The broken heart phenomenon has also come up in my private hypnotherapy practice. At the time I was attending the NLP Practitioner training in August, I had two clients who were going through very difficult break-ups of their love relationships. So when I learned that the Phobia Theater can be modified and used to help people "fall out of love," I was excited at the prospect of trying it out. After I returned to Houston, I used this technique on both of them with good results.

The procedure I use is as follows:

1. "Imagine you are sitting in the middle of a movie theater and there is a still, color snapshot of yourself on the screen, as you look today, feeling comfortable, with a smile on your face.
2. Establish 3-Place dissociation. "Now imagine that you float out of your body up to the projection booth where you can see yourself sitting in the seat and also see the still, color snapshot of yourself on the screen."
3. Run black and white movie of good parts of relationship.From the projection booth, watch and listen to a black and white movie of all the good things that happened in your relationship - all the things you did when you were falling in love, the fun times, the sex, the laughter, etc. - from the beginning of the relationship all the way through the breakup." (If the client is particularly emotional about the relationship ending, you can direct him to use the controls in the projection booth and shrink the size of the picture on the screen, turn down the sound, make the picture fuzzy, lower a Plexiglas shield between him and the screen, etc.) "Let me know when you are finished."
4. "Now bring back the still color snapshot of yourself feeling comfortable and smiling."
5. Run movie backwards.
6. "Next I want you to leave the projection booth, float back down into the theater, and step into the screen, into the very end of that movie and run that movie backwards in color, full size, very quickly, in about 1 1/2 seconds, all the way back to before the relationship began. Do this twice, then go back to your seat in the theater."
7. "Now go back to seeing on the screen that still, color snapshot of yourself feeling comfortable and smiling."
8. Run movie of bad parts of relationship. "Now I’d like you to step into the screen again and run a full size, color movie of all the bad things that happened in the relationship - the times that she let you down, made you angry, hurt your feelings, lied to you, etc. - and let me know when you’re finished."
9. "You can go back to your seat in the theater and see on the screen that still, color snapshot of you, smiling and feeling good. And aren’t you glad you’re out of that relationship now? Aren’t you glad she’s living somewhere else?"
10. Future-Pace and Testing. "Now I’d like you to think of yourself in the future, looking back on this relationship, realizing that you learned a lot from this experience. You can look back at it and see that it turned out to be a great blessing in your life. And you have totally and completely forgiven [name of former spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend], and you have totally and completely forgiven yourself for any actions, words or thoughts that were imperfect. Let me know when you are finished. Now think of yourself in the future, running into [name] somewhere, and tell me how it feels."

Both clients reported a great reduction in emotional pain around thinking of running into their former partners. After I repeated the technique in a second session, the pain decreased even more.

This process helped a young woman leave a very unhealthy relationship with a man who regularly flew into emotionally abusive rages and had started to become physically abusive with her. She reported that she felt indifferent about him after the two sessions. This indifference wavered when she subsequently met with him to give him his personal belongings, however could be reinstalled after their meeting.

The other client had ended a five year relationship five months earlier and was experiencing emotional anguish on a daily basis. He had regularly been feeling pain around his heart as well as stomach rolling when he thought of his former girlfriend. He reported that each session lessened the emotional pain and the sense of loss. He no longer feels stomach-churning or heartache when he thinks about her. He had an additional breakthrough experience when she appeared in one of his dreams and the emotional charge was gone from the situation in the dream. He has let go of the emotional anguish of the break-up and is now working through a greatly reduced feeling of sadness.

This technique is good to use with battered women (or men) to break the cycle of going back to abuser. And, for those of you whose clients may want to rekindle the love in their relationship, reverse the movies, so that you are erasing the negative experiences in the relationship and leaving the good ones in their place. For that matter, it may be a process we want to use on ourselves and our spouse/significant others from time to time, to "keep our lovelights burning." Let me know how it works from you.

Kate Ellis, J.D., C. Ht., practices hypnotherapy in Houston, Texas. Kate took her Basic NLP Practitioner Training at the 96 NGH Conference with Dr. William D. Horton and is certified through the National Federation of NeuroLinguistic Psychology, the fastest growing NLP organization today. NFNLP is proud to work with the National Guild of Hypnotists offering cost effective trainings. For info call the NGH or NFNLP at (941) 697-9104.

The mending of a broken heart technique was developed by Dr. William Horton and is taught at all his trainings. Kate Ellis can be reached at (713) 665-4708.