it as if watching yourself from afar, the feelings are much less intense. We can do this when we recall any event. It doesn’t matter whether it was ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’
Would you like to experiment and play around with the way you construct your memories? You might notice some very interesting differences.
First you’ve probably got a few memories that cause you pain to remember. When one comes to mind, stop a second and check how you are remembering it.
Are you seeing it through your own eyes? The techie term for this is ‘associated’. If you are, notice where you are getting feelings in your body and how intense they are. Then try this.
Imagine that you are sitting in the movie which is showing at the theatre. Imagine stepping out of the movie and into the audience. Then imagine you are watching the movie with you in it. If you need to imagine floating back to the very back of the theatre and watch it from there.
As you start to watch yourself notice your feelings changing. Are they in the same place? Are they as intense? Are they the same kind of feelings? Chances are you’ll notice the changes and the feelings will not be so strong.
Sometimes just stepping back in your mind from something and seeing it from outside of yourself can really make it less painful.
If this didn’t work brilliantly for you, stay cool. It takes a bit of practice.
There are lots of things you can do to change the images you make. If you get bad feelings thinking about something, notice whether the picture you are making is very big and has colour. If it does, imagine the picture on a computer screen and you pointing with the mouse at the corner of the picture.
You know how pictures get those little black squares at each corner and if you ‘grab’ them with your mouse pointer and drag inwards, you can make the picture smaller.
You can do this in your mind too. Just make it very small.
If this doesn’t work for you, just imagine the image floating away from you and getting smaller like a boat does as it sails out to sea. Notice how your feelings change as you do this. If the bad feelings get weaker, then you are discovering how to change the structure of your memories to make them less painful. Not bad eh!
Similarly if a picture that makes you feel bad has a lot of colour, try taking out the colour and imagining it in black and white.
Generally when we have bad feelings it’s because we go over and over the same old movies in our mind, wishing we could change the ending. Is it possible to change the ending of something that’s in the past. When you say to yourself, if only I’d said this or done this, does it actually change anything? Chances are NOT!!
You’re probably doing a lot of this movie watching and just being aware that you are can be very useful in helping you to work through it. Each time you do it, and think if only… I should have, I could have, why didn’t I..ask yourself two simple questions.
Can I change this NOW. Can I time travel and go back and fix it? If the answer, as I suspect, is NO, then ask yourself.
What’s next, what can I do next to move away from this? What do I want instead?
ALWAYS when you feel negative, and think about what you don’t want.. ask what do you want instead. It makes you think about possibilities rather than problems. By the way you are not allowed to say ‘I want it all to be back the way it was before X’… You are only allowed to think of what you want in the future!