In a previous article, I wrote about moving a representation to a location outside the head, so that it wouldn’t be distracting. In response to that, I received the following from Don Aspromonte, a colleague in Dallas, TX, who works with businesses internationally to improve sales and customer satisfaction, and author of Green Light Selling, a book that is based firmly in NLP communication processes.
“I read your piece about moving a representation in the head in your last newsletter, and it reminded me of a method I have used for many years. The first time I used this pattern for dealing with a migraine headache was in the early 1980’s with my sister. Based on what we were experimenting with in those days in NLP-land, I coached her over the phone to move her headache to another area of her head. This was not immediately successful for two reasons: random movement is less likely to work than moving it from/to a specific location, and ecology needs to be observed. We figured this out fairly quickly when I mentioned that we were not going to get rid of the symptom, we were just asking it to move to a different place. . . . Since migraine headaches almost always start in only one hemisphere, we began by moving it to the other side of the head. Once that is done, it can be moved up to a location a few inches above the head. When I asked her if she still had a headache she said, ‘Yes, but I can’t feel it.’ After a while she forgot that she had it. She is still successful in using this method and the frequency of headaches has dropped to nearly zero over the years. . . . I have used this exact pattern with many clients over the years and consistently received the same report, ‘Yes, I still have the headache, but I can’t feel it.’ I suspect there are many possible variations on this theme for others to explore.”
