The Fear and Anxiety Solution (21 page)

So what has felt like emotional baggage from the past actually has a much more important purpose than just haunting us or weighing us down. Unresolved fear and anxiety serve as signals—red flags that mark the memories that still require our attention. Our subconscious mind holds on to these emotions until it’s safe and we are ready to remember and learn from these events. Then we can understand the lessons and claim the growth potential that has been enclosed within these memories. Doesn’t this perspective turn your views about fear and anxiety upside down?

Taking this notion further, you’ll come to a very empowering conclusion: the more unresolved fear and anxiety you’ve stored in your subconscious, the more untapped potential awaits you.

Confirming this notion is the fact that as soon as you’ve retrieved the insights and learned from these anxiety-charged memories, your subconscious mind is more than willing to let go of the emotional attachments. Sound too good to be true? Well, here’s an example showing you that you probably have, without even realizing it, experienced this fundamental principle of “leading back, learning, and letting go” many times.

Let’s say one of your best friends doesn’t call you on your birthday. You wonder what happened; how could she forget your birthday? Who does she think she is? Is she upset with you? Was it something you said or did? Days pass, and you can’t stop thinking about the snub. Maybe you vacillate between hurt, resentment, and insecurity. But one thing’s for sure—you’re not about to call
her.
Then you find out that her father was rushed to the hospital, or that she had a very challenging time at work, or that she felt so bad she’d forgotten your birthday that she was hesitant to call you afterward. When you learn the true reason behind the perceived slight, your hurt, resentment, and insecurity change to compassion, forgiveness—and possibly a bit of embarrassment that you made such a big deal out of the incident.

What have you learned from this experience? Perhaps that, until you know the truth, it doesn’t pay to react to assumptions. Or maybe you ask yourself why you allowed the missed call to spoil your birthday. Or maybe you explore why, on
your
day, you made your friend more important than yourself. Whatever you take away, you know that this incident has presented you with the opportunity to examine your self-worth and your tendency to give your power to others.

Learning and letting go of past anxiety works relatively smoothly if you only have to deal with one or two events. But what if you’ve been shoving down countless anxiety-ridden memories throughout several decades—maybe as long as you can remember? How can you address all these unresolved emotions and learn what you need to without becoming completely overwhelmed? Trust your subconscious to offer an elegant and effective solution for this problem. It all begins with the way the subconscious stores memories.

The smell of cigars takes me right back to the seemingly endless hours of studying with my grandfather and his heroic but ultimately futile attempts to teach me the spelling rules of the German language. I can still hear his exasperated voice through a cloud of smoke, calling me an
Armleuchter
—which literally means “chandelier,” but I’m pretty sure he meant “bonehead”—after I had made the same mistake for the umpteenth time. It was all about the use of the triple
s,
which, in my defense, has been almost abolished since then by the German spelling reform. Isn’t it interesting how simple things, such as the smell of cigars, a song on the radio, an old photograph, or the taste of your mom’s favorite dish can bring back old memories? Where do these memories come from?

Memories are sorted and filed by the subconscious in a linear fashion and relative to the time when they occurred. This allows us to distinguish events that occurred last week from those that took place when we were ten years old and from those we imagine could happen in the future. It continues to fascinate me that everyone, regardless of gender, age, background, or walk of life, subconsciously codes time and memories in this linear, sequential way—from the past to the present to the future. This subconscious filing system is referred to as “the time line” in the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and by Tad James, founder of Time Line Therapy. I prefer to call this collection of experiences and memories of a person’s life journey “the life line.”

One of the great features of this subconscious storage system is that it’s easy to access. As you’ll experience in a moment, all you need to do is enter into a relaxed, light trance state and imagine that you’re floating out of your body. Looking down onto yourself, you’ll notice that your subconscious mind projects your life line with all its memories in a distinct relationship to your body.

Figure 3:
How our subconscious mind stores memories

Most people perceive their life line in one of two ways, which Tad James called
through-time
and
in-time orientations.
With a through-time orientation, people see their life line running horizontally in front of them. Some see the past to the right and the future to their left. Some see the reverse. People who view their life line with an in-time orientation picture the past behind and the future in front of them, or vice versa, while the present is inside of them (see
Figure 3
).

In addition to these two major orientations, the life lines of a small percentage of people are organized in other creative ways, such as a mixture of both orientations, or as a line running diagonally or vertically. The direction of your life line can give you a great deal of information about your subconscious mind’s relationship to time in general and to your life in particular.

Dr. James found that those who see their life line in a through-time orientation are usually punctual and expect others to be, as well. They’re good at staying on task, meeting deadlines, and organizing their time in the most efficient way possible. However, since their entire life is laid out in front of them, they perceive past, present, and future simultaneously, which can make it more difficult for them to be flexible and open-minded, to leave the past behind and make a fresh start. People who store time and memories in an in-time way, with the future straight in front of them and the past behind them, tend to more easily let go of the past and focus on what’s ahead of them. They can
be rather loose about being on time for their own appointments. On the other hand, they’re not put off if somebody else is late. In-time people often appear more spontaneous and easy going; at the same time they may be more flakey and unreliable.
¹

These are generalizations and certainly will not apply to everybody. However, once you’ve found the orientation of your own life line, notice whether some of these tendencies are also true for you. And if you should choose to change the orientation of your life line, it can be even more interesting to see whether one or the other propensity shifts, as well.

For my client Lydia, changing the direction of her life line was truly life altering. Fifteen years before she came to see me, she had lost her husband of ten years. Since then, she’d battled with often paralyzing depression and anxiety. When we talked about how she’d been dealing with the sudden death of her husband, she told me that she felt incapable of letting go. Even his clothes and shoes were still occupying the wardrobe, as if she expected that he might come back one day. Lydia hadn’t been interested in dating or creating a new life for herself. For fifteen years, all she could think about was how much she missed her husband.

When Lydia discovered the orientation of her life line, she realized why she had been so stuck in the past. Her subconscious mind projected the past in front of her and the future behind her. So all she could focus on were the years gone by, while the future was hidden behind her. After she went through the Pattern Resolution Process, which you’ll learn in this chapter, and was able to resolve residual grief and anxiety, I suggested she turn her life line around, leaving the past behind and placing the future in front of her. Immediately her face lit up, and her energy shifted. “It was as if a door that had been shut for a long time finally opened and let my life back in,” she said.

Within the next few months, Lydia donated all her husband’s belongings, redecorated her house, and started traveling again. A simple change of perspective can make all the difference.

Let’s have a look at your life line and find out how your subconscious relates to your past, present, and future. All you have to do is to follow the simple instructions that follow.

One quick note before we start: if you find it difficult visualizing, that’s most likely because you prefer to process information kinesthetically, which means you feel rather than see with your mind’s eye. If this is the case, simply
focus on the feelings and sensations that are described in this process and get a sense for the orientation of your life line that way, rather than trying to picture it.

This technique is the second step in the Pattern Resolution Process described later in this chapter, but it is also valuable when done on its own. As with the Parts Reintegration Process in the last chapter, you may either read through this exercise to familiarize yourself with the steps before you do it or record your own or somebody else’s voice reading through the instructions aloud.

Find a quiet place and sit in a comfortable chair. Close your eyes. Take slow, deep breaths. Imagine that you’re inhaling peace and light and exhaling all the tension, worry, and stress of the day. As you fill your lungs with peace and light, you’ll notice a weight gradually lifting from your body.

After a few minutes of relaxing and unwinding, visualize yourself standing in front of a beautiful door with your name on it. You know that you have the key to unlock this door. As you turn the key, the door swings open easily, and you enter a very special room, one that is deep inside yourself. A light at the center of this space immediately catches your attention. As you approach this light, you realize that it emanates from the bottom of a large, round basin that is filled with shimmering, crystal-clear water. This pool of water and light is the place from which you can travel beyond the limits of time and space and connect to your life line.

Gently sloping steps lead you into the basin. As you begin to immerse yourself in the warm and comfortable liquid, you experience a growing sense of ease and contentment. When you’re completely submerged in these soothing, healing waters, you lean back and realize that you can lie on the surface and float. As if you are held and embraced by a safe and supportive invisible force, you can remain completely still and motionless and simply let yourself drift. With every breath, you feel lighter and lighter and lighter—weightless and still. Soon you feel so light that you can actually float out of your body into the air, like a feather in the wind.

You are floating out of time and space, right up in the air—higher and higher, higher and higher—until you reach a very special place, all the way up. From there, you look down on your own body and detect your life line, the continuum of past, present, and future. As soon as you see your life
line, you know that you are now consciously connected to your subconscious mind.

All memories and events of the past, present, and future are stored in your life line. Notice its orientation in relation to your physical body, which is comfortably resting in the basin of water below you. Does your life line pass through your body or extend horizontally in front of it? Is your past behind or in front of you? Does it originate from your left or your right side? Or does it point up toward the sky or reach all the way down into the floor? And what about the future?

Now notice whether the past or the future appears brighter and has more energy than the other.

If it turns out that the future is less bright or as bright as the past, find on the side of your future a dimmer light switch. Is it a round or a vertical switch? Go to that light switch and turn up the brightness of the future, so that the glow expands, becomes more vibrant and inviting. Increase the brightness of the future until it is at least two or three times brighter than the past.

If your past is much darker than your future, it will be more difficult to orient yourself during the Pattern Resolution Process. In this case, you use the dimmer switch on the side of the past to increase its brightness, keeping in mind that you want to have the future at least twice as bright as the past.

Take one more look at your life line before you gently float back, right into your body and right into the present moment.

• • •

Changing the brightness of your life line can make a huge difference. Some of my clients haven’t been able to see their future. There was just nothing there. Their initial shock, the realization that their subconscious mind had no concept or relationship to the future, was quickly replaced by their relief of finally understanding why they’d felt so hopeless and stuck in the past. By turning up the light of their future and making this part of their life line longer and wider, they signaled to their subconscious mind that from now on their focus is directed toward the infinitely greater possibilities and opportunities to come. This small adjustment is often all that’s needed for someone to gain more hope and optimism.