So many years ago I was doing my NLP Practitioner training I was introduced to “the Time Line” and shown a way of releasing negative emotion by walking backwards in to the past along the time line picking up the gestalt of all significant emotional experience along the way and ultimately arriving at the ‘First Time”.

Those of you who are reading this that are Time Line Therapy ® Practitioners can probably understand my disappointment at this approach.

A practicing clinical Hypnotherapist at that time, I was less then happy about revisiting a whole series of traumatic events, which incidentally I felt only strengthened the gestalt. After all wasn’t I doing this already in regression therapy? I had hoped that I was going to be shown a way of going directly to the root cause of the problem FIRST.

Sometime after this I was given a copy of a copy of a copy of a Tad James tape. Eureka! I had been right there was a way of getting to the root cause first! Well, the rest is history and the more Time Line Therapy I practice the more I realize the full power of it.

In order to highlight this I would like to share with you Keith’s story.

Keith is paralyzed from the shoulders down and is unable to breathe without a ventilator. He has no feeling what so ever below the upper part of his shoulders. In the upper shoulders he experienced extreme pain. Keith is a talented Creative Designer and had a highly successful creative business.

Suddenly one night at dinner he began to feel discomfort in the back of his neck. It continued with increasing severity into the next day and Keith was rushed into hospital where he was x-rayed and put into traction . He has never walked since. That was seven years prior to my meeting him. This experience was traumatic enough. However Keith was also unable to speak when he was hooked to the ventilator. This lasted for seven months until he was transferred to a spinal injuries unit in a different hospital where the anesthetists noticed that the wrong connecting piece had been used on the ventilator. It was changed and Keith could speak. Seven months without being able to communicate at all!

It was established that traction was completely wrong intervention for the problem Keith was experiencing. Traction made the problem worse and let to paralysis. Wrong Diagnosis! Wrong Treatment!

I was reffered to Keith and as a result I visited him. I found him in great pain, very depressed and not at all enthusiastic with the prospects of his future life. I asked him what he wanted to achieve from our work together and he said that a reduction of fifty per cent in the pain level would be sufficient for him.

Although my training teaches me that I should only do what the client wants and not impose my outcomes on the client I, nevertheless, established three clear objectives.

1. Have the past loosen its grip
2. Help Keith cope with his present situation
3. Help Keith create a future I don’t think I was out of line because in working in all of these areas I felt that Keith’s need for the pain would diminish.

In the meantime I rehearsed Keith in getting into peripheral vision and using the control panel method of reducing pain. I have found this most effective with many clients who have been experiencing pain.

As part of my pre talk with a client I always elicit their Time Line. Keiths past was all around him. He was looking at it constantly he could see no future. My strategy therefore was based on his time line orientation namely:-