“One of the most important functions of the mind is to transform hindsight into foresight.”

Recently I carefully reviewed my book Transforming Your Self: becoming who you want to be, in order to prepare it to become an e-book. (Now available on
Amazon Kindle.)

I came across a section on guilt and values conflicts that I think may be of particular interest. I have modified it only slightly so that it reads more smoothly as a “stand-alone” piece:

Excerpt from Transforming Your Self, chapter 8, “Transforming Mistakes”:

Often people experience conflicts between different values in certain situations. “I want to be kind, but I also want to be honest. I want to be honest, but I also want to have friends. It seems like whatever I do, I end up criticizing myself and feeling guilty for not upholding the value that gets ignored.”

If you ever find yourself thinking like this, try a ridiculously simple change that can have a profound impact — replace the word “but” with “and.” “I want to be kind, and I want to be honest.” “I want to be honest, and I also want to have friends.” “But” separates experiences, which creates personal fragmentation, and tends to erase or discard whatever precedes the “but.” “And” joins experiences and acknowledges both, which is a very useful first step toward integration.

We often find ourselves making choices between values, and guilt is a common troubling experience that results from this. There are several ways to resolve guilt; in order for you to have a felt experience of them, I’d like you to think of a time when you did something that harmed someone else, and now you feel guilty. . . .

When you feel guilty about harming someone, that means that you violated one or more of your own values in some way. I’d like you to reexamine that incident and identify the harm that you caused someone else, and also identify the value (or values) that you violated. . . .

One of the first things to realize is that the strength of your bad feelings is an indication of the importance to you of the value that you violated — if it didn’t matter to you, you wouldn’t have any feelings about it at all. So even though the feelings of guilt or disappointment are unpleasant, they are an indication of how much you value that quality, and are committed to it, so you can feel good about the strength of your value. (This is an example of the usefulness of moving up a logical level.)

An even more important measure of the strength of your commitment to the value is your willingness to apologize, make amends, or compensate somehow for the harm that you caused. So one thing you can do is to take a few minutes to consider the situation fully, in all its aspects, and decide now what kind of appropriate apology or compensation you are willing to make. “What could I do to make amends or compensate for what I did?” Perhaps you might want to talk to that person and find out what kind of amends they think would be appropriate. If that person is dead or otherwise not available, how could you make amends to someone else in the same or similar position?. . .

Wallowing in guilt usually has no impact on future behavior other than feeling bad, which helps no one. Willingness to take action to compensate for what you have done is a lot more convincing, and a lot more useful, than just feeling guilty, and it can also heal the separation and bad feelings between you and that other person. If you are willing to make a firm commitment to make amends in some way, that will further strengthen your sense of this value, and simultaneously reduce your feelings of guilt. Pause now to consider what you are willing to do, and decide on some action to take. . . .

On the other hand, if you find that you’re not willing to take some sigificant action to make amends, then you can realize that the harm you caused someone else is really not that important to you. Since it doesn’t violate any significant value of yours, there is no need to condemn yourself and feel bad about it.

Now I want you to think again of the incident in which you harmed someone else, and ask a very interesting question: “Given my perception and understanding of the situation at that time, was there a more important value that I was actually following?” . . .

Sometimes you weren’t following a higher value. Sometimes you just made a simple mistake, or misunderstood the situation, or didn’t fully realize the consequences of your actions. But at other times you were faced with a very difficult decision, and whatever you did, you couldn’t follow one or more of your values. When that happens, people often focus narrowly on the value that was not followed, and feel terrible.

It can be very helpful to see both the value that you followed and the value that you didn’t follow, widening the scope of your thinking. “Oh, I really am a person who follows through on my values. It’s just that I was faced with conflicting values. I followed the one that was more important to me, and I couldn’t find a way to follow the other one at the same time.”

That is a much more balanced and resourceful state than guilt, and it is one that makes it a lot easier to examine the situation without self-judgment, and begin a search for ways that you could express both values if you are ever faced with a similar situation in the future.

“How do I wish I had responded in that event? How would I like to respond if that kind of situation ever happens to me again in the future? What personal resource would make it possible for me to manifest both these values, even in those situations in which I previously felt I had to choose between them?”

You can use the thoughts and images that emerge in response to these questions to transform that guilty memory into something more useful and satisfactory to you. You can use simple “videotape-editing,” taking that movie memory into your private editing room, and changing it until you are satisfied with it. You can use the “change personal history” pattern in which you access appropriate personal resources and integrate them into that unsatisfactory experience so that it becomes one that you like. Or you can use any other change method you know to transform that example of guilt into an example of what you wish you had done in the past, and would like to do if that kind of situation happened in the future. . . .

Keep in mind that every change process should include a congruence check, to be sure that the change fits with all your other values. When you are satisfied with the results of this process, imagine a similar future situation that might arise, and put the transformed memory into your future, making sure that it is linked to the cues that you will experience in the time and place that you want it to happen, and that it is vivid enough to draw your attention when and if that kind of situation happens. (For more detail on how to do this, see my earlier blog post, “Programming yourself now to remember later.”

If you’d like to read the complete e-book, you can order here:
Transforming Your Self: becoming who you want to be, on Amazon Kindle

Steve will be presenting 3 workshops at the Psychotherapy Networker Conference in Washington DC, March 21-24, 2013
March 22: Changes that Work, 4 hours
March 23: From Anger to Forgiveness, 2 hours
March 24: Transforming Your Inner Trash-talker, 3 hours

Research Digest: this is a Free weekly blog summary of recent psychology research. I usually find something interesting each week.

The so-called “gold standard” for treating PTSD is “exposure therapy” in which the client is asked to re-experience a terrifying traumatic memory repeatedly. This is very uncomfortable, so there is a huge dropout rate, and it is also very undependable and slow, taking many sessions. Besides the dropouts, some people get worse, not better. If exposure alone worked, then someone with a phobia, who is exposed to it repeatedly, would soon get over it. So exposure alone is not a cure; there must be something else.

Virginia Satir often asked clients to “see a troubling memory with new eyes,” a metaphor that at least some clients were able to utilize successfully in the context of her nonverbally evocative presence and watchful eyes. But Virginia also taught a much more detailed process for resolving troubling memories, called “Family Reconstruction,” a process she utilized in groups. After gathering some information about a client’s family members and their disturbed patters of interaction, she would ask them to select someone in the group to role-play each family member. Then she would use physical postures, gestures and sounds to paint a vivid picture of how they interacted. Sometimes Virginia would use ropes and other props to show how family members were tied to each other by their patterns of interaction — and how miserable they all were.

A key element in this process was that the client also chose someone to play herself in this reenactment, so she could see herself, and her own misery in the context of the tableau that Virginia orchestrated. This was an elaborate way to create a very moving new set of images with the client as an outside observer.

Those who have any familiarity with the NLP phobia cure  will recognize this as a way to re-view a past memory as a distant observer. In contrast, exposure therapy instructs the client to re-experience the troubling memory as a participant, as if it were happening again in the present — which is what they are already doing if they experience “ flashbacks.”

This process has an even older history. For thousands of years, many meditations have taught a similar process of “stepping back” and observing thoughts as if they are separate. Some people are able to successfully use the instruction to “step back” in order to re-experience a troubling memory as unreal, and therefore no longer troubling. But for many others this instruction alone will be inadequate to actually achieve an objective viewpoint, for a number of possible reasons.

One step back may not be nearly enough. A client may need to take ten steps — or two hundred — in order to create sufficient distance to view a disturbing memory objectively.

Even at two hundred steps, a client may need to shrink a troubling image to make it small, flat, dim, or black and white — or all of these — before being able to view it without being distressed or compulsed.

To be really effective, the client needs to be at sufficient distance that they can see themselves responding to the troublesome event, not just the troubling event. When a client sees an image of himself freaking out “over there,” that implies that he doesn’t have to feel those feelings himself.

People suffering from traumatic memories often speak of feeling “frozen in time” because they have an unchanging still image of the traumatic event at the peak of their terror. Even if they are able to step back and view it at a distance, they may still have that static troubling image. If they remember a point in time that is still disturbing, you can ask them to make that still image into a movie, and continue the movie until later, when the terror is over and they are safe, so that they are not left with an image that is still troubling.

When a client is already experiencing overwhelming feelings, it can be very difficult or impossible for them to take an objective point of view because of their emotional arousal. However, if they are first distracted, and then asked to imagine sitting in a movie theater before playing a movie of the disturbing memory, they will usually be able to.

The many unspoken implications of a movie theater — that the movie is only a record on film or video of what happened in the past, some of which may have been achieved through makeup, special effects or other fakery, etc. — are far more effective in conveying the message “This is not real” than simply asking someone to verbally relabel it.

Asking the client to notice the heavy curtains and the ornate decorations on the theater walls, the spring-loaded seats as they sit down in the theater, and to feel the arms of the chair they are sitting in, adds sensory detail that will strengthen the experience of actually being in the theater, and all the implications of that. The impact of these implications is an example of the importance of “what you know, but you don’t know that you know,” often pointed out by Milton Erickson.

But even all that may not be enough; the client may need to float up into the projection booth of the theater and look down at himself sitting in the audience in order to achieve sufficient separation from the troubling experience that will be displayed on the movie screen.

Asking the client to reach out and place her hands on the plexiglass in the front of the projection booth concretizes the separation from the events on the movie screen, making it even more difficult for her to “fall back into” the terrifying feelings being felt by that woman on the movie screen. It also occupies the kinesthetic system with feeling the plexiglass, making it less likely that there will be sufficient remaining “bandwidth” in the kinesthetic modality for feeling terror.

All these elements and more have been built into a detailed protocol that has been the core of the NLP phobia process since the late 1970’s, and which is the process of choice for what I call the phobic core of PTSD. This protocol takes the simple conscious mind instruction to “step back” from a problem memory and “see it with new eyes” into an experience of doing it that elicits unconscious responses through implication.

Resolving Complex PTSD

However, what is called PTSD usually includes many other difficulties in addition to the phobic core experience, and each of these requires a different intervention. In an earlier blog post I described many of these, which were included in a thorough and comprehensive four-day training in August, 2013. That entire 15 hours of explicit and detailed video, including written introductions to each segment and handouts, is now available in streaming video as The PTSD Training: Resolving PTSD and its Many Aspects. When you buy access to this set of videos, you can watch as often as you wish, when you wish, without having to clog your computer by downloading huge files—at a cost that is half the cost of the live workshop—never mind the cost of travel, accommodations, and lost income! See a sample video from this training here.

PTSD Client Sessions Video

A companion video streaming site offers you the complete treatment (four sessions totaling over nine hours) of an Iraq Vet in April and May 2013, including written introductions to each segment, and follow-up. For a full information and sample video from this site, go to ReleasingPTSD.com.

First, a postscript on Derren Brown’s “no-touch” punch, described in a previous post. At the end, when he punches the man from behind, he doubles over FORWARD, just as he did when Derren “air-punched” him in the lower chest from in front. If someone actually punched you in the back, your stomach would move forward (not back), and your upper body would move back (not forward)—the opposite of what he did, and a pretty obvious indication that no “energy” was involved, only hypnotic suggestion.

Now let’s take a look at tapping on the body, which is a method used in most “energy psychology.” Repeated tapping, or other repeated interruptions, definitely DOES work to reduce the intensity of a troublesome representation. The question that I want to explore is, “HOW does it work?”

“Energy psychology” says that it works by “rebalancing” or “unblocking” the “energy” in acupuncture meridians. However, I think it works by rebalancing attention, and changing the submodalities of the representation. . . .

Can you recall a time when you wanted to concentrate on something, but it was really difficult, because someone kept talking to you, or kept touching you to get your attention? It is very difficult to concentrate on something when you are repeatedly interrupted by other events. Other things being equal (which they never are!) stimulation in the present usually elicits a stronger response than an internal representation of a remembered experience. . . .

The senses differ significantly in the strength of their ability to capture our attention. Vision and hearing are “distance” senses (giving us information about events that are usually somewhat distant). Because they are more distant, we usually have some time to decide on a response, so they elicit a less urgent and more conscious response. Touch, on the other hand, gives us information about what is always happening very close to us on the surface of the body. So we are much more likely to respond immediately (and reflexively and less consciously) to a touch.

If you want to get someone’s attention at a noisy party, touching them on the shoulder or elbow usually gets their attention quickly, no matter how engaged they are in conversation. (And if you touch them in certain other places, it will get a response even faster!). Smell is more of a distance sense than taste, which will usually elicit a very rapid response, because that is something very immediate and important– particularly if the taste is unpleasant or disgusting.

So tapping on the body is definitely a way to alter someone’s attention. . . . Tapping around the eyes is even more attention-getting, because of the great importance that we place on seeing, and the potential danger of any touch that is near the eyes. . . . So here’s my hypothesis, which would be ridiculously easy to test. Tapping on the body (or any other interrupting stimulus) will interfere with fully remembering and responding to a traumatic event, a problematic belief, or any other troubling internal representation. Repeated interruption by tapping, or some other event in the present will result in changing the submodalities of the troubling internal representation in the direction of making it less impactful (dimmer, smaller, more distant, more dissociated, etc.) in the same way as the NLP phobia cure does directly.

One obvious advantage of tapping is that it can be done with minimal cooperation from the client–you don’t have to ask them about their images or tell them to see them dim, distant, etc. and this can be particularly useful when the client is already hysterical or otherwise difficult to communicate with. Another advantage is that you can teach someone else how to do it in a few minutes. . . .

Whether or not you already use tapping in your work, start doing some exploratory testing. Without any preamble (or discussion of “energy meridians,” or prediction that this will make a difference to their problem or other suggestion, etc.), ask your next client with a troubling internal representation to tell you about its submodalities by comparing it with a similar representation that doesn’t bother them. Then ask them for permission to tap them around their eyes while they think about the difficult representation, and ask them to report any changes in intensity or any submodality shifts that occur. . . .

If they have another bothersome representation of about the same intensity, do the same, but this time tap them on the wrist or shoulder, etc. If I’m right, tapping around the eyes (or other more sensitive or “personal” parts of the body) should be faster and more effective. Of course, hypnosis and all sorts of suggestions can be added to this, but if you want to do science, you test only one thing at a time, as cleanly as possible. . . .

The final test would be a carefully controlled double-blind study in which neither the tapper nor those supervising the test would know anything about the hypothesis being tested. This is the kind of basic research that could be done relatively easily and definitively under controlled conditions, and I am happy to tell you that a new NLP Research and Recognition Project is being launched to do just that, something that our field desperately needs to separate itself from all the superstition and hokum out there.

A couple of months ago I got an email from Scott Leese, who had attended one of our practitioner trainings 16 years ago, and is now a coach in California. At that training I had said something about how every culture has very beautiful traditions (as well as others not so beautiful!), and used the Navajo handshake as an example, something I had witnessed often during two summers on the reservation in the early 1950s. When two Navajos meet, they gently place their hands together and look each other in the eye, and silently sense each other’s state, both visually and kinesthetically, for some time. Scott’s email below, (slightly edited and approved by Scott) is eloquent, and is wonderful example of repeatedly offering someone a new scopes of experience, and new ways of categorizing them.

“We spend the 4th of July in Telluride every summer. This year we had a Navajo family move in to the campsite next to us. They had a son in his 20’s who appeared to have a lot of anger and history of violence (multiple scars on his hands and head and current black eye and scabbed knuckles from fighting). As he approached our site I reached out my hand and remembered you telling us how Navajos greet each other, by not shaking hands but just holding each other’s hand and just looking into each other’s eyes. Our hands and eyes met and I just held his hand still and stayed in that position for about 2 minutes. I could tell he just couldn’t believe that this white guy was greeting him culturally correctly. That instantly developed a deep rapport that led to hours of conversations about the struggles in his life. . . .

We talked about his life, why he gets into lots of fights, his drinking, his anger at the world, America, whites, etc. We talked about what were the things that he wanted his son to have in his life. What most impacted him was the idea that he was modeling what his children would learn, and that he can create a different path for his own two-year-old son. And that he had a specific mission in this world that he was here to do that transcended his environment. Connecting him with a sense that he was of value beyond his own beliefs of himself also had a great impact, and that his beliefs about himself could be changed easily and did not have to be formed by his environment–like finding a treasure on your own land when you had no idea it was buried there. His family (about 12 of them) just stood in (literal) jaw-dropping amazement that their son was talking so long to this strange white man. . . .

After some hours of conversation I said to him, “Look Fred (name changed), there is a specific reason God had us meet, and he cares for you so much that he made sure I drove 997 miles from Thousand Oaks California, so that we could talk. We talked at length about how his own identity will shape his mission in the world, and that his mission and identity will shape those of his son, and grandson and great-grandson seven generations down. I told him that he must be important in this world because of the distance I traveled and that this had been the most important conversation that I had all week in Telluride. ‘Now you tell me that you don’t have a special purpose on this planet?’ That is when he put his hands over his face and wept and walked away. He came back several times, but couldn’t speak without breaking up. . . .

I told him, ‘You appear to be someone who is wasting your energy on fighting people on the outside, when you should be fighting for yourself on the inside–someone so worthy deserves someone to fight for their survival.’ Then I anchored the feeling of him protecting his 2-year-old boy as a father into that same protection for himself on the inside. ‘You wouldn’t let some outsider come up and harm your son, correct? Then why would you let thoughts, patterns, and your own behavior harm that little boy’s father?’ Your little boy is going to use you as his model for the rest of his life to know that he was of value to you and to himself. He will forever either say, ‘I want to be like my daddy or I don’t want to be like my dad. You need to choose today, whom you will be to your son and whom you will be to yourself. Fred, we were supposed to have this talk, and you have a blank map to draw the journey of your life. Decide today that you will fight just as hard for the survival of yourself as you would for your son.’ Again he left weeping. . . .

Another part of this story was that I had been cooking a hamburger for myself on the campfire. His family was getting ready to have hotdogs for dinner. I asked him if he would be interested in some steak that I had that I wasn’t going to be able to cook since we were leaving the next day. He said he had no way to cook it. I told him that I would be happy to cook it for him and I pulled out this huge 2- inch-thick rib eye steak and started to cook it for him. He stood amazed, and kept staring at it, because again what I was doing didn’t fit into his old beliefs. Then when it was finished, he said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘Doing what Fred?’ ‘Why are you eating a hamburger while you cook me this steak? Why?’ I said. ‘Because of my faith I do what I would want someone to do for me, and I want you to have my best.’ Tears in his eyes, he left again. . . .

We had to leave the next day, but before we left he came over and said that our talks had a deep impact on his life and that I was a blessing from God. So you never know, Steve, what bit of information you teach to someone will have an enormous impact on someone else’s life.” . . .

(The Navajo handshake was both a powerful nonverbal pace of Fred’s cultural tradition, and at the same time a complete pattern interrupt, because it was so incongruent with his expectations and beliefs about white people. However, the handshake was only an entry that provided an opportunity; Scott did the rest— exquisitely.)

In a previous article, I wrote about moving a representation to a location outside the head, so that it wouldn’t be distracting. In response to that, I received the following from Don Aspromonte, a colleague in Dallas, TX, who works with businesses internationally to improve sales and customer satisfaction, and author of Green Light Selling, a book that is based firmly in NLP communication processes.

“I read your piece about moving a representation in the head in your last newsletter, and it reminded me of a method I have used for many years. The first time I used this pattern for dealing with a migraine headache was in the early 1980’s with my sister. Based on what we were experimenting with in those days in NLP-land, I coached her over the phone to move her headache to another area of her head. This was not immediately successful for two reasons: random movement is less likely to work than moving it from/to a specific location, and ecology needs to be observed. We figured this out fairly quickly when I mentioned that we were not going to get rid of the symptom, we were just asking it to move to a different place. . . . Since migraine headaches almost always start in only one hemisphere, we began by moving it to the other side of the head. Once that is done, it can be moved up to a location a few inches above the head. When I asked her if she still had a headache she said, ‘Yes, but I can’t feel it.’ After a while she forgot that she had it. She is still successful in using this method and the frequency of headaches has dropped to nearly zero over the years. . . . I have used this exact pattern with many clients over the years and consistently received the same report, ‘Yes, I still have the headache, but I can’t feel it.’ I suspect there are many possible variations on this theme for others to explore.”

Many people who are tormented by internal critical voices would like to eliminate them altogether, because they so often make them feel bad, and interfere with their living in other ways. For thousands of years Buddhism and a number of other spiritual traditions have advocated silencing the internal “chattering monkey” as a path to reaching enlightenment or nirvana. In the 60s and 70s this prescription was a key part of many “new age” programs that have been very popular, such as Ram Dass’ 1970s book, Remember, Be Here Now, and Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy based on awareness of the “here and now.” In its newest bottle this old wine has been called “mindfulness.”

As I write this, Eckhart Tolle is making immense amounts of money promoting this ancient idea in his book A New Earth, in his interview series of the same name with Oprah Winfrey, and in many other audio books and products. An indication of the extent of this industry is that an Amazon Search for Eckhart Tolle turned up 809 products!

What would it be like to have no internal voices at all? And what would the consequences of this be? Fortunately, we have a coherent first-person account of what it is like. In 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who studied the brain, had a massive stroke when a blood vessel exploded in her left hemisphere, forming a large clot that pressed on her language area, eventually shutting it down altogether. Even though Taylor was a brain scientist, she didn’t immediately recognize what was happening to her. As her language and other left hemisphere functions gradually shut down, she intermittently entered a state that she described as “euphoria,” “nirvana,” and “La La Land,” in which she became less and less able to function. A dozen years later, after her hospitalization and recovery, she described her experience in a fascinating talk that you can view online at: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

The following excerpts are from a transcript of that talk, which can also be found online at: http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php#more

“And I’m asking myself, ‘What is wrong with me; what is going on?’ And in that moment, my brain chatter, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button and—total silence.

“And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.

“Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, ‘Hey! we got a problem, we got a problem, we gotta get some help.’ So it’s like, ‘OK, OK, I got a problem,’ but then I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness, and I affectionately referred to this space as ‘La La Land.’ But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my job—it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those—they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful—and then my left hemisphere comes online and it says ‘Hey! You’ve got to pay attention, we’ve got to get help.’  . . .

“So I gotta call help, I gotta call work. I couldn’t remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my office I had a business card with my number on it. So I go in my business room, I pull out a three-inch stack of business cards. And I’m looking at the card on top, and even though I could see clearly in my mind’s eye what my business card looked like, I couldn’t tell if this was my card or not, because all I could see were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn’t tell. And I would wait for what I call a wave of clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal reality and I could tell, ‘That’s not the card; that’s not the card; that’s not the card.’ It took me 45 minutes to get one inch down inside of that stack of cards.

“In the meantime, for 45 minutes the hemorrhage is getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the telephone, but it’s the only plan I have. So I take the phone pad and I put it right here, I’d take the business card, I’d put it right here, and I’m matching the shape of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not remember when I come back if I’d already dialed those numbers.

“So I had to wield my paralyzed arm like a stump, and cover the numbers as I went along and pushed them, so that as I would come back to normal reality I’d be able to tell, “Yes, I’ve already dialed that number.” Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and I’m listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, ‘Whoo woo wooo woo woo.’ And I think to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, he sounds like a golden retriever!’ And so I say to him, clear in my mind, I say to him, ‘This is Jill! I need help!’ And what comes out of my voice is, ‘Whoo woo wooo woo woo.’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever!’ So I couldn’t know—I didn’t know that I couldn’t speak or understand language until I tried.”

Notice that Taylor’s report shows how useful her internal voice was in understanding what was happening to her, and in urging her to get help. From “And I’m asking myself, ‘What is wrong with me; what is going on?’ ” to “Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever!” her internal voice directed her attention in ways that probably saved her life.

Taylor’s report of euphoria and oneness is quite similar to the reports of some people who have used hallucinogenic drugs. Others have had similar experiences during epileptic seizures and other unique situations such as sensory deprivation tanks. Perhaps more interesting, the same kind of experience can be created without requiring a stroke, drugs, or extreme environments.

In an early NLP workshop, a man who had read far too many books about the importance of silencing your inner dialogue used his skills to do exactly that. For about an hour he experienced total internal silence—and total catatonic immobility. After he returned from this experiment, some exploration revealed that all his behavior began with some kind of direction from an internal voice, saying something like, “What shall I do next?” or “What’s most important now?” Without this voice, he was immobilized; he was “in the here and now” all right—just as many Alzheimer’s patients are—but he couldn’t get anywhere else, and he was totally incapacitated.

So while silencing your internal voices may be an interesting experiment, it has very significant practical drawbacks. Your mind may sometimes be a “chattering monkey” that criticizes and torments you, but at most other times it is a very valuable resource, one that probably no other animal has. Sometimes it just helps you remember addresses or phone numbers—an ordinary skill that can be easily “taken for granted,” until it’s no longer there! As Taylor discovered, this simple function can sometimes be very, very important. At other times a pair of internal voices might engage in a very useful discussion about the merits of what restaurant to go to, which car to buy, or whether to get married or not. Without those internal voices, you would be as helpless as Taylor was.

If we look a bit more closely at those who advocate silencing internal dialogue, we find some very interesting contradictions. One is that I haven’t heard of a single one of them who has volunteered to have their language area surgically incapacitated so that they could have Taylor’s experience. If nirvana is half as splendid as Tolle and others say, surely that would be a small price to pay.

One of Eckhart Tolle’s other books is titled, Silence Speaks, which indicates that for Tolle even silence has a voice! But more to the point, he couldn’t have created all those written books and audio CDs if he didn’t have an internal voice that he advocates evading or avoiding!

In simplified form, Tolle is saying, in words—and over and over again, “Words are useless; get rid of them.” If his statement were true, then it would be meaningless, because that statement is only a string of “useless” words, a logical paradox. Ram Dass’ book with the title, Remember, Be Here Now, is also an instruction with the same paradoxical structure—a rather large set of words that tells us to ignore words. Many people think that paradox is only of interest to philosophers and mathematicians, but it also occurs in many problems in everyday life that can have significant and troublesome consequences. In this case it results in millions of people spending tens of millions of dollars in a futile quest—using words (printed or spoken) to try to get rid of words.

Chimpanzees don’t have words (except for those who have been taught a few by psychologists) but most people don’t realize that if they got rid of words, they would become as limited as chimpanzees are. Tolle and others who advocate eliminating internal voices really should advertise it as a way to attain “chimpanzee consciousness,” “stroke consciousness,” or “Alzheimer’s consciousness”—and to be congruent they should do this without using any words! But somehow words like “enlightenment,” “the power of now,” “nirvana,” “unconditioned mind,” and other variations on that theme are much better for the marketing that maintains their employment.

By now it should be obvious that silencing all internal voices is a fairly drastic overreaction to a very limited problem. It is as if people said, “Some voices are troublesome, let’s eliminate them altogether, including the useful ones.” Some voices are indeed troublesome; what can we do to solve this problem without creating a much greater one?

If you have ever tried to stop a critical voice, you know that it is extremely difficult—if not impossible—to do. In fact, trying to get rid of it draws your attention to it even more, and results in making it more powerful, and your unpleasant response to it even stronger!

It works much better to make peace with a troublesome voice, and educate it, so that it speaks to you in ways that are more helpful and useful, becoming a friendly and supportive ally instead of a cruel tormentor. How to do that—in a variety of different ways—will be the subject matter of the chapters to follow.

(This is a draft of an early chapter of a book in progress.)

There are quite a variety of “energy psychology” approaches being promoted as effective ways to change behavior. They include Roger Callahan’s “Thought Field Therapy” (TFT), directed at the “energy fields” that thoughts allegedly produce, and Gary Craig’s “Emotional Freedom Technique” (EFT), both of which use tapping with the fingers on “meridians” (or massaging them) to change the “energy balance.”

Here is how Gary describes EFT: “EFT is a new discovery that has provided thousands with relief from pain, diseases, and emotional issues. Simply stated, it is a unique version of acupuncture except you don’t use needles. Instead, you stimulate well-established (sic) energy meridian points on your body by tapping on them with your fingertips. The process is easy to memorize and is portable so you can do it anywhere.” It launches off the EFT Discovery Statement, which says that “the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.”

Donna Eden claims that her “Energy medicine shows you how to understand and work with your body’s reservoir of electromagnetic and more subtle energies to increase your vitality, identify and correct energy imbalances that keep you from being at your best, and enhance your health and state of mind. Your body is comprised of centers of energy and energy pathways that are in constant motion, a dynamic interplay not only with other energies, but also with your cells, your organs, your immune system, and your mood. You will learn how to influence the flow of these energies by tapping or massaging or tracing specific energy points or pathways.”

Eden and Callahan both use “muscle testing” to determine the strength of the “energy field,” by asking someone to hold out their arm and then pulling down on it to test the person’s muscle strength before and after intervention. I assume that most readers of this newsletter have at least heard of these methods, and that some have also experienced them, or even taught them.

In this article I will be questioning whether “energy fields” exist or not. Even if they don’t exist, the idea of an energy field may be used to elicit changes. If anyone reading this has made useful changes in response to some kind of “energy work,” I think that is wonderful, and I certainly hope that you keep them. Now take a look at a Derren Brown video:

How did Derren do it?

Before reading further, notice your response to this demonstration. How do you think it works? Is this a convincing demonstration of an energy field, or do you have some other explanation? . . .

Derren’s demonstration is far more intense and impressive than any I have seen by Callahan, Craig, or Eden. Is he doing “energy psychology” or “energy medicine”? Derren himself is very clear in his introduction to all his TV shows that he is not. “I achieve all the results you see through a mixture of magic, misdirection, and showmanship. It’s not psychic.” Brown is a master of suggestion, both verbal and nonverbal/contextual, and his results are very striking (There are several others on youtube).

Let’s take a close look at the sequence of what he does in the video: First, notice the context. Derren is in a kung-fu dojo, where everyone has undoubtedly heard LOTS about “sensing energy.” Second, Derren asks the kung-fu master to demonstrate his “one-inch” punch that knocks the student down. If you watch closely, his punch is a lot more than its “one-inch” name. It is at least 5 or 6 inches—though still pretty impressive. Then Derren says, “I want to demonstrate something— something I do, that is similar, but non-physical. It’s easier on the knuckles. It just uses the mind,” setting up the expectation that what he will do is similar to what everyone just saw. He asks the kung-fu master to choose a different student. He thanks the student, says “Come stand here,” puts his hands on the student’s shoulders, and moves him and positions him carefully, a series of nonverbal commands to follow his instructions, followed by patting him twice on the shoulders, as if to say, “Well done; excellent,” validating his compliance. Then he rubs the student’s lower chest gently, and asks, “Can you feel that?” a conversational postulate containing the embedded command “Feel that.” Of course he can feel that; he has sensory nerves in his chest! What is he going to say? “No, I have no nerves in my chest; they were shot off in the war.” Then he makes the exact same movements in the air about a foot in front of the student’s chest. (These movements are now anchors for the feeling that he felt when they were made in contact with his chest.) Again Derren asks, “Can you feel that?” The student accepts the suggestion, and says, “Yes.” In fact, he CAN’T actually feel that, because his sensory nerves don’t extend beyond his skin, but he certainly can IMAGINE it in response to the embedded command, “feel that.” Now the student is set up for the final punch in the air, and he “feels” that and doubles over. Then Derren gives the student a series of three direct commands. “Stand,” “Stand,” “Stand,” and he helps him stand up. Then he says two more direct commands, “Breathe in,” “Out,” and the student continues to follow all these commands, followed by Derren’s saying, “It’s just in your mind.” Then Derren asks, “Can we do this one more time?” a conversational postulate indicating that he will repeat the entire sequence. He does this while holding the students’ shoulders in the same way that he did when he positioned him at the beginning, an anchor that elicits compliance again.(At first the student is not very eager to repeat this, but then he does agree, though not congruently.) Then Derren says, “This time I’ll stand behind you, so you won’t be able to see me or see what I’m doing,” implying that he WILL be able to HEAR him. Verbal implication is one of the subtlest kinds of suggestion; if you want to know more about this, check out my article on my website. Next Derren takes off his jacket and asks someone else to hold it for him. Is this irrelevant? I don’t think so. Taking off your jacket is typical when a man is about to fight or undertake an extra physical effort, a contextual implication that he will punch even harder from behind. If you want to know more about contextual implication, read my article here. Then Derren repeats the exact same motions and timing of the first two steps of touching the student’s lower chest, but with a slightly different word sequence. “You can feel that?” is an interesting combination of command and question (as is the tonal pattern), still containing the embedded command “Feel that.” Then he gestures in space in front of him, and again says, “You can feel that?” These are now visual and auditory anchors for what happened just before, when he punched the air in front of the student. Then he repeats, “This time I’ll be behind you where you can’t see me,” repeating the implication that he will be able to hear him. Then he goes behind him and punches in exactly the same way, and the guy reels away from that. Suggestion again, cued by the subtle sounds of his movements when punching the air.

Of course, I might be wrong, and it’s ridiculously easy to test this. Ask Derren (or anyone else) to secretly come up behind someone, in a very different context, and try punching the air behind him without any warning or set-up. I’d be willing to bet serious money that under double-blind conditions nothing would happen, and you can try this yourself, as I have. Last march I attended a two-hour presentation by Donna Eden and David Feinstein at the Psychotherapy Networker Conference, in which Eden demonstrated hand motions that supposedly weakened someone else’s “energy field.” Later at the evening presenter’s party, I came up behind Donna and made those exact same motions, repeatedly, but she showed not the slightest hint of feeling weakened, despite her supposed sensitivity to “subtle energies.”

James Randi (an ex-magician, who knows most of the tricks that magicians and scam artists use) has a standing offer of a million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate ANY paranormal phenomenon under controlled conditions (no suggestion allowed): No one has even been able to even qualify for the preliminary test under moderately controlled conditions. Randi’s site has a fascinating list of the applicants, AND a record of the negotiations with applicants about arranging the testing protocol. So the next time someone talks about “feeling energy,” “seeing auras,” doing “remote viewing,” or any other paranormal phenomenon, suggest to them that they try to collect Randi’s million-dollar prize. AFTER they succeed at that would be the time to listen to what they say, and learn what they do—not before. Even though I have no evidence that these kinds of “energy fields” exist, with appropriate suggestions, someone can be induced to make changes—hopefully useful ones. And there is still the question of whether tapping on someone’s body can be useful in bringing about change, something that I’ll discuss in a future article.

One technique I use a lot that has produced some results that are as dramatic as the Core Transformation process came from something a psychotherapist told me that sounds much like something Virginia Satir might have done–maybe I read it in one of her books.

In doing family therapy, she had a family where the impasse was between the father and his 17-year-old son. The father was a “strong” and stoical man, for whom expressing emotion was not an easy or desirable skill. She had the son go and stand behind the seated father and gently place a hand on each of his father’s shoulders in order to “feel and relieve some of the tension there.” Apparently this was of great effect in changing the relationship between father and son, so naturally it got me thinking.

As I have mentioned previously, the internal representations of problem people are rarely, if ever, radiating beauty and light. I’ll often ask what the expression on their face is, and what their posture is. Then I’ll ask the client to imagine walking behind that person and gently placing a hand on each shoulder and giving just a little gentle massage to loosen the person up a bit. As the client imagines touching the person, this also shifts the kinesthetic submodalities. Usually the representation itself changes, relaxes, or even starts crying.

For instance:

Client: “I feel criticized.”
Therapist: “What has to happen inside for you to feel criticized?” (Since criticism is a largely verbal activity. I could have asked, “And who criticizes you, and what do they say?”)
C: “I hear a voice.”
T: “And if that voice were a person, who would that be?”
C: “My father. My father was always criticising me; he had a horrible voice like that.” (Client has not seen father for over 14 years.)
T: “And if your father were in the room now, where would he be?”
C: “Standing right in front of me, really close.”
T: “That’s right. Now close your eyes. I want you to imagine walking around behind him and gently place one hand on each of his shoulders and whisper into one ear that is close enough to hear you, to ‘Relax now. . . all the way.’ . . . (pause) . . . Tell him it’s OK . . . it’s OK . . . and gently massage those shoulders; give him a moment to relax, all the way down now. . . .”

Try this now yourself; think of someone you felt inferior to as a child, and hold that representation in mind. Then stand up, go around behind them, and gently massage their shoulders and notice the difference. . . .

This is a nice maneuver that achieves several things simultaneously. Primarily it completely shifts the spatial orientation of the client in relation to the representation. Instead of facing each other in opposition, they become oriented in the same direction, with implications of alliance and cooperation. In addition, massaging someone’s shoulders and talking to them in this way presupposes a much more friendly relationship than criticism does, opening the door to a more understanding attitude.

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 protective.

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 a selection from a rollicking and original new book: The Rainbow Machine: Tales from a Neurolinguist’s Journal, By Andrew T. Austin.

My colleague Don Aspromonte (who sent me interesting ideas about working with agoraphobia and migraines which I included in earlier newsletters) wrote me recently about his explorations into how we code our images of things in order to know which are ours and which belong to someone else. Here is what he wrote:

“Over the past 15 years I have asked many people to help me understand how they know they own something. I have suggested they use their car and a car belonging to someone else. I make sure they can picture each car clearly and in detail, parked side-by-side in a parking lot or in their driveway.

“Then I have them check all submodalities to find out if they can determine how they code for ownership. When they find differences, I have them adjust the submodalities until both cars are identical. And yet they can still tell the difference between the car they own and the other car that they don’t.

“Finally, I ask them to examine how the cars are related to the background, and the distinction is almost always quickly evident to them. In every case where the client was able to become aware of the distinction (about 95%) their own car was either hovering off the background and not connected to it, while the non-owned car was connected to the background, OR the reverse: their own car was sitting on the ground and the non-owned car was hovering.

“What is really interesting is that about 50% of these clients experienced the object they owned as hovering while the other half saw the objects they did not own as hovering.

“I would guess I have done this about 100 times. The result has been startlingly consistent, and I have used this information to make an intervention, for instance:

“I first discovered this distinction when working with a woman who had a significant weight control problem. She told me that one of her problems was that she would eat whatever food was available during the family meals. As we got more detail about how she was thinking about it, we discovered that all of the food on the table hovered just slightly above the surface of the table, so it belonged to her. In her world the rest of the family was eating her food. That was OK with her, but by the end of the meal she had consumed everything that someone else did not eat.

“I worked briefly with another client who suffered from kleptomania–he often stole things that were not his. When he was in a store and saw something he liked, it would suddenly appear as if it belonged to him. We discovered that all of the objects in the store were initially resting comfortably in their natural position with respect to the background–they were connected to the background. Then, when he liked something, it would suddenly hover away from the background, and slightly nearer to him–much like the submodalities of a compulsion. He could not simply leave the store and let them keep his watch.”

Posted by: Steve Andreas in: Articles, New Product

(An excerpt from The Rainbow Machine, by Andrew T. Austin, ©2007 Real People Press.)

Miracle: “Specifically: An event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a deviation from the known laws of nature; a supernatural event, or one transcending the ordinary laws by which the universe is governed.” – Webster’s Dictionary.

I cannot help but wonder how different world history would be if Jesus had gone around boasting of his miracles. I can picture it now, Jesus by the river with his friends, regaling them with the Lazarus story for the umpteenth time, or showing off how a mere crucifixion was no match for His superior talents. The follow-up to that whole set of events might have been very different indeed. There is a certain wisdom in all holy books about keeping quiet about miracles, that really should be paid attention to.

For many in the healing professions, performing the apparently miraculous is a common affair. It is, after all, what one is paid to do. As a staff nurse in neurosurgery I had a patient with a rare condition known as a syrinx. Essentially a syrinx is a fluid-filled cavity within the spinal cord that enlarges over time and can result in devastation to that part of the spinal cord and nerve roots. Imagine a bicycle inner tube bulging through a split in an old worn tire.

A 40-year-old man had undergone various neurological investigations including a spinal tap that had unfortunately resulted in a syrinx. Repeated attempts at treating this condition had failed, and his situation was looking grim.

When I came across this gentleman he was ashen in colour, agitated and very angry. I wasn’t sure of his understanding of what he was facing or what he was experiencing, but it did not take great sensitivity to realise that it wasn’t positive.

“How you doing?” I ask him.

“Fuck off!” he growls angrily.

“No,” I replied, evenly, “I’m not fucking off. What’s up?” I ask innocently.

“What’s up? I’m going to be fucking paralysed, that is what’s up,” he sneered.

“And how do you know that?” Now I am aware of how terribly annoying this last question can be. NLP practitioners who have recently learned the meta-model tend to ask this much too often, and not always with any thought to why they are asking it. However, on this occasion I knew exactly where I was going.

This is the sort of situation in which a colleague of mine looks around on the walls, and says, “Let me see your fortune-telling license,” to draw attention to the fact that the person is making a prediction about the future without being suitably trained and qualified.

“What?!” My patient growled, clearly annoyed at both my continuing presence and the nature of the question. As a health care professional involved in his care, I really should know more than I appeared to know.

I asked again, “How do you know that you are going to be fucking paralysed”? His eyes go up and to the left, then up and to the right. Then back up to the left again.

“There are only so many times that you can put a patch over a punctured inner tube. When a patch doesn’t work, you can only put so many patches over the top before you ruin the fucking thing. That is how I know!” It was obvious that he had a very clear representation of this.

“I think you are wrong on that,” I say quietly. “An inner tube is not a living thing. It is black, dirty, and dead. Have you ever actually seen a living spinal cord?” I asked, as I gestured up to his right. His manner changed dramatically. Now he was attentive and curious, instead of angry. I really didn’t think it was going to be this easy.

I sketch it with my hands. “A spinal membrane is a living matrix. It lives. It is a good healthy colour, even when damaged; under a microscope the cells look beautiful. That is why I think you have the wrong picture.” I move my hands out, as though enlarging the picture.

“Shit!” he says, a better colour coming into his face. “I had never thought about it that way.”

“That’s right,” I say, “you didn’t” and quietly walk away.

Before my long shift was over, this man was eating again and laughing and joking with the staff. Eight hours later his syrinx was found to have mysteriously vanished. Eight hours was all it took! It is a testament to the healing ability that is latent in every living organism. I cannot really claim any particular credit for this minor miracle; after all, I was simply applying something I had been taught (Heart of the Mind, chapter 20). But at the time I was excited. This was amazing, and I just had to share it with the other staff.

A word of advice–don’t ever do this with nurses; they simply do not understand, and always love an opportunity to ridicule the strange man. Teach what is possible, but don’t claim credit for making it possible; that is bad medicine. Since this lesson, I have also learned that the best NLP masters rarely ever mention NLP when they are working out in the world. They just do it.

The Rainbow Machine includes creative episodes and thought-provoking ideas on topics including overeating and eating disorders, ADD, PTSD, rage, depression, schizophrenia, obsessions, compulsions, bedwetting, anxiety, smoking & addictions, dying, emergency room situations, self- esteem, critical self-talk, use of drugs, narcissism, hoarding, hysterical paralysis, agoraphobia, phobias, and much more. We think all NLPers, and anyone interested in personal growth & therapy will want a copy.