Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Now I'd like you to realize that there is nothing that your client will do that you won't anchor. As long as you are going to anchor it, you might as well know what the anchor is. If the client comes in and says "I'm really depressed" and you just go "umhm," that's as adequate an anchor as touching them on the arm. And since you will be doing that, you might as well know which anchor is which. We recommend to people in the beginning that they practice using kinesthetic anchors for a period of a month. As they do that, they will discover that they are anchoring anyway, constantly, in all representational systems. Most of the time people use anchors in a way that slows down the process of change, because they don't know what they are anchoring or how they are anchoring.

There is another important point. When you say "Do you always anchor the negative thing?" there was nothing "negative" about it. "Negative" is a judgement about experience. It is not experience itself; it's a judgement specifically made by the person's conscious mind. The experience that Linda had which was unpleasant now serves for her, as well as for everyone else in this room, as a foundation for your learning in the future if you use it that way. If you grew up for the first twenty years of your life without a single unpleasant experience, you would be dull and unable to cope with anything. It's important that you understand that all experiences can serve as a foundation for learning, and it's not that they are positive or negative, wanted or unwanted, good or bad.

As a matter of fact, it's not even that they are. Pick any experience that you believe happened to you, and I will guarantee you that on close examination it didn't. The original personal history that Linda relived, re-experienced today as she went through the experience, is as much a myth as the new experience she went through with the resource. The one we made up is as real as the one she "actually had." Neither one of them actually occurred. If you want a demonstration of this, wait two or three months, remember about having been here for three days and then look at that videotape that they are making now. You will discover there is very little relationship between it and your memories of "what happened here." Since your personal history is a myth anyway, use it as a resource instead of a set of limitations. One way to do that is with anchoring.

Those of you who have done TA "redecision" work as a client: remember all those vivid scenes and experiences that you so well recollected from when you were two years and eight months old?

Woman: Well, mine really happened.

Nothing ever really happened. The only thing that happened is that you made a set of perceptions about events. The relationship between your experience and what actually occurred is tenuous at best. But they really are your perceptions. Doing a redecision about an experience that never occurred is just as valuable as—perhaps more valuable than—doing a redecision about one that did occur, especially if it's less painful, and especially if it opens more choices. I could very easily install memories in you that related to real world experiences that never occurred and could not be documented in any way—that were just bizarre hallucinations out of my fantasy. Made-up memories can change you just as well as the arbitrary perceptions that you made up at the time about "real world events." That happens a lot in therapy.

You can also convince your parents. You can go back and check up with your parents and convince them of things that never actually occurred. I tried that, and it worked. My mother now believes she did things to me when I was a child that never happened. And I know they never happened. But I convinced her of it. I told her I went to a therapy group and I made these changes which were really important to me, and it was all based on this experience when I was little. As I named the experience, she had to search through her history and find something that approximated it. And of course we had enough experience together that she could find something that was close enough that it fit that category.

It's the same as if I sit here and say "Right now, as you sit there, you may not be fully aware of it, but soon you will become aware of a sensation in one of your hands." Now, if you don't, you are probably dead. You are bound to have some sensation in one of your hands, and since I called your attention to it, you'll have to become aware of any sensation. Most of the things that people do as therapies are so general that people can go through their history and find the appropriate experiences.