Richard Bandler - Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Step three is to distinguish between pattern X and the intention of the part that is responsible for the pattern. Dick, this part of you which is responding to you at the unconscious level has a certain intention it's trying to carry out for you. The way it's going about it is not acceptable to you at the conscious level. Now we're going to work with that part, through your channel of communication, to offer it better ways to accomplish what it's trying to do. When it has better ways than the way it goes about it now, you can have what you want consciously and this part can continue to take care of you in the way it wants to.

I want you to go inside again and ask a question. After the question, be sensitive to the signal system you have. Go inside and ask that part "Would you be willing to let me know in consciousness what you are trying to do for me by this pattern X?" Then you wait for a "yes-no" signal…. (Dick smiles broadly.)

I just said to ask "yes-no"; I didn't say "Give me the information." If you were attending, you noticed that something fairly dramatic happened. He asked for a "yes-no" answer. He got the "yes-no" signal and he also got information about the intention in consciousness.

Dick: Which pleased me.

Which pleased him and surprised him. Therapy is over at this point. There is now a conscious appreciation of what this part—that has been running pattern X—has been trying to do for him at the unconscious level. Dick, you didn't know what it was trying to do before, did you?

Dick: No, but I got a clue to it while you were talking, before l went down in. I got a feeling that it—

Part of our problem doing demonstrations is that after two days with you we have such good rapport with your unconscious there's a tendency for you to do it too fast.

So now he has a conscious understanding of the intention of this part of him that has been running X. Dick, is it true that you would like a part of you to have the responsibility of taking care of you in that way, even though the specific method it uses is not acceptable to you? You may not like the way that it goes about accomplishing pattern X, but do you agree that the intention is something you want to have a part do for you as a person?

Dick: Yes.

Now there is congruency between the intention of the unconscious part and the appreciation of the conscious.

That means it's time for step number four: to create some new alternatives to the pattern X that are more successful in accomplishing the intention, and that still allow consciousness to have exactly what it wants. What we're going to do is hold the intention—the outcome— constant, and vary the ways of achieving that outcome until we find some better ways of achieving it, ways that do not come into conflict with other parts of Dick.

Dick, do you have a part of yourself that you consider your creative part?

Dick: Humpf!

The creative part hops out! "Hi! Here I am. What do you want?" I hope you all appreciate the sense in which I said before that multiple personality is an evolutionary step. So you do have a part of yourself that you consider your creative part.

Dick: Oh, yes.

I want you to go inside and ask your creative part if it would be willing to undertake the following task. Let me explain it first before you do it. Ask it to go at the unconscious level to the part that runs pattern X, and find out what that part is trying to do for you. Then have it begin to create alternative ways by which this part of you can accomplish this intention. It will create 10,20, or 1000 ways to get that outcome, and it's to be quite irresponsible in this. It simply is to generate a lot of possible ways for you to get the outcome, without trying to evaluate which ones would really work. Now, out of that multitude of things that it will offer, the part of you that's running pattern X will evaluate which of those ways it believes are more effective than pattern X in getting what it's been trying to get for you. It is to select at least three ways that it believes will work at least as effectively as, and hopefully more effectively than, the pattern of behavior it's been using up to now to accomplish that intention. Does that make sense to you?

Dick: I think so.

OK. Go inside and ask your creative part if it would be willing to do that. When it says "yes," tell it to go ahead. And the way I would like the part of you to notify you that it has accepted each one of the new choices is by giving you that feeling, that "yes" signal. You may or may not be conscious of what the new alternatives are. That's irrelevant for our purposes here.

Dick: It sounds like a big assignment.

Yes, it is, but thousands of people have done it all over the world. It's humanly possible and you are a human. You have to go inside and explain it to your creative part and to the other part, and if they both agree, tell them to go ahead. What you're going to do now is to use your own creative resources to begin to reorganize your behavior…. (long pause)

Did you get your three signals, Dick? (No.) How many have you gotten? (None.) None, you've gotten none. Would you go inside and ask that same part—again "yes" or "no"—if it has been presented with choices by your creative part. Ask if your creative part has been presenting it choices… .(He nods.) OK. Then it has been receiving?

Dick: Apparently.

So checking at the creative level, we find creativity is generating lots of possibilities. OK, would you go inside and ask if any of those choices that were presented were acceptable choices? Were any of them more effective than pattern X to accomplish what it wants?

Some of you like to offer advice to your clients. Any time you offer advice, that's going to be less effective than if you can throw them back, with appropriate explicit instructions, on their own resources to develop their own alternative ways. You are a unique human being and so are your clients. And there may or may not be overlap, as you found the first day during that afternoon exercise when we asked you to hallucinate. Some of you could guess the content of your partner's experiences in a way that was almost unbelievable. With other people, it doesn't work at all. If you have that incredible overlap, then you can offer useful advice. There's nothing wrong with it, as long as you are sensitive to the response you are getting as you offer it. But even then it will be more effective to throw a person back on their own resources. (Dick shakes his head.)

OK. You got a "no" signal. None of the new choices are acceptable. The creative part generated a lot of possible ways, none of which were as effective as the present pattern. Now, would you ask that part that runs pattern X if it would go to your creative part and become an advisor to your creative part so that it can come up with better choices about how to accomplish that intention? Ask it to explain what, specifically, about the choices the creative part has been presenting prevents them from being more effective ways of accomplishing the intention. Do you understand that instruction consciously, Dick? OK, would you go inside and explain it to that part and then ask it—"yes" or "no"— ifit would be willing to do that? And if it says "yes," tell it to go ahead.

This particular process differs significantly from normal therapeutic and hypnotic techniques. We simply serve as consultants for the person's conscious mind. He does all the work himself. He is his own therapist; he is his own hypnotist at the moment. We're not doing any of those things. We communicate directly only with his consciousness and instruct it how to proceed. It's his responsibility to establish and maintain effective communication with the unconscious portions of him that he needs to access in order to change. Of course, once he learns to do that—using this as an example—he can do it without us. That's another advantage. This process has autonomy for your client built into it.

Dick, did you get three signals?

Dick: I'm not sure.

OK, would you go inside and ask that part if it now has at least three choices—whether or not you are conscious of what they are is irrelevant—which it finds more powerful than the old pattern X in accomplishing what it's trying to do. Again, use the same signal. It's important to continually refer back to the same signal, and it's important to get three new choices. If you have at least three choices, you begin to exercise variability in your behavior.

Dick: That was "yes."

OK, so now he got a positive; it said "Yes, I have at least three ways more effective than the old pattern X," even though he consciously doesn't know what those are.

Step five is to make sure those new choices actually occur in his behavior. Using the same signal system, Dick, we would like you to ask this part "Since you have three ways more effective than the old pattern X, would you take responsibility for actually making those things occur in my behavior in the appropriate context?" And you know that the "yes" is the intensification, and the "no" is the diminishment. Is that true?

Dick: I'm not sure that it is.

OK. Ask for that part to give you a "yes" signal before you begin, so that you know which is "yes" and which is "no." If you get them backwards, it's going to mess things up a little bit.

Dick: Yeah, I … I... I lost track.

Yes. I know. That's why I'm asking you to do this. Just go inside and ask the part to give you a "yes" signal, so that you know which one is "yes."

Dick: The "yes" signal is relaxing.

OK, fine. Let's back up a bit. Go back inside and ask the part if it agrees that these choices will work more effectively than X.

Dick: That was "yes."

Fine. Now ask that part if it would be willing to accept the responsibility for generating the three new choices—instead of pattern X—for a period of, say, six weeks to try them out.

Dick: "Yes."

Step six, in my opinion, is what makes this model for change really elegant. The ecological check is our explicit recognition that Dick here, and each one of us, is a really complex and balanced organism. For us to simply make a change in pattern X and not take into account all the repercussions in other parts of his experience and behavior wouldbe foolhardy. This is a way of building in a protection against that.

We would like you to thank this part for all the work it has done. It's got what it needs; it's already satisfied with that. Now we want to find out if any other parts have input to this process. Ask "Is there any other part of me that has any objection to the new choices that are going to occur?" Then be sensitive to any response in any system: feelings, pictures, or sounds….

OK, you've got a response. And?

Dick: They have no objections,

How do you know that? This is important. I asked you to attend to all systems. You came back and said "No. There's no objection." How do you know there's no objection?

Dick: I felt no tension anywhere.

You felt no tension. Were there any changes you could detect either in your kinesthetics or visually or auditorily?

Dick: Well, the relaxation.

A relaxation. OK, that was an overall body relaxation. Just to be sure, just to check for congruency, thank whatever part made your body relax. And then ask "If this means no objection, relax me even further. If there is any objection, make some tension occur." Again, all we are doing is varying the signal for "yes" or "no." It's arbitrary whether you go "Yes for positive increase, No for diminish," or the reverse. It doesn't matter.

Dick: I'm getting some objection.

OK. What exactly was your experience? Were there changes in muscle tension?