Summary:

Human evolution designed children to build their personalities primarily from interactions with their parents, and not from other people. That way, children are sure to learn from people who reproduced. To accomplish this, children's brains imprint the image of whoever they look at a lot - usually their parents – when they are an infant. Subsequently, only personality traits acquired from interactions with people whose faces are imprinted become permanent.

Think of an imprinted face as the lock to a person's personality. It turns out that looking at a picture of a person whose face is imprinted unlocks what was acquired during childhood from the person whose face is imprinted, allowing some of it to be undone. As a person looks longer at faces that are imprinted, and what was acquired from interactions with that person undoes, the associated problems decrease in intensity.

This section explains how to do this.

WARNING!!! DO NOT CHANGE OR STOP ANY MEDICATION OR OTHER MEDICAL TREATMENT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF YOUR DOCTOR AND/OR THERAPIST. THIS PROCESS IS NOT CURRENTLY A REPLACEMENT FOR ANY MEDICAL TREATMENT OF ANY KIND. DOING THIS PROCESS MAY BRING UP EMOTIONS THAT COULD CAUSE PROBLEMS.

Here are the details

What you'll need

You will need pictures that clearly show the faces of the people whose faces are imprinted. If a person whose face is imprinted was an adult when the face was imprinted, like your parents would be, then a picture of that person at any adult age will work. If a person's face imprinted when that person was a child, which could happen if an older sibling is imprinted, it may be preferable to use a picture of that person from around the time that person's face was imprinted. Generally, if you have them, look at different pictures of the people whose faces are imprinted and use the pictures that evoke the strongest emotional reaction.

The process

• To do the process, talk to the picture. The goal is to emotionally engage with the person in the picture. Maybe tell the person how you feel about them, or what you liked or disliked about how they raised you, or anything else that keeps you emotionally engaged.

• The process typically evokes sadness (crying), fear (discomfort), or anger.

• This should never be done with a real person. It only works when talking to a picture of the person.

• Look at each picture for 5-10 minutes per day. I don't currently know if spending longer than 5-10 minutes per person increases the benefit.

• The rate people change is proportional to the number of days each week looking at the pictures. For example, doubling the number of days per week doubles how fast you change.

• If this is done 3-4 times each week, significant change should be noticeable within 3-9 months. Once change is noticed, additional significant change will be noticed every few weeks or months.

• All change is permanent.

• Drugs or medications that alter a person's emotional responses (e.g. psychiatric medications, alcohol, marijuana) slows or stops the change process.

• This process benefits anyone who has completed adolescence. I don't know the effectiveness of this process in someone who has not completed adolescence. 

• No age is too old to fully benefit from this process unless the brain is damaged (e.g. stroke, Alzheimer's disorder).

• This process works even without a conscious memory of the person whose face is imprinted. Even if a parent died when the individual was two or three years old, looking at a picture of them will still be effective.

• Looking at only one of the imprinted faces produces significant positive changes.

More on how this works

Looking at a picture of an imprinted face decreases the emotional reaction to that person. Since our adult emotional reactions are determined by our emotional reaction to the people whose faces are imprinted, as that emotional reaction decreases, so do the emotional reactions to people in general.

Here's an example: Suppose someone reacts with a lot of fear when looking at an imprinted face. Most likely that person will also react with a lot of fear toward people in general (although the person may not be consciously aware of this because it feels normal). As fear toward the person whose face is imprinted face decreases, fear toward people in general also decreases.