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.Although he had renewed his commitment to her and she had forgiven him,208 HEART OF THE MINDshe was still bothered and depressed.She said, "It's always this way; evenwhen something is all worked out, I feel depressed for about six months,and then I'm OK." She was excited when she learned how her timeline wasorganized, because it made sense out of something that had puzzled her foryears.When she separated her immediate past and future, she felt betterright away when something was resolved, instead of having to wait sixmonths.She could tell that the past was in fact the past.Learning DisabilitiesA poorly organized, reversed, or missing timeline can sometimes causelearning disabilities.For example, Michele, diagnosed as dyslexic, hadtrouble remembering things.If she watched a movie, she couldn't fit thebeginning, middle, and end of the movie together.Reading was almostimpossible, since she couldn't remember what she had just read.She'd hadmany head injuries as a child and teenager, so it was assumed that herdyslexia was a result of brain damage.Since she couldn't do any work thatrequired memory, she became a professional masseuse.Fortunately, Michele went to see an NLP Practitioner who knew abouttimeline work.After finding out that she had no timeline, she was assistedin forming one, with her past, present, and future flowing in a U from oneside to the other.Gaining a timeline made a remarkable difference for Michele.She wasimmediately able to read a paragraph and remember it, a task she hadpreviously been unable to accomplish.The Practitioner also noted thatMichele had a series of traumatic memories between ages 5 and 13, andutilized other NLP methods to assist her in dealing with these (See chapter7, Phobias, Traumas and Abuse for methods you can use with this).Michelefound that her dyslexia vanished in almost all contexts.The only task shecouldn't perform after this change was typing, because she had trainedherself to type successfully while dyslexic.After gaining a timeline, Micheleneeded to relearn typing in a "straightened out" way.She did thissuccessfully, and is now doing computer-assisted drafting.Michele foundher life so different as a result of having a timeline that she decided to goback to school in engineering something she never would have attemptedwhen she was "learning disabled."I called Michele for her personal report and to find out more abouthow she had previously organized time.Michele's story confirmed what theNLP Practitioner had told me, and I learned more.Instead of the sequenceof events most of us have, Michele described her previous sense of time asa "mass of seaweed." "It was like having strands of seaweed in front of me,Personal Timelines 209coming up from the bottom of the ocean floor.You know how seaweedhas floating pods on top? In the pods were my past, present, and future.""Were they sorted out, with the past in some pods, and the future inothers?" I asked."No, it wasn't organized at all.They were kind of all around in ajumble.It was hard for me to remember anything because it wasn't sortedout.I'd just have to search for memories.I could never remember the thingsI said to people, or what I did the day before.That's all completely changednow.I can remember things.Another thing that's different is that I hearpeople better now, and understand what they are saying better.I can write,and read, and make sense out of movies."As I talked further with Michele, I found that her future now wentoff to her left, and her past to her right.Since this is the opposite of theway most people organize time, I wanted to check to find out if it was rightfor Michele or not."How did you decide to put the future on your left andyour past on your right?" I asked."When I made the change, I just sort of stood up and pulled theseaweed into a line.That's just the way it went past on the right, andfuture on the left.""Do you want to find out if there is a better timeline arrangement foryou?" I asked."Sure," she responded.Since I couldn't test Michele's eye accessing cues very well on thephone, to find out if she was reversed, I decided to have Michele simplytry out an opposite timeline, and find out which one worked better for her.I gave Michele very careful instructions on how to experiment with havingher future to her right, and her past off to the left."Just notice what it'slike," I added."My future is brighter now.It's like white light.I like it better, andmy past feels less like a burden.It's also a little smaller than it was before.""Now imagine going through next week with this timeline, whilechecking for several things.Do you have any objections? Do you want toshift this timeline in some way to make it better? Are there any situationsin your life where your old timeline will work better?""No.I get the answer to the last question right away," Micheleresponded quickly.Michele also noticed a place in her past timeline wherethere was a kink that she wanted to straighten out."My brain likes this timeline better," Michele continued."The firsttime I got a timeline, I felt like I birthed a brain.Now I feel like I haveaccess to it This makes a big difference.My whole brain feels more210 HEART OF THE MINDconnected now I feel the shift in my body now, too.My right and leftsides feel connected now.It's like they are receiving information properly.I feel like my brain is all white inside."We did a little more testing to make sure this new timeline wasecological for Michele, and I made sure she had my phone number in caseshe thought she needed to shift anything later on.When I checked with Michele later, she told me she had madeadditional changes in her timeline.Filling in the space where her oldtimeline had been with white light made her comfortable that her timelinewouldn't go back there.With this security, she felt comfortable allowingher timeline to be much more flexible, and experimented with a back-to-front timeline, which she liked even better.Michele's experience illustrates how it can sometimes be useful tomake a series of timeline shifts [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]