This session explores the nature of negative emotions arising from past events, and links them to developmental periods in childhood. It suggests that any negative emotion belongs with person at the age they experience the event, rather than with them at their current age. It also describes how we can store negative emotions 'like beads on a string', so that we may be reacting in the present not just to the here and now situation, but to every other 'bead' of a similar emotion.

Timeline Therapy techniques involve finding the first occasion we experience the particular emotion, and gifting the younger us with qualities he / she would have needed to handle the situation more resourcefully.