Steve Andreas: Help with Negative Self–talk Volume I

One aspect of this is worth pointing out, as it isn't always obvious at first. When you elicit a representation from a sitting client and then ask them to stand up, the representation tends to stay where it is in geographical space. A representation that is a negative artifact from childhood is often bigger, or higher up than the client, and because of this it often represents something more powerful than the client. However, when you stand up and massage someone's shoulders, you are the same height, with implications of equality. And when you feel equal to someone else, you feel much less defensive and threatened. If that other person was originally sitting down, you may even find that you are higher than they are, with a corresponding feeling of power, instead of vulnerability.

In my early daze, I would try to get the client to reduce the size of the representation, or "push" it further away. Invariably they would find some kind of difficulty. Then I chanced upon the move described above, which is much more graceful and effective.

Essentially, this puts the client in control of the representation, and gets the representation to relax. The representation is exactly that — a representation of a part of himself, a bit of his own psyche that isn't feeling nice. This is a hugely powerful technique. I prefer to have the client remain sitting and do this in their imagination. However, it isn't unusual for someone to actually stand up and go through the physical motions of these activities. This is particularly likely if the client is an athlete, or someone else who attends closely to their body and its position in great detail. (9, pp. 80–81)

Once I was having lunch with a colleague at a national psychotherapy conference. She was talking about her 10–year–old son who was having some difficulties, and about her anxiety and uncertainty about him. When I asked her where she saw the image of her son, she looked and gestured straight ahead of her, and said, "About 15 feet away." I asked her to bring this image of her son next to her, so that he was by her side, facing in the same direction. When she did this, her anxiety changed to soft tears of sadness about what he was going through, and then she said calmly and confidently, "I know what to do. All I have to do is be with him and support him."

A particularly useful intervention that I learned from Robert Dilts can be used with a couple who are arguing vehemently. Ask them to sit side–by–side, with a little space between them, facing in the same direction. Then ask them to see both of themselves in front of them, and to continue to discuss their ongoing interaction in the moment, but in "third person," as if they are describing someone else. "She is sitting with her arms folded across her chest, and he is feeling very angry right now, remembering all the times that — "

These examples may suggest other changes in position that could be useful to change the location of a representation of someone who has a troubling voice. What if you were both lying down side by side on chaise lounges enjoying the springtime sun? Or sitting back to back?

For much more about how to utilize changing the position of internal images of other people, see Lukas Derks' excellent book, Social Panoramas. (13)

When you changed the location of a negative voice so that it was farther away, you often found that the volume decreased, making it much less unpleasant to listen to the voice. Changing the volume was a major factor in making the voice easier to listen to, and changing the location in space was a way to change the volume. But how does this work so easily?

You have had many experiences in the real world in which a sound source moved away from you, or you moved away from a sound, and as it did, the sound became quieter. You have also had many experiences in which a sound moved closer to you, or you moved closer to a sound and it got louder.

When you imagine a sound moving away, or that you are moving away from a sound, that elicits coordinated simultaneous memories in all your senses of that happening. The memories of the sound moving away correspond to a decrease in volume. In other words, remembering this kind of event elicits the precise internal neurology that occurred when that happened in the external world. That same neurology can be used to make a corresponding change in your internal world.

This kind of experience is called a "reference" experience; an experience in the external world that has the characteristics that you need to make a change in your internal world. Whenever you want to make a change, you can search for a memory of something happening in the external world that has the properties that you need in order to make the internal change. When you re–experience it fully, that will elicit the response that you had in the external world. As Richard Bandler has said, "Since most problems are created by our imagination and are thus imaginary, all we need are imaginary solutions."

This understanding opens up a world of possibilities, which skilled hypnotists have been using for a century or more. For instance, if you want to lower the temperature in your hands, or to shrink the blood vessels in them, you can vividly imagine putting them in a bucket of ice water; if you want to raise the temperature of your hands, or dilate the blood vessels in them, you can imagine putting them into a bucket of hot water.

If your goal is to decrease the volume of a voice, you can think of many other contexts in which the volume changed as a result of some event, or something that you did. Pause now, to think of several other events in the real world (other than increasing distance) that decreased the volume of a sound or voice… .

Can you think of a time when someone was talking to you and then closed a door between you? Or drew a curtain? Or the person speaking to you turned away from you, or put their head under the covers? Or you covered your ears with your hands? If you were in a bathtub, submerging your ears would muffle the sound. You can use any experience like this to change volume, as long as it is something that you have experienced, preferably repeatedly.

There is a wonderful DVD (21) in which Michael Yapko helps a man with his life–long depression in a single session. The man's depression was caused by his memories of a childhood that was horribly abusive, both physically and verbally, and he had abusive and depressing internal voices as a result. One of Michael's interventions is as follows (verbatim from the transcript):

When I have hundreds of people in a room, and I ask, "Who among you has good self–esteem?" hands go up — not many, but some hands go up. And then I ask them, "Do you have an inner critic? Do you have a voice inside your head that criticizes you and says rotten things to you, and puts you down, and says mean and horrible things to you?" And every single one says, "Yes."

And I say to them, "If you have a voice that says rotten things to you, how can you have good self–esteem?" And the interesting reply — it's always a bit different — but the common bottom line is they don't listen to it. And when I ask them, "How do you not listen to it?" that's when I learn all sorts of different strategies.

One person said, "Well, I picture it as on a volume control knob, and I just turn the volume down.

Somebody else said, "I picture it as a barking dog, tied to a tree, and I just keep walking."

Somebody else says, "You know, I have another voice on my shoulder that says good things to me."

But the interesting thing is that every single person has that inner critic, that critical voice. It's just a question of whether they listen to it or not. (21, p. 17)