Does NLP or Time Line Therapy Work For Anxiety?

Here is an answer, two pages or less, to a common question in NLP. (The NLP technique we use for anxiety is Time Line Therapy®.)

Since Sigmund Freud called it “angst” (which relates to anxiety and fear), Anxiety has been one of the most commonly heard complaints by therapists and councilors. If it persists over some time, Anxiety can interfere with work, relationships and even your sleep. If Anxiety reaches the stage of panic then it can be really disabling.

Emotionally, the basis for Anxiety is Fear, but unlike Fear, which relates primarily to the past, Anxiety is a future oriented emotion. So, Anxiety is basically Fear of the future. The procedure for treating Anxiety is as simple and easy as any other NLP or Time Line Therapy® technique. The process can be done by children as young as age 3 and adults as old as 90 years. Simply put, we treat Fear first and then Anxiety. The two emotions are, however treated differently.

Using Time Line Therapy®, Fear (related to the past) is treated in the same way as any other negative emotion: it is released using the process for releasing negative emotions. Anxiety, though relating to the future can also be released using Time Line Therapy®, although the procedure is different. Simply put, the client is asked to imagine floating above his Time Line and to go to a point above and after the “successful completion” of the event. In virtually every case, the Anxiety disappears at that point.

Time Line Therapy® is so effective in treating Anxiety, that it has been used by the British Military’s Warrior Project for PTSD, and by Russian Psychologists to treat the soldiers traumatized in the Chechen war. Here is an excerpt from a Russian web site with the study that included Time Line Therapy®. The results included, “Solving of individual problems of participants-decreasing of anxiety and depression, reestablishment of the cycle ‘sleep-awaking’…”

“Psychotherapy and psychological help was based on Five-steps model by N. Peseschcian- 10h. There was used: First interview, specially selected Eastern stories, that give intuitive dimension to consulting, Time-Line Therapy, techniques of empty chair and non-finished letter, that help to part with lost relative, ask to forgive. “Group training was counted on 20 days (2 days, 10h. a day). The quantity of participants was more than 20 persons.”

3 more thoughts:

Can You Do It?

Some people worry about whether they can go deep enough to get results. Time Line Therapy® is designed to work in the lightest level of trance, and without hypnosis. Going deeper doesn’t make it work faster or better. With the Time Line Therapy® technique, going deep isn’t required, and that really reduces up the time taken.

Time Line Therapy® techniques are “content-free.”

You don’t have to relive the events, or to even know the content of the event that created the negative emotion or the limiting belief. It’s just a matter of allowing your unconscious mind to locate the original root cause in your past. Your unconscious mind already knows where the cause is located. Not having to consciously know, analyze or revisit the content of what happened speeds up the process and is particularly beneficial to those not wanting to re-experience events which might have been uncomfortable, unpleasant or even traumatic.