Letting It Go

Your Past Influences Today’s Stories

When Emily was 4, she didn’t know what to do about her mother’s illness and unavailability so she froze that bit of her angry and confused energy and created a story. The story she created was about being responsible for taking care of her mother because she had made mother sick.

As Emily matured, she translated her story, with the help of other information from her surroundings into the story that she had to take care of everyone else in order to be accepted. And it seemed to work, until it filled up all her available time and led to overwhelming anxiety that she could not keep up with the load she had imposed upon herself.

What happened to you in the past influences the stories you continue to tell yourself throughout your life. Since you often created the stories in response to stressful or uncomfortable situations they may no longer be useful to you. In any case, they serve to separate you from your true Self.

I often remind my clients that everyone creates stories. That is how we are built as humans. The problem comes when we believe that the stories are true and act accordingly. Before I learned Logosynthesis, I suggested to my clients that when you are caught up in a story that explains your world, you can experiment with creating more stories that explain the situation in different ways. Sometimes creating silly or extreme stories helps you recognize how arbitrary the stories actually are.

That process is still useful but does not reset your automatic pilot. The Logosynthesis process can help you release those stories that cause you distress and can help you release the energy stuck in the story and all it represents. The process also allows you to become more aware of who you really are at your Essence—your true Self.

Targeting the Original Story

The part of Emily’s use of Logosynthesis you saw took her back to the original story. We store our stories as pictures or patterns that contain much more information than the words we use to describe the story.

Imagine looking at a snapshot. If you try to describe it in words you may focus on the people in it, the activity they are engaged in, the environment or even the memories it evokes. That is why her next step involves describing the memory of trying to take care of her mother when she was only about 4 years old.

Once Emily has remembered as many details of the snapshot as she can (including sounds, smells, colors, relative positions of objects, etc.) she identifies where she perceives it in her personal space.

That may seem a bit strange, so take a moment and try this experiment. It may help to close your eyes after you read the instructions. Imagine your own mother in the space you are in right now.

• Where is she?

• Is she in front of you?

• Is she behind you?

• Is she in the doorway?

• How far away is she?

• How do you know?

• What is she doing?

• Is she looking at you?

• Do you see her face? Her profile?

• Do you notice anything else?

Now do you see how it exists in your personal space?

Emily can use the snapshot memory as the target the next time she uses the three sentences to release the energy she froze when she was only 4 years old.

Finding targets is the biggest challenge for most people who want to use Logosynthesis to relieve stress and anxiety. That’s what we will focus on next.