Stress Management: More Time for NOW
By Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D.
“Let anyone try to attend to the present moment
of time and one of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it,
this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it,
gone in an instant of becoming.”
—William James (1890)
Everyone has a past and a future. The past is everything that has happened until now and the future is everything that comes after now. “Now” is whatever happens in between. In NLP we learn many methods for helping people change their representations of the past and the future. We do so based on the hypothesis that the way people “code” for time creates their states and shapes their meanings about time. We have methods to heal painful memories of the past and to change the limiting beliefs associated with such memories. We have methods to help people make their futures appealing by teaching them how to shape viable outcomes and develop the strategies that make those outcomes achievable. As an NLP practitioner I have often worked with my clients’ representations of their pasts and futures. It never occurred to me, until recently, to work with their “nows” as well.
The idea come to me while reading Timeshifting by Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D. (1996). His book is about how people can reduce stress by being fully open to the present moment; something stressed out people rarely do. Instead they try to accomplish as much as possible in as short a time as possible, concentrating more on getting things done, than on the doing itself. Their sense of being gets confused with a sense of doing. In an effort to accomplish efficiency, people begin to compress their present moments. Rechtschaffen writes:
If we are aware of the now, if we experience it, we are in the flow of time. The rush of the past and the pressure of the future…are cast aside. There is only the present, there is only what is at hand. When we realize that there is only what is at hand, we also realize that time does not march at our back or lead us on. Time simply is. It is this moment, right now: a medium of our own rhythms and the rhythms of the universe—nothing more. (p. 5)
Richard Jeffries (1883) expressed the idea like this:
It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.
The solution to the stress caused by time pressure and the drive to constantly do more, says Rechtschaffen, is to “expand the moment,” and be “in the moment.” To help people develop more present-moment awareness he recommends meditation, quiet solitude, hobbies, meaningful relationships, and a clear sense of values and priorities. As an NLP practitioner, I wondered if there was some way to expand one’s sense of the present by working with the submodalities of one’s time line. Since the time line is a visual (usually linear) representation of the future, past, and present, couldn’t one “expand” the segment of the time line representing the “present” and thereby reduce stress?
I visualized my own time line and (because I have a through time meta-program; i.e., I represent my time line in front of me outside of my body) found that my present was metaphorically “at hand.” My “now” seemed to be about eight inches away from me, directly in front of my body, at waist height. It seemed small—about eight inches wide. “How can I be ‘in the moment,’” I wondered, “when it is so small?” So I put my hands around my “now” space on my time line and drew them apart and “expanded” the “now” segment of my time line. The change seemed to ease the time pressures I felt. With a larger sense of “now” I felt less harried in daily activities. Funny, I had never thought much about how I represented “now” until then. I like having a larger “now” on my time line. Sometimes when I feel stressed, I take a few moments to breathe deeply and I mentally give myself enough “now” on my time line to regroup.
All of us live within a consensual time measurement context (i.e., we agree that there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, etc.). We all have the same time allotment (everyone has the same number of hours in a day, week, month, etc.). Yet our individual experiences of time are subjective and unique and our representations of time are, to some extent, malleable. Given what NLP teaches us about our maps of time—our time lines, it makes sense to assume people vary in how much “now” they experience. I began to wonder how other people experience “now,” and how much “now” is enough to make a difference between feeling resourceful and feeling stressed out. I wondered “When does someone’s representation of ‘now” become problematic?”
In my practice, I have begun to explore the effects of changing clients’ representations of “now” as a stress management intervention that alters the time line. In this article I share two case studies with you, and a template for giving someone, or yourself, more “now.”
Case Study 1: S – Stuck between a rock (the past) and a hard place (the future)
S. was gasping for breath. Her eyes were darting everywhere without focusing. Her body was rigid and shaking. She was in the throes of another panic attack. She had come to me for relief. For the first time, I saw the extent of her difficulties. “I want you to hypnotize me so I can relax,” she demanded. “I just want a moment of peace.”
S. had endured several recent traumatic events. She was a retired teacher, recently widowed. Shortly after her husband’s death, an auto accident left her partially disabled. While recuperating from her injuries she developed pneumonia, leaving scars on her lungs, making breathing difficult. She could breathe only with the help of an oxygen tank. She was so fragile she required round-the-clock nursing care.
I tried several interventions to help S. calm down. Deep breathing was out of the question, given her lung problems. I tried pacing and pattern interruptions, eye movements, and distractions, all futile. “When are you going to hypnotize me?” she said with exasperation. “I will hypnotize you,” I said firmly, “when you pay more attention to me than what’s going on in your head.” With that, she stopped glancing wildly around the room and looked at me. Her movements slowed and she began to breathe more evenly. “What can you do for me?” she asked, sadly.
“I don’t know yet.” Thinking I could help her access a resource state, I asked if she could think of a memory of peace and relaxation.
“No,” was the reply.
“S., you’ve lived a long, productive life. Can’t you think of one enjoyable experience?”
“No,” again.
I gestured to her left and asked her to “look back over events of the past” and tell me what she saw. “I lived with an alcoholic husband. Then he died and I got sick. There are no peaceful memories.” She said it firmly and with resignation.
“Are those the memories you think of when you feel panic?” I asked, thinking she could be having post-traumatic flashbacks.
“No. I don’t think about the past at all. I don’t like to. I worry about what’s going to happen to me. What if I end up in a wheelchair? What if I have to move into a nursing home? Those are my thoughts.”
“Then you scare yourself with thoughts about the future,” I said. She agreed. Our first session ended and I invited her back for the following week. In the meantime I thought about her description of her time line and imagined what it could look and feel like. It was a dispiriting representation, which seemed to lack a “now.”
The following week S. returned, less agitated. As she faced me, I took her hands in mine. I held her palms together and as I spoke, she nodded assent frequently (a yes set). I began by pacing her representation of her time line. “S., look to your left and imagine you are looking out over your past. Anything good that might have happened back there isn’t available to you. All you can remember are the bad things, so you have walled yourself off from those thoughts. Look to your right and see your future. There are some scary possibilities there, which may or may not happen. What remains, you hold in your hands, and that’s ‘now.’ None of the bad things are happening NOW. Since NOW is all you have, you should give yourself all the NOW you need to be comfortable. So look at the space between your hands as you give yourself enough NOW.” Then I slowly drew her hands apart. As the space between her hands opened up, her breathing became regular, color came into her face, her shoulders dropped and I could feel the muscles in her hands and arms go limp. She relaxed visibly. I continued, “Keep staring at that space of NOW as you relax in the moment of NOW.” As the muscles in her face relaxed I said “Now we can do some hypnosis together.” And for the next two sessions, that is exactly what we did. On the final session I made a relaxation tape for S. and she took it home. She called me a few days later. “It isn’t long enough,” she complained. So I sent her a longer one.
Case Study2: K – A Busy Businesswoman
K., a busy executive said “My work is stressing me out.” Her outcome was “To be more fully in the present.” When I asked her what stopped her from doing so, she replied “Well, whenever I complete a task, I immediately put it behind me, without even taking time to enjoy the reward or pleasure of completion. While I am finishing up one project, I am planning the next one.” As she said this, she moved her hands quickly in a pushing gesture toward her left, followed by a grasping and pulling gesture to her right. It seemed as though she was working on some imaginary assembly line where tasks moved by mechanically as if on a conveyor belt.
I elicited her time line. She visualized her past as a straight, horizontal line extending to her left, with markings, as on a ruler, showing major accomplishments. Her future was a straight, horizontal line extending to her right, without markings. Then I asked “Where is now?” She thought about it for a while and then her face puckered into a frown and she hunched forward in her chair. Her breathing became shallow. She placed her hands with the palms facing each other, about four inches apart. “This is now,” she said.
“No wonder you don’t have a sense of the present.” I commented. “Your now seems a very cramped, small space. What happens when you expand it and give yourself enough room to fit into it?” Slowly, K. began to draw her hands apart. Her demeanor changed. She eased back into the chair and the muscles in her face relaxed. She smiled and took a deep breath. Her hand movements stopped when her hands were about 20 inches apart. “Wow! I can breathe! She held her new “now” in front of her and stared at the space between her hands for several seconds. She moved her hands around it, as though it had the dimensions of a beach ball. “I feel as though I can dance with this now, as though it’s a ball of energy.” Clearly, having more now was making a difference for K. She was learning how it felt to be “more fully in the present.”
The “Expanded Now” Strategy
Below is a brief outline on how to give someone, or yourself, more “now.” This intervention may be appropriate when someone expresses distress, fear, or anxiety about not having enough time, or about time moving too fast. Watch for gestures and eye accessing patterns that indicate a problematic emphasis on both the past and the future, or a compressed sense of the present. Use it especially when the client’s outcome is something similar to “being more fully in the present.”
According to Bodenhmer and Hall in Time Lining (1997), people with a through time meta-program (i.e., the time line is outside of and in front of the body) usually have difficulty living in the now, whereas people with an in time meta-program (i.e., the time line passes through or behind the body) tend to “get lost in the eternal now.” So it is likely that the process of giving a larger “now” could be more beneficial for through time people than for in time people. Taking the lead from Bodenhamer and Hall, I describe the following intervention for through time people.
- Obtain congruent agreement from the client to make a change and participate in a visualization process that will lessen stress by increasing the sense of the present.
- Elicit the client’s time line for the past and future. Then inquire “Where is NOW?” If the client doesn’t show you the size and location of “now” with the hands, ask him or her to do so.
- Ask the client to hold “now” in the hands and look at “now” in
relation to the past and future. If the “now”
is only a few inches wide, and if the client’s facial expression
and posture seem to convey discomfort or tension, suggest that he or
she could benefit from an expanded sense of “now.” Say
“Hold your ‘now’ in your hands and slowly draw your
hands apart, expanding your
‘now’ while staring at the space between your hands and being
aware of your feelings as you do so.” For some clients this process
may be trance-inducing, and you could use the trance response as an opportunity
for additional therapeutic suggestions about relaxing, accessing resources,
and accomplishing desired outcomes. Tell the client to stop expanding
the size when
“now” seems “just right.”
Note: For the few clients to whom I’ve taught this strategy, a “now” of shoulder-width seems to be just the right size. One client with whom I worked told me that anything larger made her feel “spacey” because she was “taking so many distractions I can’t concentrate.” If a client’s “now” is already shoulder width, then this intervention may have be superflous. If an expanded “now” results in discomfort, tell the client to “put it back the way it was.” It could be that more “now” is not the best intervention for this client at this time. Stop the intervention and work with other stress management methods such as reframing, relaxation training, anchoring resources, belief change work, etc.
- Watch for changes in facial expression, posture, and breathing that indicate a internal shift in feelings and/or perceptions. Inquire about he client’s internal response. If the change is positive, ask the client if he or she would like to have an expanded sense of now available in the future. If the answer is “yes” then install an anchor for the expanded sense of “now.”
- Ask the client to visualize two or three future contexts where he or she wants to have this expanded sense of “now” as a resource state. Guide the client through future rehearsals, with the anchor in place. Complete the intervention with an ecological check.
Questions
Most of us live in environments of over-stimulation and information overload, where time seems to move by all too quickly. Interestingly, it seems the more activity we try to pack into now, the more it seems to shrink. We compress our “nows” in an effort to cope, or to accomplish more with less time. This results in stress and tension. Having an adequate sense of “now” may help us to relate to time pressures in a more positive way.
The possibility that “more now” or an expanded present reduces stress raises many intriguing questions that warrant our attention.
Is a compressed “now” a common symptom of stress and anxiety?
Is expanding one’s “now” just a “feel good” activity, or does it truly result in lowered stress, while maintaining efficiency and productivity?
Are there people whose “nows” are too large, perhaps resulting in frequent distraction, procrastination and inertia? If so, would decreasing the size of such overly large “nows” help these people develop a clearer sense of purpose for accomplishing important goals?
Is it beneficial to teach people to develop flexibility with their sense of the present, so that they can expand and contract their “nows” according to the context? If so, which contexts are best suited for an expanded “now” or a compressed “now?” It seems to me, for example, that an expanded sense of “now” would facilitate meditation---or perhaps meditation is what expands the “now.” Perhaps high productivity environments call for compressed “nows,” and people could use an expanded “now” when they change to another, less demanding environment.
Time line interventions are valuable NLP strategies for counseling, coaching, and teaching. NLP practitioners have only begun to understand the interplay between time consciousness and personality/behavior and to discover the possible uses of time lines for diagnosis, remediation, and personal growth. Exploration and research on modifying time lines will benefit our knowledge of time line interventions.
Closing Thoughts
While this article emphasizes “now,” it is worthwhile to help our clients and ourselves maintain a functional, balanced relationship between the present, past, and future. Bodenhamer and Hall write:
Because we have “time” or eternity implanted in our “minds,” and can “time” travel to other “time” zones, we often find it difficult living fully and completely and resourcefully in the present. To live in the psychological present in a healthy and balanced way does not mean avoiding or ignoring the other time zones, but integrating “past” and “future” with the present so that we can simultaneously live fully in the present while using the resources that we can find and create from the “past” and the “future.” (p. 121)
References
Bodenhamer, B. G. and Hall, L. M. (1977) Time lining: Patterns for adventuring in time. Wales, The Anglo-American Book Company.
James, W (1892/1989) Psychology: The briefer course. New York, Harper and Row.
Jeffries, R (1883) The story of my heart, Quoted in You Cannot Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought by J. Roger and P. Williams (1991) Santa Monica, Prelude Press.
Rechtschaffen, S. (1996) Time Shifting: Creating more time to enjoy your life. New York: Doubleday.
This article originally appeared in Anchor Point,
The Practical Journal of NLP.
Judith E. Pearson, Ph.D. is a Licensed Professional Counselor, writer, and speaker with a counseling and coaching practice in Springfield, Virginia, specializing in hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Her web site is www.engagethepower.com.