Earlier this week, a few things weren’t going too well for me – nothing too tragic, in the scheme of things, but enough that I felt mildly depressed.
I decided to try a technique that I’d stumbled upon with the help of a colleague. I was going to be doing something that reminded me of a very bad time in my life, and he suggested using a “trauma reversing” NLP technique. Now, I have only basic knowledge of NLP and he was giving me this in a quick Facebook comment, so I probably didn’t practice the technique “correctly”. As so often happens, ignorance created the possibility of coming up with something new.
What I did was think of the feeling that you get when you get bad news or something goes badly wrong, that sudden drop in your gut – and run it backwards. Instead of a drop, a lift – such as you get when the news turns out not to be so bad after all, when hope is restored (or when you’re going up in an elevator). Create this feeling very deliberately, and use it a few times, until you’re feeling better. That’s what I call the “gut bump”.
Probably some NLP expert will come along and tell me that they’ve known about it for years and they call it something much, much fancier, but whatever you call it, it works.
I can even hazard a guess as to why. The human gut produces large amounts of serotonin, a chemical which the gut uses to control its functioning. Serotonin is also a key neurotransmitter used by the brain, and a shortage of it is one of the possible causes of depression. This is why many antidepressants, the so-called SSRIs or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, work by preventing the serotonin from being taken back up by the neurons that release it so that its concentration in the brain is increased.
Now, I could be completely wrong about that mechanism. All I know is, the “gut bump” sorted me out when I needed it to. Next time you’re feeling down (or anxious – it should work for that as well), give it a try.
Technorati Tags: serotonin, NLP, depression, anxiety, technique, non-drug alternatives
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