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

When her unconscious mind has selected one, have it give you a "yes" signal. You will be guaranteed by these instructions that if she consciously picks something trivial like smoking, her unconscious can pick something more useful. Habit control is the most trite application of a learning tool. It's important, but it is not nearly as important to your well–being as other things. There are many patterns that occur in your life which prevent you from having intimacy with people, spontaneity when you are moving through the world, or the ability to learn from other people and enjoy them. There are patterns like that which are pervasive—throughout everything you do. A byproduct of that pattern may be that you can't control your smoking or that you wake up at four o'clock in the morning and have to eat pecans.

Once I worked with a man who did that. He woke up at four a.m., and if he couldn't get pecans, he couldn't get back to sleep. It didn't matter where he was; it didn't even matter if he changed time zones. It changed time zones too. It was a very sophisticated thing. This person, by the way, was a clinician.

The problem was that he would travel to places where you couldn't get pecans, he would take pecans along when he went to foreign countries, but sometimes he wasn't allowed to bring them in. And that meant he would wake up at four o'clock in the morning. Being clever, he learned to go to bed at nine o'clock at night and get up at four o'clock in the morning. However, his wife didn't like that much. It made life dull.

Now, I knew that the behavior he told me he wanted to change was only an example of a much more important and pervasive pattern. However, I know that working with an example is one way to work with the pattern, so I just went ahead with reframing.

So in the next piece, I want you to first put your partner back into trance, reestablish a yes/no signal with the person's unconscious, and then ask her to identify, both consciously and unconsciously, a significant pattern of behavior she wants to change. You can label this pattern X or Y or something arbitrary like that.

3) Separating Positive Function from Behavior.

a) Now you can go right through the standard refraining model. First you say something like "I want you, Joyce's unconscious mind, to turn the finger signals over to the part of her that makes her do X. And when that part has full control over the finger signals, both fingers will lift up so that I know." You always use the ideomotor signals as a feedback mechanism.

b) The next question is very important. You ask "Are you willing to allow her conscious mind to know what it is of value that occurs when she does X?" This is a yes/ no question. If you get a "yes" say "go ahead and let her know, and when you've done that, then allow that "yes" finger to rise, that "yes" blush to occur—or whatever the signal is—so that I know you've informed her." You are always monitoring things. Use the yes/no signals not only as answers, but as monitors.

By the way, it doesn't matter if you get a "yes" or a "no" response to the question "Will you let her conscious mind know the useful purpose?" It doesn't matter because you already have what you wanted to accomplish: communication on the subject. If you go in and ask "Are you willing to communicate about this?" it might say "No." And if it says that, then you are stuck. Then you have to come up with some other scam.

If you ask a father in family therapy "Are you willing to change your behavior in relationship to your son?" he might say "No." But if you say to him "Do you love your son?" he'll say "Yes." If you ask "Do you really love him?" he'll say "Yes" again. If you then ask "Do you love him enough that you would be willing to make changes in your behavior so that he could have a happy life?" you won't find many fathers who will say "No" to that.

The reframing procedure I'm teaching you is very similar to that. You make it very easy for the person to respond in the way that you want her to by presupposing everything that's important.

So I presuppose communication. If his unconscious says "No, I'm not willing to tell the conscious mind" it's already communicated with me. I say "Then are you willing to figure out for yourself exactly what you consider to be the most useful aspect of this behavior?" You see, all

1 want is the communication. It doesn't matter whether the response is "yes" or "no." Who cares if her conscious mind knows? Even if her conscious mind knew, it wouldn't help. Sometimes knowing gives an illusion of security, but informing the conscious mind is not profoundly useful in and of itself. What I want is communication.

Equally important, I want to make a distinction between the behavior that he doesn't like and its useful purpose. This separation is also presupposed by my question. I don't ask if there is a useful purpose, I ask it his unconscious part is willing to communicate what the useful purpose is. If the unconscious part is not willing to communicate its positive function, I say "Fine" and just go ahead. The important distinction between the behavior and some useful purpose has been made. This gives me lots of flexibility in making changes. She doesn't like the behavior, so I find some positive purpose which it serves. This opens the door to creating new choices.

4) Creating New Alternatives,

a) As soon as the conscious mind knows the useful purpose, or the part identifies for itself what it is, the next step is to generate alternative ways to accomplish the useful purpose. You can simply ask that part if it would be willing to go into the creative resources where people dream and manufacture ideas —you can describe anything which has to do with the manifestation of new choices, rearranging things, or creativity– and get some new ways to accomplish this positive function other than the one it is using now. Totally reassure the part that it does not have to accept any of these choices, and that it does not have to give up the old behavior. It can simply go in and get a whole plethora of other ways of accomplishing the same positive intention.

b) When you get a "yes" tell it to go ahead, and to give you a "yes" signal again when it has gotten ten new choices. If the conscious mind knows what the pattern of behavior is and the function it serves, then you can allow the conscious mind to know about the new choices. But there is no need for the conscious mind to know about the choices.

I want you to do just that much, even though it may not make much sense to you. You first ask her to pick a behavior that she most wants to have more choices about. Then you essentially say "Separate the behavior that you are using from what it is supposed to accomplish— what its purpose is." Then you say "OK, now that you have separated those and you know the difference, I want you to go into all of your creativity and come up with ten new ways to accomplish this purpose.

You don't have to use them. There's no commitment here to change anything. Just come up with ten ways that you would be able to accomplish the same purpose."

When the person signals you that she in fact has the ten choices, or that she only got eight, then stop. Bring her back to the waking state. OK, try that much.

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In the piece that you just did, the basic thing that you arc trying to accomplish is to get somebody to learn unconsciously to separate behaviors from what those behaviors accomplish. If a behavior is a way of accomplishing a particular outcome, once you've made that distinction you can easily get the person to begin to generate other possibilities—three, ten, fifty ways of accomplishing the purpose other than the problem behavior. You want her to end up with ways which are as immediate, as effective, and as available as the way she is using now. If you do this, typically it is not that difficult to begin to induce very pervasive change.