TACS: Timeline Your Imprints

Timeline Your Imprint Experiences - [NOTE: Check with your therapist before beginning the work below. If you become triggered into emotional wounds that feel overwhelming or like it is too much, stop what you are doing, use the Strongbox Exercise, and/or go to your safe place/inner sanctuary located in the Skills section of this course.]Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) has given us a boatload of tools for directing our "Movie Mind". Timeline therapy is an NLP method of discovering how we store our personal history. Think of it as your personal DVD library of every significant event in your life. 'Significant' means an event that had any emotional intensity - positive or negative.If you are not familiar with your timeline, the above video will introduce you to your own method of storing your personal history. If we have already done that in session, then use this lesson to strengthen the neural networks for your timeline as we will use it to explore for imprint experiences. An imprint experience is the first of many experiences that provided the context for creating a part of self that uses a specific behavioral pattern we often refer to as a survival skills such as self-sacrifice, work-a-holism, or perfectionism. Trauma Timeline WorksheetTrauma imprints are especially important to identify as these are the wounds that cause serious issues with triggered emotional reactivity. There are two primary types of trauma: First is the trauma that comes from something someone did to you or something bad that happened to you. Second, the emotional wounds that come from something someone DID NOT DO FOR you such as unmet childhood needs (Attachment wounds)Be sure to include both types as you gather your imprint experiences with the Trauma Timeline worksheet (Attached). Again, Learning to use the timeline exercise in the video above is very helpful in exploring the past and your personal history. However, with the worksheet below it is not required.