he unconsciously attributed to his father’s behavior. Joe the
child felt that the person he depended on for his very survival
was withdrawing his love. If he were not loved, he would not
be cared for; if he were not cared for, he would not survive.
Without this fear reaction he might welcome certain mistakes
as an opportunity to learn from them.
The reason for many undesired emotions you experience
today was the perception that your survival was being threat-
ened as a child. Without this perceived threat, the same events
would not have produced this emotion.
Let us now focus on the first step of the inner-movie chain
reaction, the effect of undesired inner movies on our beliefs.
How do the inner movies in our mind create negative beliefs?
The inner movie is determined by the mentioned movie inputs.
With E-Motion Picture Magic we do not focus on the first two
personal factors, innate traits or physical state — but on the
remaining three psychological factors — emotional state,
habits, and values.
These three factors function under the following basic
assumptions:
Events have no inherent meaning.
All meaning is in our minds, illustrated by our
inner movies.For example, our inner movie might include many scenes
from our old home movie, recorded in our unconscious as well
as in our memory, during our childhood when our parents were
critical of us. For many of us there might be only a few scenes in
this film in which they acknowledged us for our achievements.
Like most children we may have concluded, “There’s some-
thing wrong with me.” Those conclusions then take form as fixed
beliefs. We experience them as the truth about ourselves, even if
our friends may think that these beliefs are silly and illogical.
Sometimes, when we feel happy and at peace with ourselves, we
might even share our friends’ opinion and experience moments
during which we do not buy into these negative beliefs.
“I am larger and better
than I thought.
I did not think I held so
much goodness.”
Walt WhitmanUsing Movies to Release Negative Beliefs 69