NLP Anchors: When Disgust Comes in Handy
Yesterday I bought fried chicken at a local supermarket. I got home and opened the packaging. I found a chicken wing with battered and fried feathers.
Unpleasant! They were obviously missing the big picture of plucking the chicken before cooking it. If you look up the word “grotesque” in the dictionary, this chicken wing might be there. He didn’t even want to touch the thing, but he had to, throw it away. I’m not going to eat that!! Yuck, and dagger!
In my NLP work with clients “ick and yick” can be extremely helpful. People come to my office wanting to end various behaviors that are beyond their conscious control. People want to quit smoking. People want to stop drinking. People come to my office wanting to lose weight, which means, behaviorally, eating less or no sweets: cookies, candy, chocolate, brownies, brownies, donuts, ice cream, sugary soda, chips, potato chips, and other foods. carb-laden junk. processed foods that put weight on the body. NLP anchoring can help with all of that! “Ick and yick” finds a home.
An “anchor” is simply a learned response to a stimulus that has become embedded in our minds and behaviors. Here is an example! When I was a kid, my mom tried to make me eat liver. It’s a nightmarish memory. She hates liver. As an adult, she would never choose to eat liver, because it is terribly repulsive to me, in appearance, taste, smell, in every concocted way. My response to the liver idea is this: “Get it away from me! No way is that thing going in my mouth!” Like yesterday’s chicken wing.
With NLP we can take this “get it out of me” feeling – capture it and attach it to anything, where it’s useful to do so. We can add it to the chocolate. to cigarettes. To the brownies. We can attach new responses to anything. If you don’t like it, you’re not going to eat it, or smoke it, or drink it. This process is called “disgust” anchoring. It’s another piece of my Neuro-Linguistic Programming client work, and it helps!
On the other side of loathing, I also help clients create good feelings to replace cravings, things like calm, happiness, joy, contentment, health. When a person is drawn towards something wonderful and at the same time away from something disgusting, we now have a propulsion system for change. This is NLP. Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Generating new responses that are useful and become automated, or unconscious. It is massively in creating new behaviors and achieving useful personal goals.
As a neurolinguistic hypnotherapist, I use these same tools for my own success. I have lost a considerable amount of weight. I took that chicken wing, captured the revulsion, bottled it, and applied it to chocolate brownies (my old weakness). I will not buy or eat brownies today. None. Not interested. I’m not eating brownies tomorrow either. Not the next day. When am I going to want brownies? Possibly never. And I’m fine with that.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming. This is called taking control of your life, and it’s a good thing!