Reverse Movie Technique
(also known as The "NLP Trauma or Phobia Cure")

Applications: Resolve self-limiting behaviors; defuse traumas such as phobias, panic attacks, acute anxieties, rape, past accidents, abuse, serious illness, drug flashbacks, war experiences, and most posttraumatic stress disorders.

1. Visualize a scale from 0 to 10, zero being the most comfort, and 10 being the worst discomfort you have experienced. 

Concentrate on the unwanted feelings that you have chosen to defuse through this dissociation and desensitization process.

Where are you on that scale right now, as you go back and re-live one, or a series of related past events?...

(If feelings become too intense, simply step outside the experience and become a distant observer. View it as if the experience was happening to someone else, or project it onto the movie screen of your mind, then proceed.)

2. Imagine that you're sitting in the middle of a movie theater. On the screen you see a black-and-white snapshot of yourself right before the distressing situation happened--when you were still feeling okay.

This should be JUST BEFORE you had that unwanted response, for example, mind-numbing terror, intense pain, overwhelming sadness, obsessive guilt, out-of-control rage.

3. Next, a part of you goes to the projection booth of the theater where you can watch yourself sitting in the theater, while the you in the theater watches the you in the still picture on the screen.

4. Turn that snapshot on the screen into a black-and-white movie, and run it from the beginning to just beyond the end--in super fast mode--of that unpleasant experience. 

Do it in just a few seconds--the brain learns by having patterns go by rapidly. Also, it will go by so fast it will simply be a blur, making it impossible to see anything, hear anything or experience any of the unwanted feelings. When you get to the end, stop the movie.

Knowing you are at the end can be intuitive such as knowing when you have "shuffled the playing cards enough." 

You can also have your unconscious mind give you a signal such as having the last frame go dark or go light as seen in old home movies, or "see" the words, "The End."

5. The part of you in the projection booth reunites with the part of you in the theater; jump INSIDE the movie so it becomes something you are directly experiencing... like time undoing it's self.

Run it backwards, in full color, all the way to the beginning black and white picture of the moment in time when you were happy, and only take a few seconds to do it.

It will be like seeing a movie backwards, with you inside it, as if time had reversed direction and was going backwards....

(If you have difficulty imagining going in reverse, just pretend you can do it--pretend works!)

Repeat the process four more times, in succession, very rapidly.

6. Think about what it was that upset you before beginning this technique.... Where are you now on this scale of zero to 10?

NOTE: If needed, the technique may be repeated in sets of five until you get the desired result--a "zero." If not completely successful, identify the secondary gains for keeping the unwanted feelings, and resolve the issue with additional appropriate techniques such as the "One-Step Reframe."

You may have another person coach you through the process by reading these directions out loud. You may do it yourself by simply imagining the actions in sequence while you pace yourself. 

It is not important to remember all the exact words for achieving success with this technique. 

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