Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Linda, there are other situations in your present life that are similar to the one that you saw in those pictures, right?—situations in which you respond the same way you responded to that picture, instead of the way you would like to respond. Now, what I need to know is what allows you to know that a context is similar to that one. Is it something about what you see? Is it the tone of someone's voice, the way someone sounds, the way someone is touching you? ...

Linda: It's the way someone looks.

OK, I want you to see what that looks like. And as you see that, each time you see anything similar, you will feel this. (He touches the resource anchor.) I want you to remember that you have this particular resource....

That's bridging. It takes a minute and a half or two minutes, and it guarantees that your work will transfer out into the real world. The same stimulus that in the past elicited the maladaptive stereotyped behavior, the feeling that she wants to change, now serves as a stimulus for which the resource is a response. Now she will automatically have access to the new choice in the contexts where she needs it—not just in the office, the group, the institution. This is stimulus-stimulus conditioning.

You're not going to be there to squeeze her shoulder, so you need to make some part of the actual context the trigger for her new behavior. The best thing to use as the trigger is whatever was the trigger for the unwanted behavior. If her boss' tone of voice makes her feel helpless, then make that tone of voice the trigger to access the resources of creativity, confidence, or whatever. Otherwise, if the old anchors that exist are stronger than the new ones that you've created, the old ones will override the new ones.

That is what prompted the development of family therapy. They take a schizophrenic kid and they put him in a hospital and they give him M&M's in the right order and the kid gets better and he's well and normal, happy, learning. Then they put him back in the family and he's schizophrenic again in a matter of weeks. And so they said "Ah!

Something in the family keeps the kid the same, so therefore we will treat the whole family." You don't have to treat the whole family. That's one way to do it: it's a choice. If you bring the family in, the anchors are there, and you can use them. In fact, I'll demonstrate. You can sit down now, Linda. Thank you.

I'd like two people to come up here and role-play a husband and wife…

Thank you. Larry and Susie. Now as a wife, would you give me some complaints. What does he do or not do?

Susie: He drinks too much beer. He’ll never watch football with me.

He'll never watch football with you? And how does that make you feel?

Susie: Mad. Deserted.

Deserted, so what you want is some attention from him.

Susie: Right.

And when you try to get attention from him, what—look at that, he went right up into a visual access. Boom! That's what typically happens. The wife says "I feel I want him to touch me," and the husband goes (looking up) "Well, I don't see how that's useful."Right? And then he comes into the house and says "Look, this place is a mess. I can't stand to see a cluttered house." And she says "But it feels cozy this way."

Now what I'm going to do here is use anchoring. I say "Well, I find that hard to believe, but let me check it out." So I come over here and ask the husband a few rhetorical questions, simply for the purpose of eliciting responses. I say "Larry, let me ask you a question. Are there some times when you feel like you really want to be close to her, give her some attention and some good feelings and really get close to her? Are there times like that?"

Larry: Sure, there are times. (He touches Larry's wrist.)

"Now, I know, based on my past experience as a therapist, that couples usually get in trouble with words, because people are not very good with words. They don't train adults to use words; they don't even train children. So what I'm going to recommend to you, Susie, is that you try the following: I'm going to give you a non-verbal signal to try with Larry for the next two weeks just as a way to find out whether or not he really is open to paying attention to you. What I would like you to do is this: Any time you want five or ten minutes of his undivided attention and some affection, walk up to him and hold him on the wrist like this. OK, and would you do that right now? I want to check and make sure you know what I mean."