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

I gave her this program using very unspecified language, for the reasons we discussed earlier. It's very important to understand when to use unspecific language, and when not to use it. When you give process instructions, make your language very unspecified. However, if you want someone to do something very specific, like bake a particular cake or cure a phobia, it will be important to give that person very specific instructions, so they can understand how to do it. If you want someone to bake a cake and you tell him to "take all the appropriate ingredients from your refrigerator, mixing them together in the most satisfying way …" you probably won't get the cake you wanted.

Often I hear people using the unspecific language we use for process instructions when they are trying to communicate something specific to another person. And they have no idea that the other person has no way of understanding them, because of the words they are using. For example, in therapy, people talk about how important it is to have high self–esteem, or a positive self–image rather than a negative one. But they don't talk about exactly how you build those things, or how you know when you have them.

Sally: It happens in comparing their personal experience.

What are they comparing with what?

Sally: They arc comparing their child emotions with their adult understanding of what they think is happening in the present.

OK, and when they compare those, what do they do with the comparison?

Sally: They then have an improvement in their own self–image — their own self–esteem. How?

Sally: By seeing. You see, sometimes a person has a feeling of badness about herself because it is incorporated in a memory. So as you take the present experience or knowledge in the person, and you look back at that, then at the same time you're helping that person in the session. She can then rework things so she has a different—

Let me ask you something. Do you understand that there is nothing in the description you are giving me that allows me to know what you are saying? This is not a criticism of your understanding, because I think you know what you're talking about. But you aren't talking to me in a way that will lead me to understand.

Sally: Maybe it's the knowledge base that I have. Our communication is a little bit different.

Well, it's not that, because I even know what you want to tell me. I know because people have told me many times. However, the discrepancy between how you're telling me and the way you would need to tell me in order to communicate what you want me to know, is an important distinction for what we're learning here.

You see, the kinds of descriptions you are using will be exactly what works in hypnosis. If I want you to make something up, to go off on your own and hallucinate, then I use the kind of non–specific linguistic structures that you were just using.

However, if I want you to do something specific, I have to tell you something specific. If I want to give you information about doing something, I've got to make sure that you know every detail about how to do it. You see, if I wanted you to use a particular mental program that I believed would raise your self–esteem, I might say "OK.. I want you to pick a specific unpleasant memory from your past—a memory in which you realized that you did the worst you could possibly have done… . And as you look at that memory and feel the feelings you had back then, what you don't yet realize is that without unpleasant memories like that one, you wouldn't have learned anything of importance in your whole life. If you'd never experienced the pain of a burn, you wouldn't be smart enough to avoid fires."

That instruction is at least somewhat specific. It tells you to take some unpleasant memory, feel the feelings, and then reevaluate the memory in a specific way. While that instruction doesn't tell you detailed content, it does specify the kind of memory you are to think of and what you are to do with it.

If I don't care how you make a change, I unspecify my language even more and use lots of nominalizations. Close your eyes for a minute and try something. I want you to go inside and pick two, three, or four pleasant past memories which may seem unrelated … but your unconscious never chooses anything in a random fashion … because there's a learning of importance for you as a person… . Now I know in your past, there's a wealth of experience … and that each and every one of those experiences . . , constitutes the basis for building a learn ing …or understanding for yourself … that is relevant to you … only as an adult … that wasn't relevant to you as a child … but it can serve as the basis … for building something that you learned.

Now take a few moments to let that relearning begin to take shape …to crystallize. . , . You might be beginning to see an image . , . which is not clear … and which you do not understand… . And the more you look at it … the more you realize how much you don't understand … and as you watch at the unconscious level … you can be building that learning in a way … which is significant… . The significance of your building that learning … is something that consciously … you can appreciate only when it's complete … and then you'll realize … suddenly… the ideas … and understandings about how to make changes in yourself … can begin to flow … into your conscious mind… . But those ideas have nothing to do with that new learning … because when one of those ideas comes into your mind … if it's truly an unconscious one … it will have to have a giggle attached to it. …

Now, the way I just communicated with Sally is very much like the way she communicated with me. However, there's abig difference between trying to get the conscious mind to understand something and trying to get the unconscious mind to do something. The description that she made is the kind of description I might make to a client when I want her to do something, but it's not what I'm apt to give a clinician when I want him to understand something.

It's always easier to see these things from outside the field than from inside it. That's true in almost everything. A friend of mine who is a prominent technology physicist told me about a time when he'd been working on a very complicated problem. He'd probably been awake for a month, diligently working on this problem.

His mother had been staying at his house and taking care of his kids while he was locked away in his laboratory. She came into the lab and brought him a cup of coffee and asked "How's it going?" He said uOh, it's going fine." She asked "What exactly are you doing?" and he explained the complicated problem to her. She listened and said "I don't understand it, I would have just done this" and she gave him the answer that he needed. She had never even gone to high school, but her answer is now the basis for one of the most sophisticated digital computers that has come on the market.

When you're inside a field, you're programmed to see certain things at the expense of others. Of course that gives you capabilities, but it also gives you limitations. When I entered the field of therapy, people said "All you need to do to be a good therapist is to be fully in touch with the needs of people. You help them to raise their self–esteem and their image of themselves so that they can have better and richer lives." I said "How do you do that? How do you raise self–esteem?" And they said "By making people see things the way they really are." I disagree with that; I think it's by creating more useful self–deceptions than the ones they already have. I don't know how things "really are."

The point is that there are many words that sound meaningful but aren't. Nominalizations always sound meaningful, but that doesn't mean that they are. If you want to get someone's unconscious to do something, nominalizations are exactly the kind of words that you can use effectively to do that.