Path to a Brighter Future

Initial Timeline Work This exercise is designed to give you perspective.

Find yourself a quiet place with a large floor. Visualize a time line on the floor, and place your life on the timeline. Your birth will be at one end, your present state in the middle somewhere, and your future continuing off in the same direction. You need to be able to step off to the side of it and look at it, and be able to step into a particular part of your life and "be" there. Work on "being" different ages. Work on looking at various episodes in your life in a disconnected, dispassionate way from off the side of the line.

This will be used to do some exercises that can be very helpful in making new meanings of things that have been in your past. For now, just fill in the spots with events. This work can be done in conjunction with your autobiography. You can get on the line and "become younger" by walking towards the beginning period on the line. While it may initially sound funny, this can help you to remember things. By searching on the line for feelings, such as love, compassion, the feeling of being taken advantage of, and other feelings, you can find new meaningful memories.

For example, remember a time when your trust was violated. Where is it on the line? Step onto the line in that spot. Ask yourself in that spot if having your trust violated is a familiar feeling to you at that time. If it is, try and remember an even earlier time when your trust was violated. Keep searching back (by physically moving on the line) until you find the first time that you can remember this feeling. You may think reading this that the first time was with your significant other, but using this emotion directed search back along your time line, you may find that this has been happening in your life longer than you may have suspected. These are valuable insights.

You can also create your timeline on paper to help you get started... making sure that you give an even amount of space to each year... but you will want to be able to get it out and put it on the floor in your mind as well...

Practice "being" different ages by stepping onto your timeline. Try remembering things from your childhood and teenage years that you haven’t thought about in a long time. You can give the experience of being with your significant other greater meaning in the greater context of a life more fully understood.

There will be specific timeline exercises later as you learn more about yourself walking the path to a brighter future. For now, simply work with remembering, and getting used to the idea of walking the timeline, both being and watching. Creating a usable timeline in your mind will prepare you for these exercises.

<< Prev Next >>

BPD411 Home - Services - Resources - Partners - Contact Us - Mailing List

Disclaimer: The information on this site (http://www.bpd411.org) is based on personal experiences of the authors and members of our e-mail mailing list. It is NOT meant to replace professional advice or take the place of counseling, therapy or additional personal research.