The background
Tony is by way of becoming a good friend but a man who has some ‘demons’ from his past which have caused, from time to time, a number of serious and impeding issues.
I have helped Tony to a considerable degree recently and he has given me permission to write up my intervention as a case study
It can be argued that we are all subject to a mixture of our genetics and our upbringing to some degree or other. We all have experiences and memories which can affect us.
Tony is no different from any other person in this respect. However, some major parts of his childhood were particularly nasty and caused him a lot of trauma physically and mentally. Now into his fifties, he is, on occasions, mentally affected by this past. Thoughts affect his mood, motivation, self-esteem and self-belief in negative ways to the point he feels he does not achieve as much as he can. There is some truth in this but, there is a truth from external observation that he is far more able and achieves far more than he gives himself credit for.
Tony and I agreed to work for each other on a mutually beneficial basis as friends. He had a particular memory which he had managed to reduce to a shadow which although milder than the original trauma, was still pulling at him and ever present like a black cloud dragging him back.
After some good open honest discussion with Tony in which he shared some really difficult issues with me I began working with him and applying hypnotic Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques with him. Key to this work was that he stated that he really wanted to get rid of the attachment he had with this ‘black cloud’ and move on with his life. Clearly I had the advantage, in working with Tony, that he wanted to move on and felt ready to do what he could in order to do so. He really did not know how.

The intervention
So, a brief summary of how I helped him. This, as you may expect, had already begun with a lot of discussion and listening (on my part) to as many of the clues to how he thought and what was happening to him as I could recognise. There was much to listen to but, over time I could understand how he represented his problems, how they affected him adversely and how he responded to these problems.
It is important to note that even though events had taken place many years beforehand the mental effects were still so real to Tony. My experience is that this is common with many people. Difficult events often stick in the mind and can have long term negative consequences which can become exaggerated over time and sometimes distorted and made even worse. This was not the case for Tony. His past events were sufficiently traumatic to be difficult to make more problematic.
The intervention I opted to employ was to give Tony the mental technique to sever the link between him and the black cloud he was attached to. Yes, I know that some of you may wonder at this. I ask you to think about yourself and consider for a moment how, in your mind, you recall events both good and bad from your past. You will find none of them are actually real currently, but your memory is as real to you as it is possible to be, but will be distorted or changed by time and the way you think. Think about an event now and recognise how you remember it. This should give you an explanation of what I am about to describe.
Tony literally had in his mind a black cloud or dark area which he could point to physically it was over his left shoulder slightly above his head and behind him about two or three feet and was linked to him inside by a ‘string’ or connection which was extremely tough. He knew that in this cloud were very specific memories which he had managed to stop recalling directly but the negativity and intensity of emotion involved was still there and still having a negative effect.
It is important to note here that whatever my understanding of the situation, the way in which Tony was representing it to me was real to him and I took it as so. I listened well to him and how he discussed his issues and made a mental note of the words he used and the way he used them. When I felt I had enough information to work with I moved on with help.
The first thing I did was teach him to relax deeply whilst I was talking to him. Using a hypnotic approach I managed to get him to forget the ‘here and now’ for a short while and daydream himself into a really nice place he had been before. Where this was, I have no idea, that bit was down to him, but I know he was there in his mind, I could see he was very very relaxed. Once there, I was able to talk to him at a level of consciousness removed from the immediate ‘here and now’ and started, gently, to use his representation of his ‘cloud’.  All I did was get him to mentally cut the connection from the cloud to him and send it far away so it no longer followed him. I know he did it – he physically twitched as he did it.
After that I took him back to deep relaxation and then gradually brought him back to the immediate and checked on how he was feeling. The signs were all good.

The result
Over time we talked and he fed back to me that the cloud had gone. It has left him completely. He is aware of what it was but it does not disturb him anymore. Great result! I’ve done more with him since, partially on a simple conversational, coaching and/or mentoring basis and sometime hypnotically with NLP techniques. He is feeling much better.