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This article was originally written by Steve Andreas and is republished here as part of the Steve Andreas archives. It is presented to preserve and share his work with current readers.
- Steve Andreas Archives
Following amputation of a limb, paralysis, or other interruption of sensory nerves, people often feel pain. Interventions directed at the sensory input have been ineffective or have even made the pain worse; newer approaches have been directed at eliciting motor output instead. Here is the part of an article that I found most interesting:
“Evidence that stimulation of the motor cortex (the area that controls movement) can reduce phantom limb pain has been around for some time. Perhaps more surprising was a trial by Ramachandran and Rogers-Ramachandran in 1996. They asked people with amputations of the arm and phantom limb pain to place their arms inside a mirror box so that they saw their remaining arm mirror-reversed to look like their amputated one. When they moved their remaining arm in the box they were ‘fooled’ into thinking they were moving their amputated one, and their pain was reduced. Although this has proved less effective in some subsequent trials, it did suggest that phantom limb pain might reflect a loss of motor control to the limb, as well as loss of sensory input from it.
“More recently the mirror box has been used with some success in pain that is not due to sensory loss. In fact, a box may not be required. In phantom limb pain due to a peripheral nerve injury (brachial plexopathy), Giraux and Sirigu have shown that merely training patients to imagine their paralysed arms moving in relation to a moving arm on a screen in front of them can relieve phantom limb pain.”
Presumably this imagery stimulates motor output to reorganize the cortex, reducing the pain, a strong example of how imagery can have a physiological effect.
This process is described in an article in the Economist (July 22, 2006), p 75, and is also described in a Wikipedia article.
Postscript from Connirae Andreas in 2024. We now have a fascinating small group case study on some remarkable results with phantom limb pain using Wholeness Work. Read the full article here.
This article was originally written by Steve Andreas and is republished here as part of the Steve Andreas archives. It is presented to preserve and share his work with current readers.
- Steve Andreas Archives
Fairly often someone writes to me asking about how to gather information to determine what the structure of the problem is, and what intervention to use. “How can I decide what to do when, and which method to use?” This is a very important basic question, and I want to offer a few thoughts in response to it, and some alternate ways of thinking about it.
When you have a number of different interventions that work for different problems — and not for others — it is important to make sure that the solution is appropriate to the problem. In contrast, many therapists still use a “one-size-fits-all” method, so they don’t have to gather information at all; they simply launch their one intervention and hope that it works.
For instance, Gestalt Therapy — which I was deeply involved with for about ten years back in the 1960’s and 1970’s — always involves fully experiencing and identifying with different aspects of a conflict in the present moment. That works pretty well for grief, in which the client feels separated from the lost person, because in the two-chair process they can fully experience reengaging with the special feelings they had with the lost person. But Gestalt has no impact on a phobia, because the client is already fully experiencing the terror in the present — the solution offered by Gestalt is the same as the problem.
Now let’s take a look at the presupposition in the word “the” in “the problem” — that there is only one problem. Some limited problems have a structure that can be resolved with a single intervention, and this is true of most phobias and many simple habits or responses. A problem like a phobia that occurs only occasionally in a limited set of contexts will usually have a simpler structure and will be easier to resolve. A problem that occurs in a wide range of contexts is more likely to result from a combination of factors, or from a key element of someone’s functioning, such as decisions, motivation, the way they organize time, or a part of their identity.
Sometimes a single inappropriate structure may have many different problematic results, so when you change that structure, a number of seemingly unrelated problems resolve simultaneously. Changing someone’s personal timeline often does that. For instance, a timeline that is stretched out in space, so that images of tomorrow and yesterday are always a block away, will cause someone to disregard past mistakes and future consequences, and pay more attention to the immediate present. This will tend to have a large number of consequences, including strong motivation toward pleasure in the present, vulnerability to temptation, and a poor ability to hold a job or stay with a task that is not pleasant in itself, but which promises future rewards. With a more compressed timeline, those images of tomorrow and yesterday will be closer and larger (and often brighter and more colorful) so they will have much more impact on present decisions and motivation.
But most people don’t have one problem, they have several, and some have quite a lot of them. What may seem to be a single problem may have many different separate aspects or elements, and each of them usually requires a different method to resolve.
For instance, in PTSD, there is usually what I call the “phobic core,” a memory of a terrifying life-threatening experience, often a “frozen” momentary image that appears in “flashbacks” in response to sensory triggers. But usually PTSD also includes other aspects — guilt, shame, grief, regret, anxiety, hypervigilance, violence, etc., and the client often experiences them as a single tangled mess. My online video streaming program, The PTSD Training, demonstrates how to tease these different aspects apart and work with each of them separately, so that each one can be worked with using an appropriate method. (The introductory discount for ordering this program—with no risk money back guarantee—is available through January 31.) My other online streaming video program, entitled Releasing PTSD, demonstrates how to do this in working with an Iraq vet over 4 sessions totaling 9 hours.
When I’m teaching a particular pattern or intervention, I don’t have to gather any information; I simply ask for someone who has the kind of problem that the intervention is designed to work with. I ask for someone who is grieving, or has a phobia, or has difficulty making decisions. Occasionally the volunteer has a different experience of the words I use — for instance, they have anxiety, rather than a phobia — but usually there is a good match, and what they have is appropriate for the intervention I want to demonstrate.
This suggests a possible alternate way to work with a client, particularly for a beginning therapist, or someone who has only a few methods available to them. Rather than beginning with a general inquiry about what problem(s) they would like to resolve, or what outcome(s) they would like to achieve, and then gathering more detailed information, you could try a different approach.
You could make a mental list of the different methods that you know, and what problems they resolve, and then do the same thing I do in a training — ask your client if they have a problem for which you have a dependable solution. “Do you have a phobia? Are you troubled by grieving over a loss? Do you have anger or resentment that interferes with your life? Do you have anxiety in certain contexts? Are you ever troubled by regret?”
When the client answers “Yes” to one of your questions, you can proceed to offer them a method that is appropriate, with a high probability of success. Rather than risk getting lost in endless information-gathering and possibly getting “over your head” trying to solve problems for which you are not well prepared, you can offer them a sort of smorgasbord of what you know how to do dependably.
This approach is particularly useful with a client who is in a major muddle, and doesn’t have much idea of what they need. Your list of problems may include one that they hadn’t thought of, or that they assumed was not something that can be solved, so they wouldn’t think of asking for it. If a client doesn’t realize a phobia can be cured in one session, they won’t ask for it.
There are a number of advantages to this approach. You can be more confident of being useful to a client, knowing that you can deliver results rapidly when working with the kinds of problems you know how to solve. When the client gets results quickly, that delivers value, and builds rapport and the likelihood that they will return to get resolution for other difficulties. In the process of solving one problem, others may emerge, and you may get information about other aspects of the person that is useful in making other changes.
However, this approach would not be as appropriate with a client who already has a pretty well-formed description of their problem or outcome, because they might feel that you are ignoring that, so it’s important to maintain rapport, or use a different approach with them.
Yet another way to work is to become fluent in several fundamental processes that often underlie so many problems, such as decisions, motivation, timelines, and identity. Then when a new client comes in, you can listen respectfully to how they describe their problem, and if you know how to resolve it, proceed to do so. But this would only be a sort of preamble to saying, “I have found that if I investigate certain fundamental skills that everyone has and needs, I can be of more use to you more quickly in helping you with the specific problems that you are concerned with,” and then gather information about how they make decisions, how they motivate themselves, how they represent the flow of time, or how they think of themselves, and offer any useful changes you can identify that would be useful. (There is an introductory chapter on each of the first three topics in Heart of the Mind, and a whole book about the fourth, Transforming Your Self.
Making changes in any one of these four basic processes may even solve the problem that brought them to you, or it may resolve other issues that they may not have recognized, or which may not have been in the forefront of their experience. At the very least it will be interesting, and offer important clues about what else might be useful or not useful to explore further.
To summarize, you can gather information about the presenting problem or outcome, you can offer a sort of smorgasbord of different specific changes for the client to choose from, or you can investigate some very basic processes that are likely to be useful for every client. And you can always combine these different approaches, or move smoothly from one to another as the session unfolds, making it less likely that you will ever get stuck in any one of them.
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This article was originally written by Steve Andreas and is republished here as part of the Steve Andreas archives. It is presented to preserve and share his work with current readers.
- Steve Andreas Archives
Many of us in the field have complained for years that NLP methods have been largely ignored in mainstream research into therapeutic processes. Periodically research appears that “rediscovers” and proves some aspect of NLP that we have known and published years ago - but without any reference to NLP. Recently a Psychology Today blog post by Guy Winch took a small and welcome step toward remedying this situation, which you can read here:
Thanks very much Guy!
Core Transformation is among the “examples of NLP” that Guy chose to include. The next Core Transformation Foundation Training starts Oct. 23, 2026. Click here to learn more and to register for the Core Transformation Training.
- Steve Andreas
Drawn from the Steve Andreas archives, this account remains especially relevant amid today’s frequent news of anger and violence. Shared originally by George Copsey of Minnesota, it offers an inspiring and informative perspective.
-Steve Andreas Archives
From George…
A number of years ago, I was in charge of a spiritual studies program at the local state prison. I went in once a week to conduct Bible study, and also visited some of the inmates one-on-one, to assist with their spiritual growth. That’s how I met Erick,* a tall slender young man with sharp penetrating eyes and jet black hair, who somehow always managed to have a fashionable 2-day beard. As a teenager Erick had participated in a particularly vicious murder that made national headlines. You could google it if I gave you a few keywords.
Erick quickly understood what we were teaching in the Bible study classes, and I had already seen some changes in his conduct and attitude. He had a sharp mind and was a very quick learner. But Erick had an interesting tendency to apply what he learned to everyone else, not himself.
One day, as he walked into the visiting room to see me, I immediately knew something was wrong. His entire demeanor was different from the Erick I had seen thus far - his jaw was clenched, his brow furrowed with a frown so intense it seemed etched into his face. His arm muscles were tense, his hands in fists. If he were a cartoon character he would have had a black cloud over his head. I could almost hear his internal muttering.
“Erick, what’s going on?” I asked.
He explained that there was a new female guard - she was a novice, and she had not shown him the respect that he as a long-term inmate, “should” receive. As a result, he told me he was planning to kill her that night. He even told me his plan. The next time she came around on her rounds that night, he was going to reach out through the prison bars, and grab her and strangle her.
My jaw dropped as he finished describing his plan. Vivid images flashed through my mind of what he’d done to get locked up here. I had many reasons to believe that he could follow through on his plan to kill the guard, but also a few reasons to believe he might not, based on his fledging spirituality, and the personality I’d seen up to this point.
Now I was seeing a whole different side of him. His eyes were black, staring and intense, and he was clearly focused on taking out his anger on this poor woman.
I asked if he’d be willing to explore the anger?
He said yes.
Using the Core Transformation process conversationally, he started at: “There’s something inside of me that wants to control the world” (images of Hitler came into my mind). Next he went to, “There’s something inside me that wants to get out, to kill the whole world.”
At this point I’m thinking, “Oh my goodness, where is this going to go?” We were sitting in the waiting room, across from each other. Nobody else around us knew what we were doing. Would he flip out? Was I going to be able to continue to work with this at all? I didn’t know.
It was obvious that Erick had a part of himself, like a beast in his chest, that wanted to get out and kill, and I got a very strong sense that he was working hard to suppress it. It was almost as if I could see him thinking, “I’ve killed one person already…”
He and I had a strong enough connection that I wasn’t worried for my own safety. and I trusted the [Core Transformation] process. I believe in positive intentions - that each part of us, no matter how ugly it may seem, has a positive reason for what it’s doing. I focused on that.
Continuing with the process, I asked, “If you had that control, so you could kill the whole world as fully & completely as you want, what would having that get you that would be even more?” I felt my throat go dry asking such a question. I thought to myself, “Guess I’m going all the way with this one.”
But at that moment his entire demeanor changed from that of a person with a powerful part inside him that he couldn’t control, a part he hated & feared, a part that wanted out but needed to be restrained at tremendous cost to himself — to that of a person at peace with himself. His whole body relaxed and a huge sigh of air escaped from between his lips. His face transformed with a grin that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart.
“I will have…. PEACE,” he said. We hung out together in that Core State of PEACE for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a minute or two….
At that point, he had a truly radiant smile that seemed to fill the room. I think it was the highest he’d ever been without drugs. It certainly was for me. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if Mozart had starting playing as a rainbow appeared in the windowless room. I felt such incredible serenity. And peace. And I could tell he was experiencing it too — that for the first time in his life he recognized that this part of him wanted something positive. It wanted this PEACE. And he didn’t need to kill anyone to have it.
Talking about the experience, we discussed how I had “shared” the states he had gone through in the process. In the beginning I had felt his self repugnance, his fear and loathing, his desire to kill and control. I had also experienced his Core State of PEACE. I had “gone along with him” as he experienced reversing the Outcome chain where the PEACE went through everything. Erick shared with me how, now that he had PEACE as a way of being, he no longer had a part of himself that was evil and wanted out to control and kill the world. He said he would cut the new guard some slack because she was new, and he even said he liked her personality.
He mentioned that now that he thought about it, he saw a lot of qualities in this new guard that he really appreciated. He decided he was going to reach out to her in an effort to commend her for the good things she did, and demonstrate his respect for her.
I walked out of the visiting room that day convinced he was no longer a danger to the guard, himself or society in general. Fifteen years later his excellent spiritual growth & progress has proved that to be true.
—George Copsey, Minnesota
Thanks to Mark Andreas for his work in editing the above account. (*The young man’s name has been changed to protect privacy.)
This shows the kind of transformation that is possible in a short period of time, even when dealing with something very intense. Feeling disrespected, as Erick described, is something that has brought many to violence. What would happen if more people had the opportunity to speak with someone like George at that time, and be guided through the steps of Core Transformation? If Erick can experience a transformation so dramatic, with something so intense, what might be possible for the rest of us, no matter our life issues?
Watch a free webinar on Core Transformation including a demonstration here. It’s led by Tamara Andreas, co-author of the book.
If you’d like to learn more, join us for our Core Transformation Foundation Training in starting October 22, 2026
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