The Erasure Exercise
The movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is about the idea that when a love affair breaks up, instead of feeling pain, you just go to a psychologist who erases all memory of the other person.
After a breakup, Jim Carrey goes into the store where his ex-girlfriend Kate Winslet works. She looks up at him and says, ‘Can I help you?’ He goes into near-panic that this woman, who is so important to him, does not know him at all.
She has erased him from her mind. Carrey is shocked. Nothing he can do or say causes her to remember anything about him or their relationship. When Carrey finds out what she did, he decides to erase her. But things go wrong with the procedure and . . . well . . . it is a movie you will either hate or love.
Have you had a flight that was so traumatic that just thinking about it causes a reaction? Obviously, that gets in the way of feeling good about any future flights.
So erase the bad one. I did years of study in various institutes in New York, looking for ways to deal with anxiety. One year was spent studying NLP. I found little there that was effective - except for the Erasure Exercise. I’m not sure the exercise could actually erase a memory, but the exercise can make the memory of a bad flight fuzzy enough that recalling it causes little or no anxiety.
The normal way for a memory to run is forward toward the end. This exercises creates a new memory of your flight, one that starts at the end and runs backwards to the beginning. After you create the backwards version, you superimpose it on the original version, which of course runs forward. When the forward version and the backward version are sandwiched together in your mind, they get a bit scrambled. A little scrambling is all it takes for the anxiety connected with the flight to disappear.
It sounds simple, but not everyone can do the exercise on their own. If you would like help with it, either have someone guide you through it, or set up a half-hour session with me. Here are the steps.
1. Bring the traumatic flight to mind. Make an assessment, zero to ten, of your anxiety while you are remembering the flight.
2. Write down a step-by-step outline of what happened from the beginning to the end of the flight. For example, you checked in the airport, went through security, and sat down in the boarding area. After waiting, you boarded the plane. The plane taxied out, took off, climbed to cruise altitude. Everything was fine. Suddenly there was some turbulence. An announcement was made to fasten your seat belt. The turbulence got so intense you began to worry. You imaged the plane might plunge. You had thoughts about not seeing loved ones again. Then the turbulence was not as bad. The plane landed. You got off. You got in a car or taxi, and went to the place you would spend the night. You woke up the next morning.
3. Using your notes, assemble a backwards version of the flight -- visually -- in your mind. Start with waking up the next morning. Since everything will run backwards, imagine the clock is running backwards, it is getting darker, and you fall asleep. You sleep backwards through the night. You get out of bed and walk backwards to the bathroom, where you brush your teeth. When you finish, there is toothpaste on the brush. You touch the toothpaste tube to the brush and the paste goes back into the tube. You put on your clothes and go to the dinner table, where a finished plate is presented. As you eat backwards and the food comes out of your mouth, back onto the plate, and you finish the meal by giving up a perfectly untouched plate of food.
You walk backwards out to a car or taxi. It goes down the road backwards. When you look out the windshield, everything is going away from you, except the cars which are coming backwards toward you.
You ride backwards to the airport. You get out of the vehicle backwards. You go backwards into the terminal. You put your bag on on the baggage carousel. As it spins, your bag disappears. You go backwards up the escalator, backwards to the gate, backwards through the jetway, backwards into the aisle of the plane, and backwards to your seat.
The door closes, and the plane taxis backwards to the runway. Making lots of noise, it rushes faster and faster backwards down the runway, and bumps into the air. It climbs backwards to cruise altitude. Visualize the plane cruising backwards. Picture the plane descending backwards, landing, and taxiing backwards to the terminal. You get off backwards, go backwards through security, and back to check in, and backwards, back to where you started the day.
4. Now that you have your backwards version, superimpose it on top of the original forward memory. To locate the original memory, recall a second or two of the original forward version.
5. Then, immediately re-run the backward version.
6. Repeat 4 and then 5.
7. Again, repeat 4 and then 5. You have now completed three cycles, enough for one sitting.
8. Do a test to check the results. To start fresh, shift your mind away from doing the exercise. Recall something you did earlier today, last night, or yesterday. Then, bring the bad flight back to mind. Note your stress level, zero to ten. Compare it with what it was before the exercise. It will be a bit lower.
9. A day or two later, repeat 4 and then 5.
10. After a few days, repeat again.
10. Test your reaction once more and continue these repetitions until the anxiety no longer bothers you.