Last year a family member had suffered a terrifying ordeal, one which she will never forget, and one that changed her life.
Late one Sunday evening on the 21st September 2008, she was sitting alone watching T.V in her country home when four men walked into the house , all dressed in black with balaclavas, gloves and all equipped with a cro bar. They walked up behind her, all surrounding the chair so there was no where to escape, leaving her helpless to their demands. Terrified she pleaded to them, they responded aggressively telling her to ‘get on your knees, and don’t look at me. Look at me and i’ll hurt you.’ She kneeled. They told her to put her hands behind her back, scared for her life she did as they said. One was calling the demands whilst another pulled out ties from his pocket, wrapped them around her wrists and pulled them taught. She was alone, scared and helpless. The man questioned her about her possessions, trying establish where her jewellry was located. As he was probing for answers he used the cro bar to illustrate his seriousness. Hoping it would save her life she told them where all her jewellery was located, even that of sentinmental value such as gifts from her deceased husband. After 15 minutes of raiding her home taking all her worthly possessions they disconnected the phones and fled, leaving her shaken, distraught and unable to get help, restricted by the ties. Eventually she managed to contact a neighbour and police on her portable phone. From that day forward her home was her prison, she relived the experience every moment of every day and she only found comfort in solitude, distrusting everyone and everything around her.
She tried various attempts to cope with the ordeal. She drank heavily, that didn’t work. She took sleeping tablets to numb the mind of the pain, that didn’t work. She even tried counselling and she couldn’t even bring herself to discuss what happened as she felt abused, ashamed and pathetic. Something we couldn’t understand, but it was just how she interpreted the event.
Then after a year she made the conscious decision to overcome this trauma, or at least try and manage it so that she could gain some freedom back and experience some normalities of life. She heard about neuro linguistic programming (NLP) and it was something that made sense to her, it was simple, drug free and a realistic option.
With the guidance of a friend who was experienced in NLP she learnt to change her internal representation of the event. By changing the colours, sounds and feelings of the memories she realised that it started to make her feel different towards the event. She begin to notice the negative emotions reduced as she practised it every time the memory sprung up in her head. She became convinced that it was the men that were pathetic, not her. to walk in on a lonely women and intimidate her I think we would all agree these are weak and pathetic human beings, and she managed to learn to believe this. There is a lot more to her method of overcoming the trauma but it was all done by NLP and I suggest anyone that is suffering from a traumatic experience considers NLP and sees a professional. It would be good to get an idea of what it’s about and a great place to start is http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp-what.htm Hope this helps some of you.