Alison Hendry: My open letter about the impact of my university lecturer’s words (BSL)

Wow that’s an amazing story of overcoming, mostly, the negative impacts of thoughtless and hurtful discrimination. I’m so glad you are now in a job you love and where you get really good support. You are a fantastic role model.

I always wanted to be a teacher but always felt that I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t be able to hear what kiddies were saying to me. I’m retired now after having a good career in science but often wonder how different my life would have been.

Dear Alison,

Based on what you say it appears that your 2010 tutor memory remains somewhat present in your mind. May I suggest a technique that I do know works? It comes from some attendances I made on an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) course. (I submit that the first two elements of that name should be hyphenated: Neuro-Linguistic Programming.) My personal definition of this material is to describe the “Neuro-Linguistic” element as being the somewhat automated/habit-ingrained responses/reactions one gives to a variety of everyday experiences such as the automated response to the greeting, “Hello! How are you?” Depending on how you are and how much information you want to offer in response you will ‘select’ a response which suits you, “Hello to you! I am fine. Good to see you. How are you?”; with such a response being drawn from a menu, a repertoire of appropriates different alternative responses, the “pre-programmed” selection as built up over time and from your experiences.

One such NLP “Programming” technique is how to deal with memories which one would wish to reduce in impact (or even eradicate) whenever that memory kicks in.

First of all, as with many, perhaps all, negative memories, we tend to replay them in our mind: what was said, how it was said, where it was said, who said what, etc., etc. Your description of your negative memory suggests that this is the case with you – the replaying of that memory (or just a part of it).

So, here is what you do:

Imagine yourself alone in the middle of a cinema seating area. (It doesn’t have to be in the middle, but just keeping it straightforward.) Lights are down and a film is about to begin. That film is what you replay whenever the bad tutor memory kicks in – there is that film, in full screen, full technicolour, full sound (if that is part of your specific scenario). Play it through, watch it.

Now you are going to play it through again. But, this time, play it through in black-and-white. Hopefully, that diminishes its significance in your memory. But we have a little more to do yet!

You’ve played it through in black-and-white. You are going to play it through again (in black-and-white), but, this time, you “adjust” the size of the imaging on the screen – take that image down to half size (or more) and play it through again. You can pursue this ‘downsizing’ as much as you want, and I suggest you do so until the imaging is very small and placed by you somewhere way off-centre of the screen area. But, even at half size and in black-and-white, you should already feel more relaxed about and beginning to control that memory. The memory hasn’t gone away, it’s still yours and, if you wanted to (would you really want to???), you can get it back in full blazing technicolour and full 3-D screen!

The objective is to take control of your (specific) memory and to prevent that memory taking control of you. Or, as the title of one of the books which was written in the vein of NLP, “How to change your mind, and keep the change!”

(Same technique works for anything else which represents an unhappy or intrusive memory.)

Hope this helps.

Terry