Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

"Showers"

She made a generalization somewhere in her past that said "Don't go near water; you'll drown." When that part noticed that she was going over a bridge, it said "Bridges go over water, and water's a good place to drown, so now is the time to be terrified."

We always have follow-ups. People come back or telephone, so we make sure that the changes they want did occur. Typically we have to ask for a report—which seems to me really appropriate. Change is the only constant in my experience and most of it occurs at the unconscious level. It's only with the advent of official humanistic psychotherapies and psychiatry that people pay conscious attention to change.

In Michigan, I worked on a phobia that a woman had. I didn't know what the content was at the time, but it turned out that she had a phobia of dogs. After we had done the work, she went to visit a friend who had a dog. What was really amusing to her as she walked in and saw the dog, was that the dog looked so much smaller. She said to her friend "My God! What happened to your dog? It's shrunk!"

Man: Dick's signal system gave a positive response that it received three new choices from his creative part. What if he got a negative?

It doesn't matter if you get a "yes" or "no." It only matters that you get one or the other. The "yes-no" signals are just to distract the conscious mind of the person you are working with. If you get a "no," then you offer it another way to go about it. "Then you go to your devious part and tell it to ally itself with your creative part and trick this part of you into having new choices." It doesn't matter how you do it.

I probably would have had him construct a creative part. I wouldn't have been satisfied that he had access to his creativity. I know there are lots of ways to accomplish the same thing. You can say "Do you know anyone else who is able to do this? I want you to review with vivid detail in picture and sound and feeling what they do, and then have this part of you consider those possibilities. "That's just a way of doing what we call "referential index shift."

What if you say to the person "Do you have a part of you that you consider your creative part?" And they say "No." What are you going to do? Or they hesitate; they say "Well, I don't know." There's a really easy way to create a creative part, using representation systems and anchoring. You say "Think of the five times in your life when you behaved in a very powerfully creative way and you didn't have the faintest idea how or what you did, but you knew it was a positive and creative thing that you did." As s/he thinks of those five in a row, you anchor them. You then have a direct anchor to the person's creativity. You've assembled one. You've organized their personal history. Or you can ask "Do you have a part of you that makes plans? Well, have it come up with three different ways you can plan new behavior." The word "creative" is only one choice out of a myriad ways of organizing your activities.

The only way you can get stuck in a process like this is if you try to run it rigidly. You say to a client "Well, do you have a part of you that you consider your creative part?" If they look you straight in the eye and say "No," then start making up other words. "Do you realize that you have a part of you that is responsible for all glunk activities? And the way you contact that is by touching your temple!" You can make up anything, as long as the result is that they generate new ways of accomplishing the intention. That is as limitless as your own creativity. And if you don't have a creative part, create one for yourself!

There are a lot of other ways that this could have not worked, too. Do you realize that that's what people in here are doing again? You all saw it work. And you're asking "What are all the ways it could have not worked?" I'm sure you could manufacture a hundred ways to make this not work. And in fact many of you will. The point is, when you do something that doesn't work, do something else. If you keep doing something else, something will work. We want you to make it work with each other so that you have a reference experience. Find someone you don't know to be your partner and try reframing. We'll be around if you get stuck.

Reframing Outline

(1) Identify the pattern (X) to be changed.

(2) Establish communication with the part responsible for the pattern.

(a) "Will the part of me that runs pattern X communicate with me in consciousness?"

(b) Establish the "yes-no" meaning of the signal.

(3) Distinguish between the behavior, pattern X, and the intention of the part that is responsible for the behavior.

(a) "Would you be willing to let me know in consciousness what you are trying to do for me by pattern X?"

(b) If you get a "yes" response, ask the part to go ahead and communicate its intention.

(c) Is that intention acceptable to consciousness?