AimHi Publishing - NLP Anchors

Anchors

Is there a piece of music that, when you hear it, takes you back years to another place and time, one that brings back floods of memories about an event or person that you once knew? Is there a smell that, when you smell it, reminds you of your childhood or some other time in your life?

Whenever I see someone looking at me over the top of their glasses, I am instantly transported, almost as if by some mystical power, back over 35 years to my primary school days and a rather large lady teacher who placed the fear of God into us when she looked across the room over those bi-focal lenses, her eyebrows somehow turning into horns as those deep, dark, piercing eyes penetrated our souls. In addition to the nauseating swell in the pit of my stomach, I can recall feeling the intense desire to slip down in my chair and hide under the table, just wishing that the ground could swallow me up and protect me from this witch whose power over the whole class was dauntingly absolute. Now that's an anchor!!!

Anchors are basically conditioned responses. They occur when an emotion is associated with something else. In itself this would seem quite a logical and natural process, which of course it is, but anchors, as well as being negative and positive can be debilitating and dis-empowering. Whilst some anchors can be empowering and may remind us of happy event in our lives, generally speaking these conditions do not dis-empower us. As with all NLP processes, what matters is the extent to which anchors are desirable, empowering and supportive of the process of life. Because the process of creating an anchor usually occurs when we are unaware of it, it does not take much imagination to see how the potential for dis-empowering associations can be unlimited in our everyday life.