Because many emotions are caused by beliefs, getting rid of the relevant beliefs can frequently eradicate negative emotions. For example, the belief that “Dogs are dangerous” will result in an emotion of fear when confronting a dog. The belief “People can’t be trusted” will result in a feeling of suspicion around people. When the beliefs are eliminated, the emotions usually will be also. There are, however, emotions in adults that appear to be caused by something in addition to beliefs.  Getting rid of beliefs is not enough.

Let me explain the source of these negative emotions, such as fear and anger, and what you need to do to stop them from occurring.

During the first few years after I developed the Lefkoe Belief Process (LBP) to eliminate limiting beliefs, clients were able to make radical changes in their behavior by eliminating the beliefs that caused the behavior. Frequently, there also were meaningful emotional changes. We started noticing, however, that sometimes a client would continue to have a trace of a specific emotion such as anger or fear, even after eliminating all the beliefs we could find that seemed to be relevant. We usually assumed that there was another belief we hadn’t yet discovered, but eventually would.

Eventually we realized that, although some emotions are the direct result of beliefs, many are the result of conditioning in addition to beliefs. When that is the case, the LBP will not eliminate the conditioning. (You do, however, have to use the LBP to eliminate any relevant beliefs before de-conditioning can be effective in stopping the negative emotion. If you haven’t yet experienced eliminating a belief with the LBP, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com to try it free.)

A few years ago I developed a process I call the Lefkoe Stimulus Process (LStP). It is specifically designed to eliminate the emotions that are caused by conditioned stimuli. It is simpler to use than the basic LBP and usually takes only five minutes to completely eliminate the stimuli for such emotions as fear, anxiety, anger and guilt.

How Associations Early In Life Cause Negative Emotions Later In Life

Very often we are plagued by repeated negative feelings in our life, such as fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, and sadness. We experience these feelings every time specific events or circumstances occur, such as anxiety whenever we make a mistake or someone gets angry at us, or anger whenever we are asked to do something. In many cases the events that stimulate the feeling in us do not produce the same feeling in others, and vice versa. Why does an event that is not inherently fearful produce fear (or some other emotion) in some people and not in others?

Let me explain: The classic example of this situation was an experiment a physiologist named Pavlov conducted with dogs. When presented with food, the dogs salivated. Then a bell was rung just prior to presenting the dogs with food. After numerous presentations of the food with the bell, the bell was rung and no food was delivered. The dogs salivated anyway, because they had associated the bell with the food. In other words, a neutral stimulus that normally would not produce a response does so because it gets associated with a stimulus that does produce a response. In other words, the neutral stimulus gets conditioned.

Here’s an example I use with my clients that will make the process of conditioning very clear.  Imagine that I handed you an ice cream cone with one hand and made a fist with my other hand and drew it back as if to hit you.  What would you probably feel? … Some level of anxiety if you thought you might get hit.  Now imagine that the next few times someone handed you an ice cream cone, the same thing happened and you felt anxious each time.

What do you think you would feel the next time you were handed an ice cream cone, even if there was no menacing fist? … Probably anxious.  And yet it’s clear that ice cream cones are not inherently scary.  If this next time there was no fist, only ice cream, why would you feel anxious?  Because the ice cream cone got conditioned to produce fear.  The ice cream just happened to be there every time you got scared by the fist.

The principle is that anything that occurs repeatedly (or even once if the incident is traumatic enough) at the same time that something else is causing an emotion will itself get conditioned to produce the same emotion.

That’s how making mistakes, being criticized, not meeting expectations, being rejected, and a host of other situations that are not inherently scary get conditioned to produce anxiety (or some other emotion, such as anger).  This process is also the primary cause of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Here is a real life example: Consider one of my clients who experienced fear whenever he was asked to do something.  I asked him when did he first experience fear associated with being asked to do something? He told me that when he was a child his father frequently got angry and yelled at him whenever he didn’t do what his father demanded of him. When my client reviewed the original cause of his feeling of fear, he discovered that the fear was not inherent in being asked to do something.

What caused the fear was the meaning he unconsciously attributed to his father’s threatening behavior that usually occurred when he was asked to do something: The person he depended on for his very survival seemed to be withdrawing his love. No love, no care; no care, no survival. That perception—that his survival was at stake—is what caused the fear. Being told to do things just happened to occur at the same time as something else that constantly caused fear.

Whatever is going on when you experience fear due to your parents’ anger (because their anger is an implied threat to your survival) gets conditioned to produce the same fear. The stimulus today—making mistakes, being criticized, not living up to expectations, etc.—is not, itself, scary.

How The Lefkoe Stimulus Process Works

The Lefkoe Stimulus Process works by assisting you to make a distinction between the original real cause of the emotion and the events that just happened to be occurring at the time.  Once that distinction is made, the conditioning is extinguished.  It’s as if you could say to Pavlov’s dogs: “Hey dogs, you can’t eat the bell.  It just happened to be ringing whenever you got food.”  If the dogs could understand that distinction they would no longer salivate at the sound of the bell.  But while dogs can’t make that distinction, humans can. And when they do, de-conditioning occurs.  Using the Lefkoe Stimulus Process and the LBP you can easily get rid of the anxiety, anger, and other negative emotions that plague you.

If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the LBP, go to htp://www.recreateyourlife.com/free where you can eliminate one limiting belief free.

Please share my blog posts with anyone you think might be interested (as long as you tell people where they came from) and provide a link from your own website or blog.   https://mortylefkoe.com.

To purchase DVD programs that we guarantee to eliminate eight of the most common daily problems people face, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com/store.

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/mortylefkoe and join our fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/recreateyourlife) where I answer your questions about the role of beliefs in our lives.

Finally, to receive notice of new blog posts, please fill out the following form.

copyright ©2010 Morty Lefkoe

15 Comments

  1. sigyta hart June 27, 2023 at 9:47 am - Reply

    thankyou for this very interesting introduction to the Stimulus Process

  2. David Brown August 14, 2010 at 2:44 am - Reply

    You’re essentially trying to sell NLP as your own invention, aren’t you, Morty. It’s a shame to see, when Bandler and Grinder invested so much of their time, effort and experience in developing these strategies themselves.

    For anyone interested, the above ‘association of stimulus’ is an extremely well-known and thoroughly explored NLP principle called ‘anchoring’. Anchoring can be good or bad, and you can use anchoring to easily overcome any beliefs, phobias or other emotional issues you have. Every NLP book out there describes this technique.

    David

    • Morty Lefkoe August 19, 2010 at 6:05 pm - Reply

      Hi David,

      I don’t have enough personal experience with NLP to know if what we do is the same.

      But Paul Scheele and others who studied with Bandler and Grinder in the earliest classes and who have been using it for years tell me that The Lefkoe Method (a series of six different processes) is very different.

      We’ve also had a lot of clients who have tried NLP before coming where the NLP didn’t help and our work did. And maybe there are some similarities.

      Love, Morty

      • David Brown August 19, 2010 at 6:51 pm - Reply

        Well, I appreciate your reply, Morty. I guess it’s good to communicate beneficial, benevolent personal development strategies to people regardless of the origin. I just like to see credit where credit’s due ;-)

        Best of luck for the future.

        David

        • C October 6, 2010 at 6:42 pm - Reply

          David,

          As someone who has nearly a decade of experience in NLP, I can confirm anchoring is decidedly NOT the same as the Lefkoe Stimulus Process, or de-conditioning.

          Anchoring is linking desirable state change to voluntary physical stimulus. De-conditioning is disassociating involuntary stimuli (or triggers) that induce undesirable state change from the resultant compulsive behavior. While both may be concerned with state change, they are markedly divergent in both philosophy and process. The Lefkoe Method is unique, not an NLP copycat.

          C

    • Attila February 20, 2020 at 3:04 am - Reply

      I personally am not a fan of NLP, which is considered a pseudoscience, while the Lefkoe Method has been proven to be effective by multiple independent, double-blind controlled studies. Why does NLP “feel” effective then? Well, we have our biases that will generate the perception of effectiveness, or generate a “result” for us in a way that meets our need for certainty. Methodologically rock-solid, independent, controlled studies are required to eliminate these biases and beliefs so that we can see the reality of how effective a method truly is. NLP has many innovative and sometimes funny ideas, like the Swish Pattern they just don’t seem to be producing real lasting results.

    • Attila February 20, 2020 at 3:05 am - Reply

      I personally am not a fan of NLP, which is considered to be a pseudoscience, while the Lefkoe Method has been proven to be effective by multiple independent, double-blind controlled studies. Why does NLP “feel” effective then? Well, we have our biases that will generate the perception of effectiveness, or generate a “result” for us in a way that meets our need for certainty. Methodologically rock-solid, independent, controlled studies are required to eliminate these biases and beliefs so that we can see the reality of how effective a method truly is. NLP has many innovative and sometimes funny ideas, like the Swish Pattern, but it just don’t seem to be producing real lasting results.

  3. Bill May 19, 2010 at 7:05 am - Reply

    Morty , The 2 biggest things I deal with is 1st : my whole life I never made enough money to get out of debt ,no savings account , revolving chequings account always in negative , my net worth is minus $100.000.00 in debt , I need to break free and not to feel I a slave to this world, I’m 53 and have nothing to show for it ,
    2nd area is a relationshipwith a lady , because of the issue with money ,I can’t afford to have a the love of my life , You have to have a future to offer someone special and to afford to buy things and do things ,go places , hard to do that knowing you in a cycle of debt , Can you help me with this and help give me a life , I would like to purchase the programs but do not have the funds , Please help me if you can , If I can be set free from this I promise to give you a powerful testimony on how you have help me with you knowledge to get me free. Thank you for your work and time .

    • Morty Lefkoe October 6, 2010 at 6:53 pm - Reply

      Hi Bill,

      You can be set free if you eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that have you stuck. It’s actually pretty simple.

      If you aren’t able to even purchase a $199 product with three payments, I’m not sure what you can do right now.

      Make sure you at least eliminate the three free beliefs.

      Love, Morty

  4. PC April 3, 2010 at 4:29 am - Reply

    Dear Morty, Thanks for your interesting article. I was wondering though, if it is possible to purchase The Lefkoe Stimulus Process or if it is included in one of your packages, or indeed, if this can only be done with a therapist. I look forward to hearing from you, Kind regards, PC

    • admin April 4, 2010 at 1:21 pm - Reply

      Hi PC,

      Yes, you can purchase four processes using the Lefkoe Stimulus Process.

      Please go to: http://recreateyourlife.com/store/beliefs-list.php and see the bottom four items.

      If you still have any questions, please let me know

      Thanks so much for taking the time to write.

      Regards, Morty

  5. Elsa March 26, 2010 at 1:18 pm - Reply

    Hi Morty, Thank you for creating your method for breaking the hold of strong old unhelpful beliefs. I heard of it a few days ago (through an email from Paul Scheele, Learning Strategies). I’ve tried it. And it works! So thank you. Elsa (who is still a bit amazed and kind of waiting for a reappearance of the belief)

    • Morty Lefkoe March 26, 2010 at 4:36 pm - Reply

      Hi Elsa,

      Glad you found out about us from Paul Scheele. And I’m glad our belief-elimination process works so well for you.

      Many people believe change is hard and has to take a lot of time, so they can’t believe the belief really is gone.

      Regards, Morty

  6. admin March 26, 2010 at 8:48 am - Reply

    testing

  7. what is this March 25, 2010 at 4:08 pm - Reply

    hope this works…

Leave A Comment