Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

It is not essential that people visualize to be able to do the phobia process, because the same formal pattern can be done auditorily or kinesthetically. The pattern of this technique does not require visualization. We wanted to use all systems as a demonstration. We don't need to do it with all systems. You could also first take a little time to teach the person how to visualize, using overlap.

Woman: Could you do this process without touching?

Sure, you can use a tonal anchor or a visual anchor. You can do it without touching. However, I would recommend that you do it with touching. Kinesthetics is an irresistible anchoring system. When somebody is touched, they feel it. When you make a visual sign at someone, they may look away or close their eyes.

Man: So the bail-out anchor could be a certain tone of voice?

Yes. Tonal anchors in this society are the most powerful because most Americans do not hear consciously. The number of people in this country who hear is almost nil, slightly more than the number of card-carrying musicians.

In England it's considered important to make class distinctions. In order to make class distinctions, you have to be able to hear different accents and tonalities. So English people are more acute at hearing tonal changes. Anyone who is bilingual or polyglot, and who has learned a tonal language, will have a good sensitivity to those kinds of changes.

Most people in the U.S. do not actually hear the sequence of words and the intonation pattern of what they, or other people, say. They are only aware of the pictures, feelings and internal dialogue that they have in response to what they hear. Very few people are able to repeat back, in the same intonation, what you say to them. We hear people literally. We do not add anything or subtract anything from what they say. That is a rare human experience, and for a long time we didn't realize that; we thought everybody heard words.

The real beginning of all this work started when we began taking people's words as a literal description of their experience, not just a metaphor. We started communicating back as if they were literally the way they had described themselves, and we found out that was the case. When someone says "When I focus on those ideas they feel right, but I tell myself it wouldn't work," that is a literal description of their internal experience.

Now we would like you to pick a partner, preferably somebody you have not had much contact with. It's easier to operate at the process level with strangers because their behavior is less apt to be an anchor for some behavior in you. We assume that you are all going to get changes with one another, given your usual patterns of communication. Try something new. The whole point of going through the exercise is to be exposed to new material and to do it, to discover how well it fits with your own personal style as a communicator. Until you engage all your sensory channels in playing with this material, you won't have it. Understanding fully is to be able to comprehend it in all representational systems, including behavior.

We'd like you to practice the two-step visual/kinesthetic dissociation process that we did with Tammy here. You don't need a full-blown phobia. You can use this process with any unpleasant response, to become familiar with the pattern. This, or the "change history" process will work for nearly any presenting problem that I know of. Anchoring will get you almost everything. When you're done, use bridging or future-pacing to be sure that the new response will be triggered by the context where it's needed. Go ahead.

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OK. How did it go? What questions do you have?

Woman: I noticed I was getting distracted because my partner was using many words that didn't match the experience I had internally.

What you need is a very subtle maneuver: You say "Shut up!" or you kick your partner!

One of the things that all of you can learn from this is that it's very easy to learn to talk in a way that matches your client's experience. The way to do that is described in our book, Patterns I. It describes the patterns of language that sound specific, but are actually simply process instructions with zero content.

For example, here's an exercise you can all do. Get comfortable and close your eyes. Take a couple of deep breaths and relax.