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

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.