Imprint and Re-Imprinting

An imprint is a formative experience in the past from which the person developed a belief or set of beliefs. Such an imprint usually involves unconsciously taking on the role of other significant people who were involved. The purpose of Re-Imprinting is to find the missing resources, change the belief, and adapt the role model that was formed to the client’s actual current reality.

Steps:

1. Step 1:
   A identifies a limiting behavior they wish to change.
2. Step 2:
   B identifies the associated symptoms (feelings, words, images) that accompany this behavior. B elicits the underlying belief. Signs: hopelessness, helplessness, or worthlessness. Anchor. B asks about the relevant submodalities (whatever comes to A’s mind first) and anchors them.
3. Step 3:
   A then uses this anchor to move back along their life path to the point where they first experienced that feeling/symptom. Let A identify the generalization or belief they formed from that experience.
4. Step 4:
   Have A step one step further back, to just before that experience occurred. Then A steps out of their timeline and returns to the present, dissociated from their timeline, looking back at the formative experience in the past. Ask A to notice how that experience affected their later life. Also let A identify any additional generalizations or beliefs that might have developed from that experience later on.
5. Step 5:
   Identify the positive intentions, secondary gains, or beneficial consequences that might have been linked to that experience. Identify the important people who were part of it. Some symptoms relate to the person having taken over or modeled someone else’s role. Also find the positive intentions of these people and their behaviors. A could, for instance, simply ask them internally.
6. Step 6:
   For every person involved in the imprint situation, go through these steps:
   • a) From a dissociated viewpoint, find the resources or choices the person needed back then but lacked. You can stack resource anchors, collect experiences along the timeline, send them energy, colors, etc. Let your imagination run. Pay attention to the logical levels of the resources.
   • b) Have A associate into that person’s experience who needed those resources at the time. Activate the anchor and the resources. Let them relive the entire situation with the new resources.
   • c) Have A step out of the timeline again and, from a dissociated position, reassess the experience made: How has the perception of the situation changed? What about the generalizations and beliefs formed from it? What new learning does A draw from the entire experience now?
7. Step 7:
   Ask A to find the most important resource they would have needed and anchor it. With this anchor, have A go back to a moment just before the experience. Have A let their younger self take in this resource and move along the timeline all the way to the present. “Notice what changes have occurred through this process.”