Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

I once asked a TA therapist which part had total control over his conscious ongoing behavior. Because it didn't seem that people had a choice about being their "parent," or their "child." So he named some part; TA has names for everything. I said "Would you go inside and ask that part if it would knock your conscious mind out for a while?" And he went "Ah, well... "I said "Just go in and ask, and find out what happens." So he went inside and asked the question... and his head fell over to one side and he was gone! It is amazing how powerful it is to use language. I don't think people understand the impact of verbal and non-verbal language at all.

At the beginning of therapy sessions very often I'll say to people "If anything begins to occur to your conscious mind which is too painful in any way, I want to say to your unconscious mind that I think it has the right and the duty to keep from your conscious mind anything that is unpleasant. Your unconscious resources can do that and they should do it—protect you from thinking about things which are unnecessary in that way, and make your conscious experience more pleasant. So if anything unpleasant begins to arise in your conscious experience, your unconscious mind can slowly allow your eyes to flutter closed, one of your hands to rise up, and your conscious mind can drift away into a pleasant memory, allowing me to speak privately with your unconscious mind. Because I don't know what the worst thing that ever happened to you was...."

I'm saying when X occurs, respond this way, and then I'm providing X. I'm not saying "Think about the worst thing that ever happened." I'm saying "I don't know ..." This is the same pattern that's in Changing with Families, the pattern of embedded questions. Virginia never says "What do you want?" She says "Gee, I ask myself why a family would travel six thousand miles to see me. And I don't know, and I'm curious." When I say "I don't know exactly what the most painful and tragic experience of your whole life was," it'll be right there in consciousness.

People do not process language consciously. They process language at the unconscious level. They can only become conscious of a very small amount of it. A lot of what is called hypnosis is using language in very specific ways.

It's one thing to alter someone's state of consciousness and to give them new programs, new learnings, new choices. Getting them to know that they've been in an altered state is something else entirely. Different people have different strategies by which they convince themselves of things. What constitutes somebody's belief system about what hypnosis is, is very different from being able to use hypnosis as a tool. It's much easier to use trance as a therapeutic tool with people who don't know that they've been in a trance, because you can communicate so much more eloquently with their unconscious processes. As long as you can establish unconscious feedback loops with that person, you'll be able to alter their state of consciousness and they are more apt to have amnesia.

My favorite case of this was a guy named Hal. He came to a seminar that a student of mine had set up and at the last minute she decided that she was an inadequate human being and left the State. The people all showed up at the seminar and someone called me and said "All these people are here, what should I do?" It was nearby, so I went over and I said "Well, I'll spend the evening with you. I don't want to teach a seminar, but I would like to know what you all hoped to get." Hal said "I have been to every hypnotist I've ever found; I have gone to every seminar I could ever find on hypnosis, and I have volunteered myself every time, and I have not gone into a trance."

I thought that was dedication for somebody who had failed over and over again. And so I thought "Well, wow! This is really interesting. Maybe this guy really is an 'impossible,' and maybe there's something interesting here." So I thought I'd try it. I did a hypnotic induction and the guy went right through the floor! He went into deep trance and he demonstrated all the most difficult hypnotic phenomena. Then I aroused him and said "Did you go into a trance?" And he said "No." I said "What happened?" And he said "Well, you were talking to me and I sat here and listened to you talk, and I closed my eyes, and I opened my eyes." I said "And did you X?" and I named one of the trance phenomena he had just demonstrated. And he said "No." So I thought, "Ah! well, it's just a function of his amnesia."