• Ensure that the client has a phobic type response to the stimulus or the trauma. That is, in the presence of reminders of the trauma, he must experience the quick onset of fear, panic, flashbacks; his life may be characterized by hypervigilance, he may be nervous around others, he may need to be in control and unable to feel safe; and he may have nightmares in which the trauma reappears. The protocol is inappropriate for PTSD sufferers for whom these are not the main symptoms.

• Evoke the trauma, with or without description (most NLP interventions can be completed content free).

• Interrupt the re-emergence of the trauma as soon as the client begins to show physiological signs of its onset. Changes in breathing, skin color, posture, pupil dilation and eye fixation are typical signs of memory access. As they appear, the state is to be broken by reorienting the client to the present, by changing the subject, redirecting their attention into a different sensory system, or firing off a preexisting anchor. However it is accomplished, it is important to stop the development of the symptoms before they take control of the client’s consciousness.

• After a few minutes away from the trauma, ask the client to think of a time before the trauma when they were doing something pleasant in a safe, neutral context.

• Instruct the client to imagine that they are sitting in a movie theatre and that they are watching that scene on the screen.

• Have the client imagine that they can float out of that body (in the theatre) and into the projection booth, perhaps behind a thick window, where they can watch themselves, seated in the theatre, watching the safe, neutral picture.

• Ask the client to imagine that the movie on the screen, watched by their dissociated body seated in the theatre, becomes a black and white movie of the trauma that runs from the safe place before the trauma to a safe place after the trauma.

• From the perspective of the safe projection booth, have the client focus on the responses of the dissociated watcher in the theatre as they watch the movie.

• Repeat the black and white movie process until the client can do it with no discomfort.

• After completing the dissociated movies, have the client imagine floating down from the projection booth and stepping into their own body that is seated in the theatre. Having re-associated into that body, let them imagine getting out of the seat, walking to the movie screen and stepping into the black and white image of the safe, neutral activity with which they ended the black and white rehearsal.

• As the client steps into the movie screen, have them turn on the sound, color, motion, smells and tastes of the safe neutral representation on the screen. Then, instruct them to experience a movie of the trauma in full sensory detail, BACKWARDS and very quickly (two to three seconds). Let them end the movie with a still color picture of themselves in the safe, neutral place from before the problem ever started.

• Repeat the reversed representation enough times so that it can be done easily and quickly, and the client has a sense of being comfortable. When the client can repeat the process easily with no experience of discomfort the process is finished.

• Attempt to reactivate the trauma. Ask the client to go back to it, to think of things that normally brought the problem to life. Test for the trauma in as many ways as can be found.

• If the client still has an experience of distress repeat the reversed movie several more times.

• When the trauma cannot be evoked, the procedure is over.

Unlike other treatments for phobias or PTSD, the V/KD either eliminates the memory completely, or leaves the memory intact but without traumatic affect so that the client can now talk about it without distress