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Scattering the Problem By Paul Hurley This involves taking the Eye Movement exercise and using extra submodalities for extra effect in scattering the problem, messing up their normal strategy. I first used this technique with a client who had very bad associations with an event in her recent past. I phoned her before the session and asked her to bring a tape of a favorite song of hers that she had a special association with, a song that always reminds her of a time in her life at which she felt very happy. When she came for her session, she gave me the tape of the song and I put it into my tape player. During the session, I got her to fully associate with the problem and experience all the negative and painful emotions that at that time came with thinking about that situation. When fully associated, I instructed her to stare at my finger and follow its directions with her eyes, all the time keeping her attention. I started slowly and then gradually speeded up. After finishing for the first time, I got her to think of the past with her problem. I then repeated the finger exercise, this time with an extra twist. While my client was focussing fully on the direction of my finger, I used my free hand to turn on the cassette player. This started to play her favorite song, a song with which she had totally happy and positive associations. As I increased the speed of my finger movements, I gradually increased the volume of the song. The song served as a powerful anchor. When combined with the finger exercise, it helped to totally scramble my client's strategy. When she thought about the event that had previously been the cause of so much anguish, she now experienced no negative emotions. She was simply "unable" to recreate the earlier negative emotions when thinking about the past event. Instead, she simply kept the lessons learnt and used it to help herself in the future. I find auditory anchors and especially olfactory anchors to be very useful, in combination with the finger exercise, when scrambling strategies.
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