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

If you think only in terms of changing a behavior, like smoking, you don't have much room to move. You can either smoke or not smoke, and it's very difficult to get people to not do things. If you back up and work in terms of the positive function of smoking—for instance relaxation—this gives you a lot more flexibility. There are many ways a person can relax.

People sometimes try deliberate symptom substitution, but they usually get into difficulty. For example, take a person who unconsciously wants to feel satisfaction, and the way she achieves that satisfaction is by eating a piece of chocolate cake. Replacing eating with painting a picture is not going to work very well, because it is a lot easier to get a piece of chocolate cake than it is to paint a picture.

It's a lot easier to smoke a cigarette to relax than it is to go to Mexico. Smoking may not relax you as well, but it is much more immediately available. Unconsciously you don't really make the kind of qualitative distinctions that you might make philosophically. You might consciously decide that it isn't nearly as satisfying to eat chocolate cake, because then you have to regret it afterwards, and it detracts from the rest of your life. You might decide that if you took up a hobby or you found something else to do, that would satisfy you more. However, if what you try to substitute to give you that feeling of satisfaction is not as immediate and as available as the chocolate cake, you'll cither go back to the same pattern of behavior or you will find something else that is easily available.

Now, sometimes when you find something else that is as immediate, you find something that is worth having. But often people quit overeating and begin to smoke. Or they quit smoking and spontaneously gain weight. Or they give up some habit that gets in their way, and they end up doing something even more destructive to them. So it's important that you have a way of evaluating the choices that you select.

5) Evaluating New Alternatives.

a) I'm going to ask you to pair up again with the same person and continue with the next step. Put her back into the altered state, reestablish whatever signal system you were using, and then ask her to go through each of the choices, and to evaluate each one in terms of whether unconsciously she believes it is at least as immediate and effective and available as the way she is now using to accomplish the positive function. Whatever the intention behind the behavior is, will these alternative choices work just as effectively to accomplish it? Each time she identifies one that will, allow the "yes"signal to occur, so that you can count the number of choices she unconsciously selects. You want to know how many choices she unconsciously believes meet that criterion. If you get ten, you are in good shape.

b) If you get less than three acceptable choices, have her go back to step four and generate more until she has at least three. If you only have one choice about how to do something well, that's not much of a choice. That's where most of you are now with whatever you are dealing with. If the only way you can get immediate gratification to satisfy yourself is by overeating or yelling at your children or whatever it happens to be, you don't really have a choice. If you develop only one more possibility, you still don't really have a choice. All you have is a dilemma.

If you have three possibilities, in addition to the one you don't like, then you are into the Land of Selection and that's really what choice is all about. So I want you to have her generate at least three possibilities that unconsciously she will accept as being as immediate, as available, and as effective, at accomplishing that particular purpose.

6) Selecting One Alternative.

a) Now, once you get a signal from her that tells you she has three, then have her unconsciously select which of those new ones to try out. You don't want her to select the old one, so the best way is to bypass that possibility by presupposition. You ask her to select which of the new ways strikes her as being the most effective and the most available in satisfying whatever purpose she has, and to give you a "yes" signal when she has made the choice.

b) Then ask that unconscious part of her if it would be responsible for using the new choice instead of the old one for three weeks to evaluate its effectiveness. If she discovers it will not work, then she can try out the other two, or go back to the old pattern. Going back to the old pattern of behavior doesn't constitute failure, but is simply a signal to generate more possibilities, perhaps at night while she dreams and sleeps, perhaps in a daydream.

One of the things I've discovered in my work with people is that when they go through usual therapeutic, hypnotic, or medical procedures in order to change, they often begin to change less spontaneously than a person normally would. When people fail to get the outcome they want, they begin to build the generalization that change is difficult and they can't do it, rather than simply taking no change as an indication that the choices they developed were not adequate, and that it's time to find even better ones.

When you get that part to take responsibility for trying a new choice, ask it to give some signal if it discovers the new choice is not good enough. Then have the part use that as a signal to generate a new choice that's even better, It could do this in the process of dreams, or fantasies, or just totally at the unconscious level. An inadequate new choice becomes a signal to build new learnings rather than an indication of failure. Does that make sense? It's a really important principle, even if you don't do hypnosis. When you change people, always define anything that might be considered a failure as an indication that it's time to expand. That's a much better overall learning than any specific change you could give someone in psychotherapy. If somebody comes in with numb feet, and you build in that learning and help her make the numbness go away, you teach her that if the numbness comes back, it's time to do something. It doesn't mean that therapy didn't work, or that she failed.

Sometimes a therapist tells me she used a procedure with somebody and that person changed for six months, but then the same old problem came back, and the therapist doesn't know what she did wrong. It strikes me that the therapist must have done something really right to get it to last that long. Even if the change only lasted a week, she might have done something which was very appropriate. What she missed was taking what she did that was appropriate, and using it as the basis for knowing what to do next. A symptom is like a barometer; it tells you when the choices you have are inadequate for your being able to cope and respond in a way that is appropriate for you.

Stress can also be considered a barometer for when you are not handling your behavior appropriately. Once I worked with people who were in what was called "The Stress Clinic." I thought this was an interesting name for the place—kind of a metaphor. They were attempting to help other people reduce the amount of stress in their lives by learning relaxation techniques. But what they failed to do in that clinic with their clients and with themselves was to define stress as something useful. They defined itasa disease that had to be cured, instead of as a useful way of monitoring when your way of dealing with problems isn't working well. Stress can be an indication that it is time to sit back and use the relaxation techniques and that now is an opportunity to begin to think of more creative ways to cope.

I would like you to get back with your partner and have her unconscious select the choices that will really work, and then select one of those new choices to test for a limited period of time. If the choice doesn't work, it tries another choice or begins some behavior that will generate more choices. If it does work, she keeps it, and that alleviates the need for the unwanted pattern of behavior.