Trance–formations. Neuro–Linguistic Programming™ and the Structure of Hypnosis

Man: Would it be OK to give you a case description and get suggestions from you?

Well, it would be OK. I don't know if I'll be able to say anything about it. A lot of times people describe a client to me, but since I don't have the person in front of me, I don't know what to do. Most of our procedures are based on moment–to–moment sensory feedback, and that doesn't exist in a verbal description. But I'm certainly willing to take a shot at it.

Man: This is a nineteen–year–old young man whom I saw once last week, and I will see him again tomorrow.

He certainly elicits a response from you! The first step is for you to use the phobia cure on yourself! OK, what about him?

Man: He told me that he's worn a surgical mask for four years.

How is that a problem? Does it mess up his French kissing, or what?

Man: Several years ago he became very preoccupied with his nose and—

Do you have any idea how this occurred?

Man: Yes. He developed acne on both sides of his nose, so he started wearing a surgical mask to cover it up. Does he still have acne on his nose?

Man: No. When he came to see me, it was the first time he'd left the house in four years.

He's a courageous young man.

Man: He was totally housebound, and is convinced that his nose is the most deformed nose in existence.

Well, I'll give you an amusing approach you can try. I can't guarantee you that this will work, but it's something I have done.

If you have a secretary, get her to type up a short article on the positive relationship between unusual noses and sexual attraction. Get her to use a selectric typewriter that has one of those type faces that looks like magazine print. Type up this article and make xerox copies of it and put the name of some prestigious journal or magazine on it. Then leave the article somewhere in the waiting room. When your client comes in and sits down, have your secretary watch him until he sees the article. The minute he sees it and picks it up, have her run up and take it away from him.

I had a guy who wore a splint on his nose when he went out. The tape went all the way around his face so it covered his cheeks and his nose, because he was very concerned about acne.

I typed up an article about the relationship between bandages and severe acne. The whole thing detailed how people would put on band–aids, and it would lead to severe acne and sexual impotence and homosexuality and just about everything. I left the article in my waiting room, and let him read just enough to start to get into it, and then I had my secretary take it away. When he came in to talk to me, he demanded to see the article, and I insisted there was no such thing. Finally I opened the door, went out, and asked my secretary if she had taken an article away from him. She handed me an article about breast–feeding babies! I gave it to him, and told him that it was just his anxiety. When I said that, I looked at him very suspiciously. Probably now he'll never wear one of those splints agan, even if he breaks his nose!

You have to create a context in which the response you want will occur naturally. You also need to use hypnosis or metaphor to talk about the responses that you want him to have, because not only does he need to be able to go out in public, he needs to go out in public with a sense of purpose. One of the things you might have him do is to go out in public with his surgical mask on, and go into places where he will meet people whom he will never see again. Have him pick some woman whom he knows would be really repulsed by his nose, and find out if he can go over and flash the surgical mask at her and make her throw up. The odds are you won't be able to get him to actually do that, because it will be too frightening. But you can talk about it and get him to laugh about the idea. You anchor his response of humor, and then begin to talk about going out into public. You can use that anchor to begin to associate a sense of humor about the ridiculousness of his nose with going out in public. Rather than getting him to feel OK, get him to feel ridiculous about it. It's much easier to diffuse the existing response, rather than try for a meaningful one.

I'll tell you something else you can do. We did this one, too, but we did it with a twenty–two–year–old woman who wore very unusual clothes. She wore very baggy clothes. She wasn't fat at all, but she believed that if people saw her body, they would find her hideous. So she wore hideous clothes to cover up her body.

I hired a bunch of guys from downtown to help me carry this one out. I got guys who wear vests with no shirts on. You know the type. They had big muscles, and tattoos and everything. I had them come into my office right before her appointment and sit there reading magazines. When she walked in the door, they turned around and laughed at her, and said "Those are the weirdest clothes I've ever seen." And there they were, dressed in a totally bizarre way. When she came into my office she was totally freaked out. I said "What's wrong?" and she said "Oh, those guys laughed at my clothes." I said "Oh, don't pay any attention to them. What do they know?"

The next week when she came back, her dress was not quite so baggy, but it was still kind of weird. When she came in, a man was sitting there in a suit and tie, dressed very nicely. As she walked in the door, he looked at her, then looked away and started sputtering, trying not to laugh, and said "I'm sorry. Excuse me." That was all it took to get her to wear reasonable clothes.

I use whatever my clients are afraid of to pump them out of whatever they are doing that is absurd. You can do lots of things using other people to help you get results. I've set people up out in the world to do these kinds of things, too. Sometimes I can get parents to work cooperatively with me. I go to schools and recruit people to work with me in the best interest of my clients.

You never know what will happen with any particular individual. I don't know this guy well enough to know for sure that what I've suggested would work, but in lieu of something impressive in my sensory experience, that would be the tack I would take.

Man: I've had him evaluated by a plastic surgeon, and the plastic surgeon made an allusion that there is a relationship between the length and width of the nose, and the length and width of the penis, so he's already started thinking in that direction.

You can tell him "Well we can shorten your nose for you, but… ." Or you can get the plastic surgeon to say "Well, what we do is we take it and we go whack." (He makes a chopping gesture.) That might change his mind!

I'll tell you another story. A woman that I worked with had a daughter who was really uptight about her nose. She really thought she had an ugly nose, when it didn't actually look any different than anybody else's. She wanted to have surgery and had saved up her own money for it, but her family was fighting with her about it. They told her she had an attractive nose and shouldn't change it, but she didn't believe them. Finally one day I said to the family "What difference does it make, anyway? In fact, I suggest that you insist that she go in and get rid of her hideous nose. Just say 'We've been lying to you all these years. Actually your nose is totally—ugh! — it's so repulsive! So just go down there and get the damn thing chopped off, for God's sake.'" They did this, and she went in, had the surgery, and then everybody said "Wow! You look so much better!" She didn't look different at all, because the surgeon didn't do very much. He'd been bribed, so he took just a little skin off the end and that was all. But she was happy after that, so everything was wonderful.

Never underestimate the nature of absurdity. There are some people who dye their hair, and their personalities change. If you can do something to your appearance, and it really does change your personality, then it's worthwhile. How many of you have gone out and bought some new clothes, and when you put them on you felt totally different?

Let me remind you of the general principle that we have mentioned over and over again: Create a context in which the person will naturally respond in the way you want them to. We have talked mostly about how to create a context in internal experience by using hypnotic technology. You can also use your creativity to create an external context which will get the desired response without any overt hypnosis. Sometimes that's a lot easier, and sometimes it's a lot more fun.

For instance, traditionally psychiatrists and psychotherapists have thought that it's really difficult to make contact with catatonics. It's easy, if you are willing to do things which are not usually considered professional, like stomp on their feet. They'll usually come right out of their trances and tell you to stop. That may seem unkind, but it's a lot kinder than letting them rot inside for years.

If you don't want to stomp on their feet, you can just pace them. The thing you need to keep in mind is that catatonics are in a very altered state, and you'll need to pace them longer to get rapport. They don't have much behavior to pace, but they will be breathing, blinking their eyes, and in some kind of posture. I've sometimes had to pace a catatonic for up to forty minutes, which is quite a taxing chore. However, it works, and it is very graceful. If you are not worried about being graceful, just walk over and stomp hard on their feet.

1 know one psychiatrist who was working with a man who had had a very traumatic experience: his whole family had burned to death before his eyes, and he was powerless to help them. The man went into catatonia when this happened some years ago. The psychiatrist had worked and worked year after year with this guy and finally had gotten him to come out.

When this major event occurred, there happened to be an attractive 18–year–old candystriper in the office. The psychiatrist wanted to go get a colleague to help him with the next stage of therapy, but he didn't want the man to go back to catatonia while he was out of the room. The psychiatrist turned to the candystriper and said urgently "Keep him out! I'll be right back!" and ran out of the office.

So here is this young woman who had no experience doing therapy or anything like it. She knew enough about what this man had looked like before and what he looked like now, to know when he was going back in. Sure enough, as soon as the doctor went running out to get his friend to help, the man started to go back into the catatonic state. Her intuitive response was magnificent: she reached over and grabbed this guy and gave him the biggest, juiciest French kiss you can imagine! That kept him out!

The catatonic is making a decision that the internal experiences he is having in catatonia are richer and more rewarding than the ones he is being offered on the outside. And if you have ever been in a mental institution for any length of time, you might agree with those people! What the candystriper did was put him in a situation in which he would naturally prefer staying out.

We once saw a little woman in her late sixties who had been a dancer. She was having marital difficulties with her husband, and her right leg was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors couldn't find any neurological evidence for this paralysis.

We wanted to test her to see if her paralysis was psychological rather than physical. In the office we had at that time you had to go upstairs to get to the bathroom. So we took a long time gathering information, until she asked where the bathroom was. We put her off and started discussing some aspects of her life that really got her interest. She got so excited that she put off going to the bathroom, and when she asked, we'd put her off. Just when we thought she was about to give up on us and go to the bathroom without our permission, we opened up the subject of her husband and their sexual difficulties, which was one of her major concerns. Then we told her "Go ahead to the bathroom now, but hurry up and get back!"

She was so excited that she forgot to be paralyzed. She literally ran up the stairs and then ran back down. Then she realized what she'd done, said "Oh, oh!" and went back into her paralyzed posture.

That gave us a demonstration that her paralysis was behavioral, and it also gave us an anchor for the state of not being paralyzed. We used that anchor indirectly by making veiled allusions to "taking steps to overcome difficulties," "being happy to respond to the call of nature," and "running up and down different possibilities."

Jack: How else can you tell when something is a physical problem versus a psychological problem? For example, I get seasick. It would be nice not to get seasick. I'm not sure if this is really a physical problem or a mental problem.

OK. Your question is "How do you distinguish between physical and psychological problems?" and my answer is "I don't usually bother."

Jack: Would you apply these techniques to my seasickness?

Immediately.

Jack: Would you expect to be successful?

I wouldn't bother to apply them if I didn't. I do make a distinction between psychological and physical problems in some ways. Let's say someone arrives in my office after she's had a stroke. All her behavior indicates aphasia, and she hands me a set of X–rays that show a tremendous trauma in the left temporal lobe. That is important information in shaping my response to her.

If a client has difficulties indicating definite physical manifestations, my immediate response is to make sure she is in the care of someone I consider a competent physician. I have several physician friends whom I trust. They have philosophies that match mine — "If you medicate, do it only as a last resort, because if it is successful, it destroys access to the part of the person you need to get to in order to make a behavioral change." Medication isn't for cures; typically, it's for management. That's what medication is designed for.

I can work with a person on medication; it's just that her responses are contaminated. It's hard to know how much of her response is to me and how much is to the chemical. Also, medication creates a severely altered state of consciousness. If you use our procedures with someone who is on medication, when she comes off it be sure to use the same procedures again. You've got to build some kind of a bridge between changes made in a severely altered state of consciousness, and someone's normal state of consciousness.

So if I have a client who is on medication, my first step is to get her off it, so that I have access to the part of her that is causing difficulty in her life. Once I've done that, if the client is supposed to have brain damage, I tell her metaphors about the plasticity of the human brain. The human central nervous system is one of the most plastic things 1 know of. There is a mountain of evidence that people can recover functions that they have lost through organic insult by rerouting—by using alternative neurological pathways. I will often induce a rather profound trance and do this programming in an altered state. That's the difference between a psychological and a physical program for dealing with problems in my way of proceeding.

Man: Does your position on medication include all drugs or are you talking about just "psychoactive" drugs?

I'm talking about anything that changes a person's state of consciousness. Some of the non–psychoactive drugs also have profound effects on consciousness. Since I've never been trained as a pharmacologist, I check with my physician friends whom I trust. I ask them "Are there consciousness–altering side effects to these drugs?" If not, I have my clients continue with their medications.

If you have a person who is diabetic, or something like that, you can teach her how to regulate her internal chemistry so that she doesn't have to be a diabetic. Then you take her off of the medication only as rapidly as she gains control over altering her chemistry. You tie reducing the medication to being able to regulate her own body chemistry in those areas.

Most people don't believe that kind of change is possible. Many people have very strong beliefs about what can and can't be done about

Problems with known chemical or physical aspects. Rather than opposing those beliefs, you can often use them to help you to make the changes that you're going for.

Once I went to a rest home at the request of a friend and worked with a man who had had a stroke. He had something called Broca's aphasia, which impairs the ability to generate language, but doesn't impair the ability to understand it. Someone with Broca's aphasia can understand well enough to obey commands. Another aspect of Broca's aphasia is that there is usually some paralysis, in a right–handed person, of the right side of the body and parts of the face. One of" the most common characteristics is that the right hand becomes paralyzed in a very tense position with the hand drawn in toward the arm.

This man was particularly tense on the right side of his body, and since he had not been responding to physical therapy, my friend asked me to use hypnosis to get the muscles on that side of the man's body to relax. He thought it was possible for this man to get back partial control of the right side of his body, but not until after he had gotten that part of his body to relax.

I knew, partly from reading case histories, that it was possible to use hypnosis to do this. So I went in and worked diligently for two and a half hours with this man in very deep hypnosis, and at the end of that time, his hand was as loose as it could be. I was really impressed, because I'd never done it before. I didn't even know for sure if I would be able to do it. I just went in thinking "Well, I'll pretend as if I do this every day, and it's matter of fact, and if faith healers can cure people of things, maybe that's all hypnosis is. I don't know." 1 went in and took a shot at it and it worked. I thought it was great.

I was still with the man when the doctor and the physical therapist came back in the room. Neither of them was the person who had brought me to work with this man. They told me it was time for his physical therapy, and that I would have to leave and come back later on another day. I was sitting there, gloating on the inside, thinking "Wait until they see this. This is going to blow their minds!" I was sitting there chuckling to myself about the change.

The doctor and physcial therapist went over and helped the man out of his chair and back on a bed, and neither one of them noticed the fact that while they were doing that his arm was hanging loosely at his side! That was astounding to me. But I thought, if you're not really thinking about it, and you've got other things on your mind, that's possible. Then the physical therapist reached over and took the man's arm and folded back in the position that it had been in when it was tense. She did this as if she were making a bed. She laid him there and put the arm back into position, while she and the doctor were talking to each other. She then began a series of exercises to help him open up his hand and relax it. That completely amazed me! His hand was so limp, it was ridiculous. She took his fingers and moved them all the way open, and then moved them back again. She was still talking to the doctor, half paying attention to what she was doing, when she shifted and started to work on his right leg. She stilt hadn't noticed!

Suddenly it occurred to me that I was faced with a really powerful choice. I could astound them by making them notice what had occurred, but I didn't know what results that would have. I was concerned that since hypnosis was not scientifically acceptable, they would believe that his arm and hand were going to go back to the way they had been, and then set about making sure that they did. So I interrupted them and said "I want to show you something." I walked over and picked up the man's arm, and it was just like butter. They both looked at it the way you would look at a ghost. 1 looked at them and said "I want to tell you that hypnosis is not a valid scientific treatment, and that this is only a way to aid physical therapy, and probably it will go back. In fact it usually will go back in 24 hours. But every once in a while for some strange reason, it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it's usually because the person has been treated by a really skilled physical therapist before he was treated by hypnosis."

What I did was to pace their beliefs in order to enlist their support and make the hospital system help me. I kept in mind the outcome I was really after—for the man to have the choice of tension or relaxation. Who gets credit for that is not that important. What's important is that he gets to move his arm. And if people don't like the way that he got his choice, unconsciously they'll engage in behaviors that are likely to undo the change. It's not that they're malicious, just that their conscious minds can't deal with what's happening in front of them.

It's always easier to make changes if you work within the belief structure of the system or individual you are working with–At one seminar a participant, Pam, asked if she could bring in a nine–year–old male client. Dove, who was in really bad shape. She told me that the kid hadn't been able to sleep more than half an hour at a time for the past four or five days, and was now exhausted and starting to get sick. Apparently every time he dropped off to sleep, 15 or20 minutes later he would start having nightmares about monsters, break out with sweat, thrash around and wake up screaming. Pam didn't know how to cope with this, and wanted some quick assistance.

So during a break in the afternoon, I went in another room with Dave, Dave's mother, and Pam. I didn't have much time, so I went straight for rapport. Since I'm the oldest of nine children, I have no problem getting rapport with kids. By the time we sat down I had gotten rapport by the way I walked into the room, touched, and so forth.

Rather than going through an extended information–gathering phase, I immediately asked "What color are the monsters?" 1 didn't ask him "Can you see the monsters?" "Are there monsters?" "Do you have dreams?" "Are you upset?" "What is the problem?" The question I asked jumped past all that. "What color are the monsters?" presupposed all of the things I just mentioned. It's a huge leap, but since the kid and I were in rapport, it wasn't a problem. Dave replied by listing several colors. I said "I take it they're really big and really scary–looking." He said "Yeah!"

I asked "Who, of all the people and creatures that you know, would be tough enough to deal with these monsters?" He responded "Oh, I don't know," so we began fishing around. "Would the six–million–dollar man be strong enough?" He said "Nan."

Then I happened to hit upon one. I asked "Have you seen Star Wars?" This was several years ago when every nine–year–old kid was going to see Star Wars. His face lit up at the mention of that movie. I said "I'll bet I know which of the characters you like the best." Of course he asked "Which one?" I said "The Wookie." "Yeah, that's the one."

1 said "By the way, let me teach you something about your dreaming arm that will be useful, so that you can control your dreams. I reached over, lifted his left arm, and asked him to see an image of the Wookie in a particular movie scene. With his arm in the air, cataleptic, I said "Now this is your dreaming arm, and let it drift down only as quickly as you watch, and see once again, the part of the movie that you especially like where the Wookie was doing things."

1 could see rapid eye movement as his arm started down with unconscious movements, so I knew he was visualizing. I said "Hold it there. Can you see the Wookie?" He said "Urnhum."

"Ask him if he'll be on your side, and be your friend, and be there to help take care of you." 1 could see him move his mouth and lips as he asked the Wookie the question. When he came back, 1 asked "What did he say?" Dave said "I couldn't understand him; he just made a sound." If you saw Star Wars, you know that the Wookie's speech was unintelligible. So I said "OK, have him move his head up and down for 'yes' and sideways for 'no.' Ask him again." So Dave went back and asked, and the Wookie nodded his head "yes." I asked "Look, is the Wookie tough enough to handle these monsters?" He thought about it for a while and then said "I don't think so. They're even bigger and meaner than the Wookie is."

I said "But he's faster than the monsters, right?" Dave said "Yeah." I put my hand on Dave's shoulder and said "OK. The Wookie's going to be standing there, and you know he's going to be there for you because you'll feel the pressure on your shoulder as he stands next to you with his hand on your shoulder, knowing that if worse comes to worse, he'll sweep you up into his arms and run, because he can outrun the monsters. So you'll always be able to get away if you need to." He processed that and nodded.

"However, we haven't dealt with the monsters yet. Who else could do that?" We cast about for other possibilities, and he came up with the answer, as the client always does if the therapist is smart enough to arrange the context. He chose Godzilla.

I said "OK, go in and sec Godzilla." Dave closed his eyes immediately and raised his arm. It was one–trial learning; he understood exactly. I again saw rapid eye movements as he went inside and watched. Then he stopped and said "I'm having trouble getting an answer." I said "Well, watch his head." Dave said "But he's facing the other direction." "Tell him to turn around!" I said. So Dave went "Turn around."

Now that in itself was a very important change. He was now controlling powerful creatures in the domain in which he had been terrified. I was operating entirely within his belief system, his own metaphor.

Godzilla turned around and nodded "yes." I said "Now there's only one problem left. You've got someone to defend you and take care of the monsters if you need it. But Godzilla is big and clumsy. He's strong, and he'll take care of you, but you don't want him tromping around in dreams when you don't need him."

Listen to the presupposition in that statement. That statement said to him " You will have dreams. Some will have monsters and some won't. Godzilla will be appropriate in some dreams and in some he won't be." I was beginning to convert dreaming back into a normal, even enjoyable activity, rather than the time to have nightmares. At that point Dave told me that in the story about Godzilla, there's a kid who wears a special necklace. When this Kid wants Godzilla to arrive because he's being threatened by other monsters, all the kid does is touch the necklace. That's the signal for Godzilla to arrive.

I asked Dave's mother "Would you be willing to spend an hour this afternoon taking Dave around to some jewelry stores to find a necklace that will work for him as a signalling device?" I needed to be careful about over–all ecology here. In his town a little boy running around wearing a necklace wouldn't go over very well. I told him that he was only to wear it on evenings when he knew he would need it. Again, this was a way of putting the whole thing under his control.

In this example I didn't challenge the child's belief system; I didn't challenge the way he labeled things. I did no interpretation, but rather had the flexibility to enter into the child's world of beliefs. I then used devices within that world that were appropriate for getting the choices that the child needed at the time.

Man: What if the nightmares were just a symptom of something else?

All you know about when you work with an individual or family are the symptoms. My guess is that the nightmares did represent something going on within the family system, though I have no idea what. I asked Pam to keep a watch on the family to find out if any other symptoms emerged. Six months later she reported that there were no other symptoms. If other symptoms had emerged, I would go to reframing.

By responding to Dave's nightmares the way I did, I changed their meaning. In essence, I reframed them. The fact that I did this in the mother's presence was also important, because that changed her response to the nightmares. I gave her an example of a different way of responding to the nightmares.

Woman: Why did you use the dreaming arm technique?

It's just a game, and I wanted to begin with a game. With children, framing things as games produces a much more useful response than framing them as problem–solving. The dreaming arm is particularly useful in dealing with nightmares because it places visualization under the control of the child.

Benediction

Man: You have about eight minutes for your benediction. I just thought you might like to know that.

You want us to put you into trance, huh? We decided not to do it this time, We were going to give you lots of post–hypnotic suggestions, but we decided we wanted to find out what would happen if we just left you hanging. We wanted to know if we could come back here next year and you'd all still be sitting here.

OK. During the course of the past three days you have gone through a whole variety of experiences and learnings. There, it feels much better already, doesn't it? Now take a few moments and think about the sequence of what has occurred here. Go back to the beginning—three days ago—and quickly run through and review internally the things you learned. What are the things you want to take with you when you go back to your office, your home, your family? … Because the learnings you had here in the Grand Ballroom could stay in the Grand Ballroom, but they won't if you notify yourself when and where you want them to go.

You see, learning can remain in one state of consciousness. State–conditioned learning is a fact. Once a group of medical students I worked with were given an examination in the same room in which they learned the material. Each one passed the exam beautifully. Five minutes after the exam, they were taken across the campus to the gymnasium and given the same examination. Seventy–five percent of them flunked it, because the learnings of their classroom were not always available in other contexts. And the learnings of the gymnasium weren't very useful in taking a medical exam.

This selective availability of information keeps your mind from being cluttered unnecessarily, but it can also prevent you from having learnings when and where you need them.

The best way to have a learning is to have it only when you need it. You see, if you constantly thought of your phone number all day long every day, you'd go crazy. If you can think of it whenever you want to, except when you are near a telephone, it doesn't work for you. If you try to understand why that's the case, you still won't be able to call home. But if you only think of it when you want to tell it to someone else, or to dial your home, it's a learning that serves you well.

So think of the things you want to take out of the Grand Ballroom

. . and think about the places you want to take them. . , . You don't have to think about what you are going to do with the learnings when you get there…. Just think about the furniture in your living room … the bed that you sleep in at night … that favorite office chair … your secretary … the carpet in the place where you work … the clients you've seen too many times … the business associates that you've always wanted to get … to do anything … that you want them to. Think about friends … and lovers . . , think about times and places … in your future … that are places worthy …of taking these learnings and understandings , . . and having them spontaneously emerge… .

Because while your conscious mind has worked diligently during the past three days … to understand something that isn't about it, but about the rest of each of you … your unconscious mind has been collecting information … in the way that it knows how to … and can't avoid… . And you can allow that information …to settle in your unconscious … and you unconsciously know … how to sort through that information … to make changes in yourself … changes that although you may or may not notice them … can be lasting and pervasive.

Now, some of you have not yet made good enough friends … with your unconscious process … and we want you to realize … that your unconscious is not a person … it's a part of you… . It's not a part of you as a piece is a part… . It's a part of you because it works differently … than your conscious mind. Your unconscious, for one thing, is much more lethargic. … It only does things for a purpose… . And the purpose of sorting through the learnings of the Grand Ballroom … is so that your conscious mind … can be surprised delightfully … when it finds itself doing new things … and not knowing exactly how … and especially not why, it is. … And as long as there is a Grand Ballroom, the learnings of the Grand Ballroom will go with you… .

Goodbye.