J0RGEN RASMUSSEN
PROVOCATIVE HYPNOSIS
Self-published by Jt1rgen Rasmussen www.provocativehypnosis.com
Provocative Hypnosis is first published in Norway, 2008. Copyright © 2008 by J0rgen Rasmussen ISBN 978-82-997808-0-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. For information about this book or how to obtain special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact: J0rgen Rasmussen Email:
[email protected] Web: www.provocativehypnosis.com Cover design and illustrations by Cybill Conklin Printed in Norway
FOREWORD
You reader are in for a treat - this is the stuff of genius. Take a young man, unencumbered with theory, with excellent sensory acuity and great flexibility and give him a set of patterns - some mix of the classic and New Code NLP patterning - and set him loose. Oh yeah, it helps enormously that he is fearless - that is, the issue offailure is not part of the baggage he brings to the game, and that he has a healthy disrespect for conventional treatments. His cases will provoke, inspire, confound, irritate and astonish you - he will say in plain, simple English (some of) what it is that he pays attention to, how he processes it, how he decides to act and what to do when it doesn't work. When the field of professional changework first came to my attention some decades ago, I was astonished to discover that there was prevalent among the practitioners of this work, an injunction Virginia Satir articulated this precisely - here it is in the form of a: pseudo-syllogism (this phrase may be redundant): •
If you know (consciously) what you are doing in the process of change, then you are manipulating
•
Manipulation is bad
•
Therefore you may NOT know what you are doing (consciously) in the process of change It is difficult for me to imagine an injunction that would retard progress in any field of human endeavor more effectively than this one. One of the explicit intentions of The Structure of Magic generated by Bandler and myself was to create a vocabulary that would serve as a descriptive base for an intelligent discussion of the patterning available
to practitioners of changework among actual practicing change agents. I don't think that that has happened yet although the willingness to discuss cases in relatively non-theoretical terms has begun. We have (thankfully) moved beyond the injunction so precisely articulated by 5atir. In addition to a fascination with "impossibles", Jergen and I share a fierce rejection of a certain type of professionalism - the kind of professionalism that insists on standard treatments, that places a priority (or any attention at all) on some insistence of intellectual coherency - all independent of and to the detriment of the requirements of the clients we work with. We especially, rail against the type of professionalism that locks agents of change into tightly constrained boxes of conventional interventions like understanding, empathy, support for the client - all of these are choices but choices from a very large set. Yes, of course, there are clients that require precisely these transactions but they typically need one hell of lot more and what they need is not contained in the conventional descriptions typically available. So, when reading this book, note carefully where Jergen steps over your own personal boundaries and consider a bit of selfapplication of the very patterns being demonstrated. So, here it is, in all its glorious lack of tidiness - a series of adventures to entertain and outrage you. Most importantly, Jergen allows you, the reader, the privilege of accompanying him on these adventures through the earthy, concrete and honest ongoing monologue that composes this work. Attend with care and then get out there and find out for yourself! John Grinder
Bonny Doon, California, January, 2008
TABLE OF CONTENT PRAiSE ............................................................................... 11 INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 15 CREATING THE CONTEXT AND FRAMES FOR CHANGE ... 21 TURNING BALLS INTO CATS IS THE KEY TO CHANGE -THE MYTH OF CAUSE AND EFFECT .................................... 27 THE POWER OF JOYFUL SADiSM ........................................ 30
THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS .................................... 41 ABOUT CHEMICAL IMBALANCE ........................................... 45 GETTING "REAL" WITH A BIG KNIFE .................................... 48 LET'S GET ETHICAL! .......................................................... 56 I LOVE WELFARE ............................................................... 63 PLAYING THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE ...................................... 66 A CHARMING "SUICIDAL" ................................................... 69 How TO SCREW UP IN THE NAME OF GOOD INTENTIONS .... 71 FAILING TO SUCCEED ........................................................ 74 GOD BLESS BLASPHEMy ................................................... 76
USING MODELING TO CREATE CHANGE ...................... 79 USEFUL NUANCES ............................................................ 87 CAN You SPELL RELATIONSHiPS? .................................... 93 THE DOG INSIDE ............................................................... 95 COMMITMENT IS EVERyTHING ............................................ 97 QUICK SUMMARy ............................................................ 102
WORKING WITH THE LIVING DEAD .............................. 105 CASE ONE - FRANK THE MULTI PHOBIC ........................... 106 CASE Two - MARTIN THE HAND SHAKER ......................... 112 CASE THREE - CAROLINE THE ANOREXiC ......................... 114 CAROLINE'S SESSION ONE .............................................. 116 CAROLINE'S SESSION Two .............................................. 121
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CAROLINE'S SESSION THREE .......................................... 124 CAROLINE'S SESSION FOUR ............................................ 127 THE IDENTITY THREAT ..................................................... 133
MR. "I CAN'T PISS IN PUBLIC" ...................................... 141 THE PROFESSOR'S SESSION ONE ................................... 141 THE PROFESSOR'S SESSION Two ................................... 144 THE PROFESSOR'S SESSION THREE ................................ 145 WISDOM OF HINDSIGHT ................................................... 151
HARALD THE ASTHMATIC ............................................. 155 HARALD'S SESSION ONE ................................................. 155 HARALD'S SESSION Two ................................................. 157 HARALD'S SESSION THREE .............................................. 162
A CASE OF SEVERE TINNITUS ..................................... 163 WHEN NOTHING WORKS ............................................... 173 THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T CLOSE HER EyES .................. 173
GETTING DEEP HYPNOSIS WITH ANALYTICALS ....... 191 WHAT'S THE VALUE OF DEEP HYPNOSIS? ........................ 191 THE IMPORTANCE OF A SUPERB PRE-TALK ...................... 196 How TO Do A GOOD PRE-TALK ....................................... 199 A LOOK AT HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA ................................. 205 CONSCiOUS/UNCONSCIOUS DISASSOCIATION .................. 207 AN INDIRECT TEST FOR HYPNOTIC READINESS ................ 209 ESTABLISHING THE HYPNOTIC CONTRACT.. ...................... 211 My FAVORITE SPEED INDUCTION ..................................... 212 How TO Do THE HAND DROP INDUCTION ......................... 217 REAL LIFE REGRESSiONS ................................................ 225 PITY CRY VS. A SYMPTOMATIC TRANCE ........................... 227 How TO RECOGNIZE A SPONTANEOUS SYMPTOMATIC TRANCE .......................................................................... 230 How TO CREATE INSTANT HYPNOSIS .............................. 231
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WHAT IF THEY DON'T GO INTO HYPNOSIS? .............. 235 MINDFULNESS MEDITATION ............................................. 242 THE SURPRISE HANDSHAKE INDUCTION ........................... 243 How ABOUT CONTROL FREAKS? .................................... 244 WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO REPRESS FEELINGS .............. 245 WHEN THE CLIENT IS TOTALLY EMOTIONALLY REPRESSED .................................................................... 246
SOME PURE NEW CODE CASES .................................. 251 A CASE OF HEAVY GRIEF ................................................ 251 SOME LOVING SEX FOR You ........................................... 252 A SEVERE SNAKE PHOBIA ............................................... 253 A GROUP OF FIGHTERS ................................................... 254 GRINDERS NEW CODE CHANGE FORMAT ......................... 255 TIPS FROM AN INSIDER .................................................... 259
Jf2JRGEN'S FAVORITE FORMAT .................................... 263 WHAT IF THE EMOTIONS DON'T RELEASE? ...................... 269 ANGER ........................................................................... 270 FEAR .............................................................................. 271 SADNESS ........................................................................ 271 GUILT ............................................................................. 272 TESTING ......................................................................... 272 FUTURE PACING ............................................................. 272
THE HIGHLY HYPNOTIZABLE CLIENT ......................... 273 A DEPRESSED GUY NAMED TIM ...................................... 276 TAKING THINGS LITERALLy .............................................. 278 SUSY THE INSOMNIAC ..................................................... 279 A COOL WEIGHT Loss SOLUTION .................................... 280 USING HYPNOTIC CAPACITY TO CONNECT WITH EXPERIENCE ................................................................... 281 MAKE SURE THE CLIENT INTERNALIZES AND OWNS THE CHANGE ......................................................................... 285
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COMBINING HYPNOSIS AND ORDEAL THERAPY TO KEEP IT REAL .......................................................................... 285 SUGGESTIBILITY AND COMPULSIVE COMPLIANCE ............. 291 EASY COME EASY Go ..................................................... 292 THE CLIENT NEEDS TO OWN THE CHANGE ....................... 295 RESPECT THE UNCONSCIOUS NEED FOR AMNESiA ........... 296 A CRITICAL MODIFICATION WHEN WORKING WITH THE HIGHLY HyPNOTIZABLE ................................................... 298
TERMS AND DEFINITIONS ............................................. 301 DEDICATION .................................................................... 307
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PRAISE
"You reader are in for a treat - this is the stuff of genius. Take a young man, unencumbered with theory, with excellent sensory acuity and great flexibility and give him a set of patterns - some mix of the classic and New Code NLP patterning - and set him loose. Oh yeah, it helps enormously that he is fearless - that is, the issue offailure is not part of the baggage he brings to the game, and that he has a healthy disrespect for conventional treatments. His cases will provoke, inspire, confound, irritate and astonish you - he will say in plain, simple English (some oj) what it is that he pays attention to, how he processes it, how he decides to act and what to do when it doesn't work." John Grinder NLP Co-founder "JfJrgen has written one of the most brilliant, useable, clear-headed books on NLP-both the methodology and the applications - that I have read in my two decades of studying the subject. This guy doesn't just show you the techniques-he explains the way of thinking that leaves the trail of techniques. Highest possible recommendation. II Ross Jeffries Creator of Speed Seduction@ "There's a fair number of opinions in this book I flat-out disagree with. But I'm a full-time working hypnotist seeing real clients every day - I earn my fee only if they get exactly the outcome they've come for. I need tools that work. The techniques JfJrgen describes in Provocative Hypnosis work. There's more solid, useful information packed into this book than I've found in any other hypnosis / NLP book I've read or class I've taken (and I've trained with the biggest names in the field). 11
So even if I think he's over the top sometimes, I recommend this book.
For the expert working with live paying clients I recommend it for tools. They work. For the newbie, the aspiring and the curious, I recommend it because it's provocative, funny and an overall great read." Brian Mahoney Director, Boston Hypnosis "Jergen's book arrived this weekend and I have been unable to put it down. I thought I had no behavioral boundaries under the banner of 'what's most effective for the client' but this guy makes my methods look tame. More importantly; not since Frogs into Princes have I seen a book that captures the spirit offlexibility required to be a real change artist - and it's mainly implicit in Frogs into Princes. Jergen makes it explicit and in-your-face. If you are one of my Practitioners or Master Practitioners - read it! It will echo my attitude to change work (there are no relevant considerations other that the ultimate welfare of your client and rapport is not 'being nice'). For so-called NLP Practitioners that 'run the script' (with inadequate calibration and inadequate flexibility to go 'off road') this should be a wakeup call to you. You will probably find it shocking in places, if you do I would urge you to pay attention to your inflexible boundary that Jergen has crossed. " Darryll Scott NLP Trainer and Performance Coach "I have met with Jergen several years ago in Norway whilst working with John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair. I delivered a day introduction to the delegates who were attending a Coaching with Excellence course. Jergen has a strong presence and stoney faced humor. He is a true maverick and honorable in his work with clients. His book is in my opinion is outside the boundaries set in this field (the field of hypnosis NLP books) which is a brave step. Some of the text I am sure made me blush (and I am a Yorkshire man) and I congratulate
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Jorgen for having the balls to write such a book. His knowledge is advanced and of the highest level in this field plus he has the best qualifications ... results. This is a great read and has the formats of how you should approach impossible clients. II John Thompson NLP Trainer and Business Consultant II
Your book is certainly bold and blunt. While some people might find some of the blunt language offensive and some of the techniques controversial, your book is certainly thought-provoking. II Roy Hunter Hypnotherapist & Author
II If you are anything like me you will find Provocative Hypnosis absolutely un-put-downable. Dealing with impossible clients, it is a masterful and compulsive read from beginning to end. Paradoxically, at a superficial level, Jorgen! s interventions seem of times simultaneously elegant yet crass. True compassion, however, is not about joining your client! s narrative of pain, wallowing together in content misery and somehow trying to make it all a bit more comfortable. True compassion is the ability to maintain clear boundaries and process in the midst of confusing and all-consuming incongruence whilst pursuing with absolutely single-minded determination your client! s best interests. Jorgen clearly demonstrates this in spades. You must read this book... II Dr Lewis Walker Family Physician, NLP Author and Trainer
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INTRODUCTION
I sincerely hope that this book will turn out to be the most blunt, pragmatic and straightforward book you have ever read on getting results in creating radical change. I don't care if you have an NLP, hypnosis, coaching background or no official background in changework at all: The principles are the same. Honestly, if you are a psychologist or psychiatrist, and you are results-oriented, then you will love this book. Otherwise, I am sure that you will hate it and for good reasons. It's certainly a book that I wish someone else had written a long time ago. Of course, this is the lazy "part" of me that often bitched and complained about me having to fall flat on my face so often to figure this stuff out. I wonder if you have had a similar experience to the one I am about to describe. I did my first official training with a company that offered NLP Practitioner, Master Practitioner and Trainer's Training in one summer, and let me tell you, the instructors all looked like geniuses. All the demos worked, everything went real smooth. I couldn't wait to get out there and save the world as soon as the training was over. Naive as I was, I thought that the demo subjects were randomly selected from the audience. It certainly appeared that way at the time. Well, I was wrong, just like in stage hypnosis, there was nothing random at all about the selection process. When I started seeing clients, I ended up getting the type of clients that seminar trainers tend to avoid like the plague. It took me some time to realize that virtually all the demo subjects had certain things in common:
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1. A well developed ability to visualize in consciousness 2. Easy access to feelings 3. Well-developed synesthesia patterns, especially see-feel circuits. By the way, all visualization and imagery exercises are flawed unless the pictures and sounds activate the corresponding micro muscle movements and kinesthetics in the body. The trick to making the swish, phobia cure, compulsion blowout, collapse anchors and so on work is synesthesia. Oh, by the way, if you don't know the techniques mentioned in the above paragraph, know that you don't need to know NLP to massively benefit from this book - so hang in there. 4. The ability to go into hypnosis, or if you prefer, a state of focused attention Anyone can look like a genius when they learn to spot these people and select them as demo subjects at seminars. Actually, a big part of Trainer's Training is about how to spot these people and select them as subjects. I have spoken to many NLP people about this. It seems to me that this is the way it works most of the time in most training organizations. If you doubt this, check out most of the books written in the field. I remember recommending a few NLP books to a friend of mine a few years ago. His response: "Cool stuff, but I am surprised that everyone sees so clear pictures. Is this really common?" Dear Reader, do you see a problem here? If not, I have a client for you: a fifty-five-year-old male who has been working as an accountant for the last thirty years, has no access to his feelings at all, can't visualize, has a lot of internal dialogue, is obsessed with control, doesn't go into hypnosis and blames events outside of himself for his troubles.
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Let's pretend he experiences blushing and sweating in social situations. Have you noticed that these people are seldom used as demo subjects? This isn't too strange since they lack exactly the skills needed for most of the classic NLP patterns to work. Stephen Parkhill, author of" Answer Cancer", a book I highly recommend, says that his cancer patients basically fall into two profiles: the cold left-brainer who represses feelings, and the hysterical emoter who is at the other end of the spectrum. These hysterical emoters are often (but certainly not always) highly hypnotizable, and these highly hypnotizable clients present some unique and often difficult challenges for the agent of change. I realize that categorizing clients and labeling them" cold leftbrainersjthe living dead" or "the hysterical emoter" is a VERY crude and simplistic way of looking at human beings. However, it works for me and my clients. When all is said and done, that's all that really matters. It's not that I categorize all my clients into these crude categories. Most of my clients don't fit into these categories at all, but the difficult ones have a tendency to fall into one of those categories. This book is about those royal pain-in-the-ass clients and how to deal with them when nothing works and everything seems to be going to hell. I am reminded of Winston Churchill's rather cute statement: If you are going through hell ... keep going. But where the hell do you go? There is no clear-cut answer, but this book will provide you with numerous examples of people who kept going and ended up somewhere useful. Most of these clients weren't supposed to keep going. At least not according to their psychiatrists and psychologists who had decided that they were "chronic", too "sick" to be helped or just didn't want to change. The reality in most of these cases was that these professionals
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just didn't know what to do, and instead of stopping there, they believed that the clients couldn't change and attempted to hypnotize the clients into believing that as well. Before you get started on this book I want you to know that there are many contradictions and paradoxes in the book. The book even argues with itself from time to time. Yeah, I know, thinking hurts! It certainly is more comfortable (at least in the short term) to be told what to do in a linear fashion. You will also discover that even when I have two different clients with the "same" presenting symptom I will often do interventions that are totally different. Sometimes I will do the opposite of what I did the last time. I base what I do on the unique individual in front of me, not diagnosis, statistics or personality profiles. I have never heard of a client coming for any of those things so I leave them alone. A couple of people who went over the manuscript for this book suggested that I change my "tone" a bit, so that you, the reader, wouldn't be lead to believe that I have contempt for some of my clients. The only problem is that I did feel contempt, disgust, and wanted to beat the snot out of some of these clients as if they were a red-headed stepchild. Yes, I admit it! Sometimes I have felt these "bad" emotions when working with clients. At times I projected my own unresolved stuff onto them, and at other times I think that my so-called negative emotions were highly justified and very useful in helping them change. If I pretended to be a machine with no emotion, then I wouldn't be doing justice to what happened in these sessions. Guess what, all that crap psychologists have told you about the client liking the therapist being the most important part of getting results ... sorry, but "No"! While being liked certainly doesn't hurt, it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Bottom line, does the client respond to you?
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This book is about getting results where most don't and focuses on working with the type of clients that aren't selected as clients in most courses but whom you will certainly have to deal with in the real world. The book is full of case studies from my practice, and it also contains modifications on techniques and specific suggestions regarding how to work with unresponsive subjects and highly hypnotizable subjects. Finally, a quick warning to you. It's very easy for less sophisticated readers to label me JUDGMENTAL and then to use that label as evidence that I lack empathy to prove that the techniques used are too controversial and the book too extreme to have any practical use for them. Some readers will also conclude that some of the clients in the book would have been better helped with a "compassionate and touchy feely approach". To avoid falling into this trap, just keep in mind the overall context: Clients who have NOT succeeded in traditional therapy and who generally have had their share of grandma-style compassion. These clients voluntarily entered into a therapeutic relationship with me where I would be compensated based upon a "no cure/no pay policy." They were not looking for a new friend: rather they were there to get results. If you do changework with "impossible" clients then you will from time to time be presented with the following dilemma: be polite, touchy feely and politically correct with the consequences being a client who feels" understood" but who doesn't change. The other choice will be to create some sort of discomfort and provoke some strong emotions to help the client actually get the changes they are looking for. A lot of therapists have "BEING COMFORTABLE" as their highest value and will therefore choose a touchy feely approach whether it's appropriate or not. For me "GETTING RESULTS" has the highest value and is a big part of why I have gotten the
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results I have. Please keep this in mind, as well as the overall context, as you enjoy the book and find yourself using what you've learned in the real world. One last thing, all the cases presented in this book are real. However, names, places and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of the not always so innocent. Enough introduction, let's get to work!
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CHAPTER 1
Creating the context and frames for change
A few years ago a young man dragged himself into my office, claiming that he was really scared of heights. He worked as a phone technician and spent a lot of time climbing up telephone poles to fix problems. Needless to say, he would have to correct this or change careers. I started off by challenging him, telling him that a lot of people come into my office claiming to be phobic, when in fact they were just looking for attention and sympathy. I told him that I had a hunch that he was one of those people. He pushed back and protested that he really was afraid of heights, and this went back and forth until I demanded: "Well then, show me that you're phobic!" After this type of "harassment" most people will go into a phobic state to SHOW ME that they are indeed phobic. He, on the other hand, just stared at me. My next strategy was to start asking him questions about a past memory where he was intensely phobic. This is a classic Ericksonian technique to help the client get in touch with the symptom. I started asking him questions such as: "Where were you? What was the temperature like? Were you alone or with someone? What sounds do you hear and where in your body do you FEEL THE FEAR?" Notice how I bridged from past oriented questions into a present orientation - i.e. where does the fear start. The whole idea here was to get him into the phobic state, but again, no response.
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I decided to be a bit more direct, and ask him to go close his eyes, go back to that time and step into his body, see what he saw, hear what he heard and feel what he felt and so on. I then had him make images bigger and brighter, but still no response. I always do my best to get my clients to get in touch with the problem state when they come to my office for two reasons: 1. Clients need to get in touch with the symptom to change it. 2. If the client can access their problem when they come into the office, whether it's a phobia or allergy or whatever, and you do some intervention, you test for the symptom again and if the client can't access it, then you have a good indicator of change and one hell of a convincer for the clients' conscious mind. However, if the client can't access the problem state when they come in and you do some intervention, and afterwards they still can't access it, then you got nothing at all. Having said that, I must mention that I have seen exceptions to this "rule." However, the smart money is on doing what you can to get the client in touch with whatever they want to release. By the way, I am curious, what would you do in a situation like this? I sat back in my chair and asked him the following questions: "What is it that creates the fear? Is it the heights, or is it how you think about the heights?" He shot back: "Of course it's the heights!" I told him the following: "Let's say we have two different people who both climb a telephone pole, person A is scared as hell and person B is centered and focused. It's the exact same situation, how can it be the height?" He replied: "If it weren't for the height I wouldn't be afraid. " Now, this distinction is so very important. You see, if it's the height that creates the fear, he doesn't have many options, except to stay away or be scared. However, if it's how he
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interprets the situation, and it always is, then the height can stay the same, but he can feel different if he changes "HOW" he thinks of heights. Now, there are several telephone poles outside my office and I had told him to bring his climbing shoes. I told him to get his climbing shoes on and go out and start climbing. As he walked towards the pole I saw that he entered the phobic state. I asked him: "On a scale from one to ten, how scared are you?" He told me that he was approaching six (this was before he started climbing). As he climbed the pole his fear increased and when he reached the top he told me that he was at a nine. I then told him that he could come back down, and I noticed an immediate state shift, shortly after I noticed this I asked him: "Where on the scale are you now?" He was halfway down at this point and his answer was: "I am almost at zero because I know that I am on my way down." This was exactly the leverage I needed, so I said to him: "Listen man, you were at six on the scale WHILE YOU WERE STANDING ON THE GROUND and you were almost at zero while you were on the middle of the pole cause you thought that you were soon on the ground - HOW THE HELL CAN IT BE THE HEIGHT?" The state shift that followed and the explosion of color in his face as he integrated this showed me that we had created the proper context for change. Let me introduce you to another client I worked with a couple of years ago. Martin was 18 years old and his presenting problem was obsessive compulsive disorder combined with stuttering. His psychiatrist had told him that these issues were diseases, that he couldn't help himself, that he was sick and that he needed to use drugs. This was all for his own good, of course. I mean, who needs enemies when we have enlightened professionals like this to help us. As far as I could see, there was I
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nothing "wrong" with him at alL He just lacked social skills (especially around women) and good personal boundaries. I quickly discovered that he was highly hypnotizable (more on these clients and the challenges they present later), and as soon as I confronted him with tough issues he escaped into a deep state of hypnosis. I helped him elicit states of confidence and relaxation and had him speak without stuttering in the trance state. We then practiced firing off these anchors as he entered different problem contexts in his imagination. Sounds great, huh? Well, when I spoke to him on the phone a few days later he had a total amnesia for the session we had done together, and he reported that there was no change. As I said previously, the highly hypnotizable clients present some unique challenges. One of these challenges is that the hypnotic states they enter in the office is so severely altered from the state they are in when they do their problem. So, you have to be careful to create a bridge that allows the changes to transfer from the office to the real world. Another challenge they present is that they will often use their ability to go into deeply altered states and escape when confronted with things that are uncomfortable. Paradoxically, these clients often need to be dehypnotized, they need to learn to stay out of trance and deal with real life. The next time he came in I met him outside of the office and "spontaneously" invited him to join me for a walk. Unknown to him, I had recruited an attractive and lovely young woman to come walking towards us. This was arranged in such a way that he could see her walking towards us from a distance. I suddenly turned towards him and said: "See that woman? Walk over and give her a compliment and get to know her." I should tell you that I have the following deal with my clients: they have to be willing to do whatever I tell them as long
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as it isn't physically dangerous, unethical or fattening (you have to add fattening to get the women onboard). He went into his symptomatic trance and staggered towards her as if he had just received his final call for his final destination. Then he mumbled something to her, looked down and slumped his body. I stopped the girl and asked her how he could have done that in a way that would have created intrigue or fascination on her part. She happened to be in a playful mood and agreed to start coaching him in the "how's" of approaching woman, which we practiced over the next 30 minutes. Sometimes she would laugh as he approached, and other times she would flatly reject him depending on the elegance of his approach. After a while she started coaching him as he approached other women who were walking by as well. Very often, I deal with clients by taking them out into the real world and do my best to create the experiences they need to learn the skills they are lacking. Feel free to do this, and also feel free to hire and use actors who can play roles appropriate to the learning context that you have created. If you meet clients you want to work with, but who doesn't have money to pay for the sessions, accept them anyway with the agreement that they will volunteer to be an actor when you need them. The three of us then went to a local cafeteria, and I had him model me as I interacted with people. I also taught him some specific skills. We spent an hour there and after 20 minutes I asked him: "HAVE YOU NOTICED YET?" I didn't get any meaningful response, so we continued what we were doing and after another 20 minutes I asked him the same question again. Wide eyed and puzzled, he exclaimed: "I haven't stuttered or done any obsessive thoughts since we arrived here." Another young man, Erik, at the tender age of sixteen entered my office and presented me with a horrible sight. I had never
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seen a more anxious teenager in my entire life, and I make my living by working with anxious people. This guy had been in too much "therapy" for too long, and was on an interesting cocktail of antidepressants and other pills that were supposed to reduce his anxiety and cure his nonexistent mental illness. Incredibly, the fact that this kid had no social life, a very superficial relationship with his family and spent all his free time in front of the computer didn't really interest the mental health professionals who worked with him at all. They were mostly into making sure that he took his pills and talked about his childhood. How this was supposed to create a learning context where he could learn the skills he needed to relate to people in the real world is beyond anything I can comprehend. He was a nervous wreck all the time around people. It was relatively easy to notice that every time I looked at him his anxiety would increase, and when I looked away it would decrease a bit. It was also easy to notice that as soon as I made direct eye contact his right hand moved up towards his face and his left foot would start shaking. The next time his hand started moving, he was told to grab his hair hard for three seconds as he repeated the mantra, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" If you get insulted by my use of swearing - too fucking bad. Swearing and vulgar language is used all the time in my office to create more genuine responses in people. If you do changework, you need to be willing to be very flexible to break limiting patterns of behavior and stuck states. I feel that that too many coaches and therapists are way too clinical and sterile in their behavior and language, and this is often a big mistake. Why? Because we don't want intellectual understanding and conceptual conversations, instead we look for responses, feelings and shifts in state. The mantra "SHUT THE FUCK UP" while grabbing his hair hard for three seconds served as a pattern interruption. He was 26
also told to voluntarily increase the shaking of his left leg. These two maneuvers shifted his state quite a bit and interrupted his limiting pattern. First, he went into a state of confusion. Then after a while he went into a state of laughter, which was absolutely where I wanted him. As Richard Bandler is fond of saying: "As soon as you can laugh at a problem you can change itt" After doing these pattern interrupts for a while, I asked him how he felt. After he told me that he felt pretty good, I asked him: "How can that be?" When he told me that he felt so silly doing the things I asked him to do (grabbing his hair and shaking his leg). I asked him if it was correct to say that he was choosing to feel better. He didn't quite get it, so I asked him if he wasn't in fact CHOOSING to do the goofy things I had asked him to do. He said "Yes!" and confirmed that when he chooses to do the pattern interrupts he felt better and then he got it: he was in a way choosing to feel better.
Turning Balls into Cats is the Key to Change - The Myth of Cause and Effect Once, at a seminar with my mentor and friend John Grinder, he told his audience that their job was to turn balls into cats. The audience was asked the following question: "What's the difference between kicking a ball and kicking a cat?" Of course, the ball is a mechanical thing and in the mechanical world you can use Cause and Effect use of thinking with great success. An engineer could measure and predict where the ball would end up after you kicked it if he knows all the variables that need to be measured. However, in the case of kicking a cat - forget it. You might as well throw the engineer out the window since all the rules that govern the physical world no longer apply.
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The idea of Cause and Effect in living systems is a myth and an illusion, and a very dangerous one I might add. Quite simply, the cat has choices, and the cat might attack first, run away or take the kick: who knows what the hell the cat will do? Cause and Effect implies that because of event X the response needs to be Y. However, since we have choices, the idea of Cause and Effect is not really a useful one. The three clients previously mentioned all believed in the myth of Cause and Effect and acted as if they were a ball being kicked by the external world. My job is to find out in what contexts clients act as if they are a victim of Cause and Effect, and then create an experience that introduces choice into that context. Simply put, my job is to tum balls into cats. Most people act as if they are a ball, and all clients act as if they are a ball in the contexts where they are stuck. Many of us are part time balls and part time cats, while relatively few of us live life happily as cats. Before you start messing with anyone else, ask yourself: "In which context am I acting as if I am a ball?" Then as you identify those contexts (we all have some) apply your NLP skills to give yourself more choice. All three clients previously mentioned were given an EXPERIENCE where they discovered a direct relationship between what they were thinking and doing and how they felt. It's not enough to intellectually "understand" this: your clients need a "FELT" experience where they discover this. Once people have this felt experience, it's a lot easier to create choice and also to use various NLP techniques. The show me "how do you do this" frame is a wonderful way of doing this with most people. I highly recommend Bandler's books Using your Brain and Magic in Action for brilliant examples of how to apply this.
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However, some of these "unresponsive" and very dissociated clients are hard to get with that approach, so you need other ways of creating that experience. The guy who was scaring himself climbing up telephone poles was initially totally unresponsive to the "how do you do this" approach, since I wasn't able to get him into the phobic state in the office. For the "how do you do this" approach to have any use, you need to get the person into the "STATE." If you do that you will get the so-called strategies anyway. John Grinder has told me several times that he regrets the notion of strategies and lead representation system. His perspective is that all rep systems are happening simultaneously. So, you're not eliciting a "strategy", you're getting the person into the state so that you can change it. To get my client into the state I took him out into the real world. He had the "FELT EXPERIENCE" that he generated fear while standing on the ground. However, he experienced his fear going away when he was half way down the pole since he knew that he was going down. When I said: "You were feeling fear at 5 while standing on the ground when THINKING about climbing, while the fear almost disappeared halfway up because you thought that you were going down - HOW THE HELL CAN IT BE THE HEIGHT?" After having this felt experience he corrected his fear easily. Martin was also totally unwilling to see any relationship between what he was doing and how he felt. He also used his capacity for trance to escape real life and had many "reasons" for his behavior. They all had to do with blaming people around him for his problems. When I took Erik out to meet an attractive young woman and she went to a cafeteria with him, he stopped doing his stuttering and his obsessive thoughts after a while. When I then asked him from time to time: "Have you noticed yet?" He admitted that he didn't stutter or think compulsively. Notice that I didn't tell him this. He discovered this himself and
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thereby had a felt experience that showed him that what he did affected his state, and that his state determined whether he stuttered or not. Upon returning to my office the anxious teenager claimed marked improvement. When asked how that was possible he said: "I realized that I was choosing my symptoms, and then I realized that I could choose to do other things." That was his discovery and his words. Remember, whenever you see a client, look for the contexts where they act as if they are a ball. You will easily get there by asking them questions that require them to get specific. However, when you ask questions, you're not asking them to get verbal answers. What you're looking for is a "NONVERBAL RESPONSE." Once you have gotten their unconscious attention, evidenced by a strong nonverbal response, your task is to create an experience where they create choice. Let me give you another wonderful client experience.
The Power of Joyful Sadism A woman (Mary) in her forties sits down in the chair telling me that she is depressed, frustrated and exhausted. Since I had worked with her in the past for other issues I also knew that she was highly hypnotizable. Mary: I am so frustrated and depressed, I feel as if everything is going straight to hell. My experience is that people often depress to repress their anger and frustration. If people weren't able to depress to restrain anger, violence in society would explode (I am talking those who blame others for their misery). I am not saying that restraining angering and frustration is the only function depression has, but 1 think that it's often the case.
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Since the client mentioned that she was frustrated, depressed and tired, it was safe to assume that she used depressing to restrain frustration. Frustration is a sign that what you're doing to satisfy a want or a need is not working. When people get very frustrated they often depress to avoid further frustration and pain. Is this "true"? I don't know how accurate it is, but the frame works very well.
Jergen: EVERYTHING IS GOING TO HELL? (Said in a questioning tone) Mary: Well, not everything. Jergen: There is some context in your life where what you have been doing hasn't worked for some time, therefore you got frustrated. After a while you got so frustrated that you decided that nothing you did seemed to work, then why bother? You depress to protect yourselffrom further frustration? Mary: You're absolutely right! Notice my vague use of language, and how I paced her. I got strong nonverbal signals during what I said so I knew that I was on the right track. Again, I don't ask questions to get verbal reports as much as I ask them to elicit states and get nonverbal responses.
Jergen: Mary, congratulations in creating a solid state of depression! You have been doing a very good job for some time depressing. I want you to continue depressing until we have found better ways for you to get what the depression currently gets you. This way of pacing created wonderful rapport with her unconscious and gave me some strong nonverbal signals to calibrate.
Jergen: Ok Mary, so which context of your life is this related to?
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Mary: The fifth-grade kids I teach are driving me nuts! Jergen: Which kids specifically?
Mary: Stian has ADHD and suddenly in the middle of class he just takes off. I have tried everything, but I don't know what to do. Knut is obsessive about checking if the door is locked during class, and he will get up and check the door again and again. Jergen: That's it? These kids are what you are depressing yourself for (said in mock disbelief). So, when Stian leaves class you drive yourselfnuts, huh? Notice how I get her to specify the context. It turns out that everything isn't going to Hell, it's just two kids she is having no idea how to handle. Also, instead of buying into the idea that the kids are driving her nuts, I ask her to confirm that she is driving herself nuts. A psychologist by the name of Nathaniel Branden has suggested that having high self-esteem (your reputation with yourself) isn't only about being confident and happy. It's as much about HOW FREELY A PERSON CAN EXPERIENCE AND FEEL ALL ASPECTS OF HIMSELF WITHOUT PROJECTING UNCOMFORTABLE ASPECTS ON TO OTHERS. Indeed, we all have a tendency to project those aspects of ourselves we most dislike onto others. It's easier to do that than to deal with it ourselves. Therefore, a good sign of mental health is the person's willingness to own his or her own experience. If someone goes from "They are driving me nuts" to "I am driving myself nuts" then we are halfway home. Having said that, some people are very talented at selling misery both with their language and nonverbal behavior to anyone who will listen. Some people are just worth staying away from. So, if you can find the contexts where people act like a ball and desperately project their experience onto others and help create a felt experience of them owning it, that's when people
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come back and report stunning generative changes, instead of: "Yeah, the anger is gone" or whatever. Only when they accept that they changed themselves you are done. Mary didn't know that I used to be every teacher's worst nightmare, a past that comes in handy in dealing with stuff like this.
Jsrgen: OOOHH, it's time for revenge Mary, Christmas is coming up, let's get these suckers good. That will be the best Christmas gift ... wouldn't it? Mary: The word revenge woke me up, even though it shouldn't, but what do you suggest? Jsrgen: If you and I were dancing and I suddenly changed my rhythm, what would you have to do to keep dancing? Mary: I would have to change my rhythm. Jsrgen: It's time for the lead dancer to change her rhythm. I wonder when Stian knows that it's time to leave the room?
I helped her into a hypnotic trance with the suggestion that she would review all the times Stian had left the room in detaiL She accessed several memories and was asked: "When do you know that Stian is about to leave the room? What's the very first thing he does that lets you know that he is about to leave?" After a while she said that every time before he left he would start looking around the room, smile as his eyes met her and then stand up and walk towards the door. Often, he would be slumped over at his desk and after first starting to look around he would slowly bend his arms, make eye contact, smile and then get up. I told her: "Mary, I want you to watch Stian very closely with your peripheral vision. As soon as you see him start looking around I want you to tell him to leave immediately. " Mary: What?
Jsrgen: That's right! As soon as you see the first signs of him preparing to leave, I want you to tell him to do it.
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You should have seen the state shift that followed, you know, the state people go into when they suddenly get it.
Mary: Yes, that's absolutely brilliant, I'll do it. But what ifhe refuses to leave? J.argen: If he refuses to leave, tell him the following: THE ONLY THING I AM INTERESTED IN IS THAT YOU DON'T LEARN ONE BIT MORE THAN YOU'RE COMFORTABLE WITH. (In case you didn't recognize it, this is a classic double bind that Milton Erickson used to use.) Now, let's take care of our dear friend Knut. Mary, I want you to call Knut's mother and have her bring him to school extra early. When he arrives take him on a tour of the school and have him check the doors. Give him plenty of reasons why it's so necessary to do it (so he can reject them in his own mind). After class do it again. Get him to check the doors for at least fifteen minutes after class. Don't attempt to stop him during class. Instead, pull him out of gymnastic class (his favorite) and take him on a tour to check doors. You let up when he lets up. Mary left my office in a very enthusiastic state with plenty of choices. I knew that the kids would have to change their rhythm since the lead dancer had drastically altered her rhythm. No follow-up has been necessary. She realized that she was part of the pattern and if she changes, they will. This intervention made it easy for her to step out of her depressed state. She now had transformed herself into a cat with new choices. One of the many problems with antidepressants is that the person reenters the same contexts were their frustration levels were high, and they enter with the same set of behaviors that didn't work in the past. This is how many people relapse into depression: by going right back into frustration and when the pain level gets too high depression follows.
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For long-term results with those who depress you need to help them change their state and create a learning context where they learn new behaviors to meet their wants or needs. I think that our job as agents of change is to create learning experiences in the contexts where people act as if Cause and Effect is real. Let's take a look at what happens when people believe in Cause and Effect and use that kind of thinking to deal with the challenges life presents. When these people have problems they immediately start asking "WHY?" WHY - because there has got to be a reason, and that reason is almost always outside of them. It's always other people who "make them feel bad" and events of the past that cause them pain and so on. You can hear it in sentences like: "They took away my self-esteem, she scares me" and so on. Other people blame their brain chemistry or their genes for anything in life that doesn't quite go as planned. This is the basis of the victim culture, where it never occurs to most people that they are in fact choosing most of the misery that they are complaining about. It also makes sense to become an approval addict with no backbone, since it's the events of life and other people that "Cause" how they feel and what they do. Instead of singing their own unique song in life, they try to get approval, fit in, not make mistakes, etc. When they have climbed the career ladder high enough to feel significant, others will think that they are finally" good enough." When that happens then maybe they can start to love themselves. The fear of not being enough, of not being good enough, never goes away. How could it when it's other people and events that determines ones emotional state? Most of the clients I see do one of the following two patterns:
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1. The client will say: "I feel bad! I feel bad BECAUSE of someone or something out there. I will continue to feel bad until that someone or something changes."
The more optimistic ones will try to change other people so that they themselves can feel better. 2. The client will use altruism as a manipulative control
strategy. They will "sacrifice" so much and put other people first. Later they will attempt to get a benefit from their investment. When other people don't comply they get bitter and depressed. Both these patterns are manifestations of a lack of selfresponsibility and a belief in Cause and Effect. Some of the most fulfilling clients for me to get results with have been people who have experienced rape and incest. When you work with clients like this you really get an appreciation of how big a lie Cause and Effect is. Think about it, a woman comes to my office five years after a rape with nightmares, flashbacks and problems with intimacy. The rape is over and the only thing that exists is internal representations of the rape with many anchors. When she smells the same aftershave that the rapist used or hears the same accent or sees someone who reminds her of the rapist, she freaks out. Time and time again, after helping these clients disassociate from the pictures and sounds in their head and re-anchor all the old anchors, I have experienced a totally transformed individual in front of me. There are many ways of accomplishing this. The classic phobia cure, time line patterns, Grinder's New Code Change format and Dilt's Re-Imprinting are some of the many choices available. Richard Bandler is fond of saying that the only thing more horrible than a rape is for the person to re-experience it and take it seriously.
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Since the tsunami that struck Thailand in 2004, many people are still stuck in grief and struggling with flashbacks. Some have even retired from life and are popping pills full time. What many don't realize is that some people live a more fulfilling life after the tsunami. After almost dying they realized how precious life is and made new choices about what to do and what to focus on. As Steve Parkhill wrote in Answer Cancer:
The media prefers to write about anything that can induce states of fear and emptiness. After all: fear sells! It's well known that people consume more when they feel afraid and empty inside. People who feel whole and fulfilled don 't really need to consume that much. When people feel emptiness and then try to fulfill their needs by consuming products, they still feel just as empty. Consumerism tells them that the solution lies in buying even more and the race is on. Another disastrous consequence of this type of thinking is the belief that since others can control how I feel, that means that I can control how others feel and what they do. Charming isn't it? That way, if my relationship to my girlfriend isn't quite working out, the solution lies in controlling the other person and changing the other person. What happens when two people apply these beliefs as a foundation for how they relate to each other? If you have ever experienced or seen a relationship go from passionate to ice cold, it's likely that the use of this external control psychology was a contributing factor. As I reflect back on the decade I have spent in the trenches, in most cases someone comes in and complains about some symptom that they often believe is a mental illness. They have usually been told by a psychologist or psychiatrist that the symptoms and feelings they have mean that they are ill or damaged in some way. They then start telling me (until I tell
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them to "SHUT UP!") that they are suffering because of what their parents, significant other, boss or whoever else they can blame are doing. Then they get the idea that the key to feeling better is for other people to change. As soon as they understand "WHY" (which often means; who I can blame), the clients who don't really want to change are satisfied. They now have the "reasons" that they need to justify living their life as a professional victim. For the clients who really do want to change, the illusion of Cause and Effect and the myth of control are just as damaging. They convince themselves that the most important thing is to control and change the people significant to them, and that once these people change, then they can feel good. The people in their life start distancing themselves (few people enjoy others trying to change them). When this happens, instead of changing what they are doing, they keep trying to control, which creates even more distance. When they get frustrated enough, they often start depressing or they develop some anxiety or phobias, obsessive thoughts, hallucinated voices or something that really gets them attention. They then use these symptoms as a means of attempting to control people around them. Paradoxically, this is when their partner or child sometimes develops their own symptoms as a way of trying to avoid the other person's use of external contro1. I once worked with a couple that had taken this to an extreme level: they had virtually no direct communication. They both used symptoms to communicate in an attempt to control each other and as a way of setting personal boundaries. Since they used symptoms that were "involuntary", they weren't held responsible for what they were doing. After all they couldn't help it. I laugh as I think back. They were fascinating to observe in action. She was using anxiety to keep distance, avoid sex and avoid emotion in the relationship. Every time he looked into her 38
eyes she would turn up the anxiety. He on the other hand would develop these weird pains in his body. It was absolutely fascinating to see them interact. Once, when he threatened to leave, she turned all her symptoms off until he returned to the relationship. When he was back and she felt secure again, she turned all her symptoms on again. He eventually left the relationship. Some of you might think of the story of Mary and conclude that I am contradicting myself here. That external control was the solution to her problems, but NO. The main thing was to help Mary change her own state and develop choices. Her students changed their behavior since she so dramatically changed hers. Folks, if you are looking to create some stunning generative change, get good at generating learning experiences for people in the contexts of their lives where they are most stuck in the myth of Cause and Effect and the illusion of having "control." Also, make sure you give yourself the same gift. When your clients free themselves from these beliefs to the point where they no longer live life as approval addicts, wonderful stuff happens. They will also realize that they can't make others happy and that they aren't the "Cause" of other people's misery. When they realize this they will no longer let themselves be manipulated by other people's symptoms that easily.
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CHAPTER 2
THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS
A few years ago I worked with a guy diagnosed with the mental illness" of clinical depression. After entering my office he started telling me that he wanted me to help him cure his mental illness. Our conversation was as follows: /I
J0rgen: Which so-called specific mental illness do you have? Finn: I suffer from clinical depression. J0rgen: You claim that you are mentally ill. Well, how do you know that you are sick? Finn: My doctor has diagnosed me with depression. J0rgen: So what? Depression is not a mental illness. Finn started telling me how he felt, that he was sad, had little energy and felt a general sense of hopelessness and despair. J0rgen: I believe you when you say that you feel sad, and that you have little energy. I don't doubt that you are depressing
My question is simply: How do these feelings and behaviors that you are describing mean that you are mentally ill? What evidence does your doctor have that these states and behaviors mean that there is something wrong with your brain. He never did present any evidence did he, because he doesn't have any. Finn: My doctor said: "Depression is a mental illness, in the same way that cancer and diabetes are physical illnesses. Depression is usually caused by genetic factors and that it's a chemical imbalance in the brain. "
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J0rgen: Isn't it just a bit fascinating that a doctor would never diagnose cancer or diabetes in the same way that he diagnosed depression? A doctor diagnoses cancer or diabetes only if he finds pathology on a biochemical, radiological or laboratory test. You don't diagnose these illnesses unless you can confirm pathology using a valid test. No doctor would diagnose these illnesses after having a conversation with a patient where he asks him a few questions. J0rgen: So, Finn, what biochemical, radiological or other laboratory test did your doctor use to diagnose mental illness? Finn: None, we just talked. J0rgen: If your doctor told you that you had cancer after a conversation, wouldn't you insist on some test to confirm this? Finn: You got a point, I sure would. I never thought about it like that before. William Glasser, founder of Reality Therapy and author of the excellent book WARNING uses a wonderful analogy to describe this phenomenon. Just for fun, lets separate mental and physical health (the mind body split that medicine promotes often has disastrous consequences, but what the heck) and see how these two fields are run by very different premises. Understand that when I use the words physical and mental I am referring to one integrated system. Specifically, the mind body split exists only in language, not in experience. We have created this fiction with our language, and after a while it seems as if we have forgotten that this so called split doesn't really exist. In Warning, Glasser correctly points out that when someone goes to his physician with "physical" complaints, the doctor will usually run tests to see if they can find something wrong. If they find some type of pathology using a valid test, then and only
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then will they diagnose the appropriate illness, whether it's cancer, a herniated disk or diabetes. Now, if they don't find any evidence of pathology, most physicians won't invent a disease, but instead (at least in the ideal world) create a program consisting of diet, exercise and sometimes stress management to help the person move towards better health. Quite simply, relatively few people are in excellent physical health and at the same time, relatively few are physically ill. Most people aren't in great shape, but they don't have a disease either. Naturally, when people are more or less out of shape they have a tendency to develop aches and pains here and there. The point being that you don't diagnose and treat physical illness unless pathology is found. Let's turn our attention over to the field of "mental health", a field where, ironically, most practitioners have never studied mental health at all. The same logic applies here. Some people are very mentally healthy, and relatively few suffer from mental illness as evidenced by brain pathology. Examples are Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. These diseases are primarily treated by neurologists, not psychiatrists. Let's say someone enters a psychiatrists or ordinary physician's office with symptoms such as depression, panic attacks, obsessive thoughts or hallucinated voices. The "experts" will ask the patient a bunch of questions, observe the patient's behavior in the office and then, incredibly, claim that these symptoms mean that the patient is suffering from a mental illness, despite not having a shred of evidence to support this claim. Schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, bulimia and ADHD and so on are not mental illnesses because none of these symptoms are associated with brain pathology. There is no evidence that 43
people with the symptoms listed in the DSM are mentally ill, but this doesn't stop psychiatrists from abusing people with electroshock therapy, drugging people with brain drugs to cope with life, and diagnosing people as mentally ill when they are not. Of course, it's all for your own good, or is it? The real reason why states such as depression and anxiety are diagnosed as mental illnesses by psychiatrists is, because if they didn't all those years of medical study and medication (those poor pharmaceutical companies who coincidentally fund almost all research on these "mental illnesses") would no longer be very relevant and then they would no longer be seen as the authorities and experts. How competent are most physicians in dealing with the emotional challenges of their patients, and how does the medical training they undergo prepare them for these challenges? Undoubtedly, some of them are very competent, but that's despite their medical training, not because of it. Biological psychiatry has together with the drug companies bombarded our society with a massive media campaign designed to convince the masses that their emotional challenges in life mean that they are mentally ill, and that these illnesses are caused by bad genes and chemical imbalances in the brain. The truth is that decades of intense research have failed to establish biological "causes" for any psychiatric condition listed in the DSM. There is no such thing as a "cause" anyway. If you don't believe me, consider the simple fact that no psychiatric condition can be confirmed by a biochemical, radiological or other laboratory test. For those of you who work with clients: "Have any of your clients with psychiatric diagnoses had that diagnoses based on findings from a biochemical test? Or were they instead diagnosed based on a psychiatrist asking questions and then hallucinating mental illness?" It's also relevant to point out that not a single gene responsible
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for mental illness has been found: "How could it be so when there is no way to even confirm that the person has a so called illness to begin with? Even if there were proof that a gene or a combination of genes were correlated with some symptom or illness, that does not justify labeling it as genetic, or reducing everything in a person's life, consciousness and relationships down to a combination of genes. If you are interested in the relationship between mind and genetics, I recommend that you take a look at a couple of the books that Ernest Rossi has written on the subject. One of the really interesting things to come out of the human genome project is that many genes can be turned on and off by states like novelty, fascination and change in nutrition and exercise. Consciousness can turn gene expression on and off, so don't accept it when clients attempt to reduce all their suffering down to the genetic lottery. If you, as an agent of change, accept the idea of mental illness as a frame when doing changework, you are doing yourself and your clients an incredible disservice. By working inside the frame you end up reinforcing the frame and all the assumptions and premises behind it.
About Chemical Imbalance Your brain chemistry is constantly changing depending on how you think, move your body, eat, and what you do. Naturally, when someone depresses, their brain chemistry will be very different than when they are absorbed in great sex. For these claims of chemical imbalances as the "Cause" (yep, gotta spread the Cause and Effect myth as well) then your brain chemistry would have to be totally independent of what you are doing. Since they don't have any biochemical tests that can confirm their theories, they will as evidence for their theory scan
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someone's brain activity to show that different parts of the brain are more or less active when you are depressed or hallucinating voices. Then they tell their patients that the brain activity they just scanned presents the patients ever-changing brain chemistry. No sense stopping here might as well conclude that this brain chemistry is the" cause". Sure, there are correlations between a person's subjective experience and brain chemistry, but that doesn't mean that you can reduce the person's interior experience down to some neurotransmitters. Let's stop talking about Causes and instead talk about Correlation.
C'MON, THESE PSYCHOTICS AND MANIC DEPRESSIVES GOT TO HA VE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEM! If you have this belief, go study hypnosis and play extensively with inducing altered states with yourself and others. Then after a while, you might begin to reconsider as you realize that every symptom in the DSMV can be elicited in deep hypnosis using language. There might be something seriously wrong with these people. I am not claiming that I know how people actually work. I am just pointing out that there is really no evidence to suggest that these people are sick and, more importantly, that the illness frame is NOT a useful frame if you are interested in creating change. Go watch a stage hypnosis show where you will see people experience positive hallucinations, such as seeing the audience naked, when everyone else would agree that the audience has clothes on. You will also see the participants negatively hallucinate people or objects to the point where they will claim to not see or hear things that everyone else can see and hear. In addition to stage shows, look up Stanley Milgram's research on obedience.
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Look into Nazi Germany and the slayings in Rwanda and ask yourself if these people were all mentally ill. Could you reduce what happened here down to some neurotransmitters? Did all these people suddenly develop a chemical imbalance" at the same time? Would these conflicts have been solved without bloodshed if only we had excess psychiatrists and medication available? Let's turn our attention back to stage hypnosis shows. You might be tempted to dismiss this as: "GH, these people are simply role playing." Try holding that belief when the participants believe that an onion is an apple while eating the onion with the enjoyment they usually reserve for eating something delicious. How about when they smell ammonia from a bottle, but believe and physiologically react as if they smell a perfume? It can be quite amusing to watch. If this induces a state of intrigue, start reading research documenting how James Esdaile used hypnosis as the sole anesthesia while performing surgery and natural childbirth without pain. In modern days some people have even had openheart surgery with hypnosis as the only anesthesia. In fact, hypnosis research in recent years using brain imaging technology (positron emission tomography) have shown that in deep hypnosis, color areas in the right and left hemispheres were activated when asked to positively hallucinate color. When participants experienced hallucinations as real, blood flow in the color-processing region of the brain was affected consistently with the hypnotically suggested hallucination (Kosslyn et al. 2000). When participants who were not hypnotized were asked to mentally imagine the same things that the hypnotized group hallucinated, the effects were very different. II
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Getting "Rea/" with a Big Knife HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA AND SYMPTOMATIC PHENOMENA ARE THE EXACT SAME PHENOMENA, ONLY THE CONTEXT DIFFERS. A few years ago, a close friend of mine was involved in a car accident. After spending almost two months in a coma, she eventually found herself in a rehabilitation center. Her voice was gone, she couldn't walk and her short-term memory was severely diminished. After a while she suddenly became totally convinced that she was dead, and that everyone around her was just a product of her own imagination. When friends and family attempted to correct her by saying: "Dead people can't imagine things!" it had no effect on her. She confidently whispered back: You don't know that, you're not dead! She was obviously severely disassociated and denied feeling anything, denied feeling hungry or being thirsty and so on. This went on for a while, and I became quite worried that the doctors would slap on her a psychiatric diagnosis and start drugging her. I knew that I would have to enter her reality somehow and from there turn a symptomatic trance into a therapeutic trance. Maybe you're beginning to realize that the severe dissociation my friend experienced in many ways is the same disassociation that people who experience pain-free childbirth and open heart surgery using hypnosis as the sole anesthesia have. I have helped numerous people use their disassociation skills to deal with "chronic" pain after accidents and during illness. Often, I have helped my clients disassociate from their bodies by "leaving" their body to go watch television in their living room, while their pained body was left in bed. When in deep trance, 48
both/ and logic dominates in such a way that a patient can be in bed while at the same time watch TV in the living room, thereby not being in the body feeling the pain. My friend was experiencing the same phenomena of dissociation. In a way she was doing the same as my pain clients had been doing. My pain clients had learned to disassociate from their painful bodies to escape pain, while my friend was using an even greater disassociation to escape life. The phenomena of disassociation are the same, only the context differs. It's the context where a phenomena or skill is used that determines its usefulness. Deep Trance Identification is another really interesting phenomenon to explore. This is a state where someone assumes the identity of someone else. John Grinder, in a modeling seminar in 2003, told the story of how he and Richard Bandler guided Stephen Gilligan through a deep trance identification with Milton Erickson. Gilligan "became" Erickson to the point that Gregory Bateson, a close friend of Erickson, ran out of the room after Gilligan had said something that Gilligan couldn't have known. According to Grinder, these exercises in Deep Trance Identification dramatically improved Gilligan's skills. For an athlete who wants to learn new skills, being able to do this is an enormous benefit. In stage shows, the exact same phenomena are used when a woman becomes Jennifer Lopez or a guy assumes the identity of Elvis Presley. The same phenomena, in a mental hospital are dramatically displayed when someone becomes Jesus Christ. In a psychiatry office a patient hallucinates a voice, which tells him that he ought to kill himself. The psychiatrist tells himself that the patient is hallucinating voices (ironically enough) and then hallucinates that the other person has a brain disease. Then VOILA! a voice turns up telling the psychiatrist what drugs to use. 49
To reiterate, it's not the phenomena themselves, but when and where they are used. Disassociation is wonderful when working with trauma, phobias and pain control. However, in working with grief, dissociation from the good times often keeps the person stuck for years. Here association is often the key to help people overcome grief. Steve and Connirae Andreas have written some excellent stuff on how getting people to associate with pleasurable times can heal grief. A couple of years ago I worked with a young woman who tormented herself with anxiety to make her life a living hell. She would sit at home and ask herself the question: "WHAT IF SOMEONE BREAKS INTO MY APARTMENT AND RAPES ME?" Ten minutes later she would be sweating, her pulse racing while her whole body was trembling. No one had ever broken into her apartment or raped her. My next client was an athlete, and the interesting part is that he would use the exact same mental process to motivate himself. No, he didn't imagine being raped or running away from a rapist, but maybe it could have been useful? I read about a guy who was hypnotized to believe that a shark was after him. It worked really well until he reached the end of the pool and desperately lifted his body out of the water and started crawling on all four legs. Of course in the athlete's case, the content was different, but they would both create images of what might happen in the future, step into the movie and feel what they would have felt if they actually had the experience. The phenomena "ideodynamisciscm", the experience of something taking place without effort such as involuntary finger signals or an arm rising with honest unconscious movement, is very common in therapeutic trances. If we switch the context to an Olympic event, the flow state or being in the zone is just another manifestation of the same thing. The athletes flow and
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just find themselves doing the right thing at the right time seemingly without effort. If you forget all about content, just consider process while you take a look at the bulimic that does binge eating. She will experience time distortion just like the athlete in a flow state does. She has the experience of her behavior being involuntary just like the athletes who find they are doing the right thing at the same time. Naturally, the anorexic will positively hallucinate when she sees herself in the mirror, seeing a disgusting fat woman while her friends and family will see something that resembles the look of a holocaust survivor. Simultaneously she will negatively hallucinate her ribs sticking out. In the summer of 2004 I spoke with Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, legendary World Kickboxing Champion. We spoke about meditation and mental preparation. He told me that when he entered the ring, he couldn't hear the audience, didn't see anyone except his opponent, and could hear and feel his opponents pulse. Just for kicks, when you see clients, observe the states, thought processes and behaviors of those diagnosed with obsessivecompulsive disorder. Then observe people who have a huge crush on someone, and notice if you can find any significant difference. Excluding the obvious fact that those who are in love are often happy while those with official obsessive-compulsive disorder are often miserable. But, come to think of it, those with a huge crush on someone who isn't interested are often just as miserable in the exact same miserable way. I have often thought about the following paradox: Let's say I go to church with a bunch of people hallucinating "God", and while we do that we talk to Him and pray. This is considered normal behavior by most of the people I know. However, if I during a business meeting were to look up and say: "OK Lord,"
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and proceed to tell the people present that "God just told me not to sign the contract, so I can unfortunately not do it. I am sorry, but I have to go now." Check that one out. Most people will think that you are insane and that you need some medication - fast! What's the difference between the two? The amusing part being that I can speak to God and when I do it's normal, but when he speaks to me then I am insane. He is supposed to be the sovereign one, not me. Now, the first thing I did to help my extremely disassociated friend was to enter her reality. J0rgen: I sincerely need to apologize to you. I hope you can forgive me for not having believed that you're dead. Know that I accept that you are dead. It was just so tough dealing with grief
I did this to gain rapport and to be able to enter her world. This part was easy. She was so fed up with nobody believing her, and she was totally relieved when I told her that she was right and had been right all along. When I saw that she had accepted me I changed the subject. We had a pleasant conversation about anything and everything. The next day I went in and started another conversation. J0rgen: Listen, I have some friends who work in the media, and
they are very intrigued with you and your situation. They want to make a TV documentary about you. They think it's so fascinating that you as a dead person are enrolled in a health program to improve your health! Friend: I don't really think that I have anything of interest to contribute to that. Jergen: Think about all the people who are scared of dying. If someone could tell these people that they can have friends, see movies and work out, then maybe a lot of these people could become a lot more free and lose their fear?
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Friend: Ok, I will do it, but only if this is done in a very serious way. I don't want to be ridiculed in any way!
I did this to test her belief. I was curious to see what would happen if I entered her reality totally and then, in a very congruent way, presented an idea like this. She didn't even flinch. My suggestion didn't create any strong nonverbal response. I just didn't really activate anything. The next day I visited her again with a very dramatic proposal. I told her that I had always wanted to kill someone just to know what it feels like, but that I obviously couldn't do that because of moral and ethical reasons. Jergen: Since you are already dead, can I kill you?
I said this in a way that showed her that I meant it, and now I saw that she responded somewhat nonverbally. I had gotten the attention of her unconscious. Friend: Well, if it really means so much to you, I am willing to
do that. Writing about this (and probably reading about it as well) is such a strange experience. There are so many elements of what happened here that can't be described sufficiently on paper - my state, her state, the context, my intent and congruency and of course her severe disassociation. The interplay between all these factors and the rapport we had is do hard, try impossible, to describe in any meaningful way. We negotiated a date for the killing and how it would be done. She insisted that I kill her with a knife, but that it wouldn't be a cheap knife. It had to be an expensive knife. We were all set! I went to visit an old friend of mine who is a knife collector and had some really impressive stuff. We decided on this huge
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knife that looked like it was taken from the movie Cobra with Sylvester Stallone. I remember clearly walking through the corridors of the rehabilitation center with this huge knife inside my leather jacket and the adrenaline surging through my body. As I entered her room I locked the door (thank God!) Dramatically and with great intensity I grabbed her hair while I put the blade to her throat. Then I followed this up verbally with: "YOUR TIME IS UP, THIS IS IT!!!!!" She went into a state of fear, as strong as I have ever seen, and suddenly she woke up and realized that this was real. Undoubtedly, my many years of experience as a professional self-defense instructor have enabled me to develop skills in role playing. Friend: NO, NO, stop, don't do it, I don't want to die! Jorgen: You can't be afraid of dying if you are already dead. I stopped, pretending to be very disappointed that she had changed her mind and just looked at her for a while. It didn't take long before fear turned into confusion. Jorgen: I have a friend who was in a car accident a couple of years ago. He told me that he used to be convinced that he was dead initially. Would you like to talk to him? Friend: Oh please, I am so confused. I want to talk with him. I called Ronny Hansen (one of my best friends) who had actually been in a car accident and asked him if he would help out. He said "Yes!" without hesitating. He had never thought he was dead, but all the other things I had told my confused friend were indeed true. I instructed him in pacing her (not whispering, but talking very softly) and we made up a story that was quite similar to hers. He then called her, paced her, told his story including the "being
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dead" part, and said that he had started doubting after feeling fear - then entering a state of confusion. He then very elegantly led her out of the entire thing. The change was almost instantaneous. Six months later, Ronny and I told her what we had done. She loved it! We have had a lot of fun with this incident ever since. Whenever we told the story to someone else, we usually got some combination of horror, shock, laughter and sometimes indignation. Paradoxically, the more training people had in the health field the less humorous and intriguing they found what we did. You might say that what Ronny and I did was to help her turn a symptomatic trance into a therapeutic trance. Another valid explanation is that we dehypnotized her. Quite simply, we created a strong counterexample to her belief, and gave her the experience in a way that allowed her to respond to it. The elements were rapport, calibrating her nonverbals and creating a strong counter experience to her belief. Certainly, a strong state of fear was appropriate. When she entered confusion we utilized it by having Ronny call her. By metaphor she applied the learning's to herself in such a way that she set herself free. Although symptomatic trances and therapeutic trances share the same phenomena, they are different also. If you take the time to study some "official psychotics" and compare their behavior with hypnotized clients, you will find that both experience dissociations, symbolic and metaphorical expressions, amnesias, time distortion, hallucinations, identifications, involuntary behavior (things just happening on their own) and regression. However, the client or athlete experiences these phenomena in ways to enrich their world. There is no attempt at controlling or disowning experience. Psychotics, on the other hand, experience a rigid and painful inner world where twisted
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unconscious processes have taken over. Instead of integrating and learning they disown, try to control and project their pain outside of themselves. Since both of these trances are run by normal unconscious processes that are amplified, the critical issue is: How we can turn the symptomatic trance into an empowering one?
Let's Get Ethical! A few months ago I saw a client who experienced intense anxiety when criticized or rejected. When we spoke on the phone prior to the work we did, I probed for specificity using "which specifically" for nouns and "how specifically" to challenge verbs. Heidi: I have a problem that I desperately need help with, can you help me? Jergen: Which problem, specifically? Heidi: I just feel terrible when someone rejects me or criticizes me. Jergen: Rejects you, how specifically? This went on for some time, and she described the specific bodily sensations she felt. As she described the sensations I noticed that her voice became more shallow and constricted. I started playing with rejecting her ideas on the phone and noticed that whenever I raised my voice, her voice and breathing would become restricted. It quickly became clear that it wasn't so much what I said, but loud masculine voices that were the trigger for her symptomatic trances. She started describing an experience where she had made a mistake, and her boss had raised his voice and criticized her. In contexts like this she had the least amount of choice. This gave
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me all the information I needed to create the proper context for learning. We made an appointment for the following week. I gave her instructions to stop at a gas station not far from my office. She was further instructed to call me so that I could guide her in reaching my office. I deliberately gave her very poor instructions so that she made wrong turns here and there resulting in her being fifteen minutes late. When she entered my office, I raised my voice and said: "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, CAN'T YOU MAKE SENSE OUT OF THE SIMPLEST OF INSTRUCTIONS?" She immediately started shaking and her voice chocked while she very strongly entered her symptomatic trance. If you think that I didn't have rapport with her at this point, think again. Rapport doesn't mean liking or feeling comfortable, although these feelings are often present when people have really good rapport. Rapport is about capturing the attention of the other persons unconscious. Evidenced by the state she went into, I clearly had her unconscious attention and she was indeed very responsive towards me. I don't think she liked me much, but we definitely had rapport. Many NLP practitioners limit themselves by defining rapport as a state where someone likes you, trusts you and feels comfortable. I have had clients who liked and trusted me, but that I have had no rapport with. I have also had clients who hated my guts (and still do) who I had excellent rapport with and "miraculous" results. Many psychologists and researchers claim that the most important factor in therapy is that the client likes the therapist. The implication being that a warm and emphatic atmosphere where the therapist functions as some sort of midwife is essential. Well, I strongly disagree with this. It just doesn't match my experience. What you need is the ability to get the client to RESPOND, and you need superb calibration skills. Since I at this point had gotten Heidi to respond by going into
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her symptomatic trance I could observe how she looked and sounded in this state. If you really get that NLP is about shamelessly manipulating process as opposed to content, you realize that it doesn't matter what you do as long as you have the ability to calibrate and get the client to respond. After getting a strong response and calibrating it, you do some sort of intervention. If you get what you're looking for, then great, if not, you reach into your bag of tricks and pull out something else. After the intervention you fire off the old anchors. If the old limiting response is gone and replaced it with something better: CaNCRATULATIONS! I think that you should make changework this simple. Understand that for some people in some contexts a soft, kind midwife is exactly what they need. If the client responds to that, you are justified in doing it. However, if soft listening is the only tool you have in your toolbox and the client doesn't respond, you have two choices: 1. You can call the client resistant. The implication being that the therapy works perfectly, but that damn client gets in the way. 2. You can radically alter your own behavior. Be provocative, vulgar, use shock, distraction, confusion, boredom or whatever you can think of to get a response. You can also just alter your own internal response so that you go into a very different state. By doing this the client will often automatically change his behavior. While we are on the subject of ethics, I think ethics is simple. Understand that your job is to get results and if you can get results, then do it. If you don't get results, then don't charge money. Let's go back to our friend Heidi.
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Jergen: That's right, close your eyes and focus on that feeling. I am going to count from ten to one, and as I reach one you will be back at the first event this feeling is connected to '" Ten, focus on that feeling, nine, going back in time, eight seven six five, getting younger, four, in touch with the feeling, three two, back to the very first event and ONE - YOU'RE THERE ... Here I am using the symptom as an affect bridge back in time. Since she went into her symptomatic trance as a result of my little stunt, there was no need for a formal hypnotic induction. While we are on the topic of hypnotic inductions, many hypnotherapists would have attempted to calm her down and then proceed with some sort of progressive relaxation induction. Milton Erickson wrote that what the client is doing should be utilized to fixate attention and create a therapeutic trance. I prefer to activate the symptom, utilizing the symptom to fixate attention, and then use the symptom to regress back to the memories the symptoms are connected to, so that we can reanchor and change the perceptions that are responsible for the symptom.
Jergen: First impression, are you inside or outside? Heidi: Inside. Jergen: Are you alone or with people? Heidi: The teacher is yelling at me! Jergen: How old are you? Heidi: Eight. I start with simple questions like: "Are you inside or outside?" It is easier for them to gradually build up the memory / reconstruction this way than if you try to have them put the entire thing together at once.
Jergen: Continue to focus on that feeling. As you do, I am going to count once again from five down to one and when I
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reach one, you will be back at the very first event this is connected to. Five, focus on that feeling, four three, two back to the very first event and ONE - YOUR THERE! Jorgen: Are you inside or outside? Heidi: Outside. Jorgen: Alone or with people? Heidi: With people. Jorgen: Who are you with? Heidi: Daddy and my sister. I don't really care about the content at all. The only reason I ask these questions is to get a representation where visual, auditory and kinesthetic elements are in awareness. This will give us maximum leverage in creating new synesthesias and new choices.
Jorgen: Continue to focus on that feeling. As I reach the count of one you will be back at the very first event. The same count followed with the same line of questioning. Jorgen, Inside or outside? Heidi: I am back at the same place. When doing these reconstructed regressions my goal is to reconstruct the first memory the feeling is related to. When the client ends up at the same event twice, I choose to take that as evidence that the client is back to the first event.
Jorgen: Float up above the event. Higher and higher up in the in the air so that you are above the event, looking down on it ... My question is: what is it that you need to learn from this event, the learnings which when you learn them will allow you to let go of the fear .. ? When you have learned what it is that you need to learn, I want your unconscious to preserve the learnings in a special place that you reserve for all such learning's.
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If you have studied time-line patterning you will recognize the hypnotic language used in the above paragraph. My work is heavily influenced by Time Line TherapyTM (TLT), and TLT has been a very powerful part of my toolbox. In a later chapter I will show you how to take time line work to a new level with some important modifications.
Jorgen: Now, float a bit higher and a bit further back so that you are at least fifteen minutes before the event. Nod when you are there. Heidi: Nods. Jorgen: Stay there, mentally turn around looking towards the event and NOW ... where is the FEAR ... is it GONE NOW.? Heidi: Yes! Her verbal utterances are supported by her nonverbal. Jorgen: The position you are in right now is called release position. I want you to float down into the event and try to find that old FEAR or maybe you can find that it's GONE NOW .. ? Again, this wonderful double bind IS from Time Line TherapyTM. The word "try" implies failure. So when someone is instructed to try something, they will usually come back later and say that they tried. Obviously, when someone says that they tried to be nice or show up on time, you know that they weren't. Heidi: It's gone. Jorgen: Float up above the event and start floating towards now ... only as quickly as you LET GO of all the FEAR on all subsequent events all the way back to NOW... I want you to assume release position before each event ... LET GO OF THE FEAR and PRESERVE THE LEARNINGS on all events all the way back to NOW... Heidi: I am back to now.
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Jergen: Let's test ... I want you to select five events from your past ... float all the way down into each one and try really try to find that old feeling offear or find that its totally gone now. After about a minute, Heidi reports that the fear is gone.
Jergen: Float out into the future ... to an event which in the past would have triggered the old fear... and notice how you FEEL DIFFERENTLY as you float down into the event doing things in a way that works for you ... in light of your new choices. Heidi: I am doing well! I don't like it when people scream at me, but it doesn't trigger any panic anymore. Heidi is instructed to float back to the present. As soon as she opens her eyes I start acting like an obnoxious jerk again. This time, however, her nonverbals are very different. She actually started to assert herself verbally. Since I knew how she used to look and sound when criticized, I was confident that we had made a change.
Jergen: You know, Heidi, I have done this stuff for years, and let me tell you, you are one of the fucking slowest. Not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? This is the same sentence that I used when she had entered my office one hour earlier. I was in the same state doing the same stuff as I did then, firing off all the old anchors. Heidi: You are a very rude man. How do you justify treating
people who ask you for help in this way? Jergen: You just asserted yourself, Heidi. You did it in a way that was appropriate. Would you have been able to do that before you entered my office?
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Notice that my criticism was way over the top. I had accused her of being stupid and slow when the truth was that she had solved her own problem in an hour. Clearly, she was now in a state where she had access to her critical thinking skills, the very skills that allowed her to pick my criticism apart. While she certainly asserted herself, as she should when people are as unreasonable as I was, her nonverbals showed without a doubt that she had gotten the change she had been looking for. Heidi: No I wouldn't. Jergen: That's how I justify it. Follow-up revealed that the intervention had been successful. The same follow-up also revealed that she still didn't like me much. It might interest you to know that she had been to several other therapists that she liked a lot, but who were unable to get results with her. This case, along with many others (several illustrated in this book) proves to me that the most important factor in terms of outcome is NOT whether the clients like you. Let's look at a couple of other cases that disprove the popular notions of clients having to feel comfortable and like you for you to help them get what they are after.
I Love Welfare A few years ago I worked as a consultant for a government-run institution, which helped the unemployed get back to work. I was hired to work with the tough cases, groups of people who hadn't worked for many years, and many who had no intention of doing so. For most of the individuals the welfare deals they had were too good to give up. The really interesting part was that most of them were healthy and had no legitimate reason as
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to why they should be on welfare except taking advantage of the system year after year. My job was to be some sort of motivator helping people overcome fears and blocks preventing them from going to job interviews and so on. At noon one day I was scheduled to meet a new group. I met with the woman who taught them computer skills, but she left the building in a less than enthusiastic state. I decided to spy on the group a bit to figure out what was going on. Little did I know that I was about to enter a tournament where contestants battled to wear the ultimate crown: the right to title oneself the ultimate victim of the seminar room. They were all sitting around a big table eating lunch while sharing war and horror stories about the terror of actually leaving one's house having to work for a living. Men were swearing and women were crying. Some people had phobias and panic attacks, others were depressed, a guy had lower back pains, another woman had migraine headaches and so on. A pattern interrupt was in order. Working with this group while in this state of self-pity would be inefficient and a royal pain in the ass. After working myself into a state of severe selfpity, I dragged my body over to the table - stared at the group and asked: "ls this the place where those frauds want terminally ill people to work instead of enjoying their last months as best they can?" With their attention captured I told them that I had AIDS, that I was very sick and didn't have long to live. What the hell was anyone thinking dragging me in here for? My little scam had worked! Their pattern was broken, and I had won the championship hands down. After all, nobody there could compete with AIDS. A woman started hugging me, and I decided to take advantage of the hug for a while. A few seconds later I told them that I was just kidding, that I was the seminar leader and that class had begun. Some started laughing hysterically, some 64
stared at me in shock and disbelief, and the rest went into rage indignant of my little stunt. "How dare you?" and "You Bastard!" were sentences thrown at me. None of them were ones that complimented my creativity. Jergen: You are a bunch of pussies and losers! I am not going to
bother to be politically correct. They paid me to work with you LOSERS! So, I will, although I certainly don't expect much from a group that's so FUCKED UP! I said this congruently but also with a certain sarcasm in my voice. As a matter of fact the room was now divided. Half of them were laughing themselves silly and the rest were VERY angry. Quite predictably, the group mismatched me big time and became quite productive. While a few of them understood what I was doing and found it more or less outrageous, a few of them mobilized all that they had just to prove that prick J0rgen dead wrong. Both humor and anger are a lot more productive than selfpity. The reason I got such excellent rapport with the group was because I had verbalized what they were already thinking about themselves anyway. Most of them viewed themselves as "Losers." If I had told them that they were wonderful, I would have had no credibility since it wouldn't match their experience. Consider what often happens in therapy. The patient starts telling the therapist that they are no good. The therapist tries to convince them that they really are wonderful. The more the therapist does that, the more the patient gets self-destructive. If a client is self-destructive I usually agree with them. Then I greatly exaggerate how hopeless they are until the client either starts laughing or gets angry. When people start laughing they can change, and when they get pissed off they start asserting themselves. Since one of us is going to play devil's advocate, I
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prefer to be the one. Often, just reversing this pattern starts the ball roIling when nothing else has previously worked.
Playing the Devil's Advocate Lise was one of the participants in the previously mentioned group, but despite having a good education she felt that she was worthless. She was also a polarity responder. When she told others how worthless she was, they would try to cheer her up. The more they tried to cheer her up, the more she found reasons that she really was worthless. Unfortunately, this is often the case. Friends and family often help people amplify and maintain their problems by "helping" them in this way. Their intentions are positive, but the consequences are often horrible. She requested my help and I made her work a bit before I accepted to work with her, telling her that I wasn't sure that she was worthy of my time and efforts. Lise: I feel worthless and it's just so hopeless. She went on explaining how stupid and incompetent she was for several minutes, offering all sorts of reasons for her inactivity and feelings of depression.
Jorgen: Lise, I agree that you are worthless so let's just be honest. I don't like you much either, why should I? All you do is bitch and complain all day. There is no hope in that. Lise: But, but, I really can't help it! Jorgen: Of course you can't. Maybe you're just too stupid to be held accountable for your actions. Lise: I am not that bad!
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Notice the reversal of the pattern. As I played the devil's advocate, Lise suddenly started asserting herself. Jergen: Oh, you're a lot worse than that! You claim that you are
worthless. You're a lot worse than worthless! You're actually a destructive element who's just bitching and complaining all day long, and on top of it all, just too stupid to realize that you are making yourself miserable. One quick bullet and it's all over. Just kill yourself! You're already dead anyway, you might as well make it official. Why bother living a life with no passion, curiosity where you're neither growing nor contributing? Lise: I AM NOT GOING TO SHOOT MYSELF! Jergen: Of course not. You're just a worthless coward. Pulling that trigger would take some guts. I guess sleeping pills is more up your alley. As I say this I am laughing so hard that I can hardly speak. Frank Farrelly was right. Joyful sadism can be quite useful at times. Quite predictably, as I amplify my part of the pattern by exaggerating it to ridiculous levels, Lise starts asserting herself big time. As I continue to laugh hysterically Lise starts naming all her positive qualities and all her successes in life, and as she does, she moves into a pretty resourceful state. There was a big mirror on the wall in the room and that prompted an idea. Jergen: Too bad you lack guts and honesty.
I physically grabbed her, placed her in front of the mirror and challenged her. Jergen: If you had guts you would look yourself in the mirror
and say the exact same things.
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As she starts listing her positive qualities while reentering her resourceful state I anchored it by touching her shoulder. Jsrgen: Close your eyes, and as that feeling gets stronger and
stronger with each and every breath ... if that feeling had a color, which color would it be. Lise: Red. The color is red. Jsrgen: Notice how easily that feeling gets even stronger as that red-colored feeling rotates in your body ... stronger and stronger until you can hear the sound of that feeling spinning around in your body. The more you focus in on that feeling, while it gets brighter, notice that the brighter the color, the stronger the feeling and the stronger the feeling the brighter the color. Having clients see the color of the feeling and creating an amplifying loop where you suggest that the brighter the feeling the stronger the feeling, and the stronger the feeling, the brighter the color creates a loop that allows easy amplification. Milton Erickson called this "apposition of opposites." This phenomenon allows you to take something you can easily do and lend it to something else. This way, if it's easy for the client to see the color they can lend that to increase the feeling and vice versa. Lise amplified her state and was sent on an imaginary trip into her future, using the resourceful state as a filter to experience her projected future through. After about ten minutes of this I told her to go out there and go for it, or throw herself in the river. The latter choice was clearly being rejected as evidenced by her nonverbal signals. When she walked out the door I started getting worried that I had gone way overboard. The people who had hired me had already received complaints from psychiatrists because of my stunts. Imagine my relief when I saw her two weeks later. She was going to start working again and gave me a big hug,
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thanking me for having helped her to wake up. She flat out told me that what I did for her was the best thing anyone had done for her in ten years. All this and all I had done was essentially to interrupt her limiting pattern, so that she could reverse it, thereby creating more choice in her life.
A Charming IIS uicida/" Another client from the same group naturally comes to mind. Rune was depressing and talking a lot about life not being worth living. He never directly stated that he wanted to commit suicide, nor do I believe that he was suicidal. He just spoke vaguely about life being a bitch, so that people would assume that he was suicidal. He used it to connect with people and to feel significant. Very often, having a major problem is used to feel significant and to connect with other people. It's often a powerful way of getting attention and support without directly asking for it. I decided to help him connect with people and feel significant in other ways, since his way of doing it started to push people away from him while it was also bad for the spirit of the group. Although the content differed, Rune used exactly the same pattern as Lise. I decided to do something similar. One morning I pulled Rune aside and told him that I supported his idea that life was a bitch, and that I was willing to help him organize his suicide. He had never verbally stated that he wanted to kill himself, just spoken about it vaguely so that people would get concerned and conclude that he was contemplating suicide. I did this to show him that his foolishness didn't scare me and also to steal his frame, persuading him to alter his behavior.
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Rune was totally stunned by my maneuver but pretended to not be and played along. We then had a meeting where we discussed all the practical issues surrounding his suicide. I involved myself in his planning in a very detailed way. Although he verbally played along, his nonverbals clearly showed that he was mismatching me and he started acting differently as we planned along. At the next meeting I suggested that he had to write a letter to his daughter justifying why he had to kill himself. When he claimed that he wasn't very good at expressing himself, I "sincerely" offered to write one for him. I had recently read Frank Farrelly's outstanding book Provocative Therapy. This book really opened my eyes when it came to interrupting patterns. It certainly made my work with these people a lot more enjoyable and productive. Of course, I wrote a terrible and perverse letter about a man that didn't have the guts to tackle the challenges of life. When I gave him the letter he got really angry, but as I started laughing, he gave in and started laughing hysterically as well. His behavior dramatically improved after this little stunt. So did his social skills as he learned to relate to other people in more useful ways. Whenever I get a new client I do my best to find out which therapists they have already seen, and also to figure out which responses they get from the people around them when they do their symptoms. People who perform various symptoms usually get very predictable responses from the people around them. Therefore, they often use symptoms to control others or get a feeling of security in an otherwise turbulent life. No matter what else is going on, they know that if they turn their symptoms on they will get very predictable responses from their environment. My challenge is often to help them get feelings of stability or security in more empowering ways, and also to help them 70
connect with others and feel significant in more useful ways. In order to accomplish this I need to offer very different responses to their symptomatic behavior than they are used to. If I react to their symptoms in exactly the same predictable way as everyone else, I ENSURE THAT I AM OF ABSOLUTELY NO VALUE TO THEM, because I am not bringing anything new to the table. I am also reinforcing their stuck limiting patterns by offering the same responses. By deliberately interrupting their patterns and offering different responses than they are used to, they will have to update what they are doing. When they do, they expand their choices to the point at which they no longer need their symptoms. All this is dependent on you having rapport and the ability to calibrate the responses you are getting. If you have those skills and the ability to put yourself in the right state, you have the skills to get brilliant results. John Grinder has really helped me get this by repeatedly emphasizing that all the patterns are lies. He likes to say that the patterns are there for you to learn to focus your attention, so that you have something to focus on while you learn to get responses and develop calibration skills.
How to Screw Up in the Name of Good Intentions Sometimes the state that you're in makes it almost impossible for clients to display certain responses in front of you. I remember a young woman who entered my office many years ago complaining of being severely depressed and having low self-esteem. She told an interesting story of going to therapy because she felt frustrated with her life. At the time she started therapy she wasn't depressed, just frustrated because her life had turned out very differently than she had planned. Her
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psychiatrist decided that she was depressed. When she argued that she wasn't, he told her that many young people were depressed without knowing it, and that she was one of them. "I am the psychiatrist and you are depressed" was one of his favorite sentences. Within a few weeks of this nonsense he had convinced her, and she complied by developing a state of depression. The next step of course was to start talking about her depression to find out why or find reasons to be depressed. As any hypnotist will tell you, whatever you focus on you amplify. If you think they stopped there, think again. To "help" her further, he made sure she entered a group with other anxious and depressed people, so that they could learn each others' ways of doing depression. I don't know about you, but for me the idea that a depressed person should go hang out with other depressed people is just a very bad idea! Since everyone there is depressed, no one in the group has a workable solution. I think it's better to hang around with happy people, or people who were depressed and are now happy most of the time. Having clients model those is a better idea. I asked her how she knew that it was time to do depression and how she did it. She said that she would wake up, look up at the ceiling, and realize that there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. This brings us back to our brilliant psychiatrist who had suggested that she quit studying and working, so that she could focus on her depression full time. The solution here was obvious: she needed to get back into the game of life (perhaps with some new skills) and as far away from psychiatry as possible. I started ridiculing her psychiatrist and her way of thinking, once again exaggerating her problem to ridiculous levels. I also told her flat out to throwaway her antidepressants, go out and get a job and to get out of psychiatry. Before I told her this, I had started laughing 72
hysterically when she told me how she did her depression. She got furious, ran out of my office, while claiming that she would never return. I was sure that I had blown it, and that I hadn't been able to help her at all. Two years down the road a young lady calls me thanking me for changing her life. Not recognizing her voice or her name I was quite puzzled. I had to admit that I had no idea what she was talking about. When she told me what had happened in my office, and that she had ran out, I became even more confused. Despite being furious when leaving my office, when she had calmed down, she found that what I had said made total sense and she had lost all belief in her psychiatrist. Linda said that my sarcastic laughter made the difference. That a professional like I could be laughing his heart out when she told about her problems had made her furious. However, after a while she started thinking that: "If this therapist laughs at my problems, maybe they aren't so serious after all. " I had thereby given her a strong counterexample to her belief that she had serious problems, a problem she had because she had taken a professional seriously in the first place. It didn't take long before she started working again, and then she didn't have time to be depressed. John Grinder emphasizes physiology and state in his interventions. The more time I have spent with John the better my results have gotten. I have made manipulation of physiology and state a big part of my work: not only the client's state, but my own state as well. Putting myself in a very-focused state while establishing rapport has allowed clients to model me without knowing they were doing so. My best advice for developing this skill is the daily practice of meditation. Meditation helps you develop your ability to focus and to be present.
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Failing to Succeed A few days ago at a seminar with John Grinder and his partner Carmen Bostic St. Clair, I told the audience that I had tested Johns New Code Patterns by applying them to "everything." Even using them in contexts where my thinking was that they wouldn't work. Examples would be using the Alphabet Game for insomnia and grief (more on these new code games later). I told the audience the story of Marie, a woman in her mid thirties who had recently developed panic attacks and multiple phobias. These included taking a bus, entering a shopping mall and a number of other strange phobias. We spoke for a few minutes before she told me that in the month before she developed her first panic attack, she had gotten fired from her job, her fiancee had left her and there had been a death in the family. It's very common for people to develop some sort of symptom when life becomes too overwhelming. They use the symptom to distract themselves from something they are not willing to face up to. This is exactly what Marie did. Her life was a mess. To get a break from it and avoid having to deal with it, she unconsciously created all these phobias so that she had a constant distraction from the things that really scared her. I decided to do a new code pattern called "Stalking" to help her. Stalking is a pattern designed for dealing with states people enter into to quickly or to slowly to notice that they are slipping into a state before they are into them. Examples of this could be rage and phobic responses in the case of quick states. Depression or fatigue are examples of states people often work themselves into so slowly that often they don't notice until they are fully in it. First I had Marie step into the physiology of anxiety at a specific location on the floor. She didn't step into a context. In Stalking it's preferable to just use the state itself. Then we
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created a spatial anchor for a resourceful physiology at another specific place on the floor. Then she stepped out of the resource physiology . The next step for Marie was to very slowly start moving towards the spatially anchored state of anxiety with the instruction that as soon as she feels the first sign of the anxiety state, stop, shake off and quickly jump into the place where her resource state is spatially anchored. This was repeated four times. The beauty of this pattern is that the client can now make a choice as to whether they want to enter the unwanted state or not. You're not taking away the choice to enter this state: you're just introducing choice in a context where the client previously felt as if they didn't have any. I then drove Marie to a shopping mall. She entered it without problems and had a wonderful week. I had chosen Stalking because I thought that it would be the least likely pattern to work in this context. The reason I thought that Stalking was unlikely to work long term was because it didn't deal with the secondary gains that her anxiety and phobias provided. With the anxiety gone, she would have to deal with her painful life again. I was right, after about a week her symptoms returned. When she came in for the next session we did Six Step Reframing. During the process her unconscious mind agreed to slowly let go of the anxiety over the next few weeks as she experimented with new choices. She was also given many tasks in the real world designed to learn to respect her emotions as signals that she could use instead of something that she was supposed to get rid of and control with her conscious mind. It took us something between four and six weeks to complete the work, which was very successful. A few of the seminar participants had a hard time with my experimentation. They couldn't understand how I could select the least likely pattern to succeed (least likely in my mind) and 75
do that first. How could I experiment like this? I explained to them that there were good reasons to do just that. Using patterns in contexts were you think that they are unlikely to work is a wonderful way to test patterns. This, of course, is dependent on you doing the patterns congruently, acting as if you totally believe it's going to work when you do it. Very often, I have surprised myself by making" unlikely" patterns work.
God Bless Blasphemy Recently I had another client who had experienced some bad times and had developed all these strange phobias. I decided to get a really strong commitment from her by saying the following: "There is a very simple solution to your problem, and you will be glad to hear that it's not unethical. Nor is it dangerous. However, it will be uncomfortable and demanding, and you might be tempted to give up before you succeed. Now, before I tell you what it is, I need your absolute commitment and promise that you will do it." After about a minute Rita said "Yes." I then had her shake my hand while she promised to do whatever I told her to do. J0rgen: Rita, what is the very first signal or sensation that you feel in your body that lets you know ... that you're starting to FEEL THE FEAR ... Rita: It starts here in my tummy.
As she says this she goes into her fear state. Rita was quite a rigid and proper woman and a bit religious, so I decided to use her fear. J0rgen: Every time you start feeling that first sensation in your
stomach, you are to repeat the mantra "SHUT THE FUCK UP" again and again until the fear disappears.
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I sent her out of the office, and when she came back the week after, all her old anxieties were gone. She was doing great. Rita: I am doing great! I have beaten all those anxieties with my mantra, but could I have a new one because I don't like it. J8rgen: No, it's a special mantra designed for your situation. When I heard from her later, she was still doing great. I think that it worked because she was more scared of the sentence "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and the feelings it evoked in her than she was in the real life contexts were she used to scare herself. She somehow worked everything out herself and found new ways to deal with life without any specific instructions from me. Marie was in a life situation where she would have to adapt to the overwhelming changes in her life. Her old identity was threatened, and she didn't know how to deal with her present situation. As previously mentioned, it was clear that she was using her symptoms as distraction from facing up to her present life situation. Clearly she needed to deal with her grief, and also to be able to adapt she would need to be flexible, try new things, fall on her face, get back up again and so on. Learning to use her anxious feelings as a signal system as well as exploring the thinking patterns that created the anxiety were skills that when developed would allow her to expand into a new life. Marie developed these skills directly by engaging in the real world tasks that I gave her and by doing work in the office. Much of the work was also being done at an indirect level. Once the seminar group understood this, most of them seemed to be able to better relate to what I did. Since Marie and I had excellent rapport, she transferred the skills she developed in relationship to me into the real world. I experimented with different approaches, fell on my face, did something else, and had a sense of humor about it since I was in
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a good state as I did this. Since the rapport was so strong, she matched my physiology and by doing that she went into the same type of states and developed the skills she needed to move on. No surprise here as I did the things she would have to do in relationship to her. If you can go into good states where you fail, laugh and adapt, then do something else while maintaining rapport and staying in a good state, then the client will develop these skills as a result of modeling.
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CHAPTER 3
USING MODELING TO CREATE CHANGE
Please understand that I am talking about NLP modeling. The type of modeling where you learn unconsciously in a "knownothing state." In this know-nothing state, you model using micro muscle movements until you are able to perform the skill or activity that you set out to learn. The expert does not offer any verbal descriptions, theories or explanations, and the modeler does not attempt to consciously understand or analyze what is going on. Before I met John, my NLP instructors had taught me that modeling was about matching and mirroring physiology, eliciting strategies and also the beliefs and values the expert or genius has. NLP modeling has absolutely nothing to do with eliciting strategies or finding someone's beliefs. John Grinder has in his seminars shared with his participants how he and Richard Bandler modeled the geniuses they modeled. When they modeled Milton Erickson, the project lasted for about ten months. They would spend time imitating Erickson's physiology by micro muscle movements without trying to understand or analyze what he was doing. After a few days of this they would get out in the real world and attempt to evoke the same responses that Erickson evoked. Then they would model Erickson with micro muscle movements in a "know-nothing state" again. This went on for about ten months. According to Grinder, they were then able to
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evoke and utilize the same responses in clients as Erickson was, even though they had no idea what they were doing. Only after reaching the desired level of competency did they verbally code what they were able to do. This is very different than the analytic modeling that most NLP instructors market. You know ... the one where you try to elicit beliefs and strategies. In short, you attempt to understand and talk about something you're not able to do. As Grinder often has stated, if during modeling you have theories and expectations, then your modeling and coding will be partly that. Most often when doing this, the modeling will be a lot about you and your theories and very little about the person you claim to be modeling. Consider how kids learn to walk, speak a language and how they learn to relate to the people around them. They learn to walk and speak languages in a knownothing state with no theory whatsoever. Previously I suggested that if someone couldn't afford your coaching or therapy, you can work with them under the premise that they will later function as an actor. These actors can "spontaneously" show up during ordeals, tasks and learning experiences that you have set up for your clients in the real world. Another alternative is modeling. If someone can't afford to work with you but you want to help them anyway, suggest that after the successful completion of the therapy that they will be available as a model for people who have the problem that they have successfully overcome. These alternatives are much better than just working with these people for free. Since people equate price with value, you have already shot yourself in the foot if you've agreed to work with someone for free. Clients need to invest something to get maximum benefit. If they can't pay they need to invest or pay in some other way. Using these clients as actors and as models is
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fun, challenging and beneficial for everyone that's involved. Everyone learns something and everyone grows and contributes. Having said all this, it's been my experience that some people are able to value something given to them for free. I just think that those people are few and that it takes a level of reflection and maturity that most people don't yet possess. Also, the more hurried, less mature, and uninformed the person is in a particular context, the more likely the person is to use shortcuts when making decisions. Shortcuts like equating price with value and competence with formal training. These shortcuts often work, and often they don't. Let's look at three different ways to use modeling in a change context. Model 1 - Indirect Modeling
The first approach is the one that I have already written about in the story of Marie. If you have very strong rapport, you can work indirectly using the relationship between the two of you to develop states and skills for the client. Since I went into great states where I experimented, learned from so called failures, and then did something else, Marie automatically developed these skills through her therapeutic relationship with me. I have used this approach many times with clients. To succeed at this indirect approach where the client is modeling you without knowing that they are, you need to figure out what skills the client needs, which if she had them would allow her to solve her presenting problem. Once you have figured this out and have a very strong rapport, you simply start displaying these states and skills while working with your client. If you have the clients unconscious attention, the client will mirror your physiology and by so doing experience physiologically the sequence of states that you go through. This
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sequence should contain the states the person needs to have the choice they are seeking. For this to work there has to be a close relationship between the skills you use to work with the client and the skills the client will need to use to succeed out there. You will also need to do it again and again. The work I did with Marie took about six weeks. Also, unless the rapport between the two of you is very strong, you might as well forget this one. If this sounds far-fetched to you, then Coogle "mirror neurons" for some fascinating reading and scientific support for the claims presented here. When you use this approach, don't rely only on the indirect modeling. Make sure that you also give the client tasks in the real world that will develop the skills that they need. Of course, this applies to everything you do. The stuff you do in the office in altered states needs to be complemented by real world assignments. I really like this approach since all your formal patterns can fail. It doesn't matter that they are not successful, since they develop the skills they need through the relationship. Model 2 - Direct modeling
Very often, your clients will be stuck in certain contexts, and the reason "WHY?" is because they just don't know "HOW?" Quite simply, there is no trauma or secondary gain or anything else. The client has never developed certain skills that they need to function well in a certain context. For these clients, the least likely place where anything significant will happen will be in your office. As I mentioned in the introduction to this book, some clients lack the skills necessary for NLP techniques to work. Some of these clients will not go into hypnosis, can't access feeling at all and so on. In addition to involving them in activities and tasks where they will develop these skills (the chapter on working with unresponsive clients has some goodies for you), having them
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find people who have the skills they need, and then having them model these people is a wonderful approach. I have used this approach with people who need to develop certain social skills, presentation and public speaking skills as well as to develop skills in sports. There are three steps required to do direct modeling. However, before you send them out into the world, it's necessary to train them in entering a "know-nothing state" as well as teach them how to mirror someone's physiology.
Step 1. Find a real world model and get access to the model performing in the actual context. Reading about what the model thinks that he is doing or interviewing the model is not what we are after. You need to be able to watch and model the expert, while the expert is performing in the actual context. Having said this, I have learned a lot from reading books and listening to lectures. So, I am not in any way suggesting that NLP modeling is the only way to get good at something. Let's say you wanted to model a top tennis player. What the tennis player does and when he does it is dependent upon what the other player is doing. Therefore, you cannot study just the tennis player hitting shots and claim to be modeling him. As John Grinder would say: "You need the other side of the tennis court."
Step 2. The modeler starts out in a "know-nothing state" and learns without any theory, expectations, attempts at understanding or analyzing what the hell is going on. By being fully present and modeling using micro muscle movements the modeler learns unconsciously and gains a set of skills that is untransformed by conscious filters.
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Step 3. This is a continuation of Step 2. The modeler continues modeling and using the patterning until he can perform as well as the model, or as well as he wants to. When he has reached the level of competency that he set out to reach, he starts the process of subtracting behaviors to see if he can still perform without the behavior he subtracted. When you model someone, in addition to picking up the states and behaviors required to perform a certain skill, you will also pick up some junk along the way. By junk I am referring to things the model does that isn't relevant to perform the skilL Sometimes these junk behaviors even interfere with performance. In 1996 I modeled a martial arts genius by the name of Tony Blauer. Even though I wasn't familiar with NLP modeling at the time, when I think back, I realize that I did some sort of deep trance identification. Tony opened up a whole new world for me, and my skill level exploded. I also felt a lot stronger having modeled his behavior. However, I ended up with a Canadian accent (for a little while) and a few other fascinating behaviors. These behaviors had no use and getting rid of them did not affect my skill level in any way. For your own personal development in terms of learning a skill, or for the client who needs to learn how to do something of relevance, these steps are sufficient. There is no need to attempt to codify the patterns. Sometimes you can do very well even though you don't have access to the model in real life. I have done a lot of modeling of martial arts by watching videotapes of someone perform. By modeling using micro muscle movements in a "know-nothing state", I have often surprised myself by going to the gym and just finding myself doing some new move during sparring. Again, this is how you learned to walk, speak you native language and most of the other things that you learned at a
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young age. So, you are familiar with what is called "NLP modeling." At the same time you might have to do some relearning since most educational systems and schools heavily emphasize left brained analytical learning. Model 3 - Reenactment Modeling
This type of modeling is about modeling something someone has done in the past. Let's say that you are working with a depressed client and you want to assist them in personal growth. One choice would be to find someone that has done deep depression but no longer is doing depression. Then have the depressed client do a modeling project. This also applies in getting over grief, anxiety, losing weight or getting over some disease. I must admit that I have never used modeling to help someone get over a disease, so I can't confirm or disconfirm that it works based on my personal experience. John Grinder claims some success using this format even with serious illness, so give it a shot. If this sounds farfetched to you and unlikely to work, then do yourself and the world a favor and congruently test it out. Challenge your own beliefs. I have surprised myself with being able to pull off things that seemed ridiculous to me and VERY unlikely to work. Some of these things still seem crazy to me and I can't explain it, but I know that I did it. Have fun with this! To prepare your client you need to drill them in rapport! modeling skills and teach them the verbal package. The verbal package is about challenging nouns with "WHICH SPECIFICALLY?" As an example, if someone says: "There are certain aspects of my life I wish to improve", you would ask: "Which things, specifically?"
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For verbs the challenge is: "How specifically?" So, if someone were to say: "I need to take care of myself better!" you could ask: "How specifically?" Your clients also need to frame what they are about to do to themselves and the person or persons they are about to model. The more people you can have them model, the better. Now, assuming rapport with the model, the client aims to stimulate the model to relive the events, to re-experience what they did to heal themselves. The client says something to the effect of: "Let's go back and you will re-experience what happened back there and describe in detail what happened. I will only interrupt to ask for more detail. Everything is important, what happened, what you did, how you felt, what you said to others, what others told you, and how you felt when you heard what they said." As the model begins to describe in detail these things, they will re-experience what they went through that led to the cure or remission or whatever. As the model re-experiences, your client is modeling with micro muscle movements. Your client is also listening. When he hears nouns and verbs that are of interest, he will repeatedly ask the two questions:
1. Which noun, specifically? 2. Verb, how specifically? By asking these questions the client will help the model connect the words to concrete experience, making it easier for the model to relive and re-experience. Using the verbal package also keeps the client from hallucinating and projecting excessively. Again, the goal here is to get the client to capture the sequence of states that the model goes through in giving the interview: an unconscious to unconscious transfer at the level of state.
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Useful Nuances About a year ago I received a call from a woman who requested that I work with her father. Her father had cancer in the brain and as a result had virtually no short term memory at all. She told me that it was impossible to carryon a conversation with him. He wasn't even able to read a comic book. If he were taken on a trip he would have absolutely no recall after the trip. Woman: Is there anything that could be done? Logically: No. After all, how does one work with a client who has no short term memory to the point where he can't receive instructions in a way that allows him to follow them at all and can't carry a conversation? Since I had absolutely no idea how to work with this guy, I became very enthusiastic. My philosophy has always been to work as far outside of any so-called "scope of practice" from day one. Therefore, I clearly couldn't pass up the chance to work with this guy. While meditating a few days later I realized that since his conscious mind was of absolutely no use, I would have to work directly with his unconscious. A deep trance that included me, where I could get strong nonverbal involuntary signals from his unconscious, seemed to be our only shot. A few days later when he showed up at my office, it quickly became clear that he had no idea where he was. He was dependent upon his wife for everything. Just in case you didn't catch it, I had already made my first major mistake. His daughter had ordered the session since he was unable to do so himself, and I hadn't done anything to ensure that his wife and I were aligned. Big mistake! When he entered my office, I went to shake his hand and as predicted, he started lifting his hand. As he did, I interrupted
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the handshake and went straight into the handshake induction. It went something like this: Jargen: LOOK AT YOUR HAND ... and notice how you eyes
change focus ... as that hand starts moving towards your face ... with honest unconscious movements NOW ... You don't know exactly how long it will take before you ONLY SEE THAT HAND MENTALLY ... as that hand continues towards your face ... reaching that face only as quickly as you go into a state where we can communicate on an unconscious level, independently of your conscious mind ... Keep in mind that there was no pre-talk or interview. I had never spoken to him. I met him at the door with a handshake induction, and he responded by going into a very deep state of hypnosis. You might be wondering why I bothered to induce hypnosis since his conscious mind was already out of the way. Well, I wanted an altered state where his responses were clear and amplified, so that I could communicate with his unconscious while getting clear and strong nonverbal involuntary signals. Also, it doesn't matter how deep a trance someone is in if the trance doesn't include you. By doing this maneuver, I helped him create a state of hypnosis while including myself in his trance. From there I helped him set up involuntary finger signals; nothing unusual here. When asked which of his fingers will lift with honest unconscious movements for YES ... his right index finger lifted, and when his unconscious was asked which of his fingers wanted to lift for NO ... his left index finger lifted. With involuntary signals set up I clearly stated that I wanted to speak with the unconscious, the part of him responsible for creating and healing cancer.
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His YES finger lifted with honest unconscious movement after a few seconds. Not only did we have involuntary finger signals for YES and NO, but these signals were supported by other nonverbal involuntary signals as well. The other signals were congruent with the finger signals. That's a good sign. Next he was asked whether the unconscious would confirm that there was a positive intention behind the creation of the cancer. Notice that he wasn't asked if there was a positive intention, but instead asked if the unconscious would confirm that there was a positive intention behind the cancer. Dear reader, I have an assignment for you. Go read Whispering in the Wind by John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St. Clair very carefully. Really examine the epistemology section and all the implications of what is written. Are there things such as positive intentions at the unconscious level, or are positive intentions a conscious mind linguistic construct? Are we discovering a positive intention when doing Six-Step Reframing or are we creating it? Anyway, his unconscious confirmed the positive intention behind the cancer. We then proceeded with the following questionsj instructions: Generate a set of alternatives as good as or better than the cancer in achieving the positive intention or intentions. Also, since the prime directive of the unconscious is to preserve the body, make sure that the new alternatives are both better than the cancer in satisfying the positive intent, but also return you towards health.
Jergen: Do you understand the instructions? Jergen: Give me a "YES" signal when you have completed the task.
Jergen: Are you willing to use the new choices instead of the cancer?
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Jingen: Do you know how to cure the cancer? JBrgen: Are you willing to take responsibility for curing the
cancer? JBrgen: Are you willing to start the healing process right now?
The answer to all these questions was "YES." I really prefer to get a NO response at some time, so that I know that it isn't all compliance. Therefore, I asked a question that I thought would unlikely elicit a "YES" response. JBrgen: Will you complete the healing in two days?
This time the "NO" finger lifted. JBrgen: Will you complete the healing in seven days?
This time the "YES" finger lifted. JBrgen: Will you confirm that you will heal the cancer in seven
days, having started the healing already? Again, the "YES" finger lifted. Interestingly, after bringing him out of hypnosis, he opened his eyes and asked: "Where am I and who are you?" He really had no idea who I was or what had just happened. When he was at the hospital a week later, the physicians discovered that there was a dramatic reduction of the tumor. The really interesting part is that every test they had done in the past had shown an increase in the tumor. This time, however, the tumor had dramatically reduced, and he had had no medical treatment for it whatsoever. Coincidentally, these dramatic changes had occurred right after he saw me. Even the most hard core cynic would have to acknowledge that there was probably some relationship between what we had done and the reduction of the tumor. His wife called me with the good news. I had gotten her to promise that she would call after the tests, but she didn't sound
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too enthusiastic. She told me that the doctors were stunned and told her that they had no explanation to offer her as to why this had happened. She then told them about the NLP work we had done, but the doctors got angry and wouldn't have any talk about such nonsense. Sad but true. I suggested to the wife that she bring her husband back to me to do another session. She agreed, but I felt like I had to talk her into it. She wanted him to remember again so she agreed to one more session. When he arrived at my office for his second session I did the hand shake interrupt again. After setting up the signal system with his unconscious, I asked him whether he had cured the cancer. His "NO" finger lifted. His signals told me that the healing process had stopped and that there was some objection to him healing the cancer. His unconscious was not willing to tell me what the objection was. This of course is an interesting counterexample to the idea that we are creating the positive intentions. The unconscious signals that there is a positive intention but is unwilling to reveal it. Hmm, who created that one? His signals quickly got very unclear. I was losing rapport and he seemed very exhausted. I asked him if he wanted to quit for the day. This question got a very strong "YES" response. We ended the session. I proceeded to tell his wife what had happened suggesting that we redo it another day, and that we couldn't work on the memory stuff until he had healed the cancer. Unfortunately, I never heard anything from her. His cancer started growing again and now he is dead. I had to call his daughter to get the news on his condition. She had told me before I started working with him that she had been waiting for him to get seriously ill for some time. There were serious conflicts inthe family that he wasn't able to solve
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and that the level of stress in his life was very high. She felt that it was only a matter of time before he would get seriously ill. My work with people who have developed serious illnesses have left me with an impression that there is often some sort of self-mutilation program running inside on an unconscious level. While people consciously can be fighting for their life, there is little hope unless this calling for self mutilation is properly dealt with. Cancer often seems to be an unconscious form of suicide, a socially acceptable way of escaping the burden of life. Earlier I wrote about the dangers in using the medical model and the idea of mental illness when working with people's symptoms. Consider the mind body split. This split only exists in language, not experience. Medical science is still promoting this split with often disastrous consequences for those who choose to believe in it. One of these consequences is that when someone develops a so-called" physical illness", they will ignore focusing on thoughts, feelings and relationships, both as part of the problem and part of the solution. Another consequence of this type of thinking is to isolate the individual and his symptoms from the context where they occur. Most of my clients with illnesses are quite surprised when I start asking them about their relationships, feelings and what sense of purpose or meaning they have created for their lives. At the same time, if something is labeled "physiological", people won't usually look into nutrition, toxins and other environmental factors. As an example, sometimes there can be a correlation between led-poisoning and auditory hallucinations. Having said all this, I do recognize that purely biological approaches have had enormous benefits for a lot of people. Certainly, there are a lot of people who have healed all sorts of diseases by exclusively using traditional medicine. However, it's a partial approach that will create partial results. I am not
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advocating that NLP and hypnosis are all that is needed with all clients all the time.
Can You Spell Relationships? Consider all the research that has been done on hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena. Much of the research has revolved around how many who can be hypnotized versus how many can't. Some experts (some skilled and some not) deliver a hypnotic induction, usually a progressive relaxation type induction with instructions to relax and imagine various things. Then subjects are given tests and challenges ranging from simple ones like eye catalepsy to advanced ones such as negative hallucinations on cue. Based upon how they behaviorally respond to these suggestions, they are labeled somewhere between insusceptible to hypnosis and highly responsive. A standardized induction procedure is normally used. Sometimes it's even delivered by an audio cassette. The implication being that the hypnotist doesn't matter at all and that the relationship between the subject and the hypnotist doesn't matter much. After all, how can a pre-recorded induction delivered by audiotape adapt to the behaviors of the subject? It is further assumed that if a subject doesn't respond well to the standardized induction it means that he isn't susceptible. In other words, you either have it or you don't. While there might be some accuracy to this assumption, it is a very partial "truth." It's amusing to consider that when studying a hypnotic interaction between the hypnotist and the subject only the subject's behavior and responses are studied. Not only is the behavior of the hypnotist not considered important, but so are all the relationship factors.
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Now let's assume that you placed one hundred people in a room and someone started telling jokes. Let's say that 20 percent are laughing themselves silly, 60 percent are having a good time, and the remaining 20 percent are either laughing a little or not really responding at all. Would you after watching this accept the idea that 20 percent of the people in the room had a great sense of humor, 60 percent have a medium sense of humor and that 20 percent had little or no sense of humor at all? Clearly, the same jokes told in a different way, by another person in another setting could dramatically change the responses. The state of the participants, their expectations, the relationship towards the person telling the joke and a lot of other factors will playa part. I think it's very dangerous to study capabilities, intelligence and illnesses as ONLY isolated phenomena inside the person. A much better approach is to study these phenomena as a result of relationships. As an example, have you noticed that you are more creative or energized around some people compared to others? Let's consider the rock band that has a very inspiring period where they produce a lot of great work. It's likely that this creativity is generated by how the different members of the band respond and relate to each other in a constant feedback loop. It might take very little for the band to "lose" their creativity if this feedback loop is somehow broken. How about the people who claim that alcohol make them more outgoing and funny? It's common for people to loosen up and share war stories and laugh after drinking together, but how many people when drinking alone do you find laughing and having a ball all by themselves? Actually, come to think of it, my friend Bartek (the Polish Stallion) does this. But then again, he makes most of the clients described here seem remarkably "sane." Think about shyness for a few seconds. A
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behavior like shyness only occurs in relationship to other people. After all, how many people are shy by themselves?
The Dog Inside Not long ago, I almost screwed up a session by not managing upwards. I worked with an eight-year-old boy who was allergic to pollen and a couple of other things. I knew that his mother had dragged him to all these different therapists for his allergies, and the kid hated therapy and therapists. He also hated talking about his allergies. His mother used to sit in on his therapy sessions he had done with other therapists (acupuncture and homeopathy). Therefore, I decided to throw the mother out in front of the kid, thinking that this would create instant rapport. Boy did it work! I had arranged this beforehand with the mother. Well, not quite: I had just told her that she couldn't be present while I did the work with him. I told the kid that I didn't care about his allergies. Instead we talked about two things that he loved: soccer and dogs. He lit up like a Christmas tree. When he entered these strong states by talking about soccer, I anchored the states, the sneaky bastard that I am. I had a lengthy talk with him about different types of dogs and how a dog knows which people to accept and which people to behave aggressively towards. We also had a chat about how sometimes a good dog can sometimes make a mistake and think that someone is dangerous, when they really aren't. He started talking about how a dog he knew had learned to accept someone new, even though the dog had initially been skeptical and overreacted a bit. The way we talked about this stuff was isomorphic to an allergy cure.
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It was easy to suggest that he had a dog inside that knew what
was healthy for him and what wasn't. I told him that I wanted to talk to the dog inside and that the dog inside could answer me lifting one finger for "YES" and another finger for "NO." I wanted the dog inside to lift the fingers, not him. The dog inside and I had a little chat and the dog inside decided that it was OK for him to have fun enjoying being outdoors, and by doing that he could quit going to therapy. The dog inside was very enthusiastic about that. Imagine the look on the mothers face when she enters my office and her kid tells her that he has learned to talk to the dog inside. She quickly informs him that there is no such thing, until I yell out: "He is eight, which means that he is old enough to know about the dog inside." I grabbed the mother and escorted both of us away from the kid. I told her that the "dog inside" was a metaphor for the boy's immune system. A week later the mother calls me. She was pissed off that I had told her son that he could quit therapy. I had no right to do so. When I asked her why he should go to therapy for a problem that he no longer has, she became very silent. It was quite intriguing that she was so pissed about that and showed so little enthusiasm for the fact that her son was free of his old allergies. I think I was able to negotiate a deal with her so that she would support her son being allergy free. We will just have to wait and see how this holds up. I told her straight that it would be difficult for him to remain allergy free if she communicated to him that his job was to have allergies and go to therapy. She agreed to let him stop therapy. I think that if she hadn't, there would have been little hope for a long-term cure. Actually, you will have to do more than manage upwards. You will have to manage around or future pace as some people calls it. I prefer to do this by "going fishing" meaning that I will ask them questions about how they think people who are
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significant to them will respond when they no longer have their problem. As always, it's not so much what they verbally report, but it's more their nonverbal responses that will show you if you have struck gold or not. So, whenever your questions seem to activate something or you see an incongruence, that's when you start playing around.
Commitment is Everything NLP trainer Tad James once told me that when the client's resistance is stronger than their commitment, there is no change. The more I have worked with clients, the more accurate I have found this statement to be. One of the key points is getting outstanding results is your ability to get total commitment from your clients. If I sense a lack of commitment, I will usually give them a task or severe ordeal to build up compliance and commitment. Very often it will be this lack of commitment that's preventing them from making the changes that they want to make. Therefore, by giving tasks and ordeals you will sometimes find that these maneuvers will be enough to create the proper context for change. Quite recently I had a client who had struggled with panic attacks for most of her adult life. She had been a part of one of these phobia groups, you know, the ones where they learn to live with their anxieties. The implication is that you will never get over you problems, you have to live with them and become a group member for life. As long as she was part of this group, her anxieties were there to stay. I really dislike the way these groups tend to reinforce problems. Although the intentions may be good, the consequences are not. What they are doing is creating addicts by helping people base their identity and social network around
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the exact problem that they claim that they want to solve. Have you ever wondered why there are no groups for people who have caught a cold or broken a leg? If you get a client that is part of one of these groups, demand that they quit the group for you to accept them as a client! If they are not willing to quit the group, then don't accept them. Your success rate will go up as a result of this, I promise. The same principle applies to people who are on welfare and lucrative social security deals because of their problem. Again, this is another way of creating an addict. I discovered this when I worked with the long-term unemployed. The numbers clearly showed that if people were out of work for more than twelve months, the chances of them getting back in the mix are very slim indeed. Therefore, I strongly suggest that you don't accept clients who are on a lucrative social security deal for their problem. Think about it, these people are professional victims. Their job is to do their symptom, that's how they make a living! The only problem is that they quickly start getting addicted to the problem and the lifestyle, not to mention all the rewards and secondary gains. Now, my client (Catherine) had overcome most of her anxieties, but still held onto a good portion of it. She was most afraid of developing a severe panic attack during a longer flight. Since she was no longer part of the group, didn't get paid to do her symptoms and knew how to overcome anxieties, my first thought was that she is not quite committed yet and is still using this as a crutch somehow. She quickly told me that she still carried anti-anxiety medication in her purse just in case. This gave me the leverage needed to secure the level of commitment needed. I told her bluntly that I required her full commitment. I was going to ask her to show me that commitment and that it would be very uncomfortable, but help her blowout her problem.
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Jorgen: I want you to take your medication and throw it into the trash can over there ... That's what you need to do for me to work with you. Client: But, wait a minute. Jorgen: Yes, I will wait a couple of minutes for you to make a decision. You will either continue "trying" and walk out that door or show me that you're ready to play full out. Don't talk, don't move - until you have decided. There is something else as well. If you choose to throw those pills in the trash, I also need you to promise me that you won't go to the doctor and get new ones. It took somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes for her to
make up her mind. When she finally threw her meds in the trash and shook my hand, a panic attack started building up in her body. This is exactly what I was looking for and her response confirmed my theory that she was using her anxiety as a crutch. By committing to paying full out and deciding to give up her crutch, her panic attack showed up quite predictably. Earlier I described a technique that I learned from Richard Bandler: 1. Have them notice where in the body the fear starts. 2. Have them notice which direction it moves in and how the feeling rotates to get back to where it started. 3. Tell the person to imagine pushing it outside the body, turn it upside down, put it back in so that the fear rotates in the opposite direction. 4. Keep rotating the feeling in the new direction until the feelings turns into a calm feeling or a feeling of curiosity. By giving her this experience she suddenly had a reference for being able to turn her fear on and off on cue. This felt experience
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of being able to turn symptoms on and off is what I am looking for the clients to experience inside my office. Catherine had already told me that she was ok with a one-hour flight, but feared that she would experience a panic attack during a longer 4-5 hour flight, which she had scheduled a couple of weeks down the road. Since she was OK with doing a one hour flight and now knew how to turn her fear on and off on cue, I gave her the following assignment. J0rgen: Catherine, are you OK flying for one hour? Catherine: Yes, I can do that. No problem. J0rgen: Well, here is what I want you to do. I want you to FL Y ONE HOUR ... FOUR TIMES ... I want you to bring a stopwatch and after exactly fifty five minutes I want you to create the fear. Then as soon as you start feeling that uncomfortable feeling in your tummy, I want you to do the rotating the feeling backwards technique that you just did. After exactly one hour, reset your stop-watch and do the exact same procedure after fifty five minutes. Also, you're prohibited from reading anything or attempting to distract yourself in any way. To give credit where credit is due I must mention that I got this idea from my former martial arts mentor Tony Blauer. He once trained a kickboxer who was nervous about going four rounds for a Canadian title fight. Tony asked him if he could do two rounds. The student confirmed that he could do that. Tony then told him to do two rounds twice, and the student did exactly that and won the title. I found that to be a brilliant solution and when this particular client mentioned her problem, Tony's solution came to mind. My intent in not allowing her to read or have any distractions was for her to be totally present in her own body, making a total commitment to dealing with anything that might emerge. The task of voluntarily creating the fear and then doing a technique
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that made it go away put her in the driver's seat. My reasoning was also that since she was doing the fear every hour there would be no energy left for a major one. There is another key point here regarding her not reading or distracting herself in any way during the flight. By having her commit to this she was communicating to herself that she was willing to deal with whatever came up, and that it's OK to feel what you feel and stay present to it. Many therapists who work with people who are afraid of flying recommend that they read and use other distractions. The implication being that the emotions they might experience are dangerous and must be avoided. Big mistake in my opinion! My experience shows me that raw emotion only lasts for a short time unless one chooses to fight the emotion or identify with it. By being willing to feel it and to stay totally present will ensure that the emotion doesn't turn into a symptom, but rather can remain a signal. Hear it again: the only difference between a signal and a symptom is the duration. The signal shows up, you stay present, feel it, welcome it, and use it as a signal or messenger of some sorts. This is useful. A symptom on the other hand doesn't go away. It doesn't because the recipient of the signal is either fighting it and doing what they can to repress it, or fixating on it to the point where they get absorbed into the drama. The people who do the first strategy are often the cold left-brainer's who think feeling and showing emotion is a "sin". They want to control everything and often have rational man as their highest ideal. Then you have the hysterical emoter. They identify with their emotions. As an example, they don't have a signal that they label fear. THEY ARE AFRAID and often play the "What if ... " game with ferociousness. "What if I faint? What if it's a heart attack? OH MY GOD, my pulse just went up!" They never realize 101
that there is a relationship between the thought "What if it is a heart attack?" and their increased pulse rate. These people don't use their signals in a constructive way either, but rather use the symptoms to connect with themselves in a self-pitying way. Catherine would do a combination of the two. She would repress her anxiety as long as she could. When she could no longer control it, she would freak out and identify with the feeling. The task she was given was designed to give her a direct experience of successfully staying present to her bodily signals. By learning to relate to her feelings instead of trying to control them or identify with them, she would automatically create the skill she was missing. The rotating feelings technique interrupted her pattern and gave her a choice. Instead of avoiding the feeling, she would now welcome it, feel it and pay attention to it in a very detailed way. This has a tendency to pick it apart. That gave her a concrete skill she could use to diminish it. Finally, the instruction to fly one hour "four times" utilized her model of the world and enabled her to accept the learning experience. I am very happy to report that last time I heard from Catherine was through an SMS text message she sent me from Greece saying that she had experienced a wonderful flight.
Quick Summary For those of you who are disappointed that there aren't more step-by-step detailed instructions, ala do this, then that in a linear fashion, need to start realizing that neither life nor therapy sessions work that way. Client work is often chaotic and you can take all linear Cause and Effect theories along with your personality profiles and throw them out of the window. When you do changework you basically enter a biofeedback loop
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where everything you do influences what the client does. At the same time everything the client does will affect what you do. Too many agents of change focus way too much on technique and procedures in my opinion. It's like listening to fans after a boxing match ranting and raving about the left hook that dropped the other guy. Well, first of all it wasn't the left hook that dropped anyone, but one person using the hook to drop someone else using the right tool at the right time. Few talk about how the guy who won came back from a severe beating earlier in the fight, the tenacity, passion, guts, preparation and so on. What I am communicating here (hopefully) are the skills and attitudes needed to do great changework. The most important thing will be your own state. You need to be able to go into a state where you have access to your own skills and your client's responses. You also need to be great at eliciting states in your client. Can you easily and congruently elicit a wild variety of states in your clients and utilize those states to help them get what they are there for? You need outstanding rapport skills here defined as the ability to capture the attention of the unconscious of the client. Are you willing to go first? Obviously you need to have rapport with your own unconscious. Last but not least, you got to be able to calibrate the responses your clients give you and utilize them. Remember that all the patterns are lies. They are useful so that you have something to focus your attention on while you develop the skills you need. My overall strategy, if I had one, could be summarized this way: 1. I go into an altered state of much focused attention or a
flow state if you will.
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2. I do something to provoke a response. If I get a strong response I continue what I am doing, and if not, I reach into my bag of tricks and do something else. My task is to utilize the responses I get to help the clients generate the learning experience that they need. Sometimes this learning experience is done hypnotically and sometimes it's done out in the real world. If you're starting to make a linear list in your head ... STOP IT RIGHT NOW! These aren't computers: these are human beings that we are working with. You need to do all these things pretty much at the same time. Sometimes you will future pace at the beginning, sometimes you will do a good pre-talk before doing hypnosis, and other times you will meet that no memory client with a brain tumor with a handshake induction at the door. Bottom line, you don't have a clue before you meet the client's unconscious. If you think that you have a clue, then get a clue that it's time to watch out. As Milton Erickson wrote: psychotherapy for person one is not psychotherapy for person two. What you do need to be based on the unique individual in front of you and the responses that they are giving you. Not statistics (I have never had a client who needed those), theories or personality profiles. Isn't this a gross contradiction coming from a guy who uses the categories presented in this book? Or is it? I will let you decide.
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CHAPfER4
WORKING WITH THE LIVING DEAD
There is only one thing that scares me when doing changework. It's not strong language, rage or a client that has gotten worse. It's the client who just doesn't respond (this is of course a way of responding too). As a matter of fact, if I had to choose between a client being severely worse after a session or a client that reports that there has been no change, I would choose the client who got severely worse from their symptom or illness every time. Well, not every time, because I wouldn't get to learn how to awaken the living dead. If this surprises you in any way, then consider the fact that if someone increases their symptom after a session, they have responded. I can use that response to help them create change. Some time ago I deliberately had a guy with tinnitus turn the volume and the distress up. We even moved the sound from one ear to the other. He did this easily, since I had doubted that he really had tinnitus. My doubt made him intent on proving how much he suffered. When I challenged him, he gladly turned the sound up to prove me wrong. After playing around with increasing sound, he realized that he could actually turn it up and down pretty much on cue. If he can tum it up, he can certainly tum it down. However, he had tried to tum it down for many years, so requesting that directly would have failed. This chapter is about awakening the living dead. Those cold left-brainers who just don't seem to respond. I'm lying here, they do respond, it just doesn't seem that way. It's ironic that so many NLP trainers are so into the law of requisite variety: the
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element with the most choice in a system will control the system. First of all, control is an illusion in any system. Secondly, any experienced agent of change will tell you that it's not the client with a lot of choice that's the most challenging. It's the client with lack of choices, the ones who rigidly do the same thing over and over again, no matter whether or not it fits. If I were in the diagnosis business, most of my clients would get the diagnosis RIGID, at least in the contexts where they are stuck. The clients described in the case stories that follow more or less share several characteristics. The most important one is that I was unable to get these clients into a workable state of hypnosis. They also repressed feelings, were into control, rationalized, had a lot of internal dialogue and none of the attempted NLP patterns worked. If I can't get the client in touch with the kinesthetic of the problem in the office, I will drag them out into the real world and make it very real for them. Let's look at some cases.
Case One - Frank the Multi Phobic Frank is a guy in his mid fifties who was scared of being around people and basically any place where more than a few people were present. He hadn't been to a mall, large store or cafeteria for over twenty years. He worked in the woods and his wife would do all the shopping. During the first session I attempted to do time line patterns and other NLP patterns, but we got absolutely nowhere. He was unable to get in touch with his fear, claimed to not make pictures, refused any and all attempts to induce hypnosis and had a lot of internal dialogue. However, I noticed three things of importance:
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1. He had a tendency to mismatch. He would tense up if I asked him to relax, and he was passive aggressive. 2. His greatest fear was to have an emotional breakdown in public, especially if he would cry. That he really couldn't handle. 3. The third thing was kind of intriguing. Several times during the first session he would lean on the sentence: "EVERYONE HAS EQUAL VALUE!" As he said these words, he would gesture downward with his palms. He did this three or four times. When you get a gift like this, you have to find a way to utilize it somehow to help the client.
As the first session came to a close, it was clear that we would have to do our work in the real world. I would have to find a way to utilize the three patterns of behavior previously mentioned. The next time he came in I took him on a little trip to a local food store, telling him that we were just going on a little exploration. I had scheduled the session for a time when I knew that groups of teenagers would hang outside the store. Imagine my relief when I saw a big teenage gang outside the store. We parked the car, locked the door, thereby blocking one escape route for my unsuspecting client. Frank was instructed to join me outside the store, just to take a look. By getting him there I had pretty much blocked all his escape routes. In front of him was the store entrance, behind him the group of teenagers, to his left a wall and to his right yours truly. We then had a little chat. J0rgen: Frank, in a little while you are going to walk into that store.
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Frank: NO! NO! NO! I am ill, I can't do that! I could break down! I don't think you realize how big a problem this is for me! Jorgen: Frank, I am going to count from one to three. On three, you are going to run into that store '" or ... I am going to tell everyone here that you are a homosexual and that you have a big erection. Frank looked at me and when our eyes met he could see that I was dead serious.
Jorgen: ONE... TWO ... THREE ... Ladies and Gentlemen! I have an announcement to make. . . my friend here is a homosexual. When all those heads turned he didn't walk into the store, he ran into it as fast as he could. Frank was afraid of entering the store, but remember, his greatest fear was breaking down in public. Given the choice between being ridiculed in public or go into the store, he would choose the latter. Running into the store became his only way to avoid his fear of breaking down in public. As Frank ran into the store as far away from those teenagers he could, I told him that he had to decide where to pass out. He had earlier claimed that he would pass out if he entered a big store. So, I had to ensure that he passed out safely. I quickly started to suggest all the different places where he could pass out. Quite predictably he rejected them all. In the office he had showed me his mismatching, even verbally telling me that he couldn't just voluntarily feel things. Not only did he reject all the suggested places where he could pass out, he rejected passing out all together. It was amusing, the more he was told to pass out, the calmer he got. When Frank reached a state of confusion, a great learning state, I started utilizing his fear in a slightly different way. I started walking up to strangers in the store and introduced
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myself as a psychiatric patient. Bringing up the best state of anxiety and awkwardness possible. I asked these people if they looked down on me for being a psychiatric patient, and if they would help me if I passed out. They all responded very favorably and before long there was a support team ready to help this poor psychiatric patient in any way required. The next step was to blame Frank for my misery. The support team was told that even though I wasn't ready, my psychiatrist had forced me in here (pointing towards Frank) telling me that I had to show responsibility for my life and expand my comfort zone. The group turned on Frank a bit and he asserted himself quite well. Again, given the choice between being a nut case and a psychiatrist, he would choose the more prestigious position. You might have been surprised if you had seen how well Frank played the role of the psychiatrist. One woman even started asking him for advice. Following a long and meaningful conversation with a couple of the members of the support group, Frank and I left to go to a mall and several other stores. Frank passed the tests with flying colors. I was confident that I had set up that knockout punch well enough. I asked him what he thought would be the appropriate punishment to administer to myself, considering the fact that I had just made a fool of myself in public. However, Frank evaded that one by claiming that I was a professional and obviously accustomed to stuff like this. This response clearly demonstrated that we were not done. Realizing that I had to set up that big left hook a bit differently, I asked him how he would feel if he went up to someone in a store shaking, stuttering and drooling. He very congruently told me that he couldn't handle that. Back to the store we went, but this time I made an even bigger ass out of myself than previously, stuttering, visibly drooling and shaking while approaching all sorts of people. This
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time Frank cracked up laughing almost hysterically. He seemed to really enjoy my misery, and who could blame him considering what he had been through. We went back into the car and Frank was asked again how he thought I should punish myself for having a breakdown in public. Frank tried to tell me that I didn't need to feel bad. I responded by going into a state of indignation shouting out: "FRANK, YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITE! Here I took you seriously when you stated that everyone has equal value (firing off his gesturing anchor as I say this). I can only conclude that you're a FUCKING hypocrite after all! If I make a fool out of myself in public, then it's OK. But you, ALL IMPORTANT FRANK, if you do it, it's so terrible cause you're so damn important." Now he gave me the response I had been looking for. His state shifted and his face shifted color. He got it. One of the best ways to work with these cold left brainer's is to give them a real world experience that shows them that their symptom behavior is a threat to their identity. Frank got to a point at which he couldn't continue doing his problem without ruining his identity as a compassionate guy who believed that everyone had equal value. The final session was also done live, this time at a local cafeteria. A student/ client of mine had been assigned to meet us there to playa specific role. My student was told to match and mirror Frank with the intent of establishing excellent rapport. He was also told to be just a bit more outgoing than Frank, acting as if he had the same type of problems. Actually, he didn't have to act that much, my student was pretty uptight as well. My job was to be a total asshole, especially towards Frank. Understand that Frank was passive aggressive and needed something or someone to resist. What we did here was to use the Contrast Principle, or Bad Cop God Cop if you will. Police 110
officers will often do this during an interrogation. One cop will be an asshole claiming that they have all the evidence they need, trying to scare the suspect into confessing. Sometimes the cop will be close to abusing the suspect. After a while, the other cop will jump in and "save" the suspect, backing him up a bit. Cop number two will use "we language" saying things like, my partner is right, but if you come clean we will get you X deal. Cop number two isn't really that nice or generous, but contrasted with his partner's behavior he will come across as a saint. The same principle applies if you take a hot bath. When you first slide into the hot water, you can really feel the warmth. After a little you have gotten used to the temperature, but if you have to get out of the water for a couple of minutes and then reenter, you will feel the warmth again. This is also why I want my client to be strongly in touch with their phobia, allergy, asthma or migraine headache when they enter the office. That way, after we have done our intervention, I will have them attempt to get in touch with their symptom again. If they could get strongly in touch with their symptom before the intervention, but can't do it anymore after the session, that's one hell-of-a-convincer for the client. Get creative on how you use the Contrast Principle. Sometimes using actors is a wonderful idea. In this case, the more I played the asshole, the better the rapport between my student and Frank. Since Frank could reject all the crap I told him, he had absolutely no need to mismatch my student. As my student slightly became more outgoing, Frank did as well since they had rapport. After a while, my student started talking about how he felt in social situations, and once again, Frank started talking about how he felt. That was the response that I had been looking for and a major breakthrough for my client. Frank really loosened up and
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at the end he told my student out loud that the solution to my student's rigidity was that he needed to get laid. Heads started turning in the cafeteria and Frank handled it like a champ. In closing I should tell you that between the second and third session Frank had already been to several stores and public places without yours truly to assist him.
Case Two - Martin the Hand Shaker Martin entered my office with an intriguing complaint. Every time he did something in front of other people with his hands, like signing a contract or drinking a glass of wine, his hand would start shaking uncontrollably. Martin fit the profile perfectly. He repressed feelings, had a lot of internal dialogue, had a hard time visualizing in consciousness and just didn't go into hypnosis. I thought that I might be able to get him into trance using some sort of confusion induction utilizing his internal dialogue. However, we just didn't make it. This wasn't really a problem, since I had discovered that he was one of these types on the phone. I don't really know how I know to spot these, but after a few years in the hypnosis world you start detecting stuff like this. One hint is a dry monotone voice describing things in a detached academic type language with much dissociated language like: "One could disagree ... and one would like to think ... " The guy didn't once say "I think" or "Ifeel." He had been to a couple of psychologists, and they had attempted to teach him various relaxation techniques. Like Frank, this guy was a mismatcher as well. If someone told him to relax, he would tense up. As you can probably imagine, the instructions to relax had created the opposite of the intended result.
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As soon as I observed this pattern, I decided to prescribe the symptom somehow. Very often, getting someone to voluntarily do something that's normally involuntary creates change. Martin told me that he started shaking because he didn't know how people around him would react. The more he thought about his hand not shaking the more it shook. The fact that Martin's hand never started shaking when he drank a glass of wine or signed something when alone suggested that his sentence: "I shake because I don't know how other people will react to the shaking" was pretty much where it was all at. I should tell you that I had collected Martin's money up front, and gotten him to agree that he would do whatever I asked him. In return, I promised that I wouldn't ask him to do anything unethical or dangerous. Since Martin worked in a very large firm with a number of employees, he was given the following task. Jargen: Martin! Here is what I want you to do: I want you to purchase a large poster. On it I want you to write the following in bold letters. LIVE ENTERTAINMENT. Under that headline ... I want you to write that I (your name) shake involuntarily in my right hand ... whenever I use my hands to drink or eat in front of people. For those of you who want to share a good laugh at my expense, show up in the cafeteria at lunch hours at X day. Martin: Are you crazy??? Jsrgen: Yes, I am! But my hands work quite well. It took me probably ten minutes to convince him that it was in
his best interest to do this. Martin: This is certainly not what I expected. But I have paid you and given my word, so I am going to do it.
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Jorgen: You're not getting off the hook that easily. I want you to add something. You normally start shaking involuntarily as soon as you make eye contact with someone while you eat or drink, right? Martin: That's correct. Jorgen: I want you to start voluntarily shaking that hand before eye contact. So, as soon as you realize that someone is going to see you drink or eat, I want you to do it voluntarily. When you make eye contact and can feel the involuntary shaking starting, I want you to do what you can to increase the symptoms. To make a short story even shorter, Martin did what I asked him to do. However, he was more than surprised to find his involuntary shaking gone. He didn't seem to realize consciously that by setting the frame, deciding that this hand shaking meant entertainment, he knew how others would respond. More importantly, he knew how he would respond. There was no longer any basis for him doing his symptom. Mismatching my suggestion to increase the involuntary shaking played an important part as well.
Case Three - Caroline the Anorexic Caroline was a young woman in her early twenties. She was 1,72 meters tall and weighed in at 39 kilograms. She was not a living dead, but very much into control and as a result of that. Most of our work was done out in the real world. Caroline had been doing anorexia for seven years and had been to numerous anorexia specialists in several countries. I had also met her parents at a social gathering, and they were the ones who requested that I worked with their daughter. The parents had money while Caroline was a "poor" student who had recently gotten fired from her part time job as a waiter
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at a restaurant. Her boss had told her that she was too thin and that her appearance was making his customers uncomfortable. Armed with this information before meeting Caroline for the first time, I saw a big red flag in front of me. First of all, people equate price with value. Even though her parents were paying me handsomely, she would have to invest something for the therapy to have value for her. Another factor was that she had been to all these "expert" therapists for years and hadn't changed at all. When people work on a problem for years without solving it, they are using the problem to satisfy one or more of their needs. Often this is the need to feel significant or speciaL This proved to be true in her case. Caroline was given an ordeal over the phone before our first session. She was given a list of about twenty questions and explicit instructions to provide very detailed written answers to every question. She spent days on this task and it built some of the commitment that we needed. My main concern was for her to get reaL I knew that I would have to get very real to get her to get gut level honest. She was very intelligent and later admitted that I was the first therapist that she had met that she couldn't manipulate and wrap around her little finger. Essentially, I was the first guy that would call her on her bullshit and hold her 100 percent responsible for her behavior and the choices that she was making. In my not so humble opinion, one of the worst things you can do with so-called eating disorder clients is to buy into the mental illness frame. These clients are not sick. It's wrong to claim that these clients suffer from a mental illness and need to be treated. These clients are choosing everything that they do, and it's important that anorexia and bulimia are seen as behaviors that clients are choosing. They CHOOSE these
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behaviors because the "disorder" satisfies one or more of their needs.
Caroline's Session One Caroline didn't quite know who I was or how I worked, which gave me a lot of flexibility. Since all her previous therapists had bought into the mental illness frame, and therefore treated her as sick, it wasn't too hard to figure out that they had been "empathetic and understanding." Obviously, if you want to be successful with a client like this, you will have to interrupt her pattern big time, which is exactly what I did. I dressed in a dark suit with a black tie, and since my grandmother had recently died, I had a lot of funeral stuff, i.e. brochures and cards. When she entered the office she was asked the following question as soon as her butt landed on the couch. J0rgen: Do you want to be buried or cremated? Caroline: WHAT? J0rgen: You heard me! DO YOU WANT TO BE BURIED OR
CREMA TED? It's time for you to make arrangements for what they are to do with your body after you're dead. Caroline started to laugh nervously at first, but I kept asking the same question again and again while looking deeply into her eyes. J0rgen: By the way, how do you like these brochures (the ones from my grandmother's funeral)? Do you like the quality of the brochure? What about the colors? What songs do you want? What do you want written on yours? After a while we progressed to talking about coffins, did she want to be eaten by worms or burned. This continued for about
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twenty minutes before it suddenly got pretty real for her and she started crying. Jorgen: You poor thing!
This was said with more than a little sarcasm in my voice. This was a test and I passed it by not getting soft when she tried to avoid facing what she was doing. Jorgen: So Caroline, how long have you been doing anorexia? Caroline: Doing anorexia? You talk about it like someone
would talk about doing ballet or gymnastics. Jorgen: Well, it is, isn't it? Ballet and gymnastics are activities that someone chooses to engage in, just like anorexia. Caroline: Well ... Jorgen: Let's be honest! Anorexia isn't a thing. It's a process, it's something you do. You have to think a certain way, behave in very specific ways and you have to organize your life around it just like an elite athlete would. Athletes have goals, things that they want to achieve as a result of all the training. Not only that, the training itself provides them with a number of benefits. So, what are the benefits of doing anorexia? I imagine that the short term benefits must be really great since you are willing to die just a little bit down the road, so that you can experience these benefits now. Come on Caroline! What are you getting out of doing anorexia? What are the benefits? Caroline: It takes a lot of self-discipline to do anorexia. Very few people have that level of control and discipline. Also, it's exciting to see how far I can get. You know, the doctors have a rule that says that that at my current weight, I should be at the hospital for forced treatment. But at every test, I make sure that I barely weigh more than that weight limit, and I beat them every time. But, it's a bit sad also because my parents are so worried about me and they take me to different therapists, hoping that I will get better.
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As she said this, I could see the same facial expressions of pride that I had seen earlier. Her voice was also expressed in a kind of triumphant way.
Jorgen: You little pervert! You aren't too sad about this. As a matter of fact, you enjoy that your parents are worrying themselves sick, hoping, getting disappointed again and again, knowing deep inside that you have no intent of stopping the anorexia. Far from being the poor victim, you are in a power position. You are punishing your parents, and you are enjoying it intensely because it gives you a feeling of POWER. Caroline: It makes me feel unique and special. If you had been there and your calibration skills don't suck, you would have noticed that she leaned on the word "SPECIAL." There was a strong nonverbal present every time she said the word. Anytime I am able to identify a context where the client acts as if he or she is the victim of some Cause and Effect equation, or they lean on some identity statement while demonstrating a distinct nonverbal response, I know that it's time to get to work.
Jorgen: How special is it to die as a result of some eating disorder? After all, it's the leading cause of death among young women in Norway. How special is it to deny it while it's happening, claiming to be in full control? How pathetic and boring isn't it to have being "special" as the number one mission in life? How special is that? Sounds very ordinary and very boring to me. At this point she went into a state of confusion while I just sat back unwilling to help her create clarity. She then started crying. I kept my cool and gave her no sympathy. Instead I pointed out how ordinary it was to go into self-pity when confronted, versus
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having the guts and self-discipline to deal with it. But again, only special people are able to do that. If this sounds harsh to you, remember that clients test you all the time. If I had started being "nice" at this point, it would mean that she could manipulate me using her symptoms. Clients don't want to be held responsible. They will often do whatever they can to get you to play rescuer while they play the victim. I absolutely reject this role, and I show it congruently with my behavior. I look forward to clients doing their BS to get pity. Since pretty much everyone else backs off when clients do this, they help reinforce the exact behaviors that the clients are paying them to help change. If you have the balls to not do this, then the likelihood of clients changing is much greater. After all, the only reason they do their bullshit behavior is because they are rewarded for it in some way. After telling Caroline to meet me the following day in athletic wear, I sent her out of the office while she was still crying. I am going to be blunt with you. When you play hardball like this with people you are taking a chance. One out of two things will happen. The client will either run away or change. If you have rapport and good calibration skills, you will get most people to change. The real artistry is to know when to push, when to use humor, when to get provocative and so on. Unfortunately, the only way to get good at this type of work is to go balls out, even when you don't have the calibration skills to justify doing so. You will need to get comfortable around strong emotions. I have had clients attempt to physically attack me, throw things at me and some have called me a sociopath. Geoff Thompson, legendary self-defense instructor, former bouncer and author, has some wonderful advice for conquering fear. He inspires people to look at the worst possible 119
consequence of doing some behavior. Then ask yourself: "If this worst consequence happens, am I willing to handle it?" If you can congruently look at the list of what my clients have done when pushed and decide that you will handle it, or at least learn to handle it, you can proceed forward without much fear. It's like the boxer who steps into the ring. He knows that he is going to take a hard shot sooner or later. When you are willing to deal with it, you can play full out. So, give yourself permission to fall flat on your face knowing that it will happen sooner or later. Also, when you do, make sure that you learn from it. The really cool part is that any tendency that you might have regarding being an approval addict, wimp, or victim will get triggered in you when doing this. Therefore, you will develop tremendously as a person by working this authentically with clients. I have concluded that if I am not called a sociopath or something equivalent on a regular basis, then I am probably not doing my job. It's really easy to get that label from many clients. All you have to do is to not respond on autopilot when they go into their symptomatic states. When "tough" clients enter your office, they have a long history of eliciting very predictable responses from the people around them when they do their symptoms. No matter what else is going on around them, they know that if they turn on their depression, panic attack or whatever, then people will respond on cue. As previously mentioned, this is part of the reason why people get addicted to their symptoms. Many therapists help reinforce these limiting behaviors by playing their politically correct "nice and understanding" role. The sad part is that most of these therapists aren't doing this as a strategically sound choice based upon calibrating that these behaviors by the therapist leads clients toward useful change.
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Rather, they are doing this because it's comfortable, politically correct and because they don't have the guts to deal with authentic behavior and strong emotions. Most of these therapists are wimps and approval addicts when push comes to shove. Taking a risk to get the job done: "OH NO ... what will my colleagues think?" Many will do more to preserve their image than to help a client. You will have to condition yourself a bit to be able to work like I did into the cases presented here if you are like most people. A friend of mine pointed this out in an elegant way recently. He said: "You function as a pattern interrupter ... " He has some NLP training). "You deliberately provoke where everyone instinctually wants to move backwards. " It's by deliberately provoking the responses everyone wants to avoid when you get such dramatic responses in people.
Caroline's Session Two The next morning Caroline and I met at the gym. In her papers, she had written that she used to be in pretty good shape, and that she thought that she still was. She was clearly in denial about the damage that she was doing to her body. This little trip to the gym was designed to give her a rude awakening. The real reason that she wasn't exercising wasn't a busy schedule or any other bullshit rationalization she could corne up with, it was the fact that she was not able to do it. I challenged her by telling her that a young woman at her age should be able to do 25 minutes of high speed on the treadmill. After about twelve minutes she more or less collapsed. It wasn't because of her willpower or self-discipline that she had so much pride in. It was because her body just couldn't handle it. After the little collapse I almost had to support her walking out of the
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gym. Certainly, all the looks she received from shocked exercise buffs helped fuel her embarrassment. The task went as planned and was done to give her direct counterexample to her belief that she wasn't damaging her body. Since she had so much pride in her self-discipline and willpower, it was likely that she would view her collapse as evidence that her body had gotten weak. Immediately after leaving the gym I sent Caroline to the library for her next task. Her assignment was to find three biographies about special and unique individuals. Then, after reading these short biographies, she was to write an essay about what made these people unique and special, and just as importantly, what didn't make them unique and special. The task was to be completed in two days, just in time for her next appointment. The day before her next appointment I called her and told her to meet me at a restaurant instead of at my office. I had already been at the restaurant and tipped off the waiter. I asked him if he was willing to help me save a life the following day. I told him that I was bringing in a young woman who was severely anorectic. I further explained that I was in the shock treatment industry (whatever that is) and that we were her last hope. The waiter generously agreed to help out. I gave him a tip and prepaid her meal. I told him that no matter what she ordered, he was to serve her the largest meat dish he had, and tell her: "Honestly, YOU NEED THIS!" I must have gotten through to him since he agreed to help out despite thinking that I was a little nutty. As previously mentioned, the least likely place for these dissociated clients to change is in a therapist's office. They will rationalize and intellectualize everything all day long if given the chance. The best place to do changework with anorexics and bulimics is in a restaurant.
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I told Caroline to write down the rules of the anorexia game on a piece of paper and bring it to the restaurant. I wanted to learn how to do anorexia as well as her in terms of when she ate, how much, when she knew it was time to stop, how she knew she was making progress and what she couldn't eat. For each of the rules she was instructed to write down what they were intended to accomplish, meaning what value and emotional state she was to achieve by following the rules. Basically, she could hardly eat anything at all, and all these rules and behaviors were used to satisfy her core values. These values were control, selfdiscipline, challenge, being unique and special, power, excitement and goal achievement. The emotional states that she got into by doing her anorexia were: 1. Excitement. She felt a lot of excitement by playing with her physicians, making sure that she barely weighed a little bit more than the required weight to stay out of the hospital. In the same way she enjoyed the excitement of seeing her parents get their hopes up and then getting disappointed every time she went to some therapist. 2. Security. No matter how chaotic the world became she knew that when she did her anorexia, people around her would show concern, sympathy, and love. The eating rituals also gave her the feeling of familiarity and therefore she felt secure. 3. Uniqueness. By being so good at anorexia, she felt unique and special. She also felt very special since she had "defeated" all these therapists along the way. This is a very common way for people to feel significant and special, by having a problem that never gets solved. 4. Love and connection. As always (almost) doing some sort of symptom is an easy way to get love and
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connection from other people without giving in return, asking for it or taking a risk. She also used this to connect with herself. As you can see, the benefits of doing anorexia were gigantic! For her to change, she would have to commit to getting these emotional states in other ways.
Caroline's Session Three Caroline and I met at the restaurant where she showed me all that she had written on the game of anorexia. I felt as if I had rapport with her and that I had elicited some useful states in her. However, our work had not created any change in how she did her anorexia. I ordered a big fat steak, and Caroline quite predictably just wanted to drink some water. When the waiter returned with my steak he gave one to Caroline as well and told her: "Honestly, YOU NEED THIS!" I got a big laugh out of it, but he was a bit incongruent in his delivery. So, it didn't quite have the emotional impact that I was looking for. I had another surprise planned for Caroline as well. A couple of nights earlier I had recruited a couple of friends to play out some stuff. Two young men showed up and sat down at a table at an angle away from us. One of them put up a big canvas and started to draw Caroline. This caught Caroline's attention, and my friend the artist, sent her some flirtatious looks as he continued to study her in detail and draw. Caroline refused to eat anything and was quite content in posing for the drawing. She even remarked to me: "See, men find me attractive!" What she didn't know was that there was nothing spontaneous going on here. The guy who was pretending to sketch her was drawing the ugliest stick figure cartoon type
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figure you can imagine. It was signed" AUSCHWITZ AUGUST 1944" and "Will Mrs. Super Slim Shady please go hide because people are losing their appetite." After about twenty minutes my friend walks up to Caroline, bows, and says: "Excuse me, but you just inspired me to perform at high artistic levels." He then delivered his horrible drawing and this time Caroline responded. She got furious as hell, and I enjoyed an even bigger laugh. Some joyful sadism at Caroline's expense. I have got to give credit where credit is due. I got the crappy artist idea from a tape by Ross Jeffries, the seduction guru, who bases his approach on NLP. Just when Caroline got angry enough that she wanted to leave, we got some unexpected help. A dentist sitting nearby walked up to a very angry Caroline and started telling her about all the damage she was doing to her teeth, going on and on about all the potential complications in a very concerned manner. Strong emotional states and responses like Caroline showed are windows of opportunity. I knew that I had to continue using this very valuable response. She started ranting and raving about how I must know everyone in my hometown, that people were obviously biased and influenced by me. Instead of ending the session I spontaneously decided to take her for a forty five minute drive to another city. I challenged her by saying: " Cool, let's go to another city where no one knows me, and no one is under my evil influence." Caroline agreed and we left immediately. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon as we walked down the main street, which was pretty packed with people. I knew that if I had just walked up to people and asked them if Caroline shouldn't gain some weight, then people would probably be afraid of offending her and therefore answer "No!" So, I did something a bit different. I started walking up to
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people at random telling them that my name was Peter and that I was from the National Anorexia Association. I further told them that: "We at the Anorexia Association had a campaign where we were taking anorectics out into the streets to discover how "ordinary" people thought about food and weight. This woman wants to lose another fifteen pounds, what do you think about that?" The first person we approached this way, a middle aged woman, almost went crazy, begging Caroline to gain weight. The next person we approached was a guy in his early twenties, a real idiot. He told her to go ahead and loose another 15 pounds if she wanted to and that she looked great. I don't know if this guy was looking to get laid by offering a compliment as absurd as this, or if he was just ground zero dumb. I couldn't believe how someone who wasn't on drugs could respond this way. Turned out this guy came in real handy cause Caroline perked up and said: "The score is now 1 Jergen versus 1 Caroline." It looked as if she started to believe as if she could win this little contest. However, it quickly turned out that she was mistaken in her belief. About twenty minutes later the score was J0rgen 19 versus Caroline 1. At this point she got real sad and threw in the towel. Before we ended the session I reminded her to complete the homework assignment that I had given her regarding the biographies she had borrowed from the library. After this session I got a very strong feeling that Caroline was getting more real. The key was to get strong emotional responses and utilize them. As an example, after the stunts at the restaurant, Caroline responded strongly but rationalized that people were being influenced by me. Therefore, I spontaneously drove her to another city. Had I stopped at the restaurant, the responses wouldn't have been as strong. Another key point is to compound these counterexamples while she is in a strong
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emotional state. The more counterexamples she gets to her beliefs while in this emotional state, the stronger the cumulative effect of the intervention. If you know hypnosis, you know that a big part of making a suggestion strong is to compound. The working principle is that the first suggestion accepted is rather weak, but the second accepted suggestion would be weaker while making suggestion number one stronger. The third accepted suggestion is weak again, but it strengthens suggestion number two and makes number one even stronger. The same goes for Caroline. I am giving her strong counterexamples to a belief while she is in a strong emotional state and just compounding it again and again, hopefully forcing a massive reorganization on the inside. If you have an NLP background you might be familiar with the "Last straw/going through threshold pattern" where you associate the person with a strong negative emotional memory, then go to a second strong memory, and a third and forth, recycling until it's like they are all happening at once. The goal here is to take someone over the threshold so that they can't go back. Remember that you can modify all the stuff that's done in an office to work outside the office as well.
Caroline's Session Four Caroline went home and did some serious work on her assignment during the next couple of days. At this point it was clear that something was happening, some reorganization was going on inside to make sense out of all the stuff that I had put her through.
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Looking back, I am convinced that a key point to our success was that we did intense work like this for hours every day for almost a week. I knew that if I had let Caroline off the hook, gotten soft, or pulled my punches in any way, she would have gotten into her analytical mode. The result of that would be that she would reject everything that didn't match her previous experience. I am also pretty sure that any formal attempts at hypnosis or NLP patterning would have failed, because it would threaten her sense of control. Besides, her pattern was to feel unique by defeating therapists, rendering their techniques ineffective. I was going to force her to get real or run away screaming by doing the work in the real world while activating her symptoms and taking her to restaurants. Since we did this every day, followed up by intense homework assignments, the chances were a lot slimmer that she would be able to distance herself from the work and the reorganization that it forced. Once again, I had planned a little surprise for Caroline. Her father had previously told me that Caroline hated drug addicts and that she really despised them. I told him to not tell Caroline that he had told me this, since I decided that I would utilize this somehow. The day before session four, I went to a friend of mine 00 Gjerpe) and asked him to dress up as a junkie. Not only did he generously agree, but he also did a very convincing job acting as a junkie. When Caroline arrived at the local train station the next morning, this disgusting drug addict immediately approached her. They had a conversation that went something like this
Drug Addict: Hey you, do you have anything to sell me? Caroline: WHAT! Do I look like THAT? Drug Addict: C'mon, you're one of us. It takes one to know one. Lighten up girl!
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This upset Caroline. When I met her a bit later, she was angry. She asked me if I had organized any new stunts on behalf of the anorexia association lately. When I pretended to be confused by this, she told me what had happened. Jergen: And this surprises you? Look at your arms (said while grabbing her arm pretty hard) you fucking look like an addict AND you were outside the train station. Caroline: I'm sorry. Now that she had fallen for my little bluff, I gently inquired about the drug addict. Caroline: My god, he had really hit rock bottom. You can probably imagine that my friend the drug addict" was less than delighted about this when I told him later. His mother, a psychiatric nurse, was present as I enjoyed some joyful sadism at my friend's expense. She was pretty outraged at my approach. She asked me if I wasn't concerned that her feelings might get hurt or that she would become angry. I responded by telling her that I was more concerned if she died, and I knew in my heart that I could have done more. The really cool part of my drug addict stunt was that a few weeks later something similar happened at another train station, which impacted her greatly since she knew that I couldn't possibly have any part in it. My intent in having my friend meet her at the station in the way he did was to give her an experience. I wanted her to associate the way she looked now as a result of her anorexia life style with the thing that disgusted her the most, namely drug addicts. Instead of just telling her this I generated an experience for her hidden in another activity that she wouldn't consciously recognize as relevant, since she didn't know that I knew about her disgust for addicts. II
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When Caroline entered my office after meeting my friend, she was confused. I could sense that she had reached the limits of her old model of the world. The following conversation ensued. Jargen: So Caroline, are you for real, or are you just a coward and a hypocrite? Caroline: What do you mean? Jargen: How would quitting anorexia and starting a new life not only require a lot more self-discipline, uniqueness, be a much greater challenge and prove that your truly a special person to a much larger extent than anorexia ever could? Not only that ... by living these qualities in an authentic way, you would also develop them in abundance. You see, Caroline, you started anorexia because it was a challenge, which took some self-control and made you feel unique and special at the time ... BUT, let's be honest, you are very good at anorexia, you have done it for a long time, and because you're so familiar with it ... it's not really much of a challenge anymore. However, quitting anorexia, just the thought of it scares the shit out of you. You have no idea how you would do that or if you really could do it ... that would be a REAL challenge requiring a lot of self control and self-discipline ... as you confront your deepest fears head-on. To do this would require a person who is unique and special. After all, it's easy to live in your comfort zone! Caroline's physiology shifted dramatically and her face exploded with color as the reorganization on the inside became very evident. What I did was to utilize her values that she had leaned on the entire time. By doing a reverse presupposition I made continuing anorexia a threat to her core identity. She emotionally got it this time. The simple fact that quitting anorexia and designing a whole new game of life would not only require her living her values, but give her these emotional
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states as well. At the same time she realized that the anorexia itself was a direct contradiction to her identity and the values she held so dearly. I call this technique the "Identity Threat" with reverse presuppositions. I had written down all the values that she identified with, the ones with strong non-verbals attached to them. I knew that the key point in working with her would be to make doing anorexia incongruous with her identity. I had planned this technique since the first session, but when to do it is a timing issue. If I had attempted it during the first or second session it would have failed. She was so rigid and in "control" with a model of the world set in concrete. To get her to respond, I arranged all these real life experiences designed to provoke, destabilize, challenge her beliefs and induce a massive state of confusion. The state of confusion is really what we needed. With a very shaky model of the world, some war fatigue and massive confusion going on, she was ready to respond to a maneuver such as this one. Caroline was lit up like a Christmas three at this point. There was only one thing remaining for our work to be completed. Now that she couldn't continue anorexia and keep her identity constant at the same time, it was time for her to decide on what to do instead. To complete our work she needed to decide on a new game and some new rules for living, a game that would satisfy her need for excitement, security, love, uniqueness, selfdiscipline and challenge. The only difference was that her new ways of meeting her needs would enable her to grow and be empowering to her and her health. She was told to leave my office with instructions to return the next morning with her new game designed. That night she experienced a surge of energy as she designed her new game of life. When she entered my office the next day she looked and sounded very different. With pride presented me with her new
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game of life! I offered to teach her self-hypnosis to give her more self-control, and she worked out a number of suggestions designed to enhance her ability to play her new game with gusto. I have found it very beneficial to give analyticals writing assignments such as these. The left-brainers are often skeptical. It's generally tougher to get them to commit to something new and different initially. However, once you get their commitment, they usually stick to it. The highly hypnotizable easily step into new realities, often with dramatic initial results, but it's often" easy come, easy go." Another key point in working with the left-brainers is that they often have a high need to understand what happened during the therapy. They will analyze and attempt to rationalize for some time after the work is completed. This is a golden opportunity to give them tasks that ensure their continued success. This way, you are using their need to rationalize to cement in the changes that you're looking for. This is certainly a lot better than them talking themselves out of some beneficial change. I am happy to report that the last time I heard from Caroline, five years after the intervention, she was still doing great. Since I know people who are her friends, I know that the changes have lasted long term. She even had to buy I new wardrobe as she gained healthy weight. I would like to elaborate a little bit on the technique I just presented, the "Identity Threat." I have found this technique very useful, especially in cases where there is a lot of secondary gain, and where the problem behavior is to a large extent under conscious control. It's been a very successful approach with stuff like anorexia and bulimia.
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The Identity Threat Pernille was a woman in her early forties who entered my office with the request of eliminating her fear of public speaking. During the first session I asked her if there was any benefit to having the fear of public speaking. She said that her husband was a practical man who resented her intellectual friends and all the dinner discussions she had with those friends. He felt like an outsider and she felt that the more she tried to learn and develop herself, the more it created distance and hostility in the relationship. But, her husband had moved out, and since he had, it was now OK for her to learn new things and develop her career further. The first session went great. We did a rapid induction, activated her fear by associating her into a past memory where she could really feel the fear and used the fear as an affect bridge back in time to the first event the fear was connected. In her case it turned out to be a memory/reconstruction from age three. After clearing up her fear from all past related memories, she was good to go and left my office in an enthusiastic and confident state. However, when she came back for a follow-up two weeks later, she told me that her fear was coming back gradually. As you might have guessed, her husband was gradually moving back in with her. In the conversation that followed she leaned on the sentence: "I am a very responsible person." I also picked up that she felt contempt for people who were divorced, especially single moms. At the same time she wanted to get out of the relationship. Her husband spent her money, drank way too much and gave her absolutely no respect or love. BUT, she couldn't leave the relationship since she had to take care of him.
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J0rgen: How responsible is it to live life as a drug dealer? Pernille: What? J0rgen: Let's be gut level honest here, so that we can see exactly how hypocritical you are. I had recently watched some Tony Robbins DVDs called Ultimate Relationship Mastery at which he claims that all human beings have six human needs. According to Tony they are: 1. Certainty
2. Uncertainty 3. Love and connection 4. Significance 5. Growth 6. Contribution According to Robbins, these six human needs are needs everyone needs to fulfill, and will find a way to fulfill in one way or another. The only question is if a person will satisfy these human needs in a low quality way or a high quality way. By low quality, we are referring to behaviors which are dangerous to self or others, behaviors such as drug abuse, violence, overeating, symptoms, being needy and so on. High quality refers to behaviors that improve life, like healthy relationships, meaning full activities, exercise, learning new things and so on. Robbins claims that the last two needs, growth and contribution, are needs of the spirit and are essential for true fulfillment. Personally, don't know how accurate this model is, but I do know that it can be a useful way to relate to some clients. I prefer to not really believe in anything, but use and utilize everything to help the people I work with. Realize
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that models and theories like these are constructions. Basically, it is all made up. I challenged and provoked Pemille, claiming that she was using her fear and her husband's symptoms to maintain her own identity and her needs but in a low-quality way. Let's look at how she was using her fear symptoms to satisfy her basic needs. 1. CERTAINTY
One of the reasons why people go back to bad relationships and destructive behavior is simply because it's familiar. They know that if they tum their symptoms on, people around them will change their behavior or respond in very predictable ways. They also know that they have access to their symptom any time they want, and this familiarity gives them a feeling of security and stability. This was relevant for Pemille as well, but the key point was that she was using her symptom and her husband to keep her identity as a very responsible person constant. People are very motivated to keep their identity constant. They will do the most outrageous things if they perceive that their identity is threatened. Her husband was very irresponsible which matched her identity of being "a very responsible person." She would save him and take responsibility. This gave her power in the relationship and made her feel very needed and significant. It also gave her something to talk about. Every time she complained to someone about her husband she was implying that she was super responsible. Also, the idea of being single with kids was a big threat to her identity of being very responsible as well. As previously mentioned, she felt very significant and content when she observed all the people around her who had given up. She had decided to not be one of them. When I suggested these things to
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her, I saw strong nonverbal signals telling me that I had hit bull's eye, especially around the theme of keeping her identity constant. 2. UNCERTAINTY Paradoxically, not only was she getting certainty by doing her symptom, but she was getting uncertainty as well. By uncertainty I am referring to variety, changing states, excitement and the like. She admitted that all the drama that ensued from her husband's irresponsible behavior was quite a rush for her and quite exciting. It certainly prevented boredom. 3. LOVE AND CONNECTION There wasn't too much love in the relationship. She did what many people do, she settled for a certain level of connection. All the drama and her role as rescuer maintained a connection between her and the husband. 4. SIGNIFICANCE Her role as rescuer gave her the feeling of being very important and needed. She actually had become addicted to her husband being a fuck up for her to be the rescuer. So, instead of taking a risk and developing herself, which takes some guts, she could feel significant by having a problem which never got solved. After going through this I asked questions like: "What will be the consequence of this role over time? What will happen to your selfesteem? What are you teaching your kids about relationships?" Pernille went into a strong emotional state where she associated massive pain to what she was doing. I then did the Identity Threat:
You claim that you are a responsible person, but how responsible is it to use someone else's alcohol addiction and irresponsibility to have your own identity constant, satisfy your needs in a low
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quality way, while hypocritically maintain that it's for someone else's own good?
Emotions exploded in her body, a very nice color shift in her face and a solid shift in her physiology followed. She got it, and she had a felt experience that it wasn't possible for her to maintain her old behavior and her identity at the same time. She spontaneously started creating new behavior that she would do instead to satisfy her needs and identity in a high quality way. No further work was necessary. I am happy to report that her fear disappeared again, and she divorced her husband which proved to be a good choice for both of them. I have found great use for this Identity Threat technique. I find it a lot more effective than Six-Step Reframing, visual squash and other forms of hypnotic parts work, particularly in cases with relationship issues, self esteem issues, eating disorders and so on. I have noticed an increase in my success rate since working this way compared to the early days when I used Six-Step Reframing more frequently. However, I prefer Six Steps Reframing with symptoms where the unconscious produces the symptoms, migraine headaches, allergies and different forms of pain. As an example, I worked with a woman who had a heart that was growing, very high blood pressure and she could hear her heart thumping loudly while sitting still. She was a friend of the family, and I sensed that she wouldn't open herself up for hypnotic regressions of any kind. Instead, we induced hypnosis and did Six-Step Reframing using involuntary finger signals and fluctuations in her heart rhythm as well as signals. Her heart rhythm slowed down to normal during the session, and a follow-up with the doctor revealed that her blood pressure had returned to the ideal range. In cases like this, where the symptom is totally involuntary and hard to connect with any specific behavior,
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unconscious reframing ala Six Steps Reframing seems to be a good choice. Sadly, six months later, a new severe family conflict developed and she went back to her old symptoms and drugs instead of coming back to see me for additional sessions. Experiences like this has shown me that for Six-Step Reframing and other unconscious forms of reframing to have long-term effect, it is very helpful, and it makes the process more reliable if two factors are present. 1. The neural network associated with the symptom is active at the same time that you communicate with involuntary signals. So, if you want to work with a migraine or allergy or pain, the symptom should be active while you do the reframing. It doesn't seem to make a difference if you use the symptom itself as a signal (and increase in pain for "Yes", and a decrease for "No") or you use involuntary finger signals as long as the symptom is active as you do. 2. The neural network associated with the symptom and its memories is accessed and reframed. So, if the person has a phobia, you want to activate the fear, access the memories where they have been scared including the first event, and then release the emotion while preserving the learning's. Unless these two factors are dealt with, it's a strong chance that the symptom will come back after a certain amount of time, or that the" cure" is not complete. In the heart case and the cancer case described earlier, the neural network connected with symptoms was activated while we did the reframing, which is why I think the process worked initially. However, the memories and underlying conflicts that were behind the symptoms were not accessed and dealt with. I
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think this is why the symptoms returned. Also note that I had no commitment from these clients. Contrast this with the work I did with Pernille. In her case, we reframed the earlier memories, including what I think was the first event, but there were huge secondary gains in the present that justified her continuing to do the symptoms. My learning over the years has been that it's useful to work with the past memories connected with the presenting issue, and also make sure to work with present day obstacles like secondary gain. Having said all this, be aware that any identity, identification and belief is limiting. Identity is huge trap with the potential for many negative consequences. One consequence is that whenever we believe something, we have a tendency to look for all the things that confirm the belief while deleting anything that doesn't match. In other words, we don't pick up all the counterexamples and differences. It's the differences that we learn from. In Pernille's case, her strong identity was part of the problem. By strengthening the identity, we might be creating worse problems in the long term. So, using people's identities is a good idea, but strengthening beliefs and identifications isn't a very good idea. If you figure out how to do that in an elegant way, be sure to contact me and let me know. This is the reason I never do standard NLP techniques of changing beliefs. I prefer that the clients end up with no beliefs in the context that they were tormenting themselves. When I write that beliefs are limiting I am not only referring to so called negative beliefs, but supposedly positive beliefs as well. Think of people you have met who consider themselves very intelligent. Have you noticed how defensive these people often are to admitting mistakes, or engaging in activities that challenge their deeply held belief?
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CHAPTERS
MR. "I CAN'T PISS IN PUBLIC"
An academic professor (yep, he sure fit the profile) called me to help him with an embarrassing problem. He couldn't urinate in a public bathroom! In fact he hadn't done so in thirty years. Not only was it a very awkward problem, but a terribly time consuming one. Imagine all the planning that went into not only hiding his problem but also finding places to urinate where people couldn't spot him, especially while traveling and teaching. He further told me that he had never told anyone about his problem, and that he had been to other hypnotherapists but he couldn't be hypnotized. Just based on this phone conversation I could easily determine that he was one of those types that Virginia Satir would call a "Computer." He spoke with a monotone voice, using long sentences that never seemed to end, while never using I, ala "I feel." Instead there were sentences like: "One could think, a person might under the appropriate circumstance ... " and so on.
The Professor's Session One When I picked him up at the train station prior to our first appointment, I nearly went into a laughing fit. He was exactly as I had imagined him: looks, clothes, facial expression, just a prototype of the academic professor portrayed humorously in
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movies. After we sat down in my office, he leaned back in his chair, stroked his chin and initiated our conversation. Alfred: One can easily get discouraged by all these untested
treatments. Are there any double blind studies confirming your hypothesis? J.0rgen: The only thing that is doubly blind here is you being a fucking queer and not even knowing it yourself. I did this to jolt him out of his detached analytical state, and it worked. He went into shock first and then leaned forward with a bewildered look on his voice Alfred: What? NOOOOOf!! J.0rgen: Come on man, it must be fairly obvious! You're afraid
of getting an erection around guys, but I think you already know that deep inside. I went on for a while arguing that he must be a repressed homosexual, and that any psychologist could tell him that this all came down to repressed wet-sex fantasies. This strategy, adapted from Provocative Therapy author Frank Farrelly, involves deliberately hallucinating some highly unlikely interpretation or problem, has a tendency for clients to get really specific about what their problem is really fast. It also has a tendency to elicit self-assertiveness, humor, shock and confusion. At this stage Alfred was mainly in shock followed by confusion, which was exactly where I wanted him. Shock ensured that he wouldn't go into his ordinary analytical detached mode, and a state of confusion is great for opening the door for new learning's. It's a great way to get analyticals into hypnotic states. The simple reason for this is that the more attached the client is to being a certain way/playing a specific role, the more suggestible they will be when their current pattern is interrupted.
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I then handed him a bottle of water and told him to drink it as fast as he could. As soon as he did I started harassing him again exclaiming: "Jesus Christ, can't you even drink a bottle of water without simulating the movement of sucking someone's cock?" Alfred started laughing nervously and had no idea as to how to respond. Whatever expectations Alfred had before the session, he certainly wasn't expecting this. I can tell you that for sure. After a little while of this abuse, he started ranting and raving about how wrong I was about my observations desperately trying to convince me that he wasn't a homosexual and that he didn't have repressed wet sex fantasies. The more he did this the more emotional he got. The more he invested in proving me wrong, the more commitment and compliance I got. While waiting for all the water to take its toll, I told him that a Neanderthaler would never have the problem he had. He agreed. Therefore, I had him start moving like a Neanderthaler, screaming, shouting, breathing and moving like a monkey. This had the effect of radically shifting his state. We both cracked up and had a lot of fun. Well, at least I had fun. Someone once told someone else: "If you aren't going to enjoy your life, then I certainly will enjoy it for you." I think that's a great philosophy applied to clients. Suddenly, he had to urinate and off to the bathroom we went. For a while he just couldn't do it. He felt a tension in his stomach. So, I used Bandler's rotating feeling technique that I described earlier. He was still struggling and didn't quite get into it, so I told him to just act as if. In an attempt to make it more real for him, I asked him what color the feeling would have if it had one. He answered gray. I had him make the color yellow while he continued to rotate it and VOILA he started urinating. This time while someone stood next to him for the first time in thirty years. Since we had some
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momentum going, I decided to take him to a nearby hotel. We repeated the same procedure with the same result. To be honest, I don't know if the rotating feelings technique was the straw that broke the camel's back here, or if it was just the relief of escaping the harassment by urinating. Or maybe it was the thought "I have to prove to this madman that I am not a queer or sexual pervert by urinating in public." I view it as my job to make it harder to keep a ridiculous symptom like this, than it is to let it go. By making the therapy and tasks more severe than the symptom, the easy choice becomes letting the problem go. Keep in mind that he had never told anyone about his problem even though his wife must have known somehow. I gave him a homework pissing assignment. The assignment was to recruit a friend, drink a lot of water and bring the friend to some public place and urinate there. Frank was also to tell the friend of the problem that he had been carrying inside all these years.
The Professor's Session Two He entered my office claiming that nothing much had changed. When I enquired about his homework pis sing assignment, he reported that he had done it twice and successfully urinated both times. By now he had done something he hadn't done in thirty years four times, twice with me standing around and twice with two different friends.
J.argen: Sounds like an improvement to me. Alfred: It certainly is, but on both occasions it took a couple of minutes for me to urinate, but I can't stand around like this at urinals. People might think I am screwed up! J.argen: Afraid of showing your true colors Albert, still scared of getting that erection aren't you?
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Alfred: Absolutely notl I am a married man in case you haven't noticed. Jergen: Well, on paper you certainly are, but that ring won't help you much when you get erections in urinals while it just hangs there like a wet noodle when you're around your wife. Perhaps I should send you to a gay bar, curious about that one aren't you? Alfred: I am not going there I
At this point we had good rapport and linked enough pain to him keeping his problem that he accepted the ordeal I suggested. The ordeal was that he had to go to a public place and urinate every day. Before he went in, he had to drink enough water so that he really had to go. He was to further deliberately hold back from urinating exactly for two minutes. I asked him to do this, since he had claimed that it always took him a couple of minutes to urinate. I might as well have him do it voluntarily and with intention. In addition to this, he was to not leave until he had urinated, no matter how long it took. The ordeal would end when he was satisfied that the problem was solved. If he at any time started doing his problem again, it would mean that he would have to go back to the ordeal.
The Professor's Session Three When Albert entered my office for session three with yours truly, he reluctantly admitted that he had made some improvement, but the ordeal was hell and he couldn't live this way. At this point I offered going into hypnosis as an easier choice by telling him that I would free him from the ordeal if he were to go into hypnosis with me. Unless he solved it during hypnosis, he would have to go straight back to the ordeal.
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After securing Albert's commitment, we went straight to work using a rapid induction. I had him put his right hand on top of mine while closing his eyes, instructed him to press down as hard as he could for each number I counted. Then, at the same time, I pulled my hand away, pushed his head back and yelled sleep at the same time. We then went straight into an eye lock test as a convincer for hypnosis. I suggested that while he went deeper and deeper into hypnosis, I would count from five down to one and at the count of one, his eyes would be so heavy that the more he tried to open them the more locked down they would become. He passed the test and went into a pretty deep state. As a side note, when I started working with clients I very seldom did rapid or instant inductions. The few times I did them I reserved them for people who were hypnotically gifted. I assumed that they wouldn't work with the analyticals. I was wrong. After viewing some videos of Stephen Parkhill, known for his fantastic work with terminal illness, I started using them with analyticals. To my surprise it worked a lot better than I had ever imagined. Back to my session with Albert ... Following the induction and eye lock convincer I said the following: Jorgen: You have a feeling inside that you don't like, a feeling
that has everything to do with you not being able to piss in public ... You have tried avoiding the feeling, this time, it's time to face it and deal with it ... As I count from one to five that feeling grows as strong as it has ever been ... let that happen, this is the perfect time and place ... This was followed by a one to five count, suggesting that the feeling that had everything to do with his pissing in public problem grow more and more reaL
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J9rgen: There is the feeling Albert, where in your body do you feel it, and what do you feel. Albert: NOTHING!
This is an amusing response to get after attempting to build a strong feeling in his body. I didn't sense that his unconscious was resisting. He was in deep hypnosis, and there was something about the way he said "NOTHING." Jergen: That's great Albert, because sometimes nothing is
something ... and as you continue to focus on the feeling of nothing, I am going to count from ten to one, and at the count of one, you're going to be back at an event that has everything to do with the feeling of nothing. To give credit where credit is due, I picked up this and the way of regressing people back in time from Stephen Parkhill, who further credits Jerry Kein for teaching him much of what he knows about hypnotism. Parkhill and Kein are heavily influenced by the late Dave Elman whose work has been very useful for me and clients. For those of you who have only studied Erickson, I promise that studying Elman will complement your training in a superb way. After the ten to one count that followed: Jergen: First impressions, is it light or dark? Albert: Dark Jergen: Inside or outside? Albert: Inside, and I am feeling totally numb?
After a few seconds Albert got very uneasy and blurted out: "MY FATHER IS MOLESTING ME" as tears started going down his cheek. Then, anger started coming to the surface. Jergen: Float up above the event ... look down on it, and while
you're there... I want your unconscious to preserve the
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learning's from this event, so that you can let the negative emotions go ... Remember, it's not repressed emotions from the past that protect you, but the learning's. Float so that you're at least fifteen minutes above and before the event ... Turn around mentally and look towards NOW ... What happened to those old emotions ... Are they GONE NOW?
He claimed to have released the emotions, and further claimed that he had when I had him re-associate into the event. However, his non-verbals told a very different story. His jaw was tensed and tilted forward, fists clenched, lips thinner and eye browns down. He was so repressed that even though his nonverbal signs clearly suggested anger, he wasn't really in touch with it. This is one context where the traditional way of doing Time Line TherapyTM is less useful. If the client is very dissociated to begin with I would rather have them express it and own it before letting it go. Therefore, we did Chair Therapy, where he hallucinated his father in a chair in front of him and he really told him off. After a while I would have him become the father, then himself, alternating back and forth until we could reach a state of forgiveness. The forgiveness seemed genuine enough, although I wasn't quite convinced. I had him release negative emotions on all related events on his time line, did some testing and future pacing by sending him out in bathroom scenarios in the future. After Alfred opened his eyes he told me that he didn't know that he had been molested, never even suspected it, and could the information be trusted, had it all really happened? At the time of this session I had done changework for eight years, but I had never had anyone discover" abuse or molestation that they didn't already know about before the session. I had always been very perplexed by all the people who 1/
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claimed to recover repressed memories of abuse after discovering the molestation during hypnosis. Well, maybe not that perplexed considering how many therapists use leading language and questions during hypnotic regression. My regressions (a better term would be reconstructions since memory is largely a reconstruction process, where every time you access a memory you change it forever) is totally nondirective as the only questions I will ever ask are questions such as: "Are you inside or outside? Alone or with people? What happens next?" and so on. I told Albert the truth. The simple fact is that I don't know, and while hypnosis makes it easier to imagine and remember it doesn't make the memories more accurate or reliable. We had a long talk about false memory syndrome. Clients invent memories of abuse as result of being asked leading questions by a therapist who has often decided before the session starts what they should be looking for ala: "This person has been abused, now we need to find memories of the abuse. " The therapist will often ask questions such as: "Can you feel daddy becoming sexually aroused now that he is holding you?" sometimes resulting in clients creating a "memory" of it, and then they claim to have discovered abuse during hypnosis. To be fair, you don't need formal hypnosis or hypnotic regression for this phenomenon to take place. All you often need is a vulnerable client in a state of confusion and a therapist who digs for information in a leading way. While all of this is true, it is also true that traumatic memories can be repressed and be called forth later during hypnosis, and also outside of formal hypnosis. In other words, it's possible to be abused, repress the memory and have amnesia for years, and then later recall it. However, having said that, even if a repressed memory of abuse surfaces many years later, it doesn't necessarily mean that it
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happened or that it happened that way. It's next to impossible to find out how accurate the memory is. This discussion helped Albert calm down, and I concluded the session by saying: "I don't know if this abuse happened or not, but we seemed to have resolved something very real to your unconscious. If this emotional clearing helps you solve your problem, then that's all that really matter isn't it?" Albert agreed. I was disappointed when Albert came back and reported that the hypnotic regression hadn't helped him at all. He was still struggling while urinating in public. When clients report this, I take it as an indication that we haven't found the first event that the problem is connected to, or that we haven't quite resolved the negative emotions from the memories that we worked with. Another possibility is secondary gain, but I never start my sessions with parts work anymore. I pretty much always attempt to deal with the memories associated with the state that drives the problem before doing any parts or secondary gain work. So, there you have another trouble shooting tip from yours truly. Activate the state that drives the symptom, illness or behavior first. Use the state itself as an affect bridge back in time until you find the very first memory / reconstruction. Then help them reframe, relearn and let go of the old negative emotions on all related events. If you are convinced that you have done this, then there might be something in the present that is reinforcing the symptoms: some gain that they are getting out of it resulting in them not being willing to heal up. At this point, parts work might be in order. The only time I would start out with part reframing is if some" part" was preventing us in doing the state work to begin with. Remember also that although there is some neurological and physiological justification for the concept of parts, it still is a concept and just a way to frame and talk about things. So, use
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the concept if the client presents it by saying something to the effect of: "Part of me wants to X and another part of me wants to Y." But don't start believing in the concept of parts as many people do. As John Grinder is fond of saying: "Working with parts can be
very useful until you start believing in it." There is one more thing to keep in mind. You might have resolved everything related to anger, but there might be another emotion that still needs to be dealt with for complete resolution. Another trance, another regression, and up came the same notion of NOTHING, and we ended up in exactly the same place in the same way. There was nothing earlier to be found, there was no other emotion present: the whole thing seemed pretty cleared up. After redoing forgiveness and relearning, having him experience himself and his experience of father, I had hoped that we would have integrated whatever we needed to integrate. We finished up with some rehearsal of him being relaxed and confident in the future while urinating in public. Albert knew that it was up to him to either resolve this during the hypnosis, or go back to the ordeal and resolve it the hard way. A couple of weeks later I got an SMS from Albert where he wrote that he was terminating the therapy, disappointed in the results. This was clearly one of those limited therapeutic outcomes cases where some progress was made, but we didn't achieve complete resolution.
Wisdom of Hindsight So looking back on this experience, what the hell did I learn, if anything? Reflecting back I should have just gone for the ordeal. I would have made him keep it up until we got results, since that was where he was making the progress. However, I sensed
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that he wouldn't complete the ordeal. By offering trance at this point he actually responded to it. I am very sure that he wouldn't have done so during the first couple of sessions. The reason I went for the regression is because I thought that if we could activate the state that was driving the urination problem, we could reframe all the memories connected to his problem, thereby solving it. This is my preferred way of doing changework. You might be wondering why I didn't go for that to begin with. The simple reason was that he wasn't ready. I did several covert tests, but he just didn't respond. Therefore, my strategy was to make trance the easy way out of a severe ordeal, or if he wouldn't take it, have him resolve it by doing the ordeal. In light of all this, I am not quite sure what I could have done differently. At least we got some therapeutic gain, even if it wasn't all that we were looking for. But I did learn one thing I already knew: the importance of the client having a felt experience of them creating the problem and a willingness to own the problem. For those of you who do Gestalt Therapy where Chair Therapy is common, there is a pit you could easily fall into. When clients explode with anger and beat some pillow to death, they are often not in touch with the anger at all. Quite simply, just as some people repress emotions to the point where they can't consciously feel them at all, some people escape emotion by creating a lot of drama. While punching the pillows and doing rage the client is no longer really feeling the emotion and owning his experience. I am more than a little skeptical of Chair Work. Encouraging people to emote, create drama, project the emotion onto some dead relative and play victim while in deep hypnosis is not a good idea. So, if you are going to use Chair Work, then make sure that the client is feeling his emotions, being present with it, and make sure that they don't project it outwards. Even at the last session he kept talking
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about how certain situations "made" him struggle with urinating in public (at least he was now doing it).
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CHAPTER 6
HARALD THE ASTHMATIC
Harald was a guy in his late forties who had a severe allergy to cats as well as asthma. He wasn't really dissociated like many of the rest of the people described in this chapter, but he was rather skeptical about the whole thing.
Harald's Session One In the first session he wanted to work on his allergy. We started out with a basic hypnosis pre-talk (preparation for hypnosis), designed to build his expectancy, commitment and erase whatever fears or misconceptions he might have. Following the pre-talk, we did a rapid induction followed by an attempt to bring up the feeling that had everything to do with the allergy. While we are on the subject of allergies, I should tell you that I work with them in exactly the same way I would work with a deep-rooted fear. I assume that allergies are just associations to some traumatic event. As an example, someone experiences intense grief and at the same time there is a lot of pollen in the in the air. Many times this will result in an allergic reaction. Later whenever there is pollen in the air the unconscious and immune system will signal to get out of the situation by creating an allergic reaction. Despite that some people don't develop allergies, and some things seem easy to develop allergies for (pollen, certain foods, cat hair) while other things people don't, going for the emotion
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behind the allergy and clearing it works wonders for eliminating allergic responses. In the past I would use Robert Diltls Allergy Cure, a pattern where you use anchoring to retrain the immune system and SixStep Reframing as well to deal with secondary gains. I have a very good success rate whenever the exact substance is known, and there is one or just a couple of very concrete allergies. Despite initial success, the number of people who recreated their allergy at a later time was way too high, too high for a guy with a "No Cure, No Pay Policy." In addition to this, if someone came in with a bunch of allergies and a burnt out immune system, I very seldom got any results to speak of. This has changed dramatically using the feeling behind the allergies as an affect bridge back in time to reframe the memories it's connected to. I must also add that my training in Time Line TherapyTM didn't help me much here. While TLT often worked wonders with issues where the emotion was known to the conscious mind. The process can easily turn into an intellectual leftbrained type exercise, exactly the thing we want to avoid. Back to our session with Harald and what happened after the induction and eye lock test. Jargen: You have a feeling inside that you don't like ... a feeling that has everything to do with you developing your allergy for cats and dogs ... you have tried running from it, drugging it away ... this time it's time to face it. After the now infamous one to five count. Harald: I can't feel anything, it's blank. This response seems similar to the one I got from Albert, but it was actually quite different. Harald was in hypnosis, but seemed to shut down or flatten out when I attempted to excite
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the feeling behind the allergies. When this happens, as it does from time to time, I will go for apart's reframe. Jsrgen: Open your eyes, we need to talk ... cause you need to be protected ... YOU, Harald's unconscious is trying to protect Harald from pain by not letting him get in touch with the emotions and memories that have everything to do with his allergy. Your intent is good, but repressing these old emotions aren't good for the body, and he can handle it. He went through it once more and then he had far less resources than he has now. Jsrgen: .. .AND it's the learning's from those past events and memories that protect him ... so by learning what you need you will have all the protection you need. Will you, Harald unconscious, support us in protecting Harald in a way that is healthy and mature? Harald was still in hypnosis and nodding along as I spoke, so I knew his unconscious was onboard. We re-did the induction and the one to five count, and up came a strong feeling of sadness. After tracing the feeling back in time, Harald ended up at age five in a scene where he found his grandfather dead. After clearing the sadness from this memory and all related memories his allergies cleared up.
Harald's Session Two A couple of months later Harald came back for a second session. He was amused and happy that his old allergy was gone. He had tested it on a number of occasions and he had handled it like a champ. No symptoms at all! For this session Harald wanted to work on his asthma. The fact that he had let go of the allergies had opened his mind for
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the possibility that perhaps we could do something with the asthma as well. Harald had always viewed asthma as a physical problem, but when he reflected back he could see a psychological component. As an example, every time he went cycling he would bring an inhaler with him and keep it in his pocket. Despite feeling fine when cycling, if he discovered that he had forgot to bring his inhaler, that discovery would be enough to trigger an asthmatic attack. This information gave me the perfect opening and an ideal context to help him create an asthmatic attack in my office. My strategy for dealing with asthma is a little bit different than dealing with allergies. When doing allergy work I am looking to activate the feeling inside that has everything to do with the allergies. The difference with asthma is that my goal is to have them create an asthma attack and use the asthma itself as an affect bridge back in time to find out what it's connected to. Having said that, I have also noted that allergies often seem to trigger asthma. Therefore, clearing up the allergies has made it so that many of my clients have been able to quit asthma medication and be free of the symptoms, all of this without addressing the asthma directly. However, this was not the case with Harald evidenced by the fact that his allergies were gone, but the asthma was still there. Quite amusingly, the exact same thing happened that happened the last time. After a rapid hand drop induction into hypnosis I had him remember a time when he couldn't find the inhaler. I had him step into the image and make it bigger and brighter, turn the volume up and suggested that an asthmatic attack would build up as I counted from one to five. Nothing happened. Just like what happened the last time initially. I just had him open his eyes and used the exact same parts reframe.
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We then re-did it and this time he went into a VERY strong asthmatic attack. This time he ended up back at age eighteen, which was when he had his first asthmatic attack. He had been driving a car that he had borrowed from someone and was in rush hour traffic with no possibility of getting out of the car. He had a cold and a flu and felt his allergy come on quite strongly. It turned out that a car filled with dog hair and a severe cold was not a good combination. He started having a hard time breathing, panicked and developed an asthma attack. We attempted to regress him further back in time, but we ended up in the exact same memory in the car time and time again. Seems like we had cleared up the rest during the allergy work we did. We then reframed the memory and all related memories in the usual way. After some testing we re-did the rapid induction and attempted to create an asthmatic attack again. This time he couldn't do it. Before we did it I asked his unconscious to recreate the asthma if there was more stuff to clear, and to not create asthma if we were done. This was quite a convincer for his conscious mind. Thirty minutes earlier he had created an asthma attack in my office using his own mind, and now he couldn't do it. He left my office quite convinced that something must have happened. This felt experience is so very important in doing changework. As soon as a client emotionally gets that he can choose to create an asthmatic attack, he can choose not to create it again. It's not enough usually for many clients to be told that they are choosing their symptoms. They need the felt experience of creating it and then choosing not to create it. As an example, I recently worked with a very analytical guy who struggled with a lot of fear issues and panic attacks. He had done a lot of therapy, especially cognitive behavioral therapy, through which
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he had learned to challenge his distorted thinking patterns. He had also challenged himself by exposing himself to the different contexts where he would feel the fear. As soon as he entered my office I told him the following:
"You have learned to challenge your thinking and you have challenged yourself by doing the different things you fear doing. That is very good! You theoretically know how to think, BUT you still feel the fear. The result of this is that you are logically thinking one thing while feeling very different, as if the thoughts you have learned to think don't really affect how you feel. So, you have gained a lot by knowing that you can handle yourself despite the fear and you do it, but it still feels like a strain to do it. True or false?" He lit up like a Christmas tree and said: "That's exactly it!"
Dear reader, do you see where this is going? I further asked him if he had ever felt fear in the therapy office while working on his distorted thinking. The answer quite predictably was "NO." I then told him that for therapy to be effective the fear needed to be activated in his body while challenging his thinking patterns. It's a bit like self-defense training and martial arts. Not only are most of the techniques ineffective, but in most schools and systems, the training sucks as well. It sucks because the training is done in a controlled environment of calm and cooperation with no stress, adrenaline or fear. As a result, the practitioners get really good at doing their stuff in that environment. However, skills practiced in a choreographed way in a controlled environment doesn't prepare you for the shock, adrenaline rush, breathing problems and savage energy of a sociopath committed to taking your head off. You will be quite
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lucky if there is any transfer of skill between the states you are in and the state you will be in while in a real encounter. For the skills to be available during high stress, the techniques needs to be practiced in that state, in a simulation as close to reality as you can possibly get. The same thing goes for changework. The fear needs to be activated while you challenge the distorted thinking. If you can do that, then you get results. Jens (the guy from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) understood and I told him that we would get spectacular results by doing the work while he felt fear in his body. To be fair his former therapist had attempted to get him in touch with the fear by doing different imagery techniques, but the guy was just too analytical. After a quick conscious/unconscious dissociation, I explained to his unconscious what we were about to do. His involuntary head nodded showing that the boss was onboard. With a super-analytical like Jens, don't do progressive relaxation inductions or imagery inductions. It's not that these clients can't go into hypnosis, it's just that they don't respond well to the standard relaxation stuff where people are told to relax a zillion times and then to imagine different things. Sadly, these inductions are the only tools many hypnotherapists have in their toolbox. Instead we used a rapid hand drop induction, it's short and sweet and doesn't give those goddamn analyticals time to analyze anything. Jens went right into a deep hypnotic state and in this state we created a severe panic attack and regressed right off of it to reframe the state-dependent memories. Since Jens was very much a perfectionist who had to do things perfectly, he was tasked to go out and do five things obviously wrong before the next session. He was to be an absolute perfectionist when doing his screw ups so that no one could even suspect that he was screwing things up on purpose.
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We later did another session and when I last heard from he was doing great. Oh, in case you thought I had forgotten about Harald, I haven't. He sent me an SMS that night. He had been cycling without medication or an inhaler, and to his surprise there were no symptoms.
Harald's Session Three About six months went by before I heard from Harald again. When he called me he was quite fatigued after working long hours with little time off for some time. He had a cold and flu symptoms and had experienced those for a couple of weeks. During this period of fatigue and flu symptoms his allergy had started emerging again, as well as his asthmatic symptoms. The symptoms were very mild, maybe fifteen to twenty percent of what they used to be. Before we started the session Harald agreed to take some time off and agreed to meditate twice a day for at least two weeks. I told Harald that he had done a great job in healing, and that there was something left inside ... unresolved ... which had everything to do with these symptoms reemerging. Another rapid induction, another regression and this time he ended up back at some stuff in his late teens. We cleared it out the usual way, and after this session Harald's symptoms disappeared again. When I last heard from there was no allergy and no asthma. This case is an example of the fact that when a symptom comes back, it's not a failure. It's best to just view it as something in life has triggered something that's unresolved and needs to be dealt with inside the person. All you need to do is activate whatever states that are driving the symptoms until there is nothing left to drive the symptoms.
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CHAPTER 7
A CASE OF SEVERE TINNITUS
Gabriel called me on the phone after reading about a successful allergy cure I had done live for the local newspaper. His complaint was constant and very often severe tinnitus. He had developed tinnitus about ten years prior to calling me right after going of the antidepressants that his doctor had told him to take. He had taken these to cope with a couple of panic attacks he had experienced at work. I probed for what had happened in his life in the period before he had his panic attacks, but Gabriel didn't give me anything. As a matter of fact the whole idea that there was some connection between what he had been doing at the time and his panic attacks was a notion that he had never really entertained. Obviously, Gabriel was no believer in what I was doing, but he was desperate enough to try pretty much anything at this point. The first session was a "disaster". When working with tinnitus I do a rapid induction and excite the feeling they have inside that has everything to do with the tinnitus. Same old stuff as I do with allergies, asthma or any other presenting problem they might have. Tinnitus is a tough one. I have had a couple of so-called "spontaneous remissions." Most of the time I have been able to help clients make improvement, sometimes major other times minor. I don't have a lot of experience with tinnitus and most of the successes have occurred when people have seen me for something else, often some fear-based issue. When we clear that they spontaneously improve the tinnitus.
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Gabriel resisted the hand drop induction, as well as confusion inductions and metaphor inductions. He wouldn't bring up any feelings. He obviously didn't regress back in time, and claimed that he couldn't make pictures at all. For those of you who have studied Elman style hypnosis, the answer is "Yes." I had done a long hypnosis pre-talk designed to build expectancy and eliminate any misconceptions and fears, but without any result. I felt that the session was so bad that I told Gabriel that I wouldn't be able to help him. I told him to leave and not pay me. Gabriel begged me to help him with tears in his eyes: "Couldn't we do something?" I liked Gabriel. He seemed sincere and honest, but he just didn't respond. I thought to myself: "Bloody hell, why not?" I want to help the guy and even though I am totally stuck I might learn something. A couple of weeks before I saw Gabriel I had worked with another super analytical named Arne who wanted me to help him cure his allergies and asthma. Same story, just a different name. Despite my best efforts I wasn't able to get a workable state of hypnosis or the attention of his unconscious at all. So, I decided to do something different. I placed a piece of paper on the floor. I further told Arne to see himself over there in the strongest memory of an asthma attack he had ever had. Arne was good at making pictures so he followed along. I then had him physically step over onto the piece of paper, close his eyes and associate into the memory. Of course, the intent here is to have him produce an asthmatic attack. As you might imagine, nothing happened at all. If you have been to a New Code NLP seminar (detailed instructions on New Code follows in the next chapter) with John Grinder, you will recognize that we just did step one and two of the New Code Change Format. Let me give you a quick troubleshooting tip. After having the client select a troubling context
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(Step One), and then step into the hallucinated context (Step Two), if the client doesn't get pretty strongly in touch with the feelings in Step Two, then you don't have anything. I told Arne that we would do a game. It's called the Alphabet Game (more on this Game in the next chapter) and the intent of the game is to create a high performance state where the unconscious can select the proper resources for the context the client has selected. Step Three is to have the client reenter the selected context while in the high performance state. If done correctly the high performance state will be linked to the sensory representations that used to trigger the old problem. You need to keep two things in mind here. The quality of the state you produce during the game will determine the quality of the intervention. Also, the more real you can make the hallucinated context for the client, in other words, the stronger the feeling, and the greater the change. Arne was an athlete so he was able to produce a pretty decent high performance state. Actually, I like the term "Flow State" a lot better so from here on forward I am going to use that term. Before he started playing the game, I told him that the intention when he reentered the context was to make the context as real as possible. In other words, to produce an asthmatic attack. If we can't do that, then we don't have much. This time he produced a mini asthmatic attack as he reentered the context. I suggested that the feeling would get stronger as I counted from one to five, and then we used the mini asthma attack as an affect bridge back in time to find the first event that it was connected to. Notice that I am saying connected to, not caused by. Big difference! He ended up reconstructing something from age four. We did the usual stuff to help him heal up. When Arne came back for session two he told me that he still had asthma and allergies,
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but that the allergies hadn't been quite as severe as they used to be. The asthma had been a little bit better as well. I asked him when he had experienced the strongest symptoms during the week that had gone by between the sessions. Same old stuff, we spatially anchored the context to a place on the floor, did the Alphabet Game until he was in a good flow state, then sent him back into the context. His chest tightened as his breath became more constricted. We regressed of it back in time and ended up at the same place. That's a sure sign that we hadn't quite resolved the stuff that we had dealt with the last time. I never heard from Arne after this session so I have no idea what the results were. If I were to guess I would predict some improvement, but nothing close to a remission or cure. Still, I was excited about what we had done. Never before had I thought to use a New Code Game to set up a hypnotic regression, especially for a guy who was totally unresponsive. Since this session I have used New Code Games to set up regressions a few times and more often than not. It has worked out just fine. I had just learned another tool to handle my beloved analyticals. Believe me, whenever I discover that, I am a happy camper indeed. As you might imagine I gave this a shot with Gabriel as well, but nothing. Sometimes movement and games that activate the person's physiology is a great way to a workable state with people who just won't respond to a "mental" approach, but Gabriel would have none of it. He just didn't go into a workable flow state using the Alphabet Game or the NASA Game (another new code game presented in the next chapter). So, I told him to go home and practice the Alphabet Game hoping that some practice, especially in a context where he didn't have to perform, would help him to get more into it. In case you got your hopes up, it didn't.
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Since I had absolutely no idea what to do to help this guy out, my frustration grew. In the preceding days and then, suddenly, in the middle of a meditation, an idea popped up: "Why not have him model someone who is good at hypnosis?" My sister was home on vacation from her biology studies so I had her help me out. I have used her as an actor a few times with clients and she is quite good at hypnosis as well. Therefore, I hypnotized her to hypnotize him when he came in the next time. While Karine (my sister) waited in another room I attempted to hypnotize Gabriel again knowing that he would resist everything I did, but that was exactly what I wanted him to do anyway. I wanted all his resistances linked to me and to the chair he sat in. Then after a while I had him shift to another chair while Karine came into the room in a deep trance. Could he resist being hypnotized by a young attractive woman already in a trance feeling good? She matched and mirrored him with the intent of pulling him into her trance. She would match his breathing rate and then slowly slipped into a trance, the intent being for him to follow her. Gabriel started responding but just a little bit, nothing major, but some small signs that he was responding somewhat. This told me that it was time for some fractionation. In case you don't know by fractionation I mean inducing hypnosis, bringing the person out of hypnosis and then immediately back into a hypnotic state. I instructed Gabriel in matching Karine's physiology including facial expressions, breathing, posture and so on. While Gabriel did this I asked Karine about previous trance experiences. Questions like: "Where were you? What was going on? What was the first signal you got from yourself that let you know you were GOING INTO TRANCE .. ? And then what happens as you go even deeper .. ?"
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By searching for the information Karine would go into trance, and he would follow very slightly. I would then talk a little bit fluff bringing Karine out of trance. After a little while I would ask about previous trance experiences again, and as a result she would reenter trance a little bit deeper than the last time. We did this fractionation, bringing her in and out of trance, a little bit deeper every time for about an hour. She ended up in a deep hypnotic state while he was in what you could call a light hypnotic state. Following this Gabriel was given a task. He was to find people who were good at getting absorbed into experiences, the people who really got into movies, books and daydreaming. Gabriel was further instructed to have these people relieve these experiences while he matched their physiology. The intent here was for Gabriel to model the skill of being able to get absorbed into experiences, especially internal experience. To do this I also taught him to ask specifying questions, more specifically: "Which specifically?" for nouns and "How specifically?" for verbs. Gabriel carne back a month later and reported that he had improved in his ability to get absorbed in experiences. This was a guy who in the first session told me that he never daydreamed and now he had even done a little bit of that. My goal for Gabriel with all this modeling was to develop his ability to do imagery to the point where he could create some new synesthesia patterns. Specifically, I was looking for him to turn the sound into a picture or movie, then changing the submodalities of the movie to affect the tinnitus. First of all I helped him elicit his social panorama. I got this idea from a book named "Social Panoramas" by a Lucas Derks. Derks' idea is that we represent! construct the people in our lives visually and that it's where we place these pictures spatially in this panorama that determines how we feel about them.
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I had Gabriel imagine that he was in the center and that around him were the people important to him. He was asked: "Where do you see your wife? Your daughter? Your son?" and so on including people he liked, were neutral about and even people he disliked. Of course, he felt that he was just making all this stuff up, but something very funny happened when I had him push pictures of his wife and kids far off into the distance. He suddenly reacted emotionally. Suddenly he had an experience of intentionally changing how he felt by shifting an internal image. When he pulled the pictures of his dear family members closer again, he once again felt a significant shift in how he felt. Another troubleshooting tip from yours truly: If you want to train someone to create strong synesthesias (in this case create a feeling based upon an image) use something that's likely to trigger an emotional response. Instead of using the standard stuff of having someone imagine that they are walking on the beach or hiking in the woods, go for the social panorama. Once you know who is important to them and where they are placed spatially, have fun and have them attempt to put a person they dislike in the place reserved spatially for a loved one. They won't do it! The whole thing will suddenly become very real to them. As I did this with Gabriel, his beloved wife was straight in front of him. When I had him push her away off into the distance he experienced an immediate state shift. If it isn't already obvious the reason I recommend going for the social panorama is because nothing triggers emotions more than close family and loved ones, unless they experienced some intense trauma on the beach or in the woods. But we are not looking for trauma here, we are looking for comfort in directing internal experience as well as creating more neurological choice. This is also a covert way of asking for "Yes" and "No" signals from the unconscious. At the same time as he becomes aware of
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his own signals you can calibrate them while they experience the "Yes" and "No" signal. This has another subtle benefit as well. In my experience almost all problems clients see me for are related somehow with their close relationships. So, when there is a shift in the social panoramas, be aware of nonverbal shifts and increase or decrease in symptoms when you manipulate the images and their position. I have had several clients who suddenly noticed the relationship between some symptom and their relationships. By moving images around the symptoms have gone up or down. This not only gives insight, but choice as well. No such thing happened with Gabriel. Nothing we did with his social panorama impacted his tinnitus one way or the other. However, now he had a felt experience of having some choices. THAT is a big key to successful changework in my opinion. Our next step was for Gabriel to close his eyes and go into a state of focused attention and tune into his tinnitus. When I asked him to rate his tinnitus on a scale from one to ten, he answered six. I followed up with asking Gabriel: "If that sound in your head was a picture ... what would it look like?" He started constructing an image of a grinding saw. He was further asked what that grinding saw looked like. The submodalities of the movie and the sounds accompanying the movie were elicited. This is a great strategy for pain control in case you were wondering. If you can get them to create an image of the pain their no longer stuck in their feelings. Then you can alter the picture and thereby effect the feelings again. When I had him make the picture of the saw smaller and experimented with adjusting the auditory submodalities there was no change in the tinnitus.
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In a last desperate attempt to make something happen I asked him which internal eye he was seeing the saw through. He paused for a little while before saying: "My right eye." He was told to slowly... in a way that was comfortable to him ... to shift his attention over to the other internal eye and notice what it looked like from there. VOILA another state shift and a reduction in the tinnitus from six to three on his discomfort scale took place. To conclude the session, he was tasked with practicing what we had just done and he was taught how to meditate with the instruction to mediate for fifteen minutes twice a day. Once again it's important for me to give credit where credit is due. I got the idea to switch the internal eye from a book called The Other Minds Eye by Al Sargent. I have no idea how accurate this idea of another internal eye is, but in this case and a few others it has proved to be a useful concept. That's all that really matters! We met a few weeks later to do another session, but for some strange reason Gabriel was never able to replicate what he did in that wonderful previous session where he was able to lower the volume on his tinnitus. Despite this, however, he claimed that there was some minor general improvement. Since then Gabriel was in a home accident and later had some flue type symptoms, which increased the sound on the tinnitus. Nothing we did had any effect on the tinnitus whatsoever. I called Gabriel's wife after the session with the proposal that she meet me to learn how to hypnotize Gabriel while he was asleep. Gabriel agreed to this intervention, as it seemed as a great way to bypass his conscious mind and directly access the unconscious. As far as I know she succeeded in attaching hypnosis to sleep once, but nothing spectacular came out of it. At this point Gabriel is on my mind as I am trying to figure out what to do next. Even though the results here weren't too
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impressive, I learned a lot. Whenever I get a new idea I know that Gabriel will be eager to test it out. Gabriel was also the first client of mine who did a disciplined modeling project with the intent to learn how to go into a workable state of hypnosis. Undoubtedly, Gabriel improved his ability to go into hypnosis, got better at being absorbed in an experience, got in touch with his feelings better and improved in his ability to make internal images in consciousness. Having said that, he never got close to a deep hypnotic state. Another disappointing factor is that once he stopped doing the modeling he seemed to lose the skills he gained from doing it pretty fast. I have heard that this often happens with others who have undergone training programs to improve their ability to go into hypnosis. They improve, but seem to pretty much lose it all after the training is done. Admittedly, this is a mystery to me and I have no good answer or explanation to offer for this strange phenomena.
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CHAPTER 8
WHEN NOTHING WORKS
So, what do you do when nothing works? Well, if you haven't got client commitment, you do what you can to build that or you let them go. If the client is committed and after you have hit them with everything including the kitchen sink, probably frustrated as hell, then it's time for a severe ordeal. In my opinion, the whole point in ordeals is to make it harder for the client to keep his symptom than to let it go.
The Girl Who Wouldn't Close Her Eyes Jenny was a sixteen-year-old girl who wanted to get relief from a number of different phobias and a general sense of anxiety and low levels of confidence. While she claimed that she wanted relief, she was at the same time very passive aggressive. No matter what I said or did she would apparently comply, but at the same time not quite do it. Her most severe phobia was to lie down on her back. It didn't matter if it was on a bed, a couch, the beach or anything else, a strong feeling of terror would rush through her body. She had a few other phobias as well, but this was the most intense. You're probably wondering if she had been raped or sexually molested in some way, but she claimed that nothing traumatic had ever happened in any of the contexts where she did her phobia. Her story is that she had been on a boat trip on the lake with her family one day. Everything was fantastic but suddenly out of the blue a strong panic attack exploded in her body. 173
I have heard many similar stories throughout the years where people claim no connection between their symptoms and how they life their life, but then once they go into deep hypnosis a VERY different story ensues. I had no doubt that the same thing would happen to Jenny, but I couldn't even get her to close her eyes for more than a couple of seconds! When I asked her to close her eyes, even after a hypnotic pre-talk, she would almost instantly open them claiming that an uncontrollable fear entered her body as soon as she closed her eyes. During the next hour I did my best to utilize her weird behavior by instructing her to continue to keep those eyes open as she started at a point. She was instructed to fight fatigue and to not CLOSE THOSE EYES, no matter how tired they got. The embedded command to close those eyes was mentioned again and again while I told her different metaphors about overcoming fear and a few other things. After a very long time her eyes closed and I attempted to use her fear as an affect bridge back in time. It soon became very obvious that she wasn't going to release anything in the office, at least not that day. Before the next session a few days later I got a phone call from her rather skeptical mother who was concerned if I knew what I was doing. Despite knowing a former client whom I had helped totally turn her life around and who had recommended me, the mother was concerned that since I had a reputation as a very brief therapist, her daughter's self-esteem might be damaged if she didn't change quickly. The mother further told me that her daughter didn't like me much, felt like resisting me, and hadn't improved at all since the session. That the girl had a lot of resistance towards me could be utilized. She was clearly extremely stubborn. These were all factors to consider in creating a strategy to help her out. Another factor to consider was that she was seeing a psychologist for all these issues. The psychologist had told her that change took a 174
lot of time. The fact that she adored her psychologist and believed in her so strongly made it foolish to directly challenge the psychologist's idea. A quick analysis made three things obvious to me. 1. Her resistance towards quick changes and me would
have to be utilized somehow. 2. Her stubbornness would be an ideal resource to utilize to help her get over her fear over an acceptable time frame. 3. She was going to do the change on her own. Since she resisted formal techniques and wouldn't change in the office, my job was to ensure that the problem turned out to be harder to keep than let go by using an ordeal. As Jenny walked into my office for her second session I started ordering her around. I further told her that I had an idea that would help only very determined people to solve problems like the ones she had, and that I would get back to it later. This was done to build suspense and response potential. We went straight into the New Code Change Format (more on the format later) but with the intent to fail. I knew that Jenny wanted to defeat me, and I wanted all her resistance linked to my office and me. We didn't need to use an imagery context since lying down on my couch on her back was enough to trigger intense fear. After having done so, she was instructed in playing the Alphabet Game. The whole idea was to create a high performance, or flow state if you will, and then link that state to the context where she did her problem. As I had predicted she sabotaged her own attempts to create a flow state. After she had worked on it for some time I had her reenter the couch on her back. I acted as if I really believed that we had cleared her fear and done a wonderful job by putting
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myself into a very enthusiastic physiology. She was absolutely delighted to crank up her fear, proving that she had defeated her prick therapist and shattering to pieces my overt expectation that the technique would work. It was easy to see that she very much enjoyed this. I directed her to another part of the room with the words: "That stuff I tried over there clearly didn't work." I took full responsibility for her therapeutic failure, admitted defeat and fully acknowledged that none of my quick-change tricks had worked. Since she now felt significant and I had given (by admitting defeat), it was now her turn to give something back. I had also given her a couple of hints during the session that there was a solution to her problem, but only for the very determined. The identity of being determined and stubborn was a very strong one. Now we had enough leverage to utilize it to create change. Jenny was told that the solution for the very determined was not illegal, immoral or fattening, but really required some stubbornness. She was also told that I needed her commitment before I told her exactly what it was. Before I asked for her commitment I played the devil's advocate by doubting that she really had it in her to complete the assignment, that maybe she was all talk and no show. When I got her commitment I told her that I wanted her to lie down in bed every night turning towards her back as far as she could. She claimed that she always slept on her side or on her stomach. While partly on her back she was to lie there for exactly thirty minutes. She was to use a stopwatch and maintain a position where she felt fear. Another part of the ordeal was to draw how her fear would look like if it was an image, a picture or a movie with plots and characters. Her task was to continue this religiously every night until the problem was resolved. Before she left the office she also agreed to give me a call every two weeks to give an update on how she was progressing.
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Well, you guessed it: she defeated me again by resolving her fears. She religiously followed the ordeal and it took her five months to get a complete resolution. All the other fears shifted automatically as she eliminated her main fear. Why did this work? 1. She got to defeat me once again (by changing). For an insecure and stubborn teenager with a lot of resistance, defeating a prick therapist twice and solving her problem is a pretty good deal! 2. The ordeal utilized her determination and model of the world about change taking time. In this way she did the change on her own terms. 3. Having to draw pictures for half an hour in an awkward position for thirty minutes every night made it a lot easier to let go of her problem than to keep it. In addition to this it might have taken her five months to readjust her identity and learn to satisfy her needs in other ways. Perhaps the drawings helped her in addition to getting her out of her feelings and into another rep system, to metaphorically solve whatever conflicts were the source of the fear to begin with. In closing, it's natural to think that the disciplined constant desensitization and exposure to her fear helped her overcome it as well. For those of you that might think that it was all about desensitization, this method had been attempted with her psychologist in the past with no effect whatsoever. One more thing, if you as an agent of change can allow yourself to be flexible enough to fail to succeed, then you can help some clients do some wonderful stuff. As you can see from this and other cases in this book, ordeals are a major key to the work I do. Let me give my preferred using ordeals with clients.
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First of all, they are best done as a last resort. It's beneficial that the client's pain levels are amped up a bit, the more frustrated the better. You absolutely need commitment. High levels of pain associated with the unwanted behavior are most often a great way of ensuring that. Having said that, here is a general formula. 1. Clearly Define The Unwanted Behavior Or Symptom Your goal here is to identify when they do this behavior, as well as how they do it, and with whom they do it. But don't stop there, what's the payoff? What are they getting out of doing this? 2. Create the Ordeal It's important that the ordeal be severe enough to overcome the symptom. The whole idea is to have them commit to doing something that makes it a lot easier to let go of the symptom than keeping it. My goal is to have the ordeal structured in such a way that it eliminates the need to have the problem by taking away the presuppositions, frames and social role necessary to have the problem. If you think back to Martin the Handshaker, the guy who experienced involuntary shaking of his hands whenever he did used them in front of other people. There were two things he did that I utilized to create the ordeal 1. His verbal statement: "I am afraid of how others perceive me when they see me shake like an idiot." 2. His mismatching tendencies. When I told him to relax he tensed up. When he wrote the large poster: "LIVE ENTERTAINMENT!" offering a free laugh at his expense in the cafeteria at a specified time, he had changed his own frame of reference. There was
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little need to worry about what others would think, which I always translate to: "What will I think?" He had now framed the experience as a humorous one. I also knew that he feared people laughing beforehand, but by framing it like this, there was no problem at all. In addition to this, in the past he had tried to suppress the shake, which made it worse. It was clear that if I could get him to voluntarily do it, there would be no fear or stress around if it would happen involuntarily. By having him agree to increase the shaking if it occurred, I was very sure that he would mismatch me by turning it down. This ordeal effectively eliminated two conditions necessary for the problem to exist. Some people recommend designing ordeals that are interesting and rewarding for a client, and this can certainly be useful. At the same time, never underestimate the power of pain. I prefer to either take away the conditions necessary for the problem to exist as in the above example, or scare them in another direction. The guy I threatened to expose as a homosexual in front of a crowd to get him into a store would be an example of a task based on this principle. If there is any obvious secondary gain connected with the unwanted symptom, the ordeal should be designed to eliminate that as well. Let's take a look at how this can be done. It's time to meet a former client of mine, a snotty and arrogant vice principal at a high school.
Meet Thomas: The Vice Principal Everyone Hated Thomas wanted me to help him to get rid of an intense fear of public speaking. This fear was especially crippling when he spoke in front of so called equals or people higher up on the hierarchy, like the principal. When I asked him if he ever felt
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any fear when he spoke in front of the students, he rolled his eyes and coldly uttered: "Not at alll" He further stated that he didn't respect the students whatsoever. After all, they were further down in the hierarchy than he was. At this point I decided to do the world a favor, including his students, himself, and even myself to be blunt. Those were the types of teachers I used to hate when I went to high school. What gift to get a client like this and get paid on top of it all!
Jergen: Thomas, you are an arrogant piece of shit! You know it and I know it. Of course you should fear people getting to know the real you. And they just might if you expose yourself. Would anyone like the real you? HELL NO! I sure as hell don't and I am pretty sure that no one else would either. Thomas: Come on now ... }0rgen: No, you come on! Cause it's a hell of a lot worse than that. You know that you are arrogant, but you didn't know that you are just a simple coward and a bully did you? Thomas: Huh? Jergen: Maybe you thought that you needed big muscles and to shove people around physically to be a bully? You're being a bully by hiding, by not truly offering what you have. Here other people give their all and you hold back because you don't have the guts to participate. You claim to respect these people, but it's all about you and your lack of selfrespect. You reject them before they get a chance to reject you. Of course, it's even worse. You're teaching your students the same hypocritical values where image and not being rejected is the ultimate goal. As a result, one never really contributes anything of value and life becomes passionless and joyless. You are a vice principal who teaches incompetence and hypocrisy, while claiming to be about learning and growth. Can you get any lower? I bet you get angry whenever some independent student challenges your knowledge and authority, 180
because maintaining you identity and status as important and perfect is more important than the students learning. So, you punish by giving bad grades, but you reward the students who suck up to you! Thomas was stunned as I went on like this for probably twenty minutes, never letting him even get in a word. I didn't do this stuff humorously at all as I often do when I provoke clients. No, I was dead serious, spoke straight from the heart and was very confrontational. Thomas had already paid me for the session and had agreed on the phone to do whatever I told him. So, I had some anticipation and a lot of commitment going. I knew that he was a super left brainer, so I wasn't going to even bother with any hypnosis or standard NLP techniques. I also knew that the principal was celebrating his birthday the week thereafter, and that a lot of the people Thomas respected and would deeply fear speaking in front of would be present.
J0rgen: There is only one way for you to solve this and make it all right. I want you to write a letter to all the teachers at the school. I want you to apologize for being an arrogant bully all those years. I want you speak at the principal's birthday as well, and when you do, I want you to repeat the apology. Further, I want you to deliver all the letters in person. During the next few days, Thomas' fear increased more and more in his body, until it went over his threshold to a point where he got tired of feeling it. He just couldn't take it anymore. When he biked around to deliver the letters in person, he discovered that the recipients of the letter were very surprised and they pretty much all had a good laugh. When the big day finally arrived, he did exactly what I had instructed him to do. He even told people: "Not yet... I am not scared enough yet ... " when they first requested he give his
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speech. Thomas told them that he felt that he deserved to suffer more before he took center stage. He eventually spoke, admitted to being afraid, but for some strange reason not as scared as he used to be. After describing what happened in his body and how he really felt, he apologized for being a bully all those years. The people present easily identified with him, and he got loads of pleasant laughs combined with a standing ovation and tremendous support. Thomas told me the day after that it had felt as if a huge weight had been lifted of his shoulders. He was also extremely surprised at the tremendous support he had gotten. I had expected this and hoped that this would install a strong positive anchor associated with public speaking. The thing that surprised him the most however was that he really wasn't that fearful at all. However, a few days later he called and asked me: "What about next time, what do I do then?" I told him just to apologize again if he acted like a bully again. I also asked him to read a book that would teach him to challenge his own thinking patterns. He refused both tasks. I don't have any long-term feedback regarding this guy. He knows what to do if the fear is ever a problem again, but maybe he has decided that maintaining a perfect image is the most important thing after all. Clearly, he has the choice. I build anticipation by telling clients early in the session that I have an idea that is guaranteed to work, but let's get back to that a little later. The more painful and severe the symptom, the easier it is to get commitment. On top of this, the more you get them to invest in the changework the better. As an example, when I work with smokers, one of the things I require them to do is to write down every cigarette they smoke the week before they see me. They are required to write down the exact time, what they were doing as they lighted up and what they felt in their body right before smoking. If they fail to do this I will rip
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their list to pieces in front of them and throw them out of the office! Most will choose to come back despite the harsh treatment. When they do come back you can bet that they have a solid list and their commitment level has gone up. The majority of the smokers will also report smoking less. They state that it was a drag to have to get out the list. This is an example of how you can make an unwanted behavior more troublesome to keep. Another thing to remember is that people generally equate price with value. This is a shortcut to making decisions in a society suffering from information overload. The less we know about a subject and the more hurried we are, the more likely we are to use shortcuts like "high price means good product or value." Generally, the more people have to invest to get something, the more unavailable it is, the more they will appreciate it. Should you and I utilize this? You bet! Start today by having your clients wait at least a week or two before you see them even if you have available time tomorrow. Generally, I recommend that you don't give them evening appointments or weekend appointments if they work during the day. If you do that you will often get a stressed out client who might even be inclined to fall asleep in your office. By having them deliberately take some time off from work, you will get serious clients who have made the session the most important activity of the day. The rest of their day will be arranged to benefit full focus in the changework instead of the other way around. But, don't stop there! While you're at it increase your price as well. I am not going to tell you what you should charge, but the price should be an effort for the client. It should really feel like an investment. This doesn't mean that you can't work with someone who has little or no money. If they are genuinely poor and can't afford your regular fee, then give them a lower fee, but one that they have to struggle and prioritize to be able to pay you. If they
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have no money at all you can get them to assist you in other ordeals and have them be actors during some of your client work that you do outside of the therapy office. WARNING! Whatever you do, have them do the acting BEFORE you accept them as a client. Same thing with money, never ever allow them to pay after the therapy is completed, or pay half now half later. They need to invest first. As a result of that they will look for reasons to support their investment with the result being commitment. As soon as they have invested it's likely that they will build a strong belief in the probability of change, your competence and the quality of the work you do. It's common for people to build beliefs and expectancies as result of some action or investment they have done. Did you know that the more people argue for their belief, the more emotion gets connected to it and the stronger they end up believing in it? In this way, when family and friends are resistant and attempt to talk the client out of seeing you instead of them succeeding, it's more likely that they instead help strengthen the client's commitment to see you. I always require clients to book their own appointments. That means that I never allow a wife to book an appointment for her husband or vice versa. I also never accept government money as payment for a client's treatment. I only work with clients who can either afford and is willing to pay for their own treatment or willing to meaningfully contribute in other ways. As a consequence of this, if I really want to help someone who is dead broke but can get government funds for the therapy, I will reject the money. I will work with them for free, but get them to contribute in a way that creates value for me and other people. The exception to these rules would be children. Personally, I don't prefer to work with kids, so I will only do it occasionally. However, kids need to choose to be there as well as have their own reason for being there. One thing that is important is that
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they get on the phone and verbally ask for and confirm the appointment. You can do this even if most of the details of the work are discussed with the parents. There is one reason why I generally don't like to work with kids who has little to do with the kids themselves. It has to do with the simple fact that their symptoms are often strongly connected to the family system that they are part of. I also think that many of the behaviors that parents and psychologists want to treat kids for are behaviors that are quite justified considering the situation that they are in and can't leave. A good example of this would be a rather desperate mother who called me a few years ago. She wanted me to cure her son's depression. During the phone conversation I discovered that the boy's stepfather had been hitting the mother regularly and for some time. The mother was frequently in and out of women's shelter homes, but elected to keep seeing her boyfriend. Now, guess what my good friends, the legalized pushers had done to help this young child out. Sadly, you guessed right. They told the mother he was mentally iII and gave him antidepressants! I told the mother it shouldn't take a genius to realize that the boy's feelings of helplessness, sadness and hopelessness were a pretty accurate and appropriate. There was nothing sick about the way he was feeling at all. The only thing the kid could do to stop a grown man from abusing his family would be to shoot the bastard or slowly poison him over a period of time. Ironically, if the kid had done that, and I would be the first to suggest that he be given a medal for doing so, then some other disease label would have been tossed at him in addition to some other drug solution. I firmly informed the mother that I was unwilling to work with her son under the premise that the boy was somehow ill for feeling the way he did. I also called her on her intent to return the kid back to the same old battlefield that related to his
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symptoms. I further told her that I would only work with him after she had left her boyfriend and provided a safe haven for her son. I offered to work with her so that she would find the strength and confidence to leave, but she wasn't interested in that at all. In my experience, whenever parents want to change their children by sending them to therapy, it's time for them to get dirt level honest and consider what they would be better of changing in themselves. Since this chapter has focused on how to work with the super left-brainers, there is one distinction I want to add about what I have written so far. The main challenge with the walking dead, in addition to getting them in touch with their feelings, is to get that initial commitment. Therefore, tasks should be used in order to secure commitment and a decision to change. The good news is that once the left brainers have decided and are committed, they are likely to do whatever it takes to change and follow the agreed upon ordeals 100 percent. This observation stands in stark contrast with the highly hypnotizable who more often than not are very willing to step into a brand new world but equally willing to very easily step out of it. These clients and the changes they produce are often easy come easy go, so you will often need to structure your work a little bit differently (there is a whole chapter coming up on these guys later. 3. Give Them a Reason for Doing the Ordeal Robert Cialdini, in his superb book Influence writes about the tremendous power of the word "because." The book refers to experiments in libraries where one person would ask the person in front of the copying machine if they could use the machine before them. 63 percent of the time the answer was "Yes." Then they did something interesting. The person would once again ask to use the copy machine first, but add the sentence: " ... because I am really in a hurry and only need one copy." As a
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result of this, the "Yes" responses increased to a whopping 94 percent. Even more interesting was the next little twist they added. This time the participants would ask to use the computer first again in the following way: "Excuse me, can I use the computer before you because I am only going to make some copies." This time they scored a "Yes" rate of 93 percent. It seems as if the word "BECAUSE" did most of the trick. What came after the word "because" didn't seem to matter that much. Personally, I think that what comes after the word because, depending upon context, matters a great deal. Anyways, utilize this by using the word "because" and give them a good reason for carrying out the ordeal. Usually, explaining that the more complex a symptom is the harder it is to keep it, is a good way of framing things. Of course, you will be enforcing the belief in Cause and Effect, so be careful. 4. Be Congruent and Matter of Fact It's very important that you are congruent and matter of fact when delivering the instructions. Calmly expect them to do it, even if what you are asking of them seems weird. Just act as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Offer the reason for doing it, but don't argue or get into any long-winded discussions. Just calmly and congruently expect them to. If you need to, remind them that they agreed to do this before you told them what it was. 5. Keep Going until the Problem is Resolved Last year I had a client named Stein who was about to be elected into some businessman brotherhood. One of the things newcomers had to do was to give a thirty-minute speech about themselves and their business. Stein hired me for two reasons. First of all, he was scared to death of public speaking. The
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second reason was that he wanted me to help him design a great speech. During the first session I attempted a number of different NLP approaches, but it was easy to calibrate after the session that we hadn't really gotten anything which. Stein was an emotionally repressed left brainer, scared to death of feeling, stuttering, blushing and forgetting while doing his presentation. As he entered my office the second time, it was clear that he had a sense of urgency, fear and frustration. He still wasn't where he wanted to be and the presentation was just a few days away. Since we both had frustration, urgency and fear present (a good combination by the way!) it was time for the ordeal set-up: Jergen: Stein ... I know of something that is pretty much guaranteed to help you solve your problem ... you will pleased to know that it isn't illegal, immoral, dangerous or fattening. However, it might be a bit uncomfortable ... I need to know that you are willing to do it before I tell you what it is. Stein answered "Yes" and shook my hand to symbolize our little pact. I always have clients agree to do it in advance, in addition to shaking my hand. This is very useful in helping clients build their internal consistency. If you can get them to verbally state that they will do it, as well as shake your hand before you tell them what it is, then you have dramatically increased the chances that they will indeed follow through. Stein was instructed to get up on stage and say the following:
During the next half hour it is very possible that I might blush like a pig, stutter like an insecure teenager, or demonstrate a memory loss that my age in no way can justify. If these things happen, be glad you're not in my shoes. I won't enjoy it, so make sure that at least someone gets something out of it. Feel free to have a laugh on my expense! Then he was to go straight on with his presentation."
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The day after his presentation Stein called me. He was ecstatic and felt absolutely fantastic. The whole thing had gone extremely well, the audience had cracked up laughing when he did the ordeal part. He hadn't been scared at all. Stein was convinced that his fear of public speaking was gone and no more work was necessary. The ordeal he did helped him to develop the skill he needed: openness and utilization of emotions, instead of repressing them to appear to be in control. Since he no longer had any stress around the symptoms he had described, there was no reason to fear them, and since he no longer communicated danger to himself, there was no fear. I am happy to report that Stein sent me a client some months later. The new client told me that Stein had done several presentations since our session together and was very happy with the changes. Although many people change after one experience, or even before doing the ordeal, it's extremely important to have a deal about following the ordeal until the problem is resolved. Thomas, the snotty Vice Principal, and Jenny who used five months to correct her fears are good examples of the need to have this agreement. 6. Ratify the Resolution
I have often skipped this step, but having the client ratify the change in some tangible way is very useful. Some sort of celebration or ceremony is ideal, especially if the ceremony requires them to do something that they previously couldn't as a result of their problem. If, for example, they had had a fear of heights, they could book a suite in a very large hotel with a wonderful view to celebrate and reward themselves as well as ratify the change.
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CHAPTER 9
GETTING DEEP HYPNOSIS WITH ANALYTICALS
As soon as I started working with clients in the real world, I noticed that most of the clients I had who got very good results had a couple of things in common. In addition to being congruent about changing, they had the ability to easily go into deep hypnosis. For some time I believed that the key to getting change revolved around getting deep hypnosis. If we could get that, the rest would be a walk in the park. Although real life experience has proved this belief to be incorrect, there certainly is great value in getting a deep state of hypnosis.
What's the Value of Deep Hypnosis? 1. Hypnosis is basically an amplifier of experience. That means that you can feel emotions more intensively, create more compelling and realistic imagery, and as a result of that create not only intellectual insight but also a felt emotional experience of change. If you carefully analyze the cases in this book, you will see that a large part of my work involves getting people strongly associated into the states that drives their unwanted behaviors, symptoms and illnesses. The same thing goes for resource states. I want the clients to feel intensely. The more intensely the states are felt, the deeper the change.
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I think that this is one major weakness of cognitive psychology. Quite often, people intellectually know what they need to know, they have challenged their distorted thinking patterns, BUT they don't feel it. By doing the same type of work in a state of hypnosis the clients would be able to have a felt experience of the cognitive changes they have made. Jens was a good example of this. He had challenged his thinking, but never while activating his fears and emotions at the same time. With hypnosis, the changes are deeper. Hypnotic interventions have a tendency to create change at a deeper level than language can reach. 2. Hypnosis is a state of focused attention. One of the first things you learn when experimenting with hypnosis is that whatever you focus on, you amplify. When people are in a focused state they are less likely to be distracted. This is why hypnosis is such an amplifier of experience. The client is no longer questioning and analyzing. Rather they are experiencing and getting absorbed into what they focus on. When someone focuses intently on one thing they become less critical and therefore more responsive and more suggestible. As a result hypnosis is an ideal place for the client to be whenever you really want to communicate an idea. 3. Hypnosis is an ideal learning state. If I were to diagnose most of my clients, they would get the diagnosis "rigid;" especially in the context where they are stuck. It's often hard to change old patterns of thought, emotion and behavior by using positive thinking and willpower. We are essentially using the same patterns of thought that's creating the problem in an attempt to solve it. Hypnosis gives you the ability to bypass your ordinary beliefs and thought patterns and go inside to find other
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perspectives, emotions, memories and capacities that you have. In this way you can return with these resources, amplify them and link them to the contexts where you normally do your problem. 4. Hypnosis allows you to reorganize your own experience. Most of us are highly ignorant of our own capabilities. One of the key learning's for me has been that people have a lot more capabilities than they might consciously realize. As an example, I may suggest to someone in chronic pain that all they need to do to make life a lot more bearable is to make the moments of pain seem like they last for just a few seconds, and make the pain free periods seem to last for a really long time. If I were to suggest this as a solution in an everyday conversation, people would most likely look at me as if I were an alien. This look would be followed up with a startled: "HUH?? How am I supposed to do that?" However, in hypnosis people can take an ability, such as the ability to perceive time that ordinarily is perceived to be involuntary, and voluntarily decide to use it in a specified context at a specified time. To give you one more example, the standard NLP allergy cure is an illustration of inner reorganization. Here you can take a client who is allergic to something and train them to reorganize their experience in such a way that they respond to what they were allergic to as if it was something they were not allergic to. 5. Hypnosis helps facilitate multiple perspectives. Remember in Chapter One when I wrote about the difference between a subject who fakes being in a trance, and a subject who is actually in one. When the faker is asked to negatively hallucinate a person standing between them and another person
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they're supposed to go over and shake hands with, the faker will walk right into the person he was told to negatively hallucinate. The person in deep hypnosis, however, will walk around the person, but at the same time claim that they couldn't see him. People in trance are less bound by linear logic and normal time and space constraints. They can be here and there at the same time. When people are deeply stuck in a problem they tend to turn into religious fanatics. They lock on to one "truth", one perspective and one solution. When is the last time you saw a religious fanatic with a sense of humor? By holding several perspectives simultaneously clients can utilize paradox, humor and new wisdom in solving issues. I am reminded of physicist Niels Bohr's quote: "There are two types of truth. In the superficial truth, the opposite viewpoint must be false, but in a deeper truth the opposite viewpoint is just as true." Stephen Gilligan, Ericksonian hypnotherapist and founder of self-relations therapy, has a great way of expressing these things as well: "The problem is not the problem. The problem is that what's called the problem is isolated from other truths and perspectives." 6. Hypnosis is a doorway to the unconscious. John Grinder has often stated that, "The conscious mind is superb at organization, framing and categorization, but lacks the power to do any significant change. The unconscious on the other hand has enormous capabilities for change, but little capacity for organization." When in hypnosis, we can build a stronger alliance between the conscious and the unconscious. Any skilled and experienced hypnotherapist can probably tell you about miracles taking place when people have accessed their unconscious. Sometimes there are conflicts between the conscious and the unconscious. Let's say someone is struggling with a serious disease. On the conscious level the person might be very positive and fighting
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for their life. At the same time, at the unconscious level, there might be a calling for self-mutilation. Hypnotic states can provide the key to eliminating these self mutilation programs, so that the unconscious starts moving the person towards health instead. If this sounds too far out for you, then consider bad habits like smoking. Consciously most smokers want to quit, but the unconscious feeling level mind has associated pleasure with smoking. The hypnotic state is wonderful for resolving these types of conflicts. Consider all these benefits carefully and it's almost impossible to be results-oriented and not seriously study hypnosis. After all, not only do you have more choices since both of you have access to more resources, the hypnotic state makes your NLP or other techniques both more effective and more easily done. If you read the list above you will see that being able to induce the hypnotic state is only a first step. The important part, and the part that requires the most skill, is what to do once you get them there. Guess who most instructors deliberately avoid as demonstration subjects during seminars? You don't need to be a rocket scientist, or better yet, an experienced hypnotherapist to figure this one out. You got it, it's the left brainers. The analyticals are often very difficult to get workable hypnotic states with, and that's often a problem. You see almost all NLP techniques require the client to go into at least a light state of hypnosis to work. I am talking about the usual submodality interventions, anchoring formats and time line techniques. If the client doesn't go there and you don't know what to do about it, then you're in deep shit to be blunt.
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The Importance of a Superb Pre-Talk In my experience, the biggest obstacle preventing deep hypnosis is fear. Some hypnosis instructors claim that people accept hypnosis to the degree that they don't fear it. I think this statement has a lot of merit. However, there are big differences in just how responsive someone will be to a hypnotic induction, even if you are flexible in your approach. People have all sorts of theories as to why that might be, but I don't bother too much with that. The late Dave Elman claimed that there is no such thing as a good or bad hypnotic subject. Just build mental expectancy and eliminate their fears (which sometimes is a lot easier said than done) and anyone will be a good subject. I don't think this notion is accurate, but I do I think that it's a very useful lie, at least to some extent. Just don't start believing in it. This will determine what you do. Those who believe in Elman's theory will go back to the pre-talk, and if that doesn't work, it's easy to dismiss the client as resistant. While unconscious resistance might often be true, and while a better pre-talk will often work, it's not always the most useful approach. Some people just don't seem to have developed the capacity to go into deep hypnosis. These people often claim they don't daydream, they don't get absorbed into movies or books and they're stuck with a lot of internal dialogue. I am unwilling to project my limitations onto other people's potential. Meaning, just because I don't know how to get all my clients into deep hypnosis doesn't mean that it's not possible, it just means that I don't know how to do it yet. Having said that, I don't believe that anyone whose material I have studied knows how either. My current thinking is that that these subjects can be trained to perform better. So far I have been able to help quite a few people to improve their hypnotic capacity. For some strange reason these people seem to lose most of this capacity as soon as
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the training ends. Further, I must admit that I have only had a few examples of taking a person who is totally umesponsive and turn them into an excellent hypnotic subject. By this I mean people who can do phenomena like negative hallucinations on cue. Other people have the capacity to go into deep hypnosis, but for some reason aren't flexible enough to respond to your induction technique. This might suggest to you that it's time to do the induction a little bit differently. Another possibility is that it's time to work on the relationship that you have with the client. Hypnotic work is a very intense relationship between the therapist and client. When the relationship changes in some way, so will the hypnotic responses. I have had clients who have responded wonderfully one day only to be completely umesponsive the next. Not long ago I worked with a guy to quit smoking and he responded beautifully. He quit in one session with no withdrawals or any problems whatsoever. A little while later we did a session for weight loss, but this time the session had no effect whatsoever. I noticed that his responses weren't as good and that his hypnotic state wasn't as deep. Being lazy, I assumed or hoped (which is never a good strategy by the way) that we had done something useful. In the second session, once again he responded very well, so we will just have to wait and see. I have had clients come see me for some minor issue and had no success in getting a workable state of hypnosis. A year or two down the road the same clients return with either the same problem, which has gotten a lot more severe or a different problem that really hurts. Suddenly they go into hypnosis and do the work without any problems at all. Same thing goes when people initially resist hypnosis and fight it tooth and nail. At this point my strategy is usually to give them an ordeal to help them either solve it, or after a while
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present hypnosis as an attractive way out of the ordeal. More often than not, this tactic has worked very well. The" pissing in public client" described in the previous chapter is an example of this. This is part of the reason why I largely think that so-called hypnotizability testing is at least partially a joke. It totally ignores context, relationship, expectations and motivation. Now, flipping the coin, I had a client many years ago who I helped overcome a pretty minor problem. As a metaphor for seeing solutions that she hadn't before I had her positively hallucinate a tennis ball. The tennis ball was so real to her that after the hypnosis she asked where I had put the ball. She was quite stunned to find that there wasn't one there and hadn't been during the hypnosis either. That session and many others of a similar nature taught me a couple of very interesting lessons. Before I had her hallucinate the tennis ball, I had attempted to get her to have amnesia for the number 4. She rejected this suggestion, but easily did the positive hallucination. However, according to many scales, amnesia is supposed to be easier to get than positive hallucinations. People have different capabilities and both express and experience hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena differently. Last year she came back for a very heavy-duty problem. And guess what? She totally rejected hypnosis initially. We had to do a few other things first. When someone doesn't go into hypnosis I think you have a decision to make. Is the client afraid of hypnosis or even what they might find during hypnotic work? If so, you probably did a poor job during the pre-talk. If the client has responded well in the past but suddenly resists and doesn't respond well, you have to find out if it's your induction technique you need to change, or has the relationship between the two of you changed? Maybe there is a "part" of them that is opposing the work, or you might have to work on
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their level of commitment. In this regard, I usually find that working to build up commitment and pain levels is the most useful strategy. You might have covered all the bases. The client has no fear of hypnosis, they are committed and you have great rapport, but still, no hypnosis. If so, there is a big chance that they simply haven't developed the ability or capacity to do hypnosis. This group of clients, at least for me, is a pretty small group. You will do both yourself and your clients a favor by looking into how they can increase their capacity for hypnosis. Sometimes you will decide that the amount of work needed to accomplish this isn't worth it because you have some other way of helping them solve the problem. However, it's important that you have the choice. You also have to accept that some people won't ever go into hypnosis for reasons currently unknown.
How to Do a Good Pre-talk The late Dave Elman, a major contributor to the field of hypnotherapy, is famous for emphasizing the importance of a good pre-talk. Elman believed that if you remove the fear of hypnosis, you would be able to hypnotize one hundred people out of a hundred. More accurately, you will help one hundred people hypnotize themselves with you functioning as a guide. Elman was quite clear that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. In his book Hypnotherapy, Elman wrote:
You probably think that in a few short sessions you will become an expert hypnotist. Frankly, you are hoping for the impossible, because - THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A HYPNOTIST. You are never going to hypnotize anybody. All you can ever do, and no one can do more, is to show a person how to go over the hurdle from a normal waking or sleeping state into the peculiar
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state of mind known as hypnosis. You won't hypnotize him, he will hypnotize himself. Elman also wrote that there are three things required for hypnosis. 1. The consent of the subject - tacit or implied 2. Communication between the operator and the subject 3. Freedom from fear Despite the fact that I don't agree one-hundred percent with his perspective, I think that it's very useful and therefore my pretalk is to a large degree based on Elman's work. A. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis The client needs to understand that all hypnosis is essentially self-hypnosis. That way, if someone comes in claiming that they can't be hypnotized, you can say: "You're right, you will have to do it yourself! I can guide you. Are you willing to follow some simple instructions so we can solve your problem?" Simply by incorporating this point into your pre-talk, you will eliminate a lot of potential resistance, as well as putting the responsibility of change where it actually belongs, and that's with the client. B. Hypnosis is not sleep or being out of it or unconscious The more you can relate hypnosis to something natural that clients are already doing, the less scary they'll find it and the easier it will be for them to adapt to your instructions. I like Dave Elman's definition of hypnosis. I don't think it's accurate, or does the phenomena of hypnosis justice, but that applies to all theories that I have heard. For my objective in the office, which is to get results with clients, it's quite useful. Elman's definition of hypnosis is: liThe bypass of the critical factor, and the establishment of selective thinking."
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Now, understand that by selective thinking or really focusing in on something you will automatically bypass is the critical factor. Most people will automatically bypass their critical factor and go into selective thinking whenever they meet someone they perceive as an expert or authority. A frightening example for me is the obedience many people show their physician. If we use Elman's definition of hypnosis, we can safely assume that a large percentage of patients are in a deep trance when they enter a doctor's office. Most doctors don't seem to realize this or know how to utilize it in a useful way. While I find Elman's definition useful, I think that selective experience or absorption is a more accurate description. At least concerning the types of states needed to help people change. I am not looking for blind obedience, but rather a learning state where clients can learn and reorganize in a useful way. Now, if you are a doctor, you can utilize this in a way that might prove very beneficial for the patient. For example, if you have to tell the patient about a potential side effect of some medication you are giving them, you can tell them about the side effects with a doubting tone of voice. This will strongly suggest to the client to not develop these side effects. You can also use suggestion to enhance the effect of the medication or other medical intervention you are giving your patient. While doing the pre-talk I usually describe different natural experiences of being absorbed, or hypnosis, if you will. 1. Being absorbed in a movie 2. Reading a good book 3. Daydreaming 4. Driving a car 5. Meeting a fascinating person
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6. Experiencing a flow state during sports or musical experiences. These are natural experiences where people go into hypnosis. Most people will easily identify with several of the examples mentioned above. By mentioning these experiences clients will identify hypnosis as something that they already do. As a result of this expectancy will increase and fear will be eliminated or at least reduced. But don't just mention these experiences. By describing these experiences clients will often go into hypnosis as a result of identifying with the experiences. As I mention examples, I am looking for the clients to respond or identify with one or several of the experiences. If they like movies I might say something like this: "Have you ever gotten ABSORBED into a movie... you know, when you SEE SOMETHING FASCINA TING right in front of you. .. something that rivets your attention ... NOW... As you find yourself FOCUSING IN ... listening INTENTLY ... and after a while the environment disappears ... time stands still ... and you feel intensely as you get absorbed into what you are experiencing ... " If your client likes movies, there is a good chance that they will go into at least a light hypnotic state as a result of internalizing this description. In other words, they will use their imagination to fill in the blanks. By doing this they will likely enter the same state, at least to some degree, that they were in when they had the experience. During these descriptions I will change my own state. If I go into hypnosis myself and pace their breathing, they will often follow. In addition to changing my state, I will use a deeper voice and adjust my posture slightly. This allows me to anchor the hypnotic state to a voice tone and to certain gestures. If they go into hypnosis I will change my physiology and voice tone to my normal "waking state" tone/physiology to bring them out
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of· hypnosis. After a few seconds of fluff talk I might start another trance description while firing off my anchors. This is called Fractionation, meaning that you bring them into hypnosis, then pull them out of it, and then guide them back in. Most of the time they will go deeper when you bring them back in. Too many hypnotherapists just do a pre-talk alone, instead of inducing hypnosis indirectly, establishing anchors and fractionating at the same time. You might as well utilize the opportunity. You can induce hypnosis indirectly in many ways. In addition to simply describing experiences, you can describe other client's hypnotic experiences, or even your own. Something to the effect of: "I find that when I GO INTO TRANCE ... it's like you just start to LET GO and RELAX D EEPL Y... " This I where you shift and you start to talk about your own experience and then describe it as if they are having it is a useful way around resistance. Metaphors and stories are often a good way to get around resistance. They consciously think: "ah ... this is just about him ... "but unconsciously they will start responding in an attempt to make sense out of the experience. If your client starts talking about the stuff you are describing, let them do so. This is a way for them to make the experience more real for themselves. As they describe, notice if they lean on or emphasize certain words. If they do, you can use these words when later when doing the hypnosis. Let's say the client starts describing some experience where they were absorbed. It might even be that they went into formal hypnosis before with some other therapist. A very easy and indirect way to induce hypnosis is by asking very detailed questions about a previous hypnotic experience. Questions like: "Where were you? What did the hypnotist's voice sound like? What was the first signal you got from yourself that let you know you were
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GOING INTO TRANCE .. ? What do you experience inside as you GO EVEN DEEPER NOW.?" and so on.
Usually, when doing the pre-talk, I am not looking for a deep trance. I am just looking for them to start responding. I am also testing for how well they respond to an indirect approach. Some people will just listen analytically and not respond at all. This lets me know to be more direct when I later do the formal hypnosis. On the other hand, if the person goes into a deep hypnotic state during the pre-talk, I will take that as a sign of rapport, and that we can immediately start working. No reason to go back to the pre-talk if their unconscious is responding right now by going into the state needed to do the work. I must admit that sometimes I don't do any pre-talk at all, quite simply, because the client shows me that they are ready to work right now. If a client enters trance as they step into my office, I will just go to work immediately. This means that the length of my pre-talk lasts from zero seconds to half an hour. C. Clients Maintain Control At All Times
It seems as if the most common fear clients have is that they will surrender their sense of control to someone else. Of course, you and I know that control is an illusion in the same way that Cause and Effect is an illusion. However, most people believe strongly in both these illusions. Clients need to know that they can reject anything they choose no matter how deep they go, and that they won't reveal secrets or anything thing else that they are unwilling to reveal. At this point, many clients will object, but what about stage shows? Even if they don't object, it's very likely that they have this fear even if they don't verbalize it. It's smart to address this issue no matter what. Tell your client that the people who attend stage shows have in fact
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volunteered to attend. They even compete with others to get their place on stage as a performer. The phenomena are real, meaning that people are sometimes unable to stand up, forget their name, see something that isn't there, and not see something that is there. Again, the more you can relate these phenomena to things they already do, the better. Let's go through some of the phenomena.
A Look at Hypnotic Phenomena 1. Eye or Body Catalepsy Has the client experienced waking up in the middle of the night so tired, that for a while, they were unable to move their body? Or has your client maybe been watching a movie that he wanted to see to the end but been extremely tired at the same time ... so he decided to close his eyes during the commercial thinking that he could just listen for when the movie started again ... but then ... when he attempted to open those eyes, he could not? Another thing that you will often see during hypnosis is arm levitation and arm catalepsy. An arm that seems to live its own life, either in a rigid position, or moved up or down by the unconscious. A real life example of this would be the talkative person whose fork with a bite of meat seems to just hang there as the person drones on and on, completely oblivious to his arm and the food on the fork. 2. Amnesia Some clients are very intrigued that someone forgot the number four or something else during a stage hypnosis show. Real life examples would include meeting someone at a social gathering, and then a few minutes later realizing that you have forgotten the person's name. Or what about being in an interesting
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conversation, and then suddenly someone interrupts the conversation and you lose your train of thought. When you then resume your original conversation you discover that you can't remember what you were talking about. 3. Positive and negative hallucinations Perhaps the most impressive hypnotic phenomena at a stage show are the positive and negative hallucinations. Who hasn't looked for their car keys or the salt even though it was right there the whole time? You just couldn't see it until someone handed you what you were looking for. Another common example is to walk past someone and not see them as a result of being absorbed in a daydream. Not long ago I visited my father. He has a cat and one morning I positively hallucinated the cat in my open suitcase on the floor. This was so real for me that I had a pretty long conversation with a cat that wasn't there. After a minute or so, I suddenly realized that what I thought was a cat was a combination of a plastic bag, boxer shorts and a pair of socks. I am still in awe over how my brain was able to create that one. 4. Pain control. Can you remember having a headache or some pain and then suddenly something really exciting happened and you forgot all about it? Or what about having a leg fall asleep? 5. Time distortion This is a phenomena that has a lot of very interesting applications. If you were to look back through last week I am sure that you could find examples of time seemingly lasting forever,like standing in line at the bank. Or time going by in the blink of an eye, like when you do something that you really get into something with your heart and soul.
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After going through different hypnotic phenomena like these with your clients, it's easy for them to appreciate that what they see at stage shows are normal behaviors: behaviors that have been isolated and amplified for entertainment. In a hypnotherapist's office these skills can be used to help create useful changes. Here is something else that's interesting. Guess what people will do, to varying degrees, when you go through these phenomena and describe them? They will relate it to themselves and their own personal history for examples that match ... and guess what state they will go into to get that information. The highly hypnotizable clients will usually go into deep hypnosis and you can see them really responding. This is a useful way to test for hypnotic capacity and responding before doing changework. The deeper the hypnosis, the easier the work and the more choices you have at your disposal. 6. Symptoms are forms of hypnosis Remember Elman's definition: "Bypass of the critical factor and the establishment of selective thinking." Well, what could be a more perfect fit to that definition than a strong phobia? Or what about major depression? I tell my clients that they are in hypnosis when they do their symptom. Our job is to dehypnotize them, get them out of the trance that they are in, and build a new and better state where they have better choices and behaviors to select. Whenever clients claim that they can't go into hypnosis, the best way to counter that belief is to point out that the phobia or other symptom is deep hypnosis.
Conscious/Unconscious Disassociation There is another tool I have been using for a long time that is very useful in preparing a client for a deep trance experience. I
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will describe the qualities of the conscious mind using my "normal" voice tone. I will use a different voice tone and posture while describing the qualities of the unconscious mind. Generally, it will go something like this: You have a conscious analytical and rational part of your mind. I know that and you know that, but you also have an unconscious mind, whether you know it or not. Your unconscious mind is close enough to listen and respond in its own way. Your conscious mind is analytical. The unconscious mind is the feeling level mind. The conscious mind is responsible for focus. The unconscious is responsible for habitual behaviors and instincts.
I will go on alternating like this for a while, anchoring one voice tone with the conscious and its qualities, and another voice tone for the unconscious and its qualities. After a little while I will mostly talk about the unconscious mind. If I have good rapport with the person's unconscious the client will give signs of hypnosis as I do this. Some even go into a deep state. It's also easy to fractionate by using the voice tone associated with the conscious mind for a little while and then shifting back to the other voice tone. There is another, often overlooked, advantage by doing this process and that is simply this. Whenever you take someone out of their element, or out of their normal way of relating or understanding the world, they become more suggestible. Why do you think the army takes away people's habits, rituals and identities during training? Some people don't like to use the term "the unconscious," preferring instead to use terms like "soul" or "gut intelligence" or "somatic self" and many other metaphors. One reason I like to use the term "unconscious" is because most people I meet are curious to learn about the unconscious and claim that they know little about it.
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When most people are presented with new information they have a tendency to attempt to distort everything that is presented into an old and familiar category. By doing that people get a feeling of understanding. As I write this, my mind flashes back to a psychologist who called me a few years back. He was curious about how I worked with phobics. He wanted to know how I did it. No matter what I said, this guy distorted everything I said into the category" desentization and exposure therapy." I used four different metaphors, and if you think that helped at all, think again. We all have a tendency to be sleepwalkers and do what's familiar. This is the appeal of diagnosis and personality profiles. We get the feeling of certainty and the illusion of understanding someone we haven't met. That way we know what category to put them in, how to treat them, and we have an excuse for being lazy and not getting to know them. If you get the idea that I am not exactly thrilled about personality profiles and diagnoses, you're right! I hope that you will be a little disturbed about those things as well by the time you finish this book, if you aren't there already. Now, depending on the client and the goals they have, I have freedom in how I define the unconscious and its prime directives. At this time, the client is open, curious, suggestible and with no preconceived notions when accessing the unconscious.
An indirect Test for Hypnotic Readiness I mention that the unconscious is responsible for automatic behaviors like blinking (pace whatever experience they are having). If I see them blinking I will mention blinking and say: " ... and you don't know when you will blink again." As soon as they blink I say: "That's right!" Now, they think that they did the
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blinking because I suggested it and became more suggestible as a result. Now, here is a great covert test. Tell them: "If I were to tell you to TAKE A DEEP BREATH ... " and use voice tone associated with the unconscious and take a deep breath yourself. If they spontaneously take a deep breath, then they are responding and ready to go into hypnosis. If they look at you and then consciously take a deep breath, then that shows that they are responding to some degree If they don't respond at all, but keep the same breathing rate, you haven't got rapport with the clients unconscious yet. Remember, the whole point of all this stuff is to get the attention of the person's unconscious and get responses you can utilize. Hypnosis is paradoxical. It's paradoxical because you are directing the person to behave spontaneously. Common examples would be hand levitation, a process where you direct the person to lift an arm, but at the same time make it clear that you don't want them to lift it. The result will be that the client finds that arm lifting all by itself. This is my criteria for knowing that I have a workable hypnotic state, namely, I can direct the person to behave spontaneously or have involuntary responses like arm levitation, amnesia or catalepsy. If you get the idea that all of this is very complicated and takes a long time, think again. As I wrote earlier, I want to get the attention of their unconscious and I want conscious consent as well. My pre-talk lasts everything from zero seconds to half an hour. If I see that they are ready to respond right of the bat, I will skip all this. If they have a lot of fear and" skepticism" I will take my time. However, even when I take my time I usually do everything all at once. Meaning, as I talk about hypnosis I will induce it, do conscious unconscious disassociation and covert testing pretty much simultaneously. One last point to keep in mind. Sometimes I won't mention the word hypnosis at all. That doesn't mean that I am not using
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it. However, in the past when I did the work, very indirectly, people would suddenly stop and say: "Are you hypnotizing me?" Then, fear of hypnosis would emerge, and this made the work more complicated. My preference these days is to use the word hypnosis and be straight about using it, which makes the importance of preparing the conscious and the unconscious for the hypnotic experience vital. The stuff I have just written works exceptionally well for me. I trust that it will for you and your clients as well.
Establishing the Hypnotic Contract Let's say that you have done a good pre-talk. You have eliminated fear and misconceptions, and you have built expectancy. Ready to jump in? Actually, if you are doing formal hypnosis, I recommend that you do one more thing before you start. I recommend that you establish a hypnotic contract. My preference is to activate the state that drives whatever symptom they have so we can reframe the state-dependent memories. My proposed contract is the following: Jorgen: You and I need to establish a hypnotic contract. My job is to help guide you into a hypnotic state. In this state I will help you access the feeling that is driving your symptom. We will use that feeling as an affect bridge back in time so that we can find out what it's connected to and then deal with it. Your job is to be totally uncritical. By that I mean: have no theory or expectation as to what might emerge from your unconscious. Don't try to consciously find anything or control the process. Neither do I want you to censor anything that emerges. It's up to your unconscious to bring up the feelings and the related memories.
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Finally, I don't know what will emerge from your unconscious, but I do know that you need to have a willingness to face whatever comes up, no matter who or what it's connected to. Are you willing to let this happen?
If they answer "Yes" congruently, you are ready to do the work. If they aren't congruent I recommend that you probe for what objections they might have before starting the formal hypnosis. I know that you can do a lot of powerful work indirectly and metaphorically, but I really prefer to have conscious consent. As soon as they say "Yes", they will have increased motivation to respond since not responding would be inconsistent. We human beings have a need to be consistent. By getting conscious consent you are building internal consistency. I don't stop with verbal agreement either. I walk over and have them shake my hand. If this seems silly to you, get Roberts Cialdini's brilliant book Influence and read the chapter on internal consistency. This is a very powerful persuasion principle that you should understand and utilize in changework.
My Favorite Speed Induction Would you like to know how to induce deep hypnosis in just a few seconds? If so, you will love what I am about to share with you. Now, there are quite a few benefits to creating deep hypnosis very quickly. 1. If your induction is done in a few seconds you have plenty of time to do the actual changework. It's sad to think about all the people out there who spend 15 minutes to an hour inducing trance. Too often, the only tool psychologists, hypnotherapist's and NLP practitioners have in their tool box is a long, and I mean
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long, boring progressive relaxation or imagery induction. Stephen Gilligan, a prominent student of Milton Erickson's work claims that so called "Ericksonians" will often spend up to an hour in securing deep trance. Sometimes, they might even train the client for weeks in how to respond. Quite frankly, while perhaps useful in a few cases, this is neither necessary nor useful for most clients. It is just a gigantic waste of time. 2. It is congruent with the work I do. My intent is usually to activate the feeling state that is driving the symptom. It's not so much eye rolling somnambulism (more on that later), but rather the strong emotion I am looking for. I want to crank that sucker up. It doesn't matter if it's anger, sadness, guilt or an asthmatic attack. I want them to feel the emotion as strongly as they ever have. Focus less on the so-called depth of hypnosis and more on the intensity of emotion. In my not so humble opinion, this is a major weakness with the way many NLP and hypnotherapists work. The work is too cognitive. Sure, we can do a lot of wonderful stuff cognitively, but what really drives human behavior are emotions. Since my goal is to activate strong emotions, I need an induction that is congruent with that goal. It makes little sense to do a long progressive relaxation induction and get them really relaxed over a thirty-minute period, and then attempt to bring up rage or intense fear. Instead, use an induction that is emotional, sudden and a bit "violent." That way it's easy to bring up the juicy stuff.
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3. It works wonders with analyticals. If I were to give you one advice and one advice only regarding getting hypnosis with analyticals, in addition to saying "SCIENCE PROVES", it would be to learn instant shock inductions. When I started doing hypnosis I had the erroneous belief that these shock and speed inductions were only appropriate for the hypnotically gifted. I was wrong. These inductions are, in my experience, the most
reliable inductions for the walking dead. Very early in my hypnotic career I discovered that progressive relaxation and imagery inductions just don't work very well with this client group. While metaphors are useful, it didn't seem to me as if indirect and metaphorical hypnosis worked much better either. Of course, sometimes it would work, but that's not enough. I am always looking for tools that work consistently. That means that the tool or approach must work more often than it will not. How much more successful could a very prominent "Ericksonian" practitioner be with the exact same inductions with the same clients? I don't know. I suspect that some skilled "Ericksonian" therapists might get a deep trance with some of these clients. I also suspect that they would have struck out a lot too. My results improved a bit when I started getting more skilled at doing confusion inductions. The only problem was that it often took forever to get a decent level of hypnosis, and even while using these I still wasn't as consistent as I wanted to be. The one thing that saved me from insanity was the day I started using an induction called the "Hand Drop." Suddenly, most analyticals, most of the time, went into a workable level of hypnosis and they did so in just a few seconds. By workable level of hypnosis I mean a state of focused attention where I can direct them to behave spontaneously. Usually I want their
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unconscious to spontaneously bring up the feeling that has everything to do with symptom X, and I want their unconscious to bring up the related memories. For me, this is what hypnosis is all about. Simply, can I direct the person to behave spontaneously? Examples would be strong feelings and memories emerging, eye catalepsy, arm catalepsy and so on. If you ask the client to lift an arm unconsciously: "I don't want you to lift that arm I want you're unconscious to do it." When that happens you have something paradoxical going on. Being directed to behave spontaneously is certainly paradoxical. I must give some credit where credit is due again. I got this distinction from studying the work of Jay Haley. Another powerful distinction or focus point if you will, I got from studying the work of Stephen ParkhilL In addition to reading his book Answer Cancer and watching his video tapes, one of his students (Brian Mahoney, he practices hypnotherapy in Boston), has helped me out as well. One key point I got from collaborating with Brian for the past year or so, was to emphasize emotion in my inductions. Instead of being so concerned with getting eye-rolling somnambulism, my focus has been on getting strong emotion, getting deep trance by getting strong emotion. Even though I was doing speed inductions successfully before I met Brian, this little distinction has been very usefuL Another reason that this induction I am about to present works so well is because the induction is so short. There is simply less stuff to think about and less that can go wrong. 4. People won't go to sleep on you. If you are doing long inductions and working either early in the morning or at night, there is a chance that some clients might fall asleep on you. If your clients manage to stay awake there is a chance that you will become bored out of your
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mind by doing several long inductions every day. So don't do that. These days I use the hand drop induction about 85 percent of the time, and both my clients and I are better off as a result. It's a great way to deepen hypnosis and to do hypnosis hijacking. It's very common for clients to be in a hypnotic state when they enter a therapist's office. Only problem is that the trance they are in doesn't include the therapist. Hypnosis hijacking simply means that you find a way to include yourself into the client's hypnotic state. The client can be in a very deep state, but if it doesn't include you then it's of no use. Think of it this way: if you go to a movie or sit next to someone who is absorbed into a great film, they are highly responsive to whatever they have identified with in the movie. However, that hypnotic experience doesn't include you. So, even if they are in a hypnotic state, they won't necessarily respond to anything you do or say. I assume that this is what Milton Erickson talked about when he wrote that a person can be in a deep trance and a light trance at the same time." A common example would be a therapist escorting a phobic to some context. The phobic might be in a very deep trance regarding the spider (how they represent the spider to be accurate), but be in a light state regarding the therapist or even totally block the therapist out. So, the therapist's suggestions may have no effect whatsoever! Whenever I couldn't get a client to respond strongly in my office I would drag them out into the real world, right into the context where they are stuck. When doing this I need to ensure that I am a big part of their experience. I need to know that they are highly responsive to what I do. Let's say you have a client who is afraid of heights and you take that person to a height, elevator, etc. to help them resolve their fear. One option is to just 1/
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do exposure therapy, but it's boring, torture for the client and it takes forever. Instead of doing exposure therapy I will do the exact same thing I would do in the office. I have done intense hypnotic "regressions" in elevators, in pet stores with spiders for sale and a bunch of public places. It looks weird, but I don't care. It's well worth it since we can do the work quickly and test it right then and there. To pull this off, I need a way to enter their trance and hijack it. Since the phobic state is so strong and sudden, the hypnotic hijacking needs to be strong, quick and sudden as well. There is no place for a progressive relaxation induction here. Before I teach you hypnosis hijacking I have to teach you to do the hand drop induction.
How to Do the Hand Drop Induction Ok, the induction is simple, but it requires total congruence to pull it off. Let's assume that you have done a good pre-talk, established the hypnotic contract and gotten a congruent signal from the client that she is ready to go into hypnosis with you. Quite simply, have the client put her palm on top of your palm. Instruct your client to stare at your forehead and to listen intently. Tell her that in a few seconds you are going to start to count and for each number she is to press down harder and harder. Tell her that you will be pressing up against her power. Place your elbow on your thigh for maximum support against her pressure. Then do a quick test drive. Have her press, making sure that she presses down instead of out. This is all preparation. Tell her that in a little while you will be using the word SLEEP and that when you do, you aren't referring to sleep
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like at night, but rather a state of totally letting go. Now you are ready for the actual induction: 1. Have her put her palm on top of yours 2. Instruct her to close her eyes 3. Have her press as hard as she can down as you count 4. Suddenly pull your hand away, push her forehead slightly back with the other hand and at the same time yell: "SLEEP!!!!" The whole idea here is to create shock and overload, and then while in that state giving one clear instruction being: "SLEEP." This whole process should take just a couple of seconds to get the person into a deep trance. 1. Keep talking. At this point I just tell her to go deeper and deeper as she just lets go. After the shock, the person will either go into hypnosis or reject it. The whole key here is to continue talking so that the client has a clear idea of where to go. As you can see, there are very few things here that can go wrong. The combination of confusion, distraction and shock creates critical faculty bypass for a second or two. While they are in this state you yell out: "SLEEP!" their mind gets one clear instruction and then you just continue talking about letting go all the way into deep hypnosis for a few seconds. The reason I use the word "SLEEP" is because it's the only word I have time to use in that split second opening. If you were to stop there, the client would probably just open their eyes and come out of the state so you need to keep talking. At this point my next goal will usually be to get the client absorbed into the emotion that is driving the unwanted behavior or symptom. I will say something like this:
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You have a feeling inside that you don't like ... a feeling that has everything to do with x (whatever they are therefor) ... you have tried running from this feeling ... today it's time for you to face it ... as I count from one to five that feeling is going to grow as strong as it has ever been ... let that happen this is the perfect time and place ... ONE there is the feeling ... TWO growing stronger ... THREE as you get absorbed into that feeling now FOUR as it grows even stronger ... FIVE there it is ... Remember that therapeutic hypnosis is a paradox. You are directing the person to behave spontaneously. I am directing the client to feel strongly the emotion that is driving their issue, but I am telling them that I don't want them to do it consciously. Instead it will happen all by itself involuntarily as I count from one to five. Why don't I associate the person into a past memory to bring up the emotion? Let's say that the client's presenting issue is a phobia. Why not just have him or her remember a time in the past when they were phobic? Have them associate into it and bring up the fear that way. I prefer not to do it that way. I don't want the conscious mind to select either the context or the emotion used to recreate the context. I think that it's the job of the unconscious to bring up the emotion, and to use that emotion to create a context that will allow for reframing of the related memories. Let's say that the client has some serious illness. Many clients have no idea which emotion or combination of emotions needs to be dealt with to create healing. Sometimes the client will have a theory and a story to tell that suggests that a specific emotion needs to be cleared. Pay no attention to these stories. They are just rationalizations created by the conscious mind and will only confuse and distract you. More often than not, these stories have nothing to
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do with what the unconscious brings up in the hypnotic state. This is partly why I chuckle whenever I read about studies attempting to prove that mind has nothing to do with a so called "physical illness." By interviewing clients at the conscious level, researchers think that they can get an accurate idea of whether so called "psychological" factors have anything to do with the creation of illness and the healing of illness. First of all, the idea that you can separate mind and body is a very bad one. Secondly, the conscious mind seldom has a clue as to what is going on. I remember years ago, I worked with a cancer patient and asked his unconscious during hypnosis if there was an emotional source that needed to be cleared for him to heal his cancer. He verbally answered "NO" while the "Yes" finger lifted involuntarily at the same time. Sure enough, up came an emotion and some pretty intense stuff for him to work through. The cancer disappeared and I personally think that the session we did was significant and so does the client. He was in standard medical treatment at the same time, so I don't know how much of the success can be credited to our work and how much was a result of the chemotherapy. The client and I might be totally wrong. There is a possibility that he would have healed as quickly just doing chemotherapy. It's important in cases like these to be honest and admit that we just don't know how relevant, or even relevant at all, the work we did was. I must say that I have always viewed the work I do as complementary to traditional medicine in the case of "physical illnesses." I have never encouraged a client to not do chemotherapy or surgery or any other traditional treatment. The exception to this is psychiatry patients and psychology patients. I have no reservations about clients canning those treatments. Cancer patients, at least the ones I have seen, are usually in traditional treatment at the same time. It's hard to isolate the effect of what we are doing. So, let's focus on clients where we
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can do just that. Allergy clients fit perfectly. I always have them be off the allergy drugs when they come in, and most of them let go of the allergies in one or at the most, two sessions. Clearly, there must be a relationship between the work in the office and the person leaving the office without the allergic reactions. Let me tell you something funny. The majority of my allergy clients have believed that there is no relationship between emotion and allergic responses. Some of the clients have had compelling stories to tell about trauma and which emotion and memories the allergies are related to. Almost without exception, the clients have been wrong about which emotion and which memories have needed to be reframed. The tragic part is that researchers would have concluded, by listening to the stories created by the conscious mind, that there might be "psychological" factors at work in some cases, but that most of the time, the mind had nothing to do with the creation of these allergies. But, what about that phobia? Obviously, fear must be the emotion to be dealt with here? Well, most of the time it is, but I have had quite a few cases where strong feelings of sadness or intense grief has showed up right after the induction, or even before any official hypnosis induction. In these cases I have worked with the grief or sadness, and guess what, the phobias have disappeared. Guess where these clients have been before entering my office? More often than not, at some psychologist's office or with some hypnotist attempting to work with the fear, or to some NLP practitioner doing the phobia cure again and again wondering why there is no relief.
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THE MAGIC OF INSTANT SPONTANEOUS HYPNOSIS
If you have some experience doing changework, you have probably experienced just talking to the client and "WHAM!!!" up comes an emotional explosion seemingly out of nowhere. Most clients and therapists fear these moments and think they are bad, but that's all wrong! This is what you should hope for. This is an invitation from the client's unconscious that now is the time to go to work. I just mentioned cases where phobics have entered the office to work on some phobia and suddenly during the first couple of minutes a strong feeling of sadness, grief or anger appear. When I first started out I would calm them down so that we could get them back on track, so that we could work with the phobia. It's funny that therapists do this. The unconscious signals show that now is the time. The client has spontaneously gone into a deep trance, but the therapist attempts to bring the person out of it so that the client can get comfortable, and the therapist and client can invest even more energy into the fabricated bullshit rationalizations of the conscious mind. Then they wonder why changework is hard and use that as evidence that change takes a long time. Good Grief...! If you think that the madness ends here, think again. Here in Norway, these professionals, doctors and psychologists, who don't even have hypnosis as part of their education, are the only ones who legally can practice hypnosis. Of course, this is to protect the public from incompetent practitioners. You know:
"Those dangerous people who often have both formal training and years of experience in hypnosis." In addition to ignoring such facts that all hypnosis is self-hypnosis, and that hypnotic states occur spontaneously and naturally for most people in many contexts, these law makers and so called professionals ignore that spontaneous hypnotic states will occur in a therapeutic
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environment very often. The only question becomes: "Do you know how to recognize and utilize these states to help the people who are paying you handsomely for your time? LET THE UNCONSCIOUS SELECT THE CONTEXT AND THE EMOTION
Let me ask you a quick question. Let's say a client enters your office to quit smoking. Suddenly, before any hypnotic induction or right after an official induction, up comes a super strong emotion and the client spontaneously regresses back to some terrible unresolved trauma. What would you do? Some instructors would prefer to get the person out of that spontaneous regression, calm them down and then proceed with whatever preplanned suggestions, techniques or metaphors. Who are these therapists to decide that what the unconscious brought up isn't relevant for the smoking cessation? A better choice is to follow the unconscious lead and deal with the trauma. My experience has been that the unconscious is saying: "We need to deal with this before the person can quit smoking." We simply don't know what is related to what and predictions, if you bother to make them, are very difficult. Recently, a woman who cleared up some emotional issues in my office spontaneously improved her eyesight. She hasn't worn her glasses since the session and can now see stuff that she couldn't in the past. Smokers often use cigarettes to deal with stress. Even though quitting smoking is a smart choice for most people in many contexts, I know of several people who have developed asthma or ulcers and a host of other symptoms right after quitting smoking. When some of these people have resumed smoking, the symptoms have disappeared only to reoccur when they attempt to quit once again. Having said that, if the unconscious
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spontaneously brings up some trauma, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to deal with it to help your client quit. It doesn't need to be related to the smoking at all. People often spontaneously go into hypnosis during trauma and great stress. Later, when entering the same state in your office, there is a chance that these state-related memories come up as a result of entering the state. The smart money is on using whatever the unconscious spontaneously presents during the session. So, there you are with your client. The two of you have great rapport, the client's unconscious decides that now with you is the time to finally deal with some unresolved trauma, and up comes the spontaneous symptomatic hypnotic state. You realize that it's an invitation from the client's unconscious, go over and do the following 2. Tell the client: "That's right ... thanks unconscious ... you just focus on that feeling ... close your eyes ... " 3. Place your hand on the clients forehead ... rocking the head from side to side ... tell the client to follow that feeling back to the very first event the feeling is related to as you count from ten to one. 4. When you reach the count of one you ask questions such as: "First impression, inside or outside .. ? Alone or with people.. ? Give me a report ... how old are you .. ?"
This way they can reconstruct the memory and reframe it. •
Have them focus on the emotion and suggest that as you count back from five to one, they will be back at the very first event. When they end up at the same event twice, that's a good sign that you have recreated the first memory.
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•
Now you deal with it by reframing the memories. You can use Time Line TherapyTM, New code Games, Re-imprinting or whatever works.
IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS TO MAKE
There are two important distinctions to make. When a client goes into deep hypnosis, does it include you? No reason to get philosophical here, it's about how responsive the client is to you. We are talking about rapport, having the attention of the other persons unconscious. If someone is in a deep trance and it includes you, it's possible to do what I described. If they are in a deep state and it doesn't include you, then you will fall flat on your face unless you manage to include yourself into it. You might be more or less connected to the client's experience. If the connection is strong, then I will just walk over and tell them to close their eyes, focus on the feeling and follow it back to the first event of significance. If I sense that we aren't quite that connected I will go over and do the hand drop. I start out by telling them to: "Keep focusing on that feeling, put your hand on mine while feeling that feeling, close your eyes, press and SLEEP ... just let go all the way into that feeling, as it gets even stronger as I count from one to five ... " This is a very effective way to include myself into the trance and hijack it.
Real-Life Regressions Let's say that you have a client who is scared of heights. In the office you just don't get him strongly enough into the emotion to be able to do much. A good choice, if you have good rapport and the person goes into hypnosis, is to take the person with
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you to a high place. Pace the person's breathing and physiology, make sure that you have good rapport and have the person walk out on the cliff or whatever. Then, when the person goes into the fear state strongly, tell the person to take a step back. They will of course want to do that. Make sure that they don't move so far back that they no longer feel the fear. The goal is for them to still feel the fear while you enter their experience. Then do the following: "Focus on that fear while listening to my voice ... stare at my forehead ... put your hand on top of mine ... close your eyes ... press down and SLEEP ... just allow yourself to go into a deep trance ... feel that fear and as I count from one to five ... " Here comes the test. What you want to do is to direct the person to behave spontaneously. You are attempting to amp up the fear using suggestion. If they respond, that means that they are in hypnosis AND you are part of the trance. When you do this, the hypnotic state will be very deep. Understand that when they first go out on the cliff, they spontaneously go into a pretty deep hypnotic state. The only problem is that it doesn't include you. Whenever you pull someone out of trance and then rehypnotize him or her, they have a tendency to go deeper. This change is called "Fractionation." That's exactly what you are doing here. You are taking them out of the state, and then give them some simple things they can voluntarily do. Things like taking a step back, placing their hand on top of yours and closing their eyes. By doing this you are directing their experience and fixating the client's attention. Then you do the hand drop and attempt to get a strong fear going by suggestion. You have now directed your client to behave spontaneously and the unconscious is on your side. Not only have you deepened the hypnotic state as a result of fractionation, but you have also included yourself in the trance. You have successfully hijacked the client's trance.
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In closing, I have done real life regressions with a client's informed consent, and I have done it spontaneously. It's usually easier if you have their conscious consent, but if rapport and an intense desire to change is there, then a spontaneous real life regression in an elevator or other public place can work wonders when nothing else will.
Pity Cry vs. a Symptomatic Trance John Grinder once told me that one of the benefits of studying hypnosis is to learn to distinguish which responses are from the unconscious and which aren't. In other words and relevant to what I am describing here, you need to learn to differentiate between a pity cry, a distraction and a real symptomatic trance. This might take some time and effort and be prepared to fall flat on your face from time to time. The rewards of learning to do this are very high and well worth the embarrassment both for you and your clients; at least for the clients you see later. A few years ago a student and friend of mine, Odd Arild Ringen, brought in a client for me to work with. The client was afraid of spiders and had been to quite a few therapists, and she had done a wonderful job in manipulating them around her little finger. As she walked into the office I congruently told her that I had a little surprise here waiting for her. She just scoffed and didn't go into a fear state at all. That was the first time that had ever happened for me. The fact that her state didn't change at all gave me a solid hint that spiders wouldn't be our focus during the session. In a way, I choose to interpret it as her unconscious saying: "No, that's not it, attempt another angle." So I did just that." In the process of interviewing her it became apparent that unlike most people who do phobias, she didn't do her phobia
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every time, just some of the time. As I asked questions I was looking for nonverbal state shifts, incongruence and even phobic responses. Since she never did her phobia when she was alone, but with some people (especially her boyfriend) in some contexts, you can be sure that she was using her phobia in some way socially. For her it was about boundaries and controlling other people without being held responsible for doing so. Of course, she didn't verbally tell me this. She showed me when I started to overstep her boundaries and didn't let myself be manipulated. When I started holding her responsible for her communication, she told me that she was so sorry that her boyfriend had to put up with her illness (the phobia, and her fear determining what they could do together as a couple). I just remarked: "Not really, or else you wouldn't CHOOSE to do this." She immediately responded by going into a pity cry. Clients will often do this whenever you hold them responsible, but they don't want to accept responsibility. The pity cry works well for them. It's a way for them to control the interaction without being held responsible. Society teaches us that feelings are involuntary, caused by someone or something else, so anyone who doesn't back off is clearly a psychopath with no empathy. My response was to lean back in my chair and say: "That really doesn't impress me much." I did so in a very laid back and matter-of-fact way. Then I shut up. Instantly, she went into a state of anger, asking me: "How dare you treat me like this?" Again, I did the same thing. I leaned back and said: "Nah, that doesn't impress me much either ... " Immediately she snapped herself out of anger, leaned back and said: "OK!" I then went over to grab her arm and told her to stand up and go with me to meet some spiders. This time she went into her phobic response very strongly. I amplified her
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response by doing the hand drop and regressed her back in time. The problem was resolved right then and there. This is another case where the standard phobia cure, anchoring formats, or exposure therapy wouldn't have worked very well. The real issue was boundaries and personal responsibility. It took some provocations and tests to find the proper context. In addition, by passing her bullshit testing, I got credibility and rapport at the unconscious level, evidenced by the fact that she responded and resolved her issue. For me, this case was another example of a client who I had excellent rapport with, but hated my guts (and still does!) at the conscious level. I should state that it's not a goal of mine to have clients dislike me. At the conscious level most of my clients like me and I like them. I just want to provide counterexamples to the idea that rapport means liking, and that the client needs to like the therapist for therapeutic change to occur. This client liked the therapist who referred her a lot, but clearly, the unconscious rapport wasn't there. So, if your clients like you, that's great and a bonus, but don't hold back from doing things you intuitively feel will work just because the client might dislike you a bit. It really isn't a problem if make something happen in the first session. If you don't, there is a chance that they may not come back. My student was quite stunned by all of this and wondered how I knew when to regress. The answer I gave him was that the first two emotional responses were pity cries and distractions, while the third one was a symptomatic trance produced by the unconscious.
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How to Recognize a Spontaneous Symptomatic Trance I have noticed the following characteristics: •
A genuine look of surprise. Surprise is the briefest of all our emotions and can only be triggered by a sudden unexpected event. When surprised people's eyes open vide, pupils dilate, eyebrows lift, jaw drops and they often move back just a little plus a straightening of the spine.
•
The straightened spine is very common in the symptomatic trance. It looks as if they're waking up, something is getting activated and their facial expression shows surprise since the trance is sudden and unexpected. Surprises don't last long and their facial expression will show which emotion they then go into. It can be fear, anger or sadness or some other emotion.
•
A pity cry or distraction always lacks the facial expression of surprise. Further, they have a tendency to collapse their spine, look down and away, sob and hold their hand in front of their face. The pity cries are also under conscious control. Clients can snap out of them in the twinkling of an eye if they want to. If you study the pity cries you will notice that people have a tendency to make sure that they have eye contact with you before they look down and sob.
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How to Create Instant Hypnosis We just talked about how to utilize spontaneous symptomatic trances, as well as how to differentiate between those states and pity cries. You know how to do the hand drop. You know how to include yourself in a trance and you know how to hijack a trance to do real life regressions. You don't need to wait for a spontaneous trance. You can create one to induce instant inductions. Earlier in the book I wrote that the goal of changework isn't to fabricate a cause or root cause. Hopefully, by now you know that there is no such thing. However, most people don't know this and they act as if there is such a thing as Cause and Effect in many contexts where they pretend to be suffering the effects of some cause. Our job is to find the contexts where people pretend the hardest that they are the effect of some cause. These contexts will be where they are most stuck. If you can spontaneously or not-so-spontaneously create the context where people act this way in your office, they will instantly go into state. Let's look at a couple of client examples. Heidi, who I wrote about in the first chapter, is a wonderful example. She claimed that criticism and rejection caused her to feel fear. After calibrating how she responded to my voice on the phone, I created a context that would have her go into deep hypnosis. By asking her what the fuck was wrong with her (in THAT tone of voice) after deliberately making sure she didn't find my office. She instantly went into state. I was part of her experience and we were able to reframe the memories, giving her choices and breaking the Cause and Effect curse she had set up for herself. Sometimes you can get very valuable information by listening intently and taking literally what the client is saying for the first thirty seconds of speaking.
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One guy called me and during a phone call that lasted for a few minutes, he leaned on the sentence: "I NEED TO TALK TO SOMEONE!" Our first session started with me taking him literally. I just sat back and shut up and was totally quit. I matched his physiology so I knew that we were connected. He got irritated and wanted me to speak. I just smiled and continued my weird silence. It didn't take long for him to enter a symptomatic trance. We used the feeling as an affect bridge back in time, and boy did he have some stuff to tell his father. A woman called me not long ago and she was a constant blabbermouth on the phone. I couldn't get in a word. She told me that she was anxious all the time and out of touch with herself. Just before our first session I met her outside of the office. She was told that after she entered the office door she was prohibited from speaking. Therefore, if I needed to know anything before the session, then she would have to tell me before entering the office. When she entered my office, she was told to not say anything and to not do anything, but answer everything nonverbally. It didn't take long for her to respond strongly. As you ask questions during the sessions, learn to pay little attention to the verbal answers and look for the nonverbal responses. When I think back to when I have screwed up with clients, a common denominator has been that I have allowed myself to get seduced into the stories and have ignored the small nonverbal incongruence along the way. Learn to notice when and during what topics the client goes into a slight or strong symptomatic state. When do they react with incongruence? In what contexts is there a big difference between the stories they are telling and what they are actually doing. A final biggie to be on the outlook for is projection. We all have a tendency to project onto others whatever issues are
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deeply unresolved in ourselves. A typical example would be the people who are jealous all the time and always attempt to control who they are with. When these clients enter my office I usually ask: "50, what have you done?" Guess what, often they have been unfaithful or have strong fantasies of being unfaithful, or they think that they are so unlovable that if their partner gets exposed to someone else, the partner will leave them in a heartbeat. Of course, sometimes there is a strong reason to be suspicious, but I am talking about people who present this as a pattern. It's like the people who often march in front of anti war demonstrations time and time again. Have you ever noticed how aggressive many of these people are? If someone has a lot of anger and it's an unacceptable emotion for them, they will usually either repress it or develop some symptom like back pain or chronic fatigue to cover it up, or they will project it on to someone or something out there with the greatest hook. Notice in what contexts clients are projecting things out there strongly and then help them turn their projection around. There is an art to doing this. Reread Chapter One and you will discover how a key piece is to change the projection of something being" out there" to dealing with it on the "inside." It doesn't matter if someone says: "I can't handle strong feelings in others" or "People don't respect me." Change will happen when they turn it around and learn to deal with strong feelings in themselves or respect themselves more. There you have it! These are the inductions I use at least 85 percent of the time. Master instant and rapid inductions and your success will sky rocket. Since you are probably wondering what I do for the last 15 percent of the time, this is probably a good time to troubleshoot a little bit.
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CHAPTER 10
WHAT IF THEY DON'T GO INTO HYPNOSIS?
When I am working with someone I have three objectives. 1. A deep state of focused attention where I can direct them to behave spontaneously. 2. Strong activation of the state that is driving their disease, symptom or unwanted behavior. 3. Reframing the memories related to their issue. We need Step One to do the others. So, let's say that someone doesn't respond when we attempt the hand drop. When I do the hand drop with someone, I will keep one hand on their forehead as I rock their head from side to side while instructing the person to go deeper. It's easy to feel if they drop into hypnosis when you yell: "SLEEP!!!" and pull the other hand away. If the body goes limp and relaxed and they relax the neck as you move the head, that's a sign that you are in good shape. However, if the client stiffens the neck and tenses the body including voluntary facial expressions, that's a sure sign that they are not going in. That's another beauty of the hand drop. Since you are touching the client you instantly get feedback. It effectively takes all the guess work out of it. Just feel the neck, and if they go limp it's a green light. If they tense up, you got some work to do. Some people like to do an eye lock test right after the hand drop. The eye lock test goes something like this: "Focus all your
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attention on your eyelids as they get heavier and heavier as I count from five down to one ... so that when I reach the count of one they will be so deeply hypnotized that the more you try to open them ... the more locked and sealed shut you will find them to be... "Then you count down suggesting that the eyes get heavier and heavier, and at the count of one you have them TRY to open their eyes only to find that the more they try, the more locked and sealed in the down position those eyelids are. The eye lock challenge functions as a hypnotic convincer. The client knows that he or she is in hypnosis, and you know that they are at least in a light state. It also functions as a deepener since accepting a convincer creates a deeper state. You have successfully directed the client to behave spontaneously by having the person consciously try to open, just to find that they involuntarily stay shut. The client has proved that he is in a suggestible state and you can ask for involuntary responses from the unconscious. I sometimes use the eye lock test. The benefit to using it is that it's a very easy convincer to achieve. It will often impress the client and give them more confidence and a deeper state prior to asking the unconscious to bring up the emotion that has everything to do with whatever they are there for. The large majority will accept the eye lock challenge. On the other hand, know that people can reject this convincer even if they are in a deep state. If the client is a control freak, then don't do this. It's no fun to suggest eye lock only to have the person open his or her eyes and stare at you in disbelief! You don't need to have that happen. If they stiffen the neck when you do the hand drop, don't go for the eye lock. Let's say the client stiffens the neck and rejects hypnosis, or let's say that you go for the eye lock and they just open their eyes. This doesn't occur often, but when it does I will go straight into a parts reframe: "That's right ... keep those eyes open cause we've got to talk ... there is a part of you that is preventing you from
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going into hypnosis ... and it's trying to protect you ... and I agree that protection is important and I want to ensure that you are a lot more protected than you are now ... because it's not repressing negative emotions from the past that protects you ... rather it's the learnings from those past memories that protect you ... It's by accessing those past memories and learning what you need to learn that will give you the protection you need, and I promise that we have a way of doing that that is totally safe ... So if your unconscious really wants to protect you ... and I know it does ... we need to go into hypnosis for this to happen ... Now that you think about it like that is your unconscious willing to do that ... " You will see an unconscious head nodding as you do this, and often the person is on his way into trance already. If that's the case, just go ahead and do the hand drop again. This will usually work. Sometimes they will consciously bring up some objection, and then you can resolve it before attempting another induction. If parts reframing or probing for objections doesn't work and you know that you have done a good pre-talk and established a hypnotic contract, then you got an important distinction to make. This is an important distinction that will probably take some time to master. Is the client capable of going into hypnosis? Or haven't they developed that aspect of themselves yet? If the client has many experiences of being absorbed into past experiences like movies, daydreaming, being in the zone when working out and so on, then you know that the person is capable but for some reason just isn't responding right now. If I know that the person has the capacity I will probe for objections. Sometimes there aren't really any objections but the person is a dabbler. These clients have a tendency to not quite do things full out.
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I had a stuttering client a couple of months ago who clearly had the capacity, but he just didn't go into hypnosis. He had traveled from another part of the country to see me, so I just used congruence. Congruently I told him that I knew that he had the capacity, that I was tired of playing games, that I would leave the room for three minutes, and when I came back he had a decision to make. He was further told that when I came back we would do it again, and he would either show me deep hypnosis or I would send his ass back on the plane home. The guy dropped into deep hypnosis really quickly. I have had many experiences like this and more often than not it has worked great. Whenever you get a dabbler it's no use in using another induction. It's not about the induction, it's about going full out, it's about commitment! If you have enough patience you can send the person out of the office to do some task or ordeal to prove to you that they are committed. After a while, when the task is wearing them out, present hypnosis as a way to avoid the task. The "pissing in public" example was an example of this. The lack of commitment is the most common obstacle in my opinion. As previously mentioned, I have had quite a few clients come into my office with some light symptom and they have dabbled around. Then, a few years later when the symptom is severe they come into the office and into hypnosis they go without any objections at all. If you have many dabblers as clients, that means that you are creating a context for them where being a dabbler is a bit too easy. Work on your own congruence. Display a willingness to not accept them as clients, and a willingness to walk away at any time. Increase your use of tasks and ordeals and increase your fees. What about intense performance anxiety? Some clients just block out because they do performance anxiety. Sometimes they
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are really committed, but they just paralyze themselves. It's a bit like the committed athlete who just doesn't handle the pressure well during competition. Quite often these clients have some deep hurts inside that they are doing their best to repress. The idea of getting in touch with these deep emotions is often overwhelming, so they just go numb. It might be a good idea to work on your rapport. Not only in the usual ways of matching and mirroring, but by working to pass their congruence tests. I sometimes think that the unconscious can be a bit like a flaky woman. If you are a woman reading this book you have probably just waited for my sexist side to appear. You all know what I am talking about. Women tend to test men a bit, testing them to see how much bullshit they can get away with. I think that they do this to see if I guy has any self-respect, if he can stand up for himself. If he can't stand up to her, how can she feel safe around him and count on him to stand up for her? Women are looking for strength and security, so they can open up and surrender to the experience emotionally. Well, I think that clients are the same way. If they are going to open up, feel the deepest aspects of themselves and surrender to the experience, then they need to know that you are strong, steady and ready to handle it. I think this is one reason why clients often test therapists by being rude, snotty, condescending, passive-aggressive or resistant. Of course, they might just be ambivalent about change or not really want to change, AND at the same time there is a chance that they are testing you to see if you can handle them. You just need to accept this as part of the game. Look at it as a respect opportunity, a way to deepen the rapport and really bond with them. You have to show them that you are there for them, and willing to support them all the way. At the same time it's important that you not be attached or needy about them having to change. One test they will often present you with
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where you to play rescuer while they play the victim. Don't fall for it! Don't misinterpret this to mean that you have to be dominant or authoritative, even though you definitely want to have those skills. Sometimes you will show strength by using humor. The client will then often think: "This person isn't afraid of my problem." Other times you might want to reveal a vulnerable side of yourself, showing emotion or admitting to flaws. By going first you show them that it's OK to open up. Another client might need someone really confrontational who calls them on their bullshit and doesn't give in at all. I can't emphasize enough the willingness to walk away! That you show your client that you have boundaries, and that you don't need to work with him or her. I don't work with clients that I don't like or want to work with. I reject a lot of clients and I think that I am doing both them and myself a favor. Personally, I think that a combination of working from the heart and at the same time being dirt level honest is a rare combination and the best foundation for deep credibility and rapport. I am convinced that this combination is what has allowed me to influence clients to do all the crazy stuff that you have read about. If they didn't sense that I was working from the heart, they wouldn't have done it. At the same time, if I was just touchy feely about it nothing much would have mattered either. Whenever the client is stuck or resisting, ask yourself the following question: "What skill or state does this client need to develop and then you go there first?" If you aren't willing or able to go first, then have enough integrity to refer the client out, or reschedule at a later time so that you can work on yourself in the meantime. I must admit that sometimes I get soft and fall into the traps I have warned you about. Recently, a woman in her early thirties called me to work on a couple of issues. I sensed quickly that although she verbally
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stated that she wanted to change, that she was more than a little ambivalent. My schedule was full for the next month, so I gave her an appointment about a month later. She asked me to promise to call if someone postponed or cancelled an appointment. I did call her a couple of days later and gave her an earlier appointment. Then she asked if she could come in even earlier. She was very seductive and a great hypnotist in the sense of selling her urgency and the idea that she really needed to come in quicker. Stupid as I was, I ended up offering to work a bit later one day to fill her in. You know what happened next. A few days later she sent me an SMS telling me how grateful she was for the effort I had made in getting her an appointment, but that she had changed her mind about coming in. She had decided to wait for a while. Right after I got that SMS I think I laughed myself silly for ten minutes. I even had to lie down on the floor. You got to have a sense of humor about these things. I am grateful to that woman, whose bitch qualities were well developed, to remind me of something I already know well. I screwed up, she tested my congruence, and I gave in. Who can blame her for changing her mind? I still chuckle when I think about it. I am in the middle of writing this book, and after all these years I fall into a simple trap like this. Since I have just picked a bit on female clients, it's only fair that the male clients get their share. They have their own tricks. Being overly skeptical", disrespectful or abusing your time seems to be some of the common ones. I was only 21 years old when I started seeing clients. Many of my male clients were old enough to be my father or even grandfather, and some of them had high-level positions in companies. No surprise that many of them felt a need to test me a little. I remember one CEO who droned on and on about punctuality and self-discipline as important qualities in a /I
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human being and how busy he was. He did extreme anger whenever someone didn't respect his time. You might not be too surprised to learn that he was thirty minutes late for our first appointment, and guess who wasn't there? He had had a two hour drive to reach my office. When he called wondering where I was, I just told him nonchalantly that our appointment was for two o'clock, not two thirty. Another hot shot, a lawyer, who loved abusing people verbally suddenly screamed at me: "No one talks to me like that." I responded by saying: "I know that, but for the rate you are paying me, I certainly will." He cracked up laughing and suddenly we were best of friends.
Mindfulness Meditation So, there you are in the office with your client who has shut down, and you sense that the fear of being overwhelmed by emotion is stopping him from responding. From time to time I will guide these clients through a very simple meditation were they very gently learn to orient attention inward. I have them just focus on breathing or scan their bodies and just letting attention flow from body part to body part. Whenever some other thought appears, the instruction is to reorient attention back to the body. After a while some emotion usually appears. When emotion comes up the goal is to stay present with it, to have a full experience of the emotion without repressing, fixating or obsessing. The client is instructed to notice the location, where the emotion wants to spread, temperature, shape, if it's contracting inward or expanding outwards and so on. Clients begin to notice that whenever they allow themselves to have a full experience of the emotion, it has a tendency to release. If pictures or internal dialogue appears they are to just notice it, and then put attention
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back to the emotion. After going through this exercise, the client is instructed to go home and practice this for a couple of weeks. Sometimes this is enough to help them resolve things on their own. Most of the time they come back and then do well. Clients like this often just need to get to know you a bit better so they can learn to orient inward in a safe way.
The Surprise Handshake Induction If you have read some of the early NLP books like Tranceformations, which is one of my favorites, then you are familiar with the handshake induction. It's a rapid induction that I have found great use for with some of my "skeptical" and resistant clients, especially the ones with a lot of performance anxiety. Last year I worked with a woman for an issue that we needed to resolve quickly. She was very afraid that she would be resistant and that she would fail. In addition to this I sensed that she had some trance capacity, but not much. I let her fail time and time again sitting in the chair. The idea was to use up all her resistance and link it to sitting in that chair. I used a lot of sentences like: "You have been sitting in that chair for some time ... and you have resisted everything in that chair ... and it's clear that you haven't responded at all ... I can't help you ... It's time to end this work and send you home ... I am not willing to work with you in that chair anymore ... " She started crying and begged me to keep trying, but I congruently told her that she had failed and that her resistance HAD been to strong in that chair. Once I could see that she had given up and accepted the fact that I wasn't going to work with her, I escorted her to the door with the following words: "Well, it's sad that I wasn't able to help you, but that's life sometimes. I wish
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you the best of luck and it was nice meeting you ... "I then moved to shake her hand goodbye, but to her surprise I went straight into the handshake induction. (Go back to chapter one and read about the guy I met at the door with this induction for a description on how to do it.) The client responded beautifully and went into a workable state of hypnosis. By doing a surprise induction like this as she thought the session was over she was able to respond. There was no performance anxiety, her defenses were down and the resistance was used up.
How About Control Freaks? The key to success is to somehow be able to utilize the need for control. Learn to listen intently and take what your clients say literally, especially if they lean on a sentence and repeat that sentence several times. One client kept asking: "BUT people in trance can't resist suggestions. No matter how hard I tried to convince her that all hypnosis really is self-hypnosis, she just wasn't buying it. If you have read Erickson's Tomato Plant Induction, which is detailed in many of his books, you know how powerful an indirect induction can be. I did something similar. I spoke about hypnosis in a general way to fixate her attention while giving embedded commands about going inside. I kept talking about: " ... how everyone could use a HAND from time to time and it didn't matter if it was THE RIGHT HAND or the left because at times in life ... We have been sinking for a while but that we have abilities deep inside ... That helps us LIFT UPWARDS ... so that we can feel LIGHT AND EFFORTLESS ... " After a few minutes of this nonsense talk her right hand started lifting involuntarily. I could see that she was going into hypnosis and at the same time expressions of worry and concern showed in her facial expression. I sensed that she was holding II
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back slightly because of the belief that she would be powerless to resist a suggestion if she really went deep. It was time to utilize her model of the world. I gave her the following double bind: "If you know that YOU ARE IN A TRANCE ... nod your head up and down ... if you don't know that you are in a trance ... move it from side to side." She started nodding hear head up and down confirming that she knew that she was in a trance. I sensed that she needed to know that she could resist a suggestion, so I gave her the eye lock challenge, knowing very well that she would resist it. As soon as she opened her eyes she was told: "That's right ... Now that you know that you are in a trance ... and you know that you can resist a suggestion while in trance ... how long until those EYES CLOSE and you drop all the way into a deep state NOW... " She did just that and had no problems going into hypnosis thereafter.
What About Those Who Repress Feelings Sometimes you will get clients who just aren't able to voluntarily access the state that is driving the issue they are seeing you for. Sometimes people go into hypnosis, but then, when I attempt to bring up the emotion using a strong one-tofive count ... the answer I get is NOTHING ... I just don't feel anything. If the client is reporting feeling nothing and I sense that he is shutting down, I use the same parts reframe that I use when someone doesn't go into hypnosis. See "Harald the Asthmatic" for an example. If I sense that the client is in hypnosis and leans on the word "NOTHING" as if they are a bit numb, like the pissing in public client, I will utilize it by saying: ... That's great ... Sometimes
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nothing is something ... and as you continue to focus on that feeling of nothing I am going to count from ten to one ... and when I reach the number one you're going to be back at the first event that has everything to do with this issue ... " Often the client will just be an analytical that has a tough time bringing up feelings and getting absorbed. My favorite tactics for dealing with this is to have the client hyperventilate on purpose (explained later). Another choice is to use a New Code Game to activate emotions. Before I give you specific instructions on how to do New Code Games, let's look at some New Code Case stories as well as the principles involved.
When the Client is Totally Emotionally Repressed Sometimes I get these clients from hell and absolutely nothing works. Some people are so emotionally repressed and so into the illusion of control that hypnotic approaches and new coded interventions will be very hard to pull off. If you have read this far you have discovered the wonderful world of Ordeal Therapy and read about examples where ordeals have worked when nothing else has. I would like to introduce another choice for these superrepressed clients. Before I do that, I'll ask if you have you ever noticed that a lot of people seem to begin hyperventilating when they really seem to be "losing it"? I have noticed this a lot with my martial arts students when they do heavy sparring or full contact simulations. When people start hyperventilating, doctors usually give them a bag to breathe into to help them get back into a "normal" breathing rhythm. What if hyperventilating is a natural way for the mind-body system to deal with some issue? Another fascinating phenomenon is if you watch certain animals that have been traumatized (and
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survived), notice how they will shake a little as if they are shaking the experience out of their system. Many years ago one of my early-day NLP instructors, a guy by the name of Mike Chechanowich, taught me a very interesting technique where you get the client to hyperventilate on purpose. I think that Mike got this technique from the Rebirthing method. I have combined this breathing technique with mindfulness meditation techniques I have picked up by studying the materials of a meditation teacher by the name of 5hinzen Young. Here are the steps: 1. Have the client lie down on the floor on his back. Put one
of your hands on his lower back and one hand on his stomach. The reason for doing this is so that you can help the client establish a good breathing rhythm. 2. Have the client start breathing very deeply using both
the stomach and the chest. Also make sure that they have the mouth open. The whole idea here is to breathe very deeply and at the same time in a fast and rhythmic way. Your job is to be a combination of a cheerleader and a provocateur. You can use whatever hypnotic language skills you might have to provoke emotions, or you can just make sure that they keep breathing and then help them deal with whatever comes up. Often intense pain will come up and more often than not the deep repressed emotions will surface. Often you will see the client start shaking, just like the animals do. You want to encourage them to just let it happen. Don't try to stop them. These sessions have usually lasted somewhere between thirty minutes and an hour. It's hard for a client to keep analyzing while doing this.
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When strong emotions come up I invite the client to have a full experience of the emotion and to observe it. If it's very overwhelming I will help the client break the emotion down into small components. Here are some examples: A. Is the feeling stable or is it changing? If we use this distinction I will ask the client about every five seconds if the emotion is stable or changing. If they answer stable, I will have them notice the stability. If they answer that the emotion is changing I will have them observe how the emotion is changing. B. Does the feeling pressure inward or outwards (contracting or expanding) or is it doing both?
C. Is the feeling local or global? By local I mean located in one specific location or is it in different places? If the emotion is very intense I might use just one of these
categories. Usually I combine them by asking the client questions from several of these categories every few seconds. The whole idea is for the person to both feel the emotion and just observe it with precision. This is a great way of releasing old pent-up emotions. Another thing I often do once the feeling is beginning to diminish is to have them notice their thoughts as well. The categories I use here are "pictures", "dialogue" or "subtle" if they can't quite grasp if it's a picture or voice or maybe both. Here the client is instructed to just say out loud whatever comes up. There is no need for any content here. If the client sees a picture the client just says" PICTURE" out loud. If he is talking to himself he will say the word "DIALOGUE" out loud. If there is picture and dialogue he will say "PICTURE and DIALOGUE". After a while I might combine observing with precision both thoughts and emotions by having the client do both and just
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describe in detail what's happening without going into any content. Again, this is a great way to release old repressed emotions as long as they consciously do not try to let go of the emotions. While they do this exercise I don't have them hyperventilating. They hyperventilate to bring up emotion. Then we do the mindfulness meditation. Once they seem clear and report that they are, we stop. We might do as little as thirty minutes or we might go beyond an hour. Another option is to go straight in to J0rgen's favorite format. WARNING! Don't use this hyperventilating technique on people with heart problems, epilepsy or with the pregnant!
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CHAPTER 11
SOME PURE NEW CODE CASES
I spent about six months only using the New Code Change format on pretty much every client I saw whether the client needed it or not. How is that for a client centered approach? There were a few exceptions. Actually, the approach is VERY client centered since we are not imposing anything on the client. The client chooses the context and generates the state and resources without the agent of change needing to know any content.
A Case of Heavy Grief A couple of years ago I saw a woman in her forties named Vicky who had struggled with intense grief for the last thirteen years. Her thirteen year old daughter had suddenly collapsed and died in her arms during a walk in the woods. If my memory serves me correctly, the daughter had some sort of heart defect that they didn't know about. Since that time the mother had suffered with intense grief and several times a day whenever something reminded her of her dead daughter, the picture of her dead daughter in her arms would torment her. Vicky and I created a one session miracle on a cold and rainy October day. First we had her choose a context (which wasn't hard). The context she chose was the one where her daughter died in her arms. Vicky was instructed to see herself over there, on a hallucinated place on the floor, in that context.
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Next she was instructed to physically step into the imagined context and be there with all her senses. As she did this a strong emotion of grief came up. Since she stood on a piece of paper while having the grief experience, the experience became spatially anchored to that particular place on the floor. That's what I mean by the term "spatial anchor." After a few seconds I pulled her out of the context and had her jump up and down for some time to get her out of the grief state. We then spent about fifteen minutes playing the Alphabet Game before she went into a strong flow state. Suddenly, I had her reenter the context while still in the flow state and a lifetransforming change followed. After stepping out of the context she joyfully told me that the picture had changed by itself. Her daughter had suddenly smiled at her in the image. When I later heard from her, she told me that when she thought about her daughter she felt joy and that she spontaneously had started reliving a lot of pleasant memories she had experienced with her daughter.
Some Loving Sex for You Another client, a woman in her late thirties came in with the inability to really enjoy sex. Even though she loved her husband very much and was attracted to him, her body would go numb when they had sex. Even friendly hugs would create a feeling of numbness and often a feeling of wanting to get away. Sara had been sexually abused as a child by her father and requested that we didn't go into her past memories. I was curious to see what would happen if we dealt with this without working directly with her past memories, but instead used the New Code Change format.
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I asked her which context she felt the numbness the most. When doing this format I always prefer getting the biggie, the worst context, in the hope that if we change that, the change will generalize to all similar contexts. Sara selected a context, and then proceeded to step into it. We knew that the unconscious approved of the context since her whole body went numb instantly. Then, after breaking state we used the NASA game to create a flow state followed immediately by having her reenter the context. I saw a pretty strong nonverbal state shift, which she verbalized by saying: "That was certainly different." When Sara came back a week later, she told me with tears in her eyes that she had had loving sex for the first time in her life. She jokingly described herself as a thirty seven year old woman who had just lost her virginity. A most welcome bonus was that hugs also felt comfortable. Both of these client stories about how much things had changed their lives brought tears to my eyes then and there. I am a sucker for emotional stuff like that with happy endings. Experiences like these certainly make this job the very best in the world.
A Severe Snake Phobia Anita wanted relief from a severe snake phobia. "Just" thinking about it was enough to send her into panic. If she saw one on TV or saw a picture of a snake in a magazine she would freak out. To help Anita I borrowed a book from the local library, which was full of snake pictures. We started out by using a picture of a snake from the book as context. Then we did the NASA game for about fifteen minutes to get a great flow state. While in the flow state I showed her the picture again, but this time she went into a state she described as neutral. We tested several times and
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each time she went into the neutral state. However, when I showed her a picture of a snake with different colors she would once again go into a phobic state. In the end we had to re-do the game three times for her unconscious to generalize the change to snakes of different colors and sizes. Be prepared to repeat the game using a slightly different context. Some people will, if you choose the most severe context, generalize that change to all contexts that are somewhat similar. However, people vary a lot in how widely they will generalize the change. This is one reason why I prefer the approach I have presented numerous times so far in this book.
A Group of Fighters I teach self-defense in addition to doing changework. From time to time I will teach my students self-hypnosis and various NLP and meditation techniques. I have also had the pleasure of working with a couple of professional mixed martial arts fighters using the format described above. In my experience, a great strength in using the New Code change format is that even though different athletes might play the exact same game, the unconscious of the individual athlete might produce VERY different states based on what is most appropriate in the context selected. Also, as the context changes, the state might spontaneously change into a more appropriate one. One pro fighter told me that he simply felt that he had more choice and better perspective in his selected context. Another time I worked with three fighters simultaneously. They all chose contexts related to fighting and they all used the Alphabet Game. One guy felt a surge of adrenalin after completing Step Four. The next guy broke into laughter and the last guy went into a state of relaxed confidence.
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The main challenge is that a lot of people won't generalize the changes very easily, meaning that if the context changes somewhat the new state won't fire off. In other words, the bridge between the context, the state and the ability to generalize the change to similar contexts is the main challenge.
Grinders New Code Change Format The New Code Change format is an elegant format developed by John Grinder to correct a flaw in the "old classical" NLP. In the old days the clients conscious mind would be asked something to the effect of: "What do you want to achieve?" Grinder points out that the client's conscious mind is the part of the client least qualified to decide what the end state should be. That this: the decision should be left to the unconscious. Further, the conscious mind would then often be asked to identify some resource. A common example would be the different anchoring formats where the client is asked to consciously select some resource, and then go back and re-experience it. Again, Grinders perspective is that which end state and resources to be used are decisions best left to the unconscious. Another big distinction in the New Code Format is the focus on state instead of behavior. Instead of generating new behaviors as in Six Steps Reframing, the emphasis is on generating a flow state and then linking that state to the context where the client is stuck. STEP ONE
From third position (observer position) select some context where you find yourself stuck. See yourself over there in the context where you experience X the most. Remember the woman with grief? I had her use the memory of her son dying in
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her arms as context. I had her see that experience on a specific place on the floor on a piece of paper (spatial anchoring). There is no attempt to find out about the problem or what the client wants to do instead. The goal is to identify a context where the client is stuck. To create the greatest change possible I like to probe for which context the client is the most stuck. Generally, the more emotion the client feels when they step into the context (Step Two) the more appropriate the context. Have the client consciously select the context where she is most stucki reacting most inappropriately from the third position. You will skyrocket your results in changework if you focus on context and state instead of attempting to understand the problem or work on what the client wants to achieve consciously. STEP TWO
Have the client physically walk over to the hallucinated context on the floor. Most people will benefit from closing their eyes to really associate into the context. Going back to the grief client I had her physically walk over to the imagined context and associate into it. STEP THREE
Have the client step out of the context. Then have the client play a New Code Game. The Alphabet Game and NASA game are excellent choices. The intent here is for the client to play the game until she is in a flow state and has maintained that state for a little bit of time. If you see that the client loses his state during the game (and you will), just stop them and have them take a couple of deep breaths and then go at it again. If the client is doing something that's getting in the way of achieving a flow state, then verbally instruct the client how to do things differently. Here is how you do the games.
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The Alphabet Game
Make a chart and write up all the letters of the alphabet. Under each letter put an L, R or B in a different color. The task of the player is to vocalize the different letters, while simultaneously lifting an arm. So, let's say that you have put an L under (A), that means that the player is to vocalize A while lifting his left arm. If there was an R under the letter (B), that would have meant to lift the right arm while vocalizing B, and if there was a B under the letter (C), it would be an instruction to lift both arms while vocalizing C. The player continues to do this until he is able to do it with rhythm and flow. The next step is to add some complexity. This time the player not only lifts an arm, but also at the same time lifts the opposite leg. Therefore, if they lift the RIGHT arm while vocalizing some letter, the left foot is to be lifted simultaneously. The final step is to work the alphabet backwards. So far we have started with the letter A, and then proceeded to the last letter in the alphabet. Now, to make it even more complex we are going to start with the last letter in the alphabet, and when we reach A, just rotate back to the last letter in the alphabet again. The intent here is to create a flow state. A state where the person is absorbed in the experience, flowing with rhythm, with just the right amount of effortless "tension." Most people will need something between ten and fifteen minutes to reach a good flow state. The NASA Game
This is another variation of a New Code Game, which along with the Alphabet Game I have gotten from John Grinder. The intent is the same: to produce a flow state.
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1. Have the client find a spot to look at right in front of him or her. 2. Instruct the client to say the word "LEFT" and then
move his eyes to the left. Then have him say the word "RIGHT", then move his eyes to the right. Then do the same thing for "UP" and then "DOWN." Have the person practice this for a little so that a good rhythm is established. 3. The next step is to present a math problem (start out easy) at the beginning of the cycle (when the client says "LEFT"), and then have the person give the answer to that math problem at the end of the cycle (after moving his eyes down). 4. The whole idea here is that the clients keep the same rhythm and not stop to think. S. The next add on is for you as a coach to attempt to
distract the client during the cycle. Clap your hands, jump up and down, and push the client lightly and so on. 6. An optional step is for the coach the clap the last number of the math problem 7. As an example, if the math problem is four times four, you would say: "Four times ... " and then clap your hands four times. Keep going until you can see the client steadily in a flow state over some period of time. Speed is not essential, but rhythm is. It's not important if the client makes "mistakes" or not, rather the rhythm and quality of the state is what counts.
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STEP FOUR
When you see that the client is in a flow state that she has maintained for at least for a couple of minutes, have the client reenter the context that they stepped into in Step Two. It's important that the client doesn't attempt to consciously change or influence anything. Lead the client there for a little while to make sure that they are in a good state. If they" collapse" then pull them out of the context, have them take a couple of deep breaths, and then do the game again.
Tips from an Insider Remember that it's all about two variables, namely" context and state." There is no need to attempt to understand the" problem" or ask the client what she wants instead. Just have the client select the context where she is most stuck. Once the client steps into the hallucinated context, then it's all about creating the flow state. When the state is good have the client re-enter the context without consciously trying to change or influence anything. 1. Emphasize rhythm. The most common mistake many clients make is that they think it's all about speed. Get people to slow down. 2. It's not about content. Clients often worry about doing it wrong. Emphasize that it's all about the quality of the state. It doesn't matter if they make "mistakes" or not. If they are really hung up on content, task them by requiring them to make a mistake every other line (on Alphabet Game) as an example. 3. The New Code Games are ideal for creating flow states. You are activating both hemispheres, using the three
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most important representational systems (visual, auditory and kinesthetic). In addition you are creating rhythm and getting the clients physiology involved. There is one more important factor involved in creating a flow state. It's important that the game neither be too difficult nor too easy. If it's too easy you create boredom, and if it's too difficult you will only get frustration. Ideally, you will get the client playing the game at a level at which it's difficult and challenging, but at the same time doable. 4. Calibrate signals from the unconscious. In Step Two when the client steps into the chosen context, if the context is approved of by the unconscious you will usually see it by the client getting the feeling connected with the context. Also, after reentering the context in Step Four, ask the client how it feels if the change isn't obvious by noticing the client's nonverbal response. If the change isn't there you might want to re-do the game. Remember that you need three things to make this format work. First of all, the client needs to get in touch with the feeling state connected to the context when she steps into it in step two, the stronger the better. If the client is very "analytical" and doesn't feel anything when she enters the context, and you know that you have the right context, then play a game with the intent of getting in touch with the feeling the next time she enters the context. Then, once the context feels "real" for the client, step out, do a new game and then reenter the context. The second thing you need is a strong flow state. Again, look for rhythm and synchronized patterns of
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movement and sound. Another good sign is if the client makes a "mistake" and doesn't care, but just carries on in the same state. The third thing you need is a strong bridge between the state and the context, since you are linking a flow state to the visual and auditory triggers used to trigger the unwanted response. 5. Future pace when done. After reentering the context and pulling the person out after a while, it's useful to challenge the client a bit. Questions about how they will respond when person X does Y or whatever (use whatever you know about the context if the context is known to you) and look at the client's nonverbal responses. Does the client show evidence of the old response or is she showing the nonverbals of a resourceful state? You should know that John Grinder uses the term "High Performance State." I use the term "Flow State" because I find that term more accurate and useful. I write this just so you know that we are referring to the same thing.
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CHAPTER 12
JI2JRGEN'S FAVORITE FORMAT
The format presented below is my bread and butter technique. It combines the principles of the New Code, Time Line patterning, a rapid induction, deep hypnosis, strong emotions and hypnotic regression. Notice that we don't have the person consciously select the context (as opposed to Step One in the New Code Change Format). Instead we have the unconscious select the emotion/ state and use that as an affect bridge back in time to create early context. Another strength is that we are aiming for all context relating to the client's issue. HOW TO SET IT UP
My goal here is to find out when they do x. It doesn't really matter if it's a fear, or unresolved grief or some other unwanted behavior or symptom. The key question to ask yourself is: "In which context are the symptoms most severe?" The main question I will ask the client is: "When do you do this, or in which context do you experience X?" Once again, feel free to use provocation, confrontation and humor to find this out. As always the client's nonverbal response will be far more informative than any story they might have constructed. If you can find the context where the client is the most stuck and use that, you have a great opportunity for generative change. I am also looking for a set of words or a sentence that will trigger the unwanted state in the client. If the client fears public speaking the word set might be something like: "So ... if you were to present yourself in front of highly
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competent people ... where you have to perform ... and they all focus on you ... " The next step for me is usually to elicit a time line. I usually do some conscious/unconscious disassociation and then present the organization of time as a job the unconscious has. The wording might go something like this: At the unconscious level you have a way of knowing something that you have done in the past ... versus something you plan to do in the future ... So if I were to ask your unconscious in what direction your past is located and in what direction your future is located ... I have an idea that you would in two different directions in relationship to your body ... So, if I were to ask your unconscious where your past is ... where would you point..? (After they point) .. .and where is your future?" If the client says that they don't know, just say: "I know you don't... but if you did where would it be? Take the first thing that comes up just trusting your unconscious." I don't think I have ever failed getting a response to that, but if you do, you could just use the parts reframe I have presented numerous times in this chapter. Then I have the client float the time line as preparation for the changework. It usually goes something like this: Please close your eyes ... and imagine floating above your time line ... higher and higher until you reach a place where you can just sense the past and future down there ... NOW... what I want you to do is to start floating back in time ... further and further in your own unique way ... all the way back to your younger years to a positive event ... a time you felt really good ... float down into the event... see what you saw ... hear what you heard ... until you start to feel that good feeling ... and notice as you make the image bigger and brighter and turn the volume up ... that the feeling gets even better ... NOW that you enjoy what you are experiencing ... I want you to float back up above the time line ... and float towards your future ... and of course you don't have memories in your future ... but you might have ideas, hopes and dreams and float II
II
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approximately one month into the future and let me know when you are there ... OK, float all the way back to now and reorient comfortably and when you have done so just open your eyes ... " Make sure that you calibrate the client along the way, making sure that the client is following you and is responding. Before I have them do this little exercise I tell them that they have to use their active imagination. It often helps to give them an example they can relate to. I often say: "Could you imagine being on top of a roof looking down?" If they confirm "Yes" (and aren't phobic of heights) I will tell them: "In the same way I will ask you to imagine floating up above the timeline just to get the experience of floating, AND I want you to know that this is just preparation so you don't have to perform in any way." This usually takes away any performance anxiety that they might have been doing. I also like the part of having them re-experience a good memory. That way the idea of letting go and focusing inwards gets to be a good thing. Now it's time for a hypnotic pre-talk designed to alleviate their fears and to establish a hypnotic contract. I will also explain different positions regarding the time line. I like to call the position of being associated with a past memory (like they just did with the positive event) Position 1. If they float above the event looking directly down on it then that's Position Two. When they float further back in time so that they are above the event and at least fifteen minutes BEFORE the event, so that they can turn around and look at the event from the perspective that it hasn't happened yet, that's Position Three. Position Three is a position where the client will let go of negative emotions. I am not quite sure why it works so well, but I know that it really does work that way. Although I do this stuff, and use the positions a bit differently than what Tad James does in Time Line TherapyTM, my format is heavily influenced
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by his teachings. So, I have to give credit where credit is due and say "Thank You!" Ok, you have now prepared your client, so here is the actual format. 1. ACTIVATE THE STATE THAT IS DRIVING THE ISSUE
Remember the hand drop induction into hypnosis. Well, now is the time for it. Do the hand drop and then immediately say: "You have a feeling inside that you don't like ... a feeling that has everything to do with X (Here you can use whatever word set or sentence you discovered when you probed for context) ala: The feeling that has everything to do with you developing migraine headaches when you relax and feel that you deserve a break ... You have tried to avoid the feeling, but now is the time for you to feel it and deal with it ... I am going to count from one to five ... and as I do that feeling is going to grow as real as eve ... " Then you do the one-to-five count. When you reach the count of five have the client identify where in the body they can feel the feeling the most, and have the client touch that body part. Ask the client to name the feeling. This way you will know if it's anger, fear, sadness, guilt or whatever. 2. USE THE STATE TO LET THE UNCONSCIOUS CREATE THE CONTEXTS
One thing that I really like with this format is that it's no longer the conscious mind that selects the context. We are going to let the unconscious take care of that. It goes something like this: "Feel that feeling and keep feeling it as I count from ten to one ... When I reach the count of one you are going to be back to the very first unresolved memory that has everything to do with X (of course, don't say X, use whatever
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they have presented whether its asthma or migraines or insomnia or premature ejaculation ... ) TEN focusing on that feeling, NINE - EIGHT - SEVEN ... following that feeling back in time ... SIX - FIVE - FOUR ... to the very first memory that has everything to do with this feeling ... THREE - TWO getting ready now and ONE you are there (I usually snap my fingers and jerk the clients head a bit from side to side a bit to disorient them a bit)... First impression ... INSIDE OR OUTSIDE? .. Are you standing, sitting or lying down .. ? ALONE OR WITH PEOPLE .. ? What age are you .. ? What do you feel?" Make sure that you do this super fast. All you want to do is to build a context involving all major rep systems. If the client says: "I don't know" just say: "I know you don't, but if you did ... first impression INSIDE OR OUTSIDE?" If it still isn't quite going well, suggest that you're going to count from three to one and at the count of one they will be aware of more detail. You can also use the "NOTHING IS SOMETHING" word set. That's right ... often nothing is something and as you continue to focus on nothing I am going to count from three to one, and as I do the something that's behind nothing will appear. If that doesn't work use the parts reframe that I have presented previously. So now you have a context, but it probably isn't the earliest one. My experience is that the earlier back in time you get the client the better. Once we have a context I will say: "Keep focusing on that feeling ... once again I will count from five to one and when I reach the count of one you will be back to the very earliest memory this feeling is connected to." If they end up in the same event twice and the memory is from between age zero and five at the most, you might be back at the first unresolved memory.
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3. RELEASE OF EMOTION AND RELEARNING
Once the client has built this context I utilize the timeline to relearn and release emotion. It goes something like this: "Float above the event up to Position Two ... so that you are directly above the event looking down on it ... and I want your unconscious to learn whatever it needs to learn so that you can let go of x emotion ... NOW while your unconscious learns, I want you to use your conscious mind as well ... that kid down there at age X is feeling emotion Y ... and he was doing the best that he could with the resources he had available at the time... However, that feeling in that context is representative of the thinking patterns of a child ... not the grown man that you are today ... as you look at it from the perspective of being a grown man you can begin to update the memory ... you know a lot of things that the kid down there didn't know and as you view it in light of your current knowledge and resources ... notice how new choices become apparent ... and although learnings about other people and the world is valuable ... make sure that the learning's mostly are about yourself. .. about what you can do differently ... and that they are future oriented ... " If I sense that the client is struggling I will ask the client to verbalize the learning. In this way I can help the client out a bit by asking questions, although I really prefer to just work with process and leave the content to the client. I might offer some perspectives and reframes if I sense that it's useful. Once the client confirms that he has learned whatever is needed, it's time to release the emotion or emotions connected to the memory. Often that would have already happened if you have done a good job in the relearning phase. It's time for the following instructions: "I want you to float to Position Three ... so that you are above the event and BEFORE the
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event happened ... turn around and look at the event from that perspective ... NOW what happened to X emotion ... is it GONE NOW? (If client answers YES and you see a state shift, say) ... Float down into the event ... and notice if the emotion is GONE NOW... " If the emotion is gone I will offer the following instructions: "I want you to start floating back towards now only as quickly as you let go of X emotion on all related events back to now ... Here is how I want you to do it ... As you float towards now your unconscious knows exactly which memories are related and which have unresolved emotion on them ... and it knows how to present those memories on your time line ... All I want you to do is to assume Position Three before each event and let go of the emotion and preserve whatever you've learned about how you can do things different in the future ... "
What If The Emotions Don't Release? Sometimes the client won't release the negative emotion from the first memory. If that happens I prefer to do the things listed below and in that order. A. Usually this means that there is an even earlier memory related to the issue with umesolved emotion. Say something like this: "I am curious if there might be something even earlier that needs to be dealt with first ... Let's find out ... I am going to count from five to one ... and if there is something even earlier you're going to be there at the count of one ... If this event is the very earliest you will just experience this memory even more vividly ... leave it up to your unconscious." More often than not there will be an earlier memory and when the client enters position three on that memory, the emotion will usually release.
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B. Let's say that the client ends up back in the same memory they were just in. I will check that the client really enters Position Three. Instruct the client to: " ... look towards now and to float as high up in the air as you need '" and as far back in time as you need until you can feel the emotion release NOWwww ... " C. If that doesn't work I will educate the client a bit on how
emotions are signals. I will tell the client that so called "negative" emotions are good as signals, but not good for the body to hold on to. Also, I will emphasize that it's the things learned from the memory that protects them and not the old negative emotion. Depending upon which emotion the client feels that won't release I will usually use the following frames.
Anger Anger is there to signal you that someone has broken your rules about what's acceptable in the context that you are in. There are three solutions. You can challenge your own rule. Is your rule empowering and useful? If it isn't, then what other rule would be more appropriate? Another solution, if the client feels that the rule is appropriate, is to ask him how he can enforce his boundaries better in the future either verbally or by actually doing something different. As an example, a client of mine used to invite her sister over to her place for Sunday dinners with her family. The sister would often be at least thirty minutes late and the family would sit there hungry and my client would boil with anger. She felt that her rule about time was appropriate. She decided to continue to invite her sister, but at five o'clock sharp the family would start eating whether the sister was there or not. This solution enabled her to let go of anger easily. 270
Sometimes there isn't much you could have done. So, the solution will be to "forgive" and let go and figure out how to prevent it from happening again.
Fear Fear is there to signal to you that you have picked up something that might be dangerous. Gavin De Becker, author of the book The Gift of Fear wrote something that I think is pretty profound: "The fact that you feel fear is solid evidence that what you are fearing is not happening. If it was actually happening you would be in the experience and you would no longer fear it." He uses the example of being up in the mountains hiking and afraid that you might slip and get too close to the edge. Well, if you slip and get to close you will no longer fear that, you will instead be afraid that you might fall over the edge. Of course, if you actually fall off the edge you will be afraid of landing and so on. So, the client needs to evaluate if he really is in danger. If no, the client can proceed as usual. If "Yes", how can he get to safety? Or how can the client be better prepared the next time. Which skills might the client want to develop?
Sadness Sadness is the perception of loss. What is the client losing, if anything? Has the client really lost anything, or is it just fuzzy thinking. If so, then it's time to challenge that. Other solutions will be to regain what has been lost or establish or do something else that satisfies the same emotional need. Often it will be about other people not giving them something that they think they need to be happy. The idea being that the parents or wife needs
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to show more respect or acceptance and so on. The most useful solution will usually be about how the client can then develop more self-acceptance or more self-respect.
Guilt Guilt is there to signal that you have broken one of your own rules. The signal is there to inspire you to live your values. The rules might be terrible, or you might realize that it's time to do something different or change your values.
Testing When the client signals that he is done it is time for a test. I simply instruct the client to test the most significant memories and notice if those are flat. Instead of me trying to convince the client that the old negative emotion is gone (if it is), I will have the client convince me. Even after the client is satisfied that the emotion is gone, I will have the client test a few more times to really make sure. If the emotion isn't gone, then it's right back to Step Two. Once again you amplify the emotion and follow it back to the earliest memory that's unresolved.
Future Pacing The last step is to instruct the client to go out into the future and notice how things are different. I have the client do this for a little while. As they do this it's important to calibrate and sometimes challenge them a bit. Challenge them by asking how they will deal differently with whatever context they were stuck in. If the client at this point reacts with the same old tired response that they are paying you to help them change, then it's right back to step two again. 272
CHAPTER 13
THE HIGHLY HYPNOTIZABLE CLIENT
Before we start exploring this intriguing group of clients I think it's useful to me to specify what the hell I am talking about. Specifically, what criteria I use to determine a highly hypnotizable client and just as important how this labeling is useful. Obviously, these are the people who go very easily into a deep hypnotic state. Those people who go really deep and who seem to respond to just about any hypnotic induction. It's also the people you will see on stage at a stage hypnosis show, the 10 to 20 percent of the population who seem most receptive to hypnosis. My criteria are the following: 1. The person will age regress in the present tense. In others words, when they relive/reconstruct some memory it's as if it's really happening and just as intense as when it originally happened. Most other clients will have at least some awareness that they are not really there, but they are here and there at the same time. The most highly hypnotizable clients I have seen seem to be living life in the present compared to the analyticals that are less present but live more in the past or the future. Interestingly, while they have a tendency to live in the present, these clients are the only ones who will do a "real" age regression in the present. 2. They are very able and willing to get uncritically absorbed into a new perspective or experience. These are the clients who while at the movies get so absorbed into
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it that they seem to lose awareness of where they are. They even seem to be surprised to find themselves in the movie theater right after the movie ends, often a bit disoriented. When they imagine something it's as intense as if it was actually happening. Same thing if you ask them to go back to some memory, they will get so absorbed that the remembered experience will be as strong as the real one. 3. This group of clients can easily do positive and negative hallucinations on cue. While you can make an argument that we all do positive and negative hallucinations all the time in everyday life, and I agree that we do, there is a special and small group of clients who will do these phenomena on cue as a result of suggestion or post hypnotic suggestion. To be able to do this the client needs to be able to accept a high degree of trance logic. In other words, to be able to tolerate paradox with no need to resolve it. Remember the example of a deep trance subject actually experiencing a negative hallucination versus the subject faking a deep trance. Let me refresh your memory. The subject was while in deep trance instructed to negatively hallucinate a person standing right in front of the object. The subjects who were actually in a deep trance elegantly walked around the person they negatively hallucinated while at the same time claiming that there was no one there. In their world they walked around someone who wasn't there. This is an example of trance logic. People in deep hypnosis have a tendency to use BOTH/ AND logic. In this way the subject can actually be on the operating table having open heart surgery and at the same time feel like he is swimming in the Arctic Ocean. The result is an amazing level of pain control
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where they feel the pain at some level, but at the same time they don't. This has actually been done in real time. You can read more about it in the book Trance and Treatment by Herbert and David Spiegel. Herbert Spiegel is the first person, who to my knowledge, tested and categorized his patients into low, medium, and high hypnotic capacity. He also made some observations about the relationship between hypnotic capacity and personality. He then designed his interventions based on what category he had put his patient in. While I don't agree with all his views, I urge you to check out his work. It will give you some additional perspectives on this topic of hypnotizability that are a little different from mine. As I said, I find some of his conclusions a little troubling, but some of the stuff he writes about has some value. 4. These clients will, if instructed, develop amnesia for the whole or parts of the trance experience as a result of suggestion. Some of the hypnotic virtuosos will even develop spontaneous amnesia for the entire trance experience without receiving any suggestions for doing so.
This chapter is reserved for clients who could do all or most of the phenomena described above. The ability to go into deep hypnosis opens the door for accessing skills and developing results that seem miraculous. No doubt, these are the type of clients any skilled hypnotherapist hopes to get since getting results with these clients is usually easy, provided the client is willing to change. Any skilled or even semi-skilled agent of change will have a number of former clients they have been able to perform what most people would consider "miracles" with. The common denominator will be the client's ability to go into a deep hypnotic state coupled with a willingness to change. On 275
the other hand, the common denominator in the group of clients they haven't been able to get any results with will be the ones who don't go into hypnosis and aren't very committed. My ideal client, if I wanted to maintain my comfort zone, and to be honest, on days where I would like to be doing something else, would be a highly hypnotizable client with a strong willingness to change, little secondary gain and a severe symptom. The more severe the symptom, the less bullshit you will get from clients if they are there to change. The toughest client has always been the uncommitted left brainer. These clients will push you to get smarter and more competent and for that reason they" should" be your favorite client. Before you start to believe that working with highly hypnotizables will be a walk in the park, you need to know that there are some traps you can easily fall into. Every resource can turn into a problem if used in the wrong way in the wrong context. The case stories below will shed some light on how you can get better results with these clients.
A Depressed Guy Named Tim Tim was a guy with a lot of knowledge and resources, but he struggled with depression, anger and self-sabotaging behavior. He wanted to start his own company, but claimed that he just couldn't since he had a mental block that stopped him. J0rgen: "How do you know that you can't start your own company and succeed at it?" Tim: "The way I know is that it feels totally real to me. " Tim's way of knowing that he couldn't was "because" it felt real to him, and if it felt real then it was real. I picked up something funny. Whenever he would talk about his shortcomings in the
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past, he would gesture right in front of him. When he talked about the stuff he wanted to do in the future, he would gesture right in front of him again, only a bit further in front of him. Well, you guessed it! His "timeline" (a useful construct whether or not we actually have such a thing) was organized in such a way that his past, with the screw up memories blown up, was right in front of him. Whenever he imagined the future, he would filter it through up the screw ups of the past resulting in a bad feeling. Not the best recipe for getting motivated about the future, but a marvelous way of doing depression. Got to hand him that, he was a master at the Art of Depression. I had him imagine floating above his timeline so that he could look down on it. Then I had him imagine taking the past and putting it behind him and the future in front of him. After this he was instructed to shrink the size of all the bad memories and screw ups in his past. This simple intervention worked wonders, and that's no surprise since I gave him exactly what his unconscious was signaling me to assist him in doing. We didn't stop there. I helped Tim into a very deep hypnotic state. Once there I told him that when he opened his eyes he would see and hear Santa Claus right in front of him. Tim was deeply hypnotized so this positive hallucination was totally real to him. Then I suggested that when he next opened his eyes the table between us would be gone, that there was only space between us. Once again, he opened his eyes and negatively hallucinated the table and IT FELT REAL TO HIM. Tim was convinced that both the positive and the negative hallucination were real since they FELT REAL. By the way "IT FEELS REAL" was the sentence he marked out and leaned on several times during the interview. If something felt real then it was real. He needed the experience of something FEELING REAL but not being real, not as an intellectual concept but as a felt experience, a felt experience where something that feels real 277
doesn't need to be "real." After the hallucinations we had a little chat. Jargen: "When you saw Santa Claus that was real wasn't it. I
mean, it FELT REAL didn't it? Tim: You mean ... YEAH ABSOLUTELY! J0rgen: "When you negatively hallucinated the table, didn't that
feel real as well? Tim: That was amazing, yes, it still feels totally real. I could have sworn it wasn't there. J0rgen: Now, I have a question for you. You used to have a mental block and the way you knew it was real was because it felt real. Now, if you can see something that isn't there and it FEELS TOTALLY REAL, and you can't see something that actually is there and that feels totally real as well. I wonder how real those old limitations were after all? Tim went straight back into deep hypnosis. I told him to keep exploring the future in light of the deep changes he just made. I got a letter from Tim a year later thanking me for helping him produce a miracle. He was no longer depressed and was running his own company.
Taking Things Literally Clients will often tell you right off the bat what you need to do to help them. Remember Tim, he marked out a sentence several times and his gestures revealed a lot. By noticing these things and utilizing them, you can design that experience for the clients in deep hypnosis. You won't get much resistance since you are feeding back to the unconscious exactly what it communicated to you. Let' s take a look at couple examples.
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Susy the Insomniac Susy was a woman in her early forties who had struggled with insomnia for a long time. She had tried talk therapy and sleeping pills but nothing had helped her much. Some biofeedback practitioner had helped her out with her depression, but the insomnia was still there. Tingen: How on earth do you manage to not sleep? I mean, if there is something I am good at it is sleeping. I close my eyes and I wake up ten hours later. Susy: I don't know. I just lie down and start to recall how long it's been since I have slept properly, and I get worried that I won't sleep tonight. I remember not being able to sleep. The more I try to sleep the more awake I become. Susy has just given us the solution to her problem. Amnesia. If she didn't remember all the sleepless nights then she wouldn't worry, and if she didn't worry her problem would disappear. Susy went easily into deep hypnosis. Once there, I tested for somnambulism by suggesting a number block. I gave Susy the suggestion that when I snapped my fingers the number four would be gone. She passed the test when she counted one - two - three - FIVE and so on. Shortly thereafter, to her surprise, she discovered that I had eleven fingers. The reason I did this was both to convince her that she was in deep hypnosis and also to test for her ability to respond to direct suggestion in an involuntary manner. I then gave her the posthypnotic suggestion that whenever she put her head on the pillow with the intent to sleep (didn't want to ruin her sex life) she would develop amnesia for having had a sleep problem. This suggestion was repeated several times. Then she was "given" amnesia for the fact that I had given her the suggestion. I then hurried her out of the office in a state of slight confusion
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to protect the suggestions and the amnesia, since I wanted her conscious attention as far away from the session as possible. It worked! I have two years worth of follow-up on that woman and the insomnia is gone. This is another of those clients who "should" have been difficult to work with, but it was easy. All I had to do was to observe, listen intently and literally give her exactly what she required.
A Cool Weight Loss Solution Camilla was a woman in her mid thirties who wanted to lose about twenty pounds. She had tried a bunch of different diets, but would sabotage herself every time. She told me that she loved food and hated the idea of someone wanting to take food away from her. She was super stressed and wanted to learn how to meditate to reduce her stress levels. I hope you have your weight loss plan ready based upon the above description. Think about it, there are a couple of very important things to pick up. 1. She loves food and fears being told not to eat certain foods. She is super stressed and eats really fast. How can we utilize that? 2. She wants to learn how to meditate to reduce her level
of stress. So, how can we utilize these factors to help her lose weight in a way that is natural and elegant to her? Camilla easily went into deep hypnosis and was told the following: "Camilla, everyone has been telling you that you need to diet and that you enjoy food too much. Well, those solutions haven't worked well for you and for good reason. I want you to do something else entirely ... you see ... I want you to eat only the food you want to
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eat ... Everything is allowed ... and more importantly I want you to start enjoying food in a way you never have before ... taking the time to really taste ... smell ... Experience the sensations in your body that let you know that it feels so very good to enjoy food ... " The suggestions were repeated many times. She was also instructed to do time distortion, to eat in slow motion and to really feel and experience everything. To really enjoy food meant to only eat when hungry, select the food she wanted, eat in slow motion time and to stop when satisfied. It was also suggested to her that eating in a slow motion state would be her way of not only enjoying food but her way of meditating as well. Camilla lost over twenty pounds and she did so by enjoying herself. She was stunned by how good it felt and how easy it was. A year and a half later she called and told me that she wanted a reinforcement session since she had gained four pounds. She was given one and when last heard from was still doing great.
Using Hypnotic Capacity to Connect with Experience Robert was a business man with an intense fear of flying. When I saw him it had been close to a decade since he had been on a plane. This had cost him a lot of time and money since he would have to drive or take trains and boats instead of flying. On the phone he told me that he had been to several psychotherapists, two different fear of flying groups sponsored by different airlines as well as two different hypnotherapists. Robert also told me that he was very good hypnotic subject; so good that the hypnotherapists had been surprised that the hypnotic work hadn't helped him at all.
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Robert told me exactly how to help him in about ten seconds before he sat down in my office. What would you do if one of your clients told you the following: "Hello Jergen, I want you to know that I have TRIED a lot of different things and I have always told myself that as soon as I am over this fear I will buy a plane ticket the same day." If there are two words I don't like hearing from clients they are the evil twin sisters called HOPE and TRY. Jergen: I want you to stand up and TRY to lift that chair over there. Robert went straight to my chair and lifted it up. As soon as he did I gave him a hard time about the instruction, which was not to lift the chair but to try to lift it. Robert responded by just standing there. So, I sternly instructed him that I had not asked him to NOT lift the chair. Robert went into a state of confusion and it took him a couple of minutes to figure out how to try to lift the chair. As soon as he got it (evidenced by him struggling with/ expanding a lot of energy while the chair stood on the ground) I told him that I understood that he had been trying a lot of things and that I don't work with people who try. I only work with people who do things." Jergen: To be fair to be both of us, there is no point in working together if you are going to try again. If we are to work are you willing to actually do it? Meaning, are you willing to do the stuff I instruct you to do. Robert: Yes, I am willing to actually do it this time. We then shook hands to confirm our agreement.
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J.argen: Good, there is something else I want you to DO. You told me that as soon as you are over this fear you would immediately go buy a plane ticket? Robert: That's right! J.argen: True or false, when you saw those two hypnotherapists, even though you went deeply into hypnosis you never felt any fear, did you? Robert: That's right, I never felt any fear. It actually felt good when I imagined being on the plane. J.argen: I am going to ask you to do something. If you do it I can guarantee you that you will solve this problem. I promise you that it isn't illegal, immoral, or fattening. I need you to confirm that you will do it before I tell what it is. Robert: I trust you. Ok, I will do it. J.argen: As soon as we finish here today, and it doesn't matter how you feel about flying, I want you to immediately go and purchase a ticket. I also want you to get on that plane sober and drug free. Suddenly, things got very real for Robert and surprise, surprise, guess which strong emotion suddenly appeared in his body? That's right, a strong feeling of fear and as soon as he shook my hand the fear exploded.
J.argen: That's right, close your eyes and go even deeper into hypnosis ... I am going to count from ten to one and at the count of one you're going to be back to the very first memory related to this fear. He ended up at some reconstructed memory at age three and we cleared his fear using the same format I have described in detail earlier in the book. When Robert contacted me a couple of months later he had been on several flights and the fear was gone. The key point in making this intervention work was to make the whole thing real for Robert. As long as he operated
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from the frame that he didn't have to fly before he was comfortable, it is not much of a surprise that the hypnotic work he had done earlier didn't do much. No wonder he had never felt any fear during previous hypnotic work. Quite simple really, it just wasn't real to him and he hadn't committed to change. Robert did what some highly hypnotizable clients do. He used his hypnotic capacity to escape from the world, to disassociate so that he didn't have to be present. When these people choose to use their hypnotic capacity to connect with the world life tends to get a lot better. When you use hypnotic interventions with these type of clients, make sure that they stay present with you and that they are connected with the state that is driving the symptom they want help in changing. I have learned this the hard way. Several former clients of mine have gone deeply into hypnosis, seemingly cooperated totally, only to suddenly open their eyes and say: "This isn't working!" The two hypnotherapists Robert had seen had attempted to help him using direct suggestion and some imagery. I think that this is a bad choice. First of all, the chances of direct suggestion alleviating a strong phobia are very slim in my experience. Another problem is that these therapists seem to create a conflict inside the client. They directly suggest that the client be comfortable on the plane and have the client imagine being comfortable and so on. The only problem being that the client has a lot of strong emotionally charged memories of fear based flying. When these types of therapists are successful they are often only partially successful, and/ or the changes last a little while before the fear starts creeping back. By accessing the fear and updating and reframing those old memories there is suddenly no internal conflict. The whole person is congruent about flying with comfortable feelings since 284
he has reorganized his own internal experience in such a way that it supports him flying comfortably. Now the client owns the change versus just responding to some suggestion, which isn't congruent with the client's internal experience. So, dear script reading direct suggestion hypnotist, please do the world a favor and update your toolbox.
Make Sure the Client Internalizes and Owns the Change I am not opposed to giving clients direct suggestions. I often do for lighter issues like smoking and habit modification work as well as athletic enhancement work. Direct suggestions can be great if there are no strong memories with negative emotions related to the issue. Sometimes I will also use direct suggestion at the end of the work. At this point you can use direct suggestions to cement in the changes and learning's that the clients has discovered. However, especially with heavy issues, people can seemingly respond greatly, but to your surprise there is no real world change, or if there is change it can be very short lived.
Combining Hypnosis and Ordeal Therapy to Keep It Real A couple of years ago I saw a young woman named Betty who did some intense jealousy and depression. During the first session, using my preferred format, up came some strong fear and then a lot of fuzzy stuff. When we used the fear as a bridge back in time we got mostly fuzzy stuff related to what she perceived as past lives. I need to say a couple of things on this
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topic. Some people, perhaps most notably, Brian Weiss, has stated in his books that between thirty to forty percent of clients will need to visit a past life to get results. Based on a decade of doing hypnotic regressions I know that this is complete and utter bullshit. Might there be such a thing as a past life? I don't know. However, that's not really the issue. If we were to assume that there is such a thing as past lives (which I don't) it still makes little sense to assume that what people describe as past lives really are past lives. I have had many clients spontaneously regress back to something they report to be a past life. When they do I treat it as real, thereby utilizing their model of the world. What I never do is to impose the idea of past lives. I never mention the possibility to a client. This is one reason I never use the question I was originally taught to ask by Tad James when he taught me Time Line TherapyTM. The question goes like this: "What is the root cause of this problem, the first event which, when disconnected, will cause the problem to disappear? If you were to know, was it before, during, or after your birth?" BEFORE: In the womb or before? WOMB: What month? BEFORE: Was it a past life or passed down to you genealogically? PAST LIFE: How many lifetimes ago? GENEALOGICAL: How many generations ago? AFTER: If you were to know, what age were you? Well, I am not going to beat a dead horse. You know how problematic the whole Cause and Effect thing implied by this question is by now. There is another problem here as well. Simply by asking the question in this way you might install the
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idea that their "problem" is "caused" by something that happened in a supposed past life. How do I know this, you ask? Quite simply I followed this script for some time. Then I dropped the past life part of the question and guess what . .. mentioning past lives and genealogical influence in the question will trigger a higher number of clients selecting those options than if you don't presuppose it. Tad James and other "new agers" argument for doing this is that by allowing for past lives you utilize the client's model of the world. Their argument is that the client's unconscious mind might believe in past lives even if they consciously find the idea absurd. My response to this is that you can utilize pretty much anything, past lives and religion included, but there is no need for you as an agent of change to presuppose the existence of these things by your questions. Especially now that you know that some people who would never bring up the topic will do just that based on the way YOU framed the question. This is content imposition of the worst kind. It gets even worse. Let's say that you don't succeed with a client who" discovered" that the "root cause" for him being depressed right now is because he experienced something in a past life. If the client accepts the presuppositions that YOU as the agent of change have imposed, then the client probably won't release the problem unless he is able to "find" the past life experience. Trust me when I say that I have experimented massively with this. That way you won't have to and risk installing fuzzy thinking like this in your client. Notice that with my preferred format I just have the person follow the feeling back in time to their earliest memory that the feeling is connected to. Oh, I should mention that since I started doing it that way the past lives thing almost never appears. However, it has
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happened. What might be going on if it appears even though you haven't brought it up? In my mind there might be three explanations for this. Some very creative individuals might come up with many more. 1. The client might have actually regressed back to a past
life. Personally, I have never had a case where this line of reasoning was compelling for any reason I could think of. Despite this, since it comes from the client, I will treat it as real even if it's all B.S. content-wise. Who needs content if the stuff that comes up is structurally similar in some way to the clients "real" issue? If you can resolve it, you might resolve it in real time. So, even if the client regresses to a "past life" and the intervention you do help the client resolve the problem, then that is in no way evidence for the existence for past lives. If you believe that this is solid evidence for the notion of past lives, then you might as well start believing that people actually have a dog inside. Remember the kid I helped clear allergies by using this metaphor. 2. People create the metaphor of past lives to make it less
traumatic and easier to heal their issue. This is, in my opinion, a not that uncommon thing that might be going on when people report past life experiences. Let's say that someone has experienced something (in this life) that they perceive as very traumatic and extremely unsettling. These clients might, to make things easier and less threatening, create a metaphor that is similar to the trauma, so that they can experience it as "someone else" at a different time." By first resolving it in this way, it's often easier to then confront the "real" trauma.
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3. In my not always so humble opinion, the majority of the experiences people label past lives is not only BS and not useful, but is actually a distraction created by the unconscious to avoid having to deal with something. Given the choice between "reliving" something traumatic from their past and fabricating a fuzzy or even intriguing past life experience, the client's unconscious, especially if they're not quite committed or ambivalent about change, will often choose the latter. In my opinion this is what Betty did initially when we started working together. After I presented my usual reframes things got a bit better. She did a little bit better but hadn't improved much after two lengthy sessions of this stuff. This, to me, was another example of how some clients can use their capacity for hypnosis to escape from life and experience rather than connecting. Betty had gotten together with a guy who had a daughter from a previous marriage, and the main context where Betty did her depression and jealousy were related to being around the kid, especially when the boyfriend was around. After not having made much improvement with her using my usual format I decided to combine the notion of a social panorama with the New Code Change format. I had Betty close her eyes and imagine that she was in the middle and that around her were all the significant people in her life. Then I asked her to point to where these different characters were located spatially. The kid was represented as clawing her nails into her skirt, and the boyfriend's ex wife was represented as right behind her right ear jabbing away with an unpleasant voice. We used this representation as a context, did a New Code Game, and then we had her reenter the context without consciously attempting to influence anything. This intervention made the representations
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spontaneously change, as well as created some very useful shifts that generalized to many real world contexts. When she came in for the next session she reported these exciting changes as well as her general feeling of depression having lifted. However, there was one context that remained and it seemed totally stuck. She would still start crying and depressing in front of the child. Three sessions and absolutely no progress whatsoever related to this particular context. My gut told me that it was time for an ordeal. We needed to make it a lot more painful to do that crappy behavior than keep it up. I called in her boyfriend as well, framed it as a team effort and got both people's commitment that they were willing to play full out and do whatever it takes. Interestingly enough, she absolutely HATES this one rock band. Few things surprise me anymore in doing changework, but this did. I have never ever seen someone react with such strong emotion at the thought of having to listen to this particular rock band's CD. She started crying at the thought of having to do so. The ordeal was simple. If she ever were to start crying and depressing in front of the kid again, she was to instantly go into a room and listen to a whole CD of this music. It would be up to the boyfriend to determine if she was depressing in front of the child or not. I got his word that he wouldn't abuse this little privilege. Case closed! I have two-year follow-up and can happily report that the CD hasn't been played once and she has never started crying and sobbing in front of the kid since that last session. Just the threat of having to do the ordeal has effectively resolved this issue. I am also happy to report that the relationship improved as a result of this, and that she has gotten a lot closer to the kid as well.
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To me, this case is another example of the fact that sometimes it's important to combine hypnotic interventions with real world stuff. If people use their hypnotic capacity to escape and disconnect, then ordeals are often perfect to help them reconnect and to make the change real to them.
Suggestibility and Compulsive Compliance A few years ago I saw a young teenager named Richard who wanted to get rid of an allergy. We did the usual stuff and it seemed to work just fine evidenced by the fact that when he entered my office he was heavily symptomatic, and when he left there were no symptoms after heavy testing. I might add that pollen season was in full swing, so this was a very good test. A few days later his mother called and claimed that his allergies were back. Oh, by the way, when other people call to report that someone else's symptom is back that's never a good sign. Richard came back a couple of days later. His uncle was driving him and the uncle told me that the allergies were back. When asked how he knew this he told me that the mother had told him so. When Richard was asked the same question he also referred to his mother. When I asked him how he knew if the allergy was back or not he still referred to his mother. This was more than a little intriguing since he was outside of my office during pollen season and didn't have any symptoms at alL I proceeded to have a little chat with him and a after a little while, two things became very obvious. His mother was struggling with the same type of allergy and had talked a lot about how the allergy was a family thing. He was also extremely uncritical of his mother's suggestions. A suggestion from his mother could easily override his own actual experience. He could be free of all symptoms, but if his mother
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"asked": "Can you feel the allergy Richard?" he would take that as a command and generate the symptoms as a response. I asked Richard the following question: "What if your mother was here right now and she said ... HOW is that Christmas tree over there decorated?" Well, Richard went right ahead and hallucinated a Christmas three right then and there in my office in June. I did a Six-Step Reframe with Richard regarding the compulsive need to respond to his mother in that way and then, as soon as he had left my office, I called his mother and explained the whole situation to her. She wasn't easy to convince, but I got her to agree to not bring up the allergy unless he brought it up himself. He successfully stayed free of the symptoms for a couple of years but then started recreating the allergy from time to time. The change never really held up and to this day I am pretty sure that he is not totally free of the allergy. Neither is he free of the compulsive suggestibility regarding his mother. In this case, I was never quite able to get the mother to communicate clearly that Richard's job was to be allergy free and that it was OK. I think that's the main reason the intervention never held up long term. Some of these highly hypnotizables have this pattern. When life becomes stressful they develop this compulsive need to comply with the suggestions of some authority figure in their lives.
Easy Come Easy Go Most of the highly hypnotizables have an easy time stepping into a new perspective or model of the world, but as soon as the context changes they might just as easily step into a totally different perspective. They seem to do this uncritically and
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without much personal ownership of their own experience. This is in stark contrast" the lows" who will often be more skeptical and conservative before entering a "new world." When they choose to do so, they seem to own it to a much larger degree. The lows seem to take more personal responsibility and therefore not be quite so vulnerable regarding having the home team in their corner. The highs seem to have more responseability despite often being less responsible, and if that isn't paradoxical then I don't know what is. In my experience, the notion of secondary gain and vulnerability towards how others respond to them having changed is a much larger issue for the high's than the lows. I have had people make dramatic changes in my office only to have a quick meeting with the doctor undo everything we have done together. In my office the client uncritically accepted a new reality and changed dramatically, but then they met the doctor. For some of these clients the doctor would be at the top of the hierarchy and the doctor disapproving of the change would be enough to get many of these clients to change right back. This pattern is highly unlikely with a low, since when they change they have a tendency to own it and rationalize the changes afterwards. A closed minded doctor isn't nearly as dangerous for these clients. I am reminded of a client I saw close to a decade ago. She was severely depressed, did panic attacks, hallucinated voices that told her to hurt herself, which she did. She cut herself with razors and had attempted suicide. She had spent a lot of time in psychiatry and done the usual cocktails of drugs. The psychiatric treatments and group treatments hadn't helped her change at all. She was a totally changed woman after we had done just one session together. Her family was totally stunned and called me and thanked me for giving them their daughter back. We did time line work to clear old negative emotions and
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limiting decisions, anchored resource states and did parts negotiation with the bad voices and she responded beautifully. After three sessions all her problems seemed to be totally gone and she even did some dramatic changes in her personal life. She even started to do some public speaking, which she had never done before. The changes held up for a couple of months. She suddenly started depressing again and came in for another session and once again she changed. She seemed to take personal responsibility and showed no indication of believing in the disease model of biological psychiatry at all. I know for a fact that she did well for another month or two, but then she went straight back into her old ways. If my memory serves me correctly she had started hanging out with her old friends again, and when I spontaneously bumped into her in the street she looked and felt horrible. She was back in psychiatry, on medication, doing group therapy with the other screw-ups and the old psychiatry victimology world view was back into place. It was as if she had never set foot into my office. She talked about being sick, chemical imbalances and all that other crap. I confronted her about it and also busted on her for being back into the group therapy, which she admitted had never helped her at all. I told her that if she wanted to play that game I wanted nothing to do with her, but if she wanted to get over this to call me. Guess what, she never did, and since then she has gained at least 100 pounds and had at least one more suicide attempt. Honestly, I don't know if she is still alive. This case and other similar ones have always puzzled me. People go back into the system, which was never able to help them in the first place and discard the stuff that actually worked. The common denominator has been, more often than not, that the client is highly hypnotizable.
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The Client Needs to Own the Change Stephen Gilligan is fond of saying that therapy only begins when the client pushes back. When the client pushes back it's their way of choosing their own solution. Of course, the more you attempt to impose content on your clients the more relevant this issue is. Last year I saw a young woman who was doing severe panic attacks and anxiety. She was highly hypnotizable and had let her mother use her as a doormat for way to long. This client didn't have the ability to say no. She also blamed other people for making her feel the way she did. She had started her first panic attack while watching the movie Brokeback Mountain with her boyfriend. I used this as an opportunity to accuse her of being a repressed lesbian and that she had created a panic attack to repress her lesbian impulses. Of course, I was pretty sure that this was hogwash, but I continued to accuse her of the most outrageous things. I put my feet in her lap after smearing my shoes with mud, telling her how right it felt for me to do so. I continued to treat her like crap until she revolted and then, and only then, did we do any hypnotic or other interventions. As horrible as this sound for those of you who might be stuck in content, or the "I sacrifice myself to get acceptance from my peer group right now" mind set. If I hadn't done this she would have done compulsive compliance and then undo everything as soon as she met her mother. I am happy to report that this woman has made a powerful long-term change. I also rehearsed with her again and again how she would deal with her mother, and I played devil's advocate while she continued to come up with reasons for why she had actually changed. Everything we did in the office was followed up with tasks in the real world to insure that she actually did the stuff she claimed she would do.
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Whenever you get a high, make sure that you find out who the players are related to the clients issue and make sure that you prepare, rehearse with, and task the client until they are totally congruent about the change. If possible, you might want to involve these significant others in the changework and make sure that they are onboard. Sometimes with some of these clients this will be a make or break. A lot of the "highs" are of course able to change long term without doing this. I once worked with a woman who had done intense migraine headaches every week for thirty plus years. She literally exploded at a seminar I did when I suggested that we often unconsciously create or choose different symptoms and diseases. I challenged her to work with me and she accepted. As you might guess I treated her migraine as a choice and, in hypnosis, enquired as to when she had chosen to create the migraine. Her father was super skeptical and I had her rehearse a zillion times to tell him straight that she didn't choose to do migraines anymore. He liked to ask her how disappointed she would be when the migraines came back. Nice presupposition, huh? Not long after we had completed the work together she met her father who predictably asked exactly that question. She felt the first sensations of a migraine come on, but then congruently told herself and her father that she had made a decision and that she wasn't that person anymore. The sensations stopped immediately and in the two-and-a-half years I had follow-up info she never had another migraine.
Respect the Unconscious Need for Amnesia Many years ago I worked with a guy for some minor issue. I can't even remember what it was, but it was successful. During
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our last session he told me that he struggled with epilepsy and that he had regular bouts of epilepsy. I don't know if it was "real epilepsy" or pseudo seizures. I offered to take a shot at working with him to solve the epilepsy, and I told him that I would do it for free. I have done a lot of free work just out of curiosity. Tom went into very deep hypnosis. He was the first client I had had who went that deep so just for the hell of it I let him enjoy a strip-show right there is my office. He enjoyed it tremendously. I then treated the epilepsy as a limiting decision, cleared the decision and the negative emotions around it, and the unconscious agreed to stop the epilepsy. I didn't hear anything until I bumped into him at a restaurant close to a year later. He told me that the minor issue we had worked on had been successful. When I enquired about his epilepsy he became very strange and went into a state I don't know how to describe in any useful way. He congruently asked me if he had told me about the epilepsy. It didn't take me long to discover that he had total amnesia for us having worked on it, as well as the hypnotic session as well. He further told me that the epilepsy had disappeared on its own for some mysterious reason around a year ago. I didn't press the issue any further. In case you are wondering I was not foolish enough to tell him of what we did. I sometimes speculate if this is why Milton Erickson seemed to use hypnotic amnesia so much. Perhaps the changes he helped people make were so "out there" that to protect the client and the change he would induce amnesia to ensure that the change be left alone, without the ridicule many would face if they attempted to defend or explain having healed themselves or used hypnosis to accomplish the healing. This is pure speculation on my part. Erickson might have had another reason for doing so. I must say that in the few cases were clients have developed spontaneous amnesia for parts of
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the session or the whole session, or like in this case, developed amnesia for having worked on an issue, the amnesia has seemed to have served them well. I think it's important to add that some of these clients have worked with me for other issues and they haven't necessarily developed amnesia when working on those issues. This makes it likely that the unconscious decided to choose to produce the amnesia to protect the change. In the cases I have seen it seems to have been a good decision. Do your clients a favor and don't mess with it.
A Critical Modification when Working with the Highly Hypnotizable It's very tempting to attempt to just suggest symptoms away when doing work with the highs. After all, they are so responsive to suggestion. Remember Richard (the allergic) who would easily change in the office, but as soon as his mother was around, her suggestions would change him right back. When using the New Coded Regression format, it is important to keep the clients suggestibility level in mind. Let's say you do the format and ask: "What happened to the old negative emotion? Is it GONE NOW.. ? (Let's assume you get a YES response) ... Float down into the event and try as hard as you can to find that old emotion ... or maybe you can find that it's GONE NOW?" The client might claim to have released the emotion and his nonverbal signals might even confirm the change. However, there is a good chance that the client hasn't actually released anything, but is merely responding to your suggestion. The emotion is still there, but the client represses it when testing as a result of responding to the suggestion. Then the client goes back into the real world, the suggestion wears of, and since there is
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no reorganization of internal experience to support the attempted change, the client discovers that he is still stuck. Or, someone else (high in the clients hierarchy) suggests that the symptoms will come back and often they do. So, when enquiring if stuck emotions are gone, use a neutral voice tone AND get the client to both verbalize what they learned and convince YOU that the old emotion is gone. Just ask the client how he feels when entering the event, and do so with a neutral voice tone. Be extremely careful when using suggestion with the highs. When working with medium trance subjects, suggestions can often be very helpful. The lows will often not respond to direct suggestions, so no worries there. Use the format as described with the lows and mediums. When working with the highs, don't suggest that the emotions be gone. Let the client reorganize his own experience and discover for himself that the old emotions are gone. Remember Gilligans quote: "The therapy starts when the client pushes back." Keep this in mind when working with the highs and you will help these clients create kick ass changes. Well, that's it for this book. I hope you have enjoyed it and that it turns into a different book each time you read it, as well as being useful in new ways as a result of doing so. The world could use some more people who work at this level of intensity, so if you are going to be an agent of change, don't pussyfoot around. Don't be a wuss! Go out there and do it! Then write an even better book than this one so that you can return the favor and I can learn from your experiences... the miraculous, the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
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TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
ANCHORING
The pairing of a neurological response with a stimulus. Let's say a comedian tells several funny jokes and every time the audience laughs, he makes a unique gesture or uses a unique tone of voice. If he later in the show fires of the same gesture again, it is a good chance that the audience will start laughing without him saying anything. AUDITORY
Relating to hearing or a sense of hearing. BEHAVIOR
The specific actions and reactions through which we interact with the people and environment around us. BEHAVIORAL FLEXIBILITY
The ability to vary and adjust one's own behavior to elicit responses from another person or persons. CALIBRATION
The process of learning to observe and utilize another person's unconscious nonverbal responses. CONGRUENCE
All aspects of a person being aligned.
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CONTEXT The framework surrounding a particular event. This framework will often determine how an experience is interpreted. FRACTIONATION The process of inducing hypnosis, then bringing the clients out of it, and then back in. When you do this, they have tendency to go deeper. FUTURE PACING The process of rehearsing new responses in future contexts. HIGH PERFORMANCE STATE I FLOW STATE A state that is categorized as high performance relative to the context where the state is utilized. These states usually have minimal or no internal dialogue. HYPNOSIS There is no definition that can do this phenomenon justice. I look at it as a state (and the state versus no state is a big controversy) where the person can more easily access and amplify unconscious processes to reorganize ones experience. I frame hypnosis depending on which responses I want to elicit. HYPNOSIS HIJACKING The ability to include oneself in a clients hypnotic experience and utilize it to create change. KINESTHETIC Relating to bodily sensations. In NLP the term kinesthetics is used to encompass all kinds of feelings including tactile, visceral and emotional.
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META MODEL A model developed by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. The model is designed to question the deletions, generalizations and distortions present in natural language. When used skillfully, it will enable the agent of change to hallucinate less and help the client reconnect language to concrete experience. MILTON MODEL
The set of patterns coded through the modeling project the cocreators of NLP conducted on Milton Erickson. When skillfully applied these patterns can influence the clients unconscious in a useful way. MODEL
The work product of an NLP modeling project is a set of patterns. Models are to be sharply differentiated from two other associated notions, replicas and theories. MODELING
The process of imitating someone is a "know-nothing state" until you can perform in roughly the same way given the same set of circumstances. METAPHORS
Stories, parables and analogies. NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING
The study of subjective experience and what can be calculated from that. The study of how people do what they do. NEW CODE GAMES
Games that include activities to assist the player enter a high performance state.
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NEW CODE NLP The set of patterns coded by John Grinder originally with assistance from Judith Delozier and more recently Carmen Bostic St. Clair to present new patterns and correct flaws in "classic code NLP." PARTS A metaphorical way of talking about different aspects of a person's subjective experience. Parts work is often indicated when different aspects of a person's experience are in conflict with each other. PATTERN Any aggregate of events that if can be divided in any way by a "slash mark" such that an observer perceiving only what is on one side of the slash mark can guess with better than random success, what is on the other side of the slash mark. PERCEPTUAL POSITIONS The position you view and experience from. There are three common ones that we often use.
1. First Position. Experiencing a situation while looking through your own eyes, hearing with your own ears, and feeling the feelings in your own body. 2. Second Position. Imagining that you float in to the body of another person present. Seeing through that person's eyes, hearing through that person's ears, and feeling what that person is feeling. 3. Third Position. An observer position viewing both yourself/the persons involved in the experience.
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RAPPORT
The attention of the other persons unconscious. The degree of responsiveness between two or more people. REGRESSION
When done hypnotically the client can to some extent relieve past events by reconstructing and reframing old memories. REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS
The five senses: seeing hearing, touching (feeling), smelling and tasting. SECONDARY GAIN
The benefits of having or keeping a problem, symptom or disease. SIX STEP REFRAMING
A pattern designed to both create new choices and also verify these new choices by involuntary signals with the unconscious. SOMNAMBULISM
The level of hypnosis required to do direct suggestion work. SPATIAL ANCHORING
Associating a particular experience with a specific place on the floor. For example a public speaker might intentionally use place on the stage for problems and another place for solutions. STALKING
An intervention for when behavior shifts at a speed faster than conscious awareness or at a speed so slow that the client doesn't notice the change until it's" too late."
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STATE The total ongoing "mental" and "physical" conditions from which a person is acting. STRATEGY
A set of neurological and behavioral steps a person takes to achieve a specific outcome. SUB-MODALITIES
The finer distinctions of the modalities, i.e. the size of an image, or the volume of an internal dialogue, or the direction where a feeling is spinning. SYMPTOM
A signal that has been ignored for too long. SYNESTHESIA
The process of overlap between representational systems, characterized by phenomena like see-feel circuits, where a person derives feelings from what they see, and hear -feel circuits, where a person gets feelings from what they hear. Any two sensory modalities may be linked together. TIME LINE
A construct which has proven to be quite useful in helping people update old memories with new resources. Where the persons past and future is spatially located in relationship to their body. For example, some people's future is in the front of them while the past is behind, while others might have the future to the left and the past to the right. VISUAL
Relating to sight or the sense of sight.
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DEDICATION
To John Grinder, for your generosity in sharing your wisdom with me and for being the only teacher I have had who could deal with my questions while remaining in a playful state. Thank you buddy for writing the foreword and for inspiring me to put my madness on paper to begin with. You walk the walk. To Marit for triggering a wider range of emotion in me than I could ever anticipate, and for being so unreasonably lovable. You are the love of my life.
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SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE:
My mother for giving me unconditional love and support. My father for always doing things his own way. My sister Karine for selling her new radio so that I could attend my first NLP course, and for assisting me on numerous occasions as an actor with difficult clients. My grandmother for understanding me in her own special way at an age when I felt that no one else did (now I know that no one ever can, but it's no longer an issue) Brian Mahoney for being my hypnosis sparring partner for the last couple of years and for helping me out with valuable suggestions for the book and for editing it. Richard Bandler for being the genius that he is and for teaching me more than he ever intended to do. Tad James for teaching me Time Line TherapyTM. Tony Blauer for sharing so much of his brilliance with me and for sharpening my bullshit detector.
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Christian Renskoug for helping me take my business to a new level, for his help with editing this book, and for his infectious enthusiasm for life. Ross Jeffries for taking the time to read the book and for giving it a strong recommendation. He is one of the sharpest minds in the field and to have such a sharp mind recommend the book is an honor. Steve Andreas for giving editing advice and offering feedback to a total stranger. Your kindness and generosity are appreciated. Tormod Steinsholt for helping me get started on this book. Odda for" forcing" me to get better. For all the clients I have had, especially those screwballs that did their best to drive me nuts. You guys taught me the most. Nathaniel Branden for writing "The Six Pillars of Self Esteem." Having read hundreds of books on related topics, this is the one which has impacted me the most.
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