Regression is a technique for discharging negative incidents that happened in the past, and to remove the negative elements from it, as a result of which a relief can be felt in the present. Regression helps to gain insight into the subconscious mind. It helps to realize that the same occurrences are repeated in different lives, because a negative situation that occurred recently, is also to be found in times (long) gone. At that time there was a similar situation as well, or the anxiety was present as well. First, the material from your own life is laid bare, from your youth, from your childhood years. And if you manage to reach previous lives, material that shows that the things that happen now, also happened in previous lives, is laid bare.
Choose a topic as a starting point. For example: ‘I feel hurt when people are unfriendly to me’. You want to find an incident in which this situation occurred and which you want to discharge (this means removing the negative elements from it by recalling it), and then you want to find an similar, earlier incident. And so on. Continue to look for similar, earlier incidents, which you want to discharge. The more negative incidents from the past have been discharged, the less you will mind that people are unfriendly to you, the less you will feel hurt or the less such incidents (in which people are unfriendly to you) will occur. Regression can also be used to discharge a certain negative incident that you still think about or that still hurts, as a result of which the memory of the incident will no longer be painful, or the incident will have left your thoughts entirely.
Look for the earliest incident that you can find. The earliest means from the longest time ago. If you don’t succeed in finding incidents from times long gone, then start with more recent incidents. When the recent incidents have been discharged, the earlier incidents (from longer ago) will come up automatically, because they come to lay bare when incidents from more recent times have been discharged. It’s important for an incident to be completely discharged, otherwise it will be difficult to find previous incidents. To discharge completely means to lay bare, remember all the negative elements from the incident, as a result of which the negative charge is removed from the incident. When all the negative charge has been removed from an incident, the incident can be recalled without any part of it feeling uncomfortable or painful.
How to go about it.
Start with a topic and then try to remember an incident in which this topic is present. For example, the topic ‘fear of being unpopular’. Look for the earliest incident that you can find in which you were afraid of being unpopular. Do this in the following way. Say to yourself: ‘I go back to the earliest moment in which I am afraid of being unpopular.’ Use the present time, so say ‘in which I am afraid’ and not ‘in which I was afraid’. You might remember an incident right away, but this often doesn’t happen. There is often no recollection at all or only a vague feeling that something is hit or for example there is the thought of a school desk without any more information. But in your subconscious mind, something has actually been hit, and it is the aim to bring this to the conscious level.
A) When you immediately remember an incident, proceed to E).
B) When nothing at all comes up, you will perhaps not succeed in performing this technique on your own. But the following tools might help you to do so.
– Say to yourself: ‘If there is an incident in which I am afraid to be unpopular, what could this incident be?’ Use your imagination. Chances are that something may come up, it might be something very vague, but that’s already more than before.
– Say to yourself: “with regard to an incident in which I was afraid to be unpopular, has anything been suppressed”. This means: is there suppressed information related to fear of not being unpopular.
. Something may come up now by formulating the sentence this way.
– Apply the technique of making sentences starting from feelings and ideas. Clearly imagine ‘the feeling of fear of being unpopular’, and make the right sentence with it. Apply the rest of the technique (repeating the sentence, perhaps letting other sentences come up, then returning to the original feeling or idea and making a sentence with it once more, etc.) Then try to find another incident. So, say again: ‘I go back to the earliest moment in which I am afraid of being unpopular’.
– Picture a screen of four squares in front of you. Two squares breadthways and two squares up. Say to yourself: ‘With regard to my fear of being unpopular, what do I see in the first square?’ Next, ‘With regard to my fear of being unpopular, what do I see in the second square?’ And so on, until all the squares have been filled. If nothing comes up in the squares, then try the following. ‘With regard to my fear of being unpopular, what might be present in the first square?’ Do the same for the other squares. If this doesn’t work, try the following: ‘With regard to my fear of being unpopular, what can I put in the first square?’ And simply put something in it, the first thing that comes to mind. The same for the other squares.
Write down the information that has come up in the squares, however vague they may be, or however inapplicable they seem to be to your fear of being unpopular. Proceed to D). Apply the instructions in D) to the four different parts of information that have come up in the squares. Start with the part that you feel is most relevant. If you don’t succeed in getting information with this, try a next part.
If nothing comes up in the squares, and you have tried the other possibilities described above, then you should give it up, then it is not possible for you to apply this method on your own.
C) If you have a vague feeling that you have hit something, then apply the same four tools to try and bring out clearer information.
D) Something has come through, for example, the idea of a school desk, or the image of a school desk. This idea or this image of a school desk is an element from a hidden incident in your subconscious mind. The aim is to bring out more information from the incident, based on this first element that is found.
A few tools to bring out more information.
– Think of the school desk and try to feel whether information is coming through spontaneously.
– Say to yourself: ‘What comes right before the moment of the image/idea of the school desk?’ There is a good chance that something might come through. If nothing comes through, say: ‘If there is something just before the moment of the school desk, what could this be?’ If nothing comes through, use the variation: “what comes immediately after the image/idea of the school bench?” Or this variation: “what comes before, what comes after, what comes 10 or 20 seconds before, what comes 10 or 20 seconds later?”
– With regard to the school desk, is there a feeling? With regard to the school desk, is there an idea? With regard to the school desk, is there an emotion? With regard to the school desk, is there something pleasant or unpleasant, is there something ugly or beautiful, is there something cold or warm? With regard to the school desk, is there a person? If so, then try to bring up more information about this person. Who, how old, male or female, capacity (pupil, teacher, headmaster, nun, friend, enemy, …), what do they say, what do they do, why are they there, how many people, …? With regard to the school desk, is there a conversation, is there a word? With regard to the school desk, is there a sound? With regard to the school desk, is there an image (something visual)? With regard to the school desk, is there a smell? With regard to the school desk, is there a colour? With regard to the school desk, is it light or dark? With regard to the school desk, is there a time? And anything else you can imagine yourself to retrieve more information.
– With regard to the school desk, has anything been suppressed?
– Apply the technique of making sentences, starting from the school desk. Or apply the technique of the squares. With regard to the school desk, what do I see in the first square, etc.
E) We have some information from this incident, but a (large) part of the information is still hidden. Think of the information you have, and say to yourself: ‘I go to the beginning of the incident, what is the beginning of the incident?’ There is a good chance that something comes through. If nothing comes through, say: ‘What happens next in the incident?’, ‘What happens earlier in the incident?’ or, ‘Is there an earlier incident?’ If you believe that there is an earlier incident, first try to bring out this earlier incident, and later return to the incident you started with. If nothing comes through, then you’re stuck on the information you already have. In this case, try the techniques described above to get more information to the surface. Say to yourself: “I’m looking for the beginning of the incident, what could be the beginning’” or “in connection with the beginning of the incident, is something suppressed?” or apply the technique of the squares, say to yourself: “regarding the beginning of the incident, what do I see in the first square”, etc.
If you have found more information, then again say to yourself: ‘I go to the beginning of the incident, what is the beginning of the incident?’ If you don’t succeed in getting more information through, give it up and try again with another topic.
If more information comes through after having looked for the beginning of the incident, then do as follows. Say to yourself: ‘Starting from this moment in the incident, I go through the incident’ and try to go through the incident step by step, go through the successive occasions in the incident, try to remember the successive occurrences step by step.
It’s important to think in the present time when you go through the incident. For example: ‘the teacher is standing in the front and he is writing on the blackboard and I’m sitting at my school desk and I’m feeling unhappy.’ When you have finished going through the incident, say again: ‘I go to the beginning of the incident and I’m going through the incident.’ There is a good chance that more information will come through this time. This is because during the previous time that you went through the incident, information has come to mind that has been discharged completely or partially as a result (stripped from the negative element that is linked to that moment by remembering that moment). Go through the incident again and again until you no longer get any new information through. Then say to yourself: ‘Is there an earlier beginning?’ If you get something through, repeat the technique of going through the incident again and again. If nothing comes through, say to yourself: “if there is an earlier beginning, what could it be’” or “with regard to an earlier beginning, is something suppressed?”.
The process of bringing this incident to the surface is finished if you feel that the entire incident has been recovered, and that no single negative feeling is left when going through it. This means that there is no more fear, sadness, insecurity, feeling of guilt … present in it. If a part of the incident still feels negative or unpleasant, then there is still something hidden in the incident. Then try to retrieve more information about this part using the techniques described above. And then go through the incident again, from beginning to end, until you feel that you have been able to bring the entire incident to the surface and that it has been discharged completely. If the incident has been discharged, you can look at it with a neutral feeling. Suppose that you were humiliated by your teacher in this incident, then you know that this happened, but it no longer affects you.
And then you go and look for an earlier incident. Say to yourself: ‘Is there an earlier, similar incident?’ or ‘Is there an earlier incident of fear of being unpopular?’ If nothing comes up, say to yourself: ‘Is there a later, similar incident?’ or ‘Is there a later incident of fear of being unpopular?’ If nothing comes up at all or only vaguely, or if much comes up, then repeat the procedure as described above from A) onwards. Use this formulation: “if there is an earlier similar incident, what might that incident be” or “regarding a similar, earlier incident, is there something that is suppressed”, or apply the technique of the squares and say to yourself: “regarding an earlier similar incident, what do I see in the first square”, etc.
It doesn’t matter if you have to give up because you’re stuck during the process of trying to lay bare an incident. Some subconscious material may possibly have been activated, but next it settles down again. If you are stuck with regard to a certain topic, try a different topic. It’s quite possible that you’ll have more success with this topic.
If you don’t succeed in applying this regression technique by yourself, then you can try to do it with the help of another person. Preferably someone who is trained in such techniques, but if you don’t know someone like that, then you can try it with any other person. You are more likely to succeed with the help of another person than when you do it by yourself, even if this person is not trained for this.