by Sarah Fletcher | Feb 2026
In this blog I want to talk to you about something that I see time and time again in coaching sessions, on NLP courses, and in conversations about personal development:
You’re not stuck.
You’re running a pattern.
My First Experience of Breaking a Pattern
Let me take you back to 2003. That was the year I was first introduced to NLP. At the time, I had already trained in psychotherapy, I had a hypnotherapy qualification, and I was teaching Psychology. I was deeply curious about human behaviour and consciousness – about how we think, why we react the way we do, and how we unlock our inner power.
But what I didn’t realise back then was this: I had choice.
Choice in how I structured my internal experience.
Choice in how I coded my thoughts.
Choice in how I responded to stress.
On day one of my NLP diploma, I walked into an unfamiliar environment with new people, new space, new noises and I felt completely outside of my comfort zone.
And my familiar stress response kicked in. A headache.
That was my pattern. Whenever I felt anxious or overwhelmed, my body would produce a physical symptom. A headache that would often turn into a migraine. It was predictable. It was automatic. It felt out of my control. During the break, I told my trainer I didn’t think I’d be able to stay. “This will turn into a migraine,” I said. “I won’t be able to concentrate.” He calmly replied, “You’re on an NLP course. Let’s do some NLP.”
What happened next felt like magic.
Within minutes, the headache transformed. I could still detect something there but it had no pain, no intensity, no distress attached to it. It had changed shape. It had changed size. It had changed impact.
And it didn’t come back. That was my convincer right there, that NLP was powerful stuff!
If I could change that… what else was possible?
Every internal experience has a structure.
Anxiety has a structure.
Stress has a structure.
Overwhelm has a structure.
Even confidence has a structure.
We tend to think our feelings just “happen” to us. But actually, we are coding them.
We are creating pictures.
We are hearing internal dialogue.
We are generating sensations in the body.
We are assigning colour, size, movement, location.
And we’re doing it unconsciously.
That headache I experienced wasn’t random. It was a coded stress response. It was my nervous system’s way of protecting me from discomfort. But when we change the coding, we change the experience. That’s where your power lies.
Let’s Break Down Anxiety
Think of something that causes you mild anxiety.
Maybe it’s
- Giving a presentation.
- Having a difficult conversation.
- Trying something new.
- Stepping into a new opportunity.
Now, pause and become curious.
What does the picture look like?
Is it close to you or far away?
Is it big or small?
Bright or dim?
Colour or black and white?
Still or moving?
What about the sounds?
Is your inner critic loud?
Fast-paced?
Harsh in tone?
Where does that voice come from?
And the feelings?
Where do you feel it in your body?
Does it have a size?
A shape?
A colour?
Is it rotating? Tight? Heavy?
This is your internal coding. This is how you structure your experience.
Recoding the Pattern
In NLP, we don’t focus primarily on the story. We focus on the structure. So instead of analysing why you feel anxious, we explore how you are creating anxiety internally. And then we change it.
You might:
- Push the image further away.
- Shrink it down to the size of a postage stamp.
- Turn it black and white.
- Blur it.
- Rotate it
- Spin it in the opposite direction.
-
With the inner critic, you might:
- Turn the volume down.
-
Change it into a comedian’s voice
-
Slow it down.
-
Put a mute button on it.
-
With the body sensations, you might:
- Soften the colour.
-
Cool the temperature.
-
Change the size.
-
Move it to a different space in your body.
-
Shake it out.
- When you change the coding, the emotional charge shifts. Not because you’ve changed the external event. But because you’ve changed your internal experience of it.
That is all within your control and power.
Harnessing the Power of the Unconscious
Your unconscious mind runs your patterns.
It runs your stress responses. It runs your fight-or-flight reactions. It runs your habitual self-talk.
But here’s the empowering truth: The unconscious can be rewired.
You are not broken.
You do not need fixing.
You are simply running a pattern. And patterns can be changed.
When you realise that anxiety is not an identity but a structured experience, something that has colour, shape, sound and movement – you reclaim your inner power.
You move from victim of your reactions to communicator with your nervous system. That’s transformational! This is why NLP is so incredibly transformative and rapid.
Changing the Pattern Changes the State
When I left that room in 2003 without a headache, something fundamental shifted in my consciousness.
I realised:
- I could reorganise my internal pictures.
- I could change the size and distance of my fears.
- I could soften the feelings in my body.
- I could take control of my inner dialogue.
I hadn’t changed the external world. I had changed my representation of it. That is what NLP does. It transforms mental states by restructuring experience.
So you are not stuck… If you’re experiencing anxiety, stress, overwhelm or recurring emotional patterns, please hear this – there is nothing wrong with you, no fixing is necessary, – you are running a pattern. And when you understand the structure of that pattern, you can:
Recode it.
Rewire it.
Reorganise it.
Reclaim your power.
That’s why I’m so passionate about NLP courses and personal development training. Because once you learn how to work with your internal coding, you are no longer at the mercy of your reactions. You become the communicator with your own nervous system. You become the architect of your internal experience.
To me this is what unlocking possibilities truly means. Not changing everything outside of you. But changing how you structure what happens inside of you. And when you change that… your life literally transforms from the inside out!
If you feel called to explore this work more deeply then come and train in NLP with us. Our students say they wish they had done it sooner!
Thanks for reading – feel free to comment if you liked it and let me know what else you would like me to write about 😊
