Richard Bandler - Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Dick: Yes, around my eyes.

OK. Whenever you get a response to a general inquiry, it's important to check and be absolutely sure what that response means. Thank that part for the response of tension in the muscles around your eyes. Ask for an increase for "yes" and a decrease for "no" to the question: "Do you object to the new alternatives?"...

Dick: There was a decrease.

It's slightly unusual to have the tension here. Typically at the ecological check almost everybody's heart speeds up. Most people associate a speeded-up heart rate with fear or anxiety. When I ask them to stop hallucinating and simply ask for an increase for "yes" and a decrease for "no," the heart rate usually slows down. My understanding of this is that it's simply a signal that some part of them is quite excited about what's going on.

Dick: I was also aware of a pulsating in my hands, but the eye tension seemed more dramatically different than the hand sensations, so that's why I mentioned the eye tension.

OK, let's check this, too. This time go in and thank the part that gave you the hand signals. Then ask the same question "Do you have any objections?" and ask for an increase for "yes" and a decrease for "no."

Dick: Decrease in sensation.

Decrease, so that part also doesn't have an objection. If there had been an objection at this point, you would simply recycle back to step three. You have a new "yes-no" signal—the pulsating in the hands. Now you make a distinction between this part's objection and its intention. You continue cycling through this process until you have integrated all objections.

We usually hold the first set of three choices constant and ask any part that objects to find alternative ways of doing what it needs to do without interfering with the first set of choices. But you could also ask both parts to form a committee and go to the creative part and select new alternatives that are acceptable to both.

The ecological check is very important. Many of you have done elegant work, and the client is congruent in your office. When he leaves, another part of him emerges which has concerns that are contextually bound. When he gets home, suddenly he doesn't have access to what he had in your office or in the group. There are other parts of him that know that if he goes home and simply changes in the way that he was going to change, he would lose the friendship of this person, or blow that relationship, or something like that. This is a way of checking to make sure that there are no parts whose positive contribution to him will be interfered with by the new pattern of behavior. Of course the only real check is in experience, but this is a way of doing the best you can to make sure that the new choices will work.

OK, now, Dick, what happens if six or seven weeks from now, you discover yourself doing the old pattern of behavior X? What are you supposed to do, then? ... You can accept that as a signal that the new choices that you came up with were not adequate to satisfy the intention. And you can go back to your creative part and give it instructions to come up with three more choices. The pattern of behavior is a barometer of how effective the new choices are. If the old behavior emerges after a test period, it's a statement that the new choices were not more effective than the old pattern. It's a signal for you to return to this process and create better choices.

Regression to previous behavior isn't a signal of failure, it's a signal of incompetency, and you need to go back and fix it. Reframing will work. I guarantee his behavior will change. If his behavior changes back, that's a signal that the new kinds of behavior were not as effective at getting something for him as the old pattern. Then he goes back through the process, finds out what other secondary gain is involved, and creates new ways to take care of that as well.

If you don't explicitly make the symptom a signal to negotiate, the person's conscious mind willcall it a "failure" if the symptom comes back. When the symptom is identified as a signal, the client begins to pay attention to it as a message. It probably always was a message anyway, but they never thought about it that way. By doing this, they begin to have a feedback mechanism. They discover that they only get the signal at certain times.

For example, somebody comes in with migraine headaches and I reframe, and all parts are happy, and the client goes along for two weeks and everything's fine. Then they are in a particular context and suddenly they get a headache. That headache triggers off the instruction that the negotiations weren't adequate. The person can drop inside and ask "Who's unhappy? What does this mean?" If a part says "You're not standing up for yourself like you promised to," then they are faced with a simple choice of having a migraine headache or standing up for themselves.

I had a woman who got such severe migraine headaches that she was flat on her back. There was a part of her that wanted to be able to play every so often, and if it wasn't going to get to play, then the other parts weren't going to get to do anything! Whacko! It would give her a headache. So she made an arrangement that she would spend a defined amount of time in playing activities. After the session, when the weekend came and it was time to play, she decided to do her taxes instead! That part just laid her out. She called on the phone and said "Well, I didn't keep up my end of the bargain, and I got another migraine headache. What should I do?" I said "Don't ask me; ask the part. It's not my problem. My head doesn't hurt."

So she went in and found out what she was supposed to do. That part said "Go out, get in the car, and go somewhere and have fun or else!" As soon as she got in the car, the headache was gone. So her headache no longer became something that was a burden; it became an indicator that she had better respond. She learned that getting a headache was a signal to go out and have some fun.

OK. Any questions about the process we went through with Dick?

Woman: Am I understanding that Dick doesn't need to be aware of what those choices are?

We prefer that he not be. That could just get in his way.

Woman: Dick, you're not aware of your three alternatives specifically?

Dick: I'm not. In some ways I feel a failure because of it, you know, because I can't think it.

Woman: Well, how does he know he has them?

He got a signal from his unconscious, namely the kinesthetic feeling of relaxation. He doesn't consciously know what the new alternatives are.

Dick: But it feels OK down here.

His unconscious mind knows what they are, and that's all that counts. That's the one that runs the show in this area of behavior, anyway. Let's make a demonstration for your purposes here. Would you go inside, Dick, and ask this same part down here, using the same "yes-no" signal, if it would be willing to allow your conscious mind to know what one of those new choices is, just as a demonstration to you that it knows things that you don't.

This is called a convincer. It's wholly irrelevant for the process of change, but it can settle people's conscious minds a little bit.

Dick: He won't do it

And rightfully so. If I were Dick's unconscious mind, I wouldn'ttell him either. He'd try to interfere. What did he do earlier? His unconscious part wouldn't release specific information, and he immediately had a feeling of failure! I wouldn't communicate with his conscious mind if it were going to behave like that either. It's just as convincing to have your unconscious say "No, I won't tell you what any of the new choices are," if it's an involuntary signal. Right?

Dick: Right.

Now let me mention in passing the paradoxical nature of the request that we made in step two. The question is "Would you be willing to communicate with me in consciousness?" Any signal that he detects has to be a response in consciousness. Even if the part says "No, I would not," that's still a communication in consciousness.

If he had gotten a "no" response, I would understand that in the following way: the intent of that part is not to not communicate with him in consciousness. It's a statement that it doesn't trusthim. That is, it's not willing to release content information to his conscious mind. And I respect that. I really believe that unconscious minds should have the freedom, and in fact have the duty, to keep out of awareness material which would not be useful forthe conscious mind to deal with.

We had a period when we did nothing but deep, deep trance hypnosis. A man came in once and said that there were all kinds of things standing in the way of his being happy. I said "Would you like to tell me what those things are?" And he said "No, I want to go into a trance and change it all, and that's why I came for hypnosis." So accepting all behavior, I did an induction, put him into a deep trance, sent his conscious mind away, and said "I want to speak privately with your unconscious mind." I have no idea what that means. However, when you tell them to, people do it. They talk to you and it's not the one you were talking to before, because it knows things the other one doesn't know. Whether I created that division or whether it was there already, I have no idea. I asked for it, and I got it.

In this particular case, his conscious mind was, to put it as nicely as I can, inane. His unconscious resources, however, were incredibly intelligent. So I said "What I want to know from you, since you know much more about him than I do, is what change is it that he needs to make in his behavior?"

The response I got was "He's a homosexual."

"What change does he need to make?"

"He needs to change it, because it's all based on a mistake."

"What mistake?"

The explanation that I got from his unconscious mind was the following: The first time he had ever asserted himself physically, in terms of trying to defend himself against violence, was when he was five years old in a hospital to have his tonsils out. Someone put the ether mask on his face, and he tried to push it away and fight back as he went under the anesthetic. Anesthesia became anchored to the feeling of being angry. After that, every time he began to feel angry or frightened and started to strike out, his body went limp. As a result of this, his conscious mind decided that he was a homosexual. He had lived as a homosexual for about twenty-five years.

His unconscious resources said "You must not let his conscious mind know about this mistake, because knowing that would destroy him." And I agreed with that. There was no need for him to know that he had goofed in all of his relationships for twenty-five years. The only important thing was that he make a change, because he wanted to get married. But he couldn't marry a woman because he knew that he was a homosexual. His unconscious mind would not allow himin any way to become conscious of the fact that he had made this mistake, because it would have made his whole life a mistake and that knowledge would have utterly destroyed him. It wanted him to have the illusion that he grew out of it and grew into new behavior.

So Iarranged with his unconscious mind to have him blossom as a heterosexual person and to make the changes as a result of a spiritual experience. His unconscious mind agreed that that was the best way to go about it. He changed without any conscious representation of either the hypnotic session or where the changes came from. He believes it came as a result of a drug experience. He smoked marijuana and had a cosmic experience. He assumed that it was the quality of the grass, and not a post-hypnotic suggestion. That was adequate for him to make the changes that he wanted.