Fast Phobia Model: Full Script [Powerful Technique]

For resolving fears there is the fast phobia technique, also known as the NLP cinema exercise. Read exactly how this technique works on this page.

The Fast Phobia technique is a pure submodality exercise, in which (double!) Dissociation is the greatest remedy. Normally the metaphor of the cinema is used, but you actually have the complete creative freedom to come up with something else you can use to work with submodalities.

The Fast Phobia Technique: script

1. Confirm in advance that the client has the ability to learn. For example, ‘How quickly did you learn the phobia? Do you agree that you can get rid of it just as quickly? ‘ Phobias are acquired quickly, so getting rid of them is also quick. In fact, it cannot be slow.
2. We start the fast phobia technique by first calibrating . We do this by asking the client to go to a moment in her life when she did not yet have the phobia. Then you let her go to a moment when she did: “When did you react phobically, or: What traumatic experience is it? So be clear for yourself what the client looks like when she is in a neutral state, and what she looks like when she is in a phobic response.
3. Then break state . For example, “Do you see all those people here?”
4. “Imagine (!) That you are sitting in a cinema and looking at yourself on a small black and white screen in a cinema armchair.” From now on you can continue to use the small screen for the entire exercise .
5. “You’re in the audience and you see yourself on the screen, doing something neutral, like gardening or something. What do you see?”
6. “Now imagine that you float out of yourself to the projection booth and can see yourself in the cinema armchair. So you see yourself looking at yourself while your copy in the cinema armchair looks at yourself on the screen. Lean your hands on the table that stands there, with the projector on it. ” This is double dissociation , so experienced less intensely. You are in control here, because you can operate all the buttons of the film here.
   Tip: The double dissociation is even more powerful when it’s in a corner. So position the projection booth so that you have to look to the right to see the film.
7. “Fast-forward the movie so you can look for a 15-minute moment before the unpleasant experience began. Pause it there. Hear that high-pitched sound that rewinding a tape makes. “
8. “In a moment, start the movie of the complete bad memory, from start to finish, in black and white. Start the movie, looking at the back of the version of yourself sitting in the room, and looking at the screen. “Tell me when the end of the reminder is where you are safe. Then let the screen freeze (pause). Keep that distance, so stay in double dissociation. Let the screen go white.”
9. “Float from the projection booth to yourself in the armchair, and float out of the armchair and enter the movie.”
10. “So you see through your own eyes, while you are in the unpleasant event, still paused at the end where you are safe. In a moment I will say: rewind. At that point, put the film back into colors and rewind all the way to the beginning until you were safe. For example, everyone walks backwards and swallows his / her words. That rewind only takes 1.5 seconds. Optional: with super loud circus music in the meantime. When the image is back at the starting point, freeze it again and make the screen completely white again. Okay, he comes: rewind! ”
11. Repeat this process (steps 6 to 9) four to seven times, speeding up each repetition until the feeling has completely disappeared (if you continue for longer, the entire memory is no longer accessible).
12. “Float out of the picture again and float back into yourself sitting in a cinema armchair. Let your copy that is in the projection booth also float back into yourself sitting in a cinema armchair. ”
13. “Notice how you feel different now. Take a deep breath in and out, filling your body with oxygen and energy as you inhale. Get up from the cinema armchair and walk out of the cinema room. ”
14. Test it: “Go back to the memory. How do you feel?” If you can test it live it is even better. If someone was phobic of elevators, see if you can walk to an elevator. Or you can tell a story and measure the client’s response. If the client was afraid of spiders, you tell a story where someone ended up with hundreds of spiders on them, like a shower. In the meantime, you test the response of the client that has just been: if all goes well, he is the only one who laughed at the story, while bystanders got the creeps.
15. Future pace: “Enter a future event in your mind and test a similar phobic situation that you conceive.”

A conversational variant: completely deconstructing the phobia’s TOTE strategy with humor

Use the article on TOTE strategies and find the piece on questioning and deconstructing a problem state of mind, such as a phobia.

A conversational variant: ridiculous submodalities and anchoring the response to them

For example, a client might have a phobia of cooked beans.

1. Associate the client (possibly conversational). Let him experience the submodalities  of the phobic experience. Of course you make it easier if you also keep the beans with it.
2. Distract him with a conversation about something else. You can put it in a corresponding state by saying, “Okay, let’s pause.” Now he no longer expects you to do coaching exercises with her, so now is the time to take action.
3. Play with the submodalities to make fun of it: “Imagine running away from the cooked beans.”
4. He’s probably saying it’s weird, and you can clearly see a change in her mood. Anchor that implicitly. We want to anchor his response that it’s weird to be afraid of it!
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 to reinforce the anchor. For example, “Change the color of the beans to pink and run from it!”
6. As always, remember to test, future pace, and break states when you’re done with it all the time.

A fast variant

In the extensive description of the regular Fast Phobia technique, you wind the film in black and white and rewind it in color.

In the fast version of this technique, you only do one step, and the opposite : you quickly rewind the film a number of times in black and white. Dissociated, so while watching the movie screen. And with crazy music to it.

You can also apply this technique to the future

Will you soon be in a situation that you fear?

1. Then apply the Fast Phobia technique to that future situation by placing that future situation on the screen. In fast rewind, you rewind all the way to the here and now. For convenience, you can use the fast variant – see previous paragraph.
2. Then you make a new film with a happy ending. You can find the steps for this in this article about the New Behavior Generator.
3. Repeat the previous two steps a number of times. Faster and faster.
4. Future Pace.

An alternative: Timeline therapy

With the advent of timeline therapy, the fast phobia has become obsolete. Timeline therapy also contains the dissociation effect: you look at an event from the past from a distance. You can also use timeline therapy to tackle the gestalt of fear that all phobias depend on. You can do that with the timeline therapy technique for dealing with negative emotions.