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In January of this year my 7 year old daughter Katie choked on some food. And by choking I don’t just mean it went down the wrong way and she had a bit of a cough. I mean her windpipe was completely blocked, she was no longer coughing. She is turning blue before my eyes. Katie stares straight at me with sheer panic and terror in her eyes. She is pleading, begging me to help her while she suffocates.
I grab her, turn her over and thump her hard on the back. Whack, whack whack. I know this must hurt but I have to get the blockage out. But it’s no good. Her mouth opening and closing in a desperate attempt to get some air, any air into her lungs.
Frantic now I turn her round, wrap my arms tight around her ribs and crunch HARD – the full blown Heimlich manoeuvre. I’d learnt about it on a first aid course YEARS before. A gobbet of food goes flying several feet across the room. Katie goes limp in my arms, but… she takes an in-breath, then she starts to cough and if she can cough, she can breath. She’s breathing again. I look at her face, distressed but relief flooding in. She’s breathing. In and out. In and out. Great sweet gasps of air.
I thought that was the end of it but a day or so latter I noticed she was playing with her food rather than tucking in to her dinner with her usual healthy appetite. To say Katie is a good eater is an understatement. She is a wonderful eater, ready to try new foods, relishing textures and flavours, even foods considered strong for the adult pallet.
But she was only picking at her meal. I know that making a fuss is only ever counterproductive with Katie so left her to it thinking her hunger would simply kick in eventually.
When she was still not eating after days, and dark circles started to appear under her eyes, when her ribs started to show on her normally plump, healthy little body I started to get concerned. Then the school called to mention that Katie was not eating her school lunch. At our next meal I observed her taking a mouthful, chewing it and then putting it in her napkin to hide the fact that she could not swallow.
Katie was not eating! She was eating almost nothing at all. As a mother it seems to be hardwired into the very core of my being to feed and nurture my child. It is such a basic primitive instinct. Most mothers are familiar with the feeling of it actually hurting themselves when they hear their baby cry with hunger.
I sat down with Katie for one of our chats. “I’m just a nervous swallower now” she told me. Now fortunately I am a trainer of NLP and know a little about phobias, and fear, and the unconscious mind. Rather a lot actually.
I went away and constructed an intervention. First we did Time Line Therapy(TM). “Ok Katie, remember where you Time Line is? Good, now float up above your Time Line, and go back out into the past to the moment just before you started to choke. Now. Where’s the Fear?”
“It’s gone Mummy”
“GONE? Are you sure, just check for me. Pop down into your body back at that time… is the fear all gone?”
“no it’s all gone. I remember you hitting me on the back – that really hurt you know!”
“I know I’m sorry – I was trying to help”
“It’s OK I know you were, I’m glad you did that big squeeze thing – that worked”
“Yeah me too…. Ok now float up above your time line again and come back to now.”
Katie’s healthy appetite has returned. She eats well. Katie is healthy; she is back to her normal weight and her strong self again.
So when people ask – does NLP work with kids – I can say from direct experience YES. It works with kids too.
n.b please do NOT use this technique unless you are a certified practitioner of NLP and Time Line Therapy (TM). Unless properly and fully trained you can cause someone to fully associate into a traumatic memory which without the skills of NLP you will not be equipped to handle.
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