Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

When you have completed communication and created alternative new behaviors for the part that originally ran the problem behavior, you ask for all other parts to consider the repercussions of these new patterns of behavior. "Is there any other part of me that has any objection to the new choices in my behavior?" If another part objects, it will typically use a distinctive signal. It may be in the same system, but it will be distinctive as far as body part. If suddenly there's tension in the shoulders, you say "Good, I have a limited conscious mind. Would you increase the tension in my shoulders if it means 'Yes, there is an objection,' and decrease it if it means 'No.'" If there is an objection, that's a delightful outcome. That means there is another part, another resource, that's active in your behalf in making this change. You are at step two again, and you recycle.

One of the things that I think distinguishes a really exquisite communicator from one who is not, is to be precise about your use of language: use language in a way that gets you what you want. People who are sloppy with language get sloppy responses. Virginia Satir is precise about her use of langauge, and Milton Erickson is even more precise. If you are precise about the way you phrase questions, you will get precise kinds of information back. For example, somebody here said "Go inside and ask if the part of you responsible for this behavior is willing to change?" And they got a "No" response. It makes perfect sense! They didn't offer it any new choices. They didn't say "Are you willing to communicate?" They said "Are you willing to change?"

Another person said "Will you, the part of me that is responsible for this pattern of behavior, accept the choices generated by my creativity?" And the answer was "No." And properly so. Your creativity doesn't know a thing about your behavior in this area. The part that's got to make a selection is the part that is responsible for your behavior. It's the one that knows about that.

Man: What if the unconscious creative part refuses to give any choices?

It never happens if you are respectful of it. If you as a therapist are disrespectful of people's creativity and their unconscious, it will simply cease communicating with you.

Woman: My partner and I found that our conscious minds were most unaccepting of change.

I totally agree with that. That's very true of therapists, especially if the choices were left unconscious. It's not necessarily true of other groups in the population. And it figures, because therapists have very nosy conscious minds. Almost every modern humanistic psychotheo-logy I know implies that it is necessary to be conscious in order to make changes. That's absurd.

Woman: I'm confused about awareness and consciousness. Gestalt therapy talks about the importance of awareness, and—

When Fritz Perls said "Lose your mind and come to your senses," and to have awareness, I think he was talking about experience. I think he suspected that you could have sensory perception without intervening consciousness. He wrote about what he referred to as the "DMZ of experience," in which he said that talking to yourself was being as far removed from experience as you could be. He said that making visual images was a little bit closer to having experience. And he said having feelings was being as close as you could get to having experience, and that the "DMZ" is very different than behaving and acting in the real world.

I think what he was alluding to is that you can have experience without reflexive consciousness, and he called that "being in the here and now." We call it "uptime." It's the strategy we've used to organize our perceptions and responses in this workshop with you. In uptime, you don't talk to yourself, you don't have pictures and you don't have feelings. You simply access sensory experience and respond to it directly.

Gestalt therapy has an implicit rule that accessing cues are bad, because you must be avoiding. If you look away, you are avoiding. And when you are looking away you are in internal experience, which we call "downtime." Fritz wanted everybody to be in uptime. However, he was inside telling himself that it was better to be in uptime! He was a very creative person and I think that's what he meant, but it's really hard to know.

Woman: You said we'd see when reframing doesn't work.

I certainly did as I walked around the room! You will try it and it won't work. However that's not a comment on the method. That's a comment about not being creative enough in the application of it, and not having enough sensory experience to accept all the cues that are there. If you take its "not working"—instead of a comment about how dumb and stupid and inadequate you are—as a comment about what's there for you to learn and begin to explore, then therapy will become a real opportunity to expand yourself, instead of an opportunity for self-criticism.