I Have a Voice

by Bob G Bodenhamer

  Look into your gallery of pictures and note the qualities of each one of your thoughts: fear, faith, courage, and so on.

  Expand your resourceful images so that they completely cover the negative images of fear.

  Consider the fear-ridden thought that you will block and then stutter. Make it a static image. Now access resourceful thoughts about having faith or courage. What do you have faith in? What are you courageous about? Allow your mind to produce images to represent several different states. Label each image as it arrives, “fear”, “faith”, “courage” and so on, and put it at some distance, so that you can see them all together, rather like pictures on the wall of an art gallery.

  Look at your gallery, and notice how you have represented each thought. What does the thought of “fear” look like? What does “courage” look like? How do you represent “faith”? You may have static images, or movies. You will probably notice that these images vary in brightness, color, size, and so on, and that maybe the positive thoughts are bigger and brighter than the negative ones. These are usually the kinds of distinctions our minds make in representing such ideas.

  Still looking at your set of images in front of you, in your mind, begin to expand the positive ones, the “faith” and “courage” (and any more you think would be useful to have) and make those images bigger so that they completely cover the negative image of “fear”.

  In metaphorical terms, “the good guys win” – if you allow them to. So just relax, notice these changes going on in front of you as you allow your positive resources to dominate your thoughts.

  Where is that old negative thought now? Somewhere way in the background. In the foreground you have the resources of faith, courage, and so on. You have taken the thoughts of faith and courage and applied them generously to your general way of being.

  When you bring your resources to bear on the fear of blocking, the positives win out every time, just so long as you allow that to happen. Finally, bring these positive resources back into your body. Find a way of reintegrating this way of perceiving the world into your body. For example, you could use your hands to bring these resources into your heart area.

  Exercise 3.6: Foregrounding resources

  This exercise asks the PWS to look for resources that are in the background of the “fearful and anxious” sensory-rich movie of their blocking. By doing this, the PWS becomes better at controlling their mind-body state.

  Overview

  Step back from your movie and step into a dispassionate state of critical analysis.

  Access a state of fearing that you will block. Step into that state of fear by imagining yourself in the context where you would have this fear.

  From the background of your mind access a strong resourceful state of courage, faith, determination, and so on. Amplify it by making the movie vivid and using empowering language.

  Apply your resource state(s) to the fear of blocking. Do this using language or any combination of visual, auditory, or kinesthetic resources.

  Before teaching others how to do this, you need to do it on yourself and understand how you did it. Think of something you are fearful or anxious about, such public speaking, and run the pattern on yourself.

  First make sure the PWS is in a good state. Then have them mentally step back so that they are able to examine the movie they make dispassionately.

  Ask them to recall a time when they were blocking and fearful, and watch that movie from a safe position. Say “Remember a time when you were blocking. What are you paying attention to?” Usually they will be totally focused on themselves or on the other person, mindreading them like mad, that they will not be seeing anything else at all clearly.

  Then ask, “How close are you to the other person?” Ask them to mentally step back so that they can see more of the area behind and beside the image that represents blocking, and to pay close attention to what they have not been seeing. Ask, “What is there that you are not seeing?”

  Now, ask them to look behind that or beyond that and notice the resources back there. Say something like, “Yes, those resources are within you and you can be aware of them if you just pay attention. You may experience these resources as behind you, or supporting you in some way. At the moment they may be quite distant, far behind you in the background and you are only just aware of them. Or you may experience the resources you need actually inside yourself, maybe a feeling, maybe a sense of being bigger, more confident, so that having these resources, you hear yourself speaking confidently and fluently with that other person. You may think of these resources as confidence, calmness, courage or faith.” Amplify these resource states as needed.

  Once the PWS understands the model, has the fear foregrounded, and is aware of the resources behind and beyond the fear, say, “As you become more aware of the resources that are available to you, you can allow them to become stronger, closer, with you and within you. And as you bring those resources into the foreground of your mind just push that old fear of stuttering way into the background. You may wish to just let it go so far that it either disappears, dissolves or explodes.” To make this even more powerful, do what Jack did and allow the resource state to do whatever it wants in order to remove or destroy the problem state.

  Practice finding different resources, applying them to the unresourceful movie, and notice which have the greatest effect. Jack uses pictures; I do it using words. I visualize the word “fear” and above that I put the word “faith.” Behind that visual of the word “faith” is a picture of Jesus who, for me, empowers the word “faith.” I then move the visual of the word “faith” down on top of the word “fear” and the word “fear” breaks into a thousand pieces. Others do it kinesthetically as they will move the feeling of courage and/or faith into the location of the feeling of fear. When you have “courageous” fear or “faithful” fear, how does that change the fear?

  Applying resources to completely cover the negative image of fear, usually results in a shift in thinking. When Jack brought his image of fear forward and melded it with his resource image “the meaning totally changed”. How the PWS applies their resources is up to them. They can do it slowly and gradually and see the old fears and anxieties fading into the background, or suddenly and completely and experience a dramatic change in how they are.

  Note: A person with religious beliefs may discover the presence of God. Yes, resources flow from God into them, just so long as they allow themselves to stand far enough back from that debilitating situation. In the next section we will discuss further how to lead the PWS in accessing their higher spiritual resources.

  Meta-stating

  Everyone has the ability to access resources that will change the way they are at any one time, and can deliberately choose to apply them to any situation. If, for example, the PWS only applies a state of courage when thinking about speaking to a friend then they can learn to apply it to strangers as well. It is the state of mind, and not the content of the state, that makes the difference.

  Exercise 3.7: Basic meta-stating

  The previous pattern is an example of what its originator, L. Michael Hall calls Meta-stating – the process of applying resources to debilitating states (Hall, 1996, 2000, p. 47). The essence of this way of changing is:

  Access a state which is limiting or debilitating, such as the fear of blocking.

  Think of an appropriate resource which when you apply it to the fear of blocking will minimize the fear.

  Associate into that resource state. Start by recalling a time when you had this state before, and then allow it to become stronger to completely fill you.

  Staying in this resourceful state, apply it to the fear of blocking. Allow the resource state to envelop and permeate that fear of blocking, so that it dissolves and loses its power.

  This change in your state can remain with you and continue to influence the way you are in the world. Still in this new state imagine yourself going through the rest of today, tomorrow, next week and the months to come,
and experience life with a state of resourcefulness.

  Because the fear has been well learned, it may take several repetitions of applying your resources over a period of time for your fear of blocking to diminish and eventually go away. Practice is essential. Every time the fear of blocking comes up, apply your resource state to the fear. Eventually the fear will weaken and disappear.

  When the triggers for the fear are present your mind-body used to immediately respond with fear. Every time you challenge this connection you are interrupting the old strategy and in effect saying “No” to the fear and “Yes” to your resource state (see Exercise 6.3).

  This meta-stating exercise involves changing the way you perceive your fear. You put yourself in a position of relative power, and use the positive energy of your resources to overcome the limitations of the unwanted state.

  Changing your point of view – perceptual positions

  You are constantly changing your point of view, altering the way you perceive and understand your experience. In fact, every process in this book gets you to do this, because change entails perceiving your reality in a significantly different way. Although there are infinite different points of view, they can be categorized into five distinct perceptual positions. Each has a particular function and thus provides an alternative way of understanding what is happening. This section is about how you can move at will through the five perceptual positions in order to create the changes you want.

  The fear relating to blocking comes from the point of view that the world is fixed in some aspect, that there is nothing to be done to change things. PWS get stuck in this point of view, and cannot conceive of alternatives being possible. There is a way out: imagine stepping outside those fears around blocking and stuttering and adopting a point of view in which change is possible, a position which enables fluent speech. For example, you feel confident and know that you can achieve great things by pretending you are an expert. That’s a change of point of view that the PWS can make to deal with their fear.

  Deliberately changing your point of view is both useful in that it allows you to engage with the world in a different way, and provides a general strategy for dealing with any kind of change. It increases your mental flexibility in the way you perceive the world and thus in how you make meaning of the people and events you encounter.

  The realization that humans operate from five basic ways of looking at experience offers tremendous potential in managing your own states and enhancing your communication. NLP’s original three positions have now been expanded to five (see Young 2004, and Figure 3.4), and these are simply numbered first, second, third, fourth and fifth perceptual positions respectively. You already use these perceptual positions; this model provides a way of thinking about them and using them systematically. Here we will consider how they work for people who block. As a clinician it is important that you recognize how to move flexibly around these different positions yourself in order to benefit from the insights offered by each perceptual position.

  Figure 3.4: Perceptual positions

  Associated points of view

  First and second positions are both associated – you are fully in the experience. When you are fully associated in a memory, it is as if you are looking out through your eyes, hearing the sounds and feeling the feelings, and therefore you do not see yourself in the picture.

  First position

  This is the familiar position of being in your own body, looking out at the world from the viewpoint of being yourself. It’s ego-centric – the normal and healthy position of seeing, hearing, and feeling from inside your self. It’s your truth, your immediate needs that matter, and you take less account of anyone else’s position. You simply think, “How does this conversation or communication affect me?” In first position you speak with authenticity, you present yourself, your thoughts, feelings, and responses congruently. You disclose, listen, inquire, and are present for others.

  The down-side of first position is that you get stuck: the PWS is totally blocked. The solution is to move to another perceptual position and view their blocking from a different perspective. Although this kind of shift may require some effort, it liberates the PWS and enables them to gain fluency. Now it is not the case that they have never done this before. They have – but they need to learn how to do it in the blocking context.

  Second position

  Second position offers alternatives. One aspect of this is pretending to be another person, imagining how everything appears from their physical location. You put yourself in a different context: in the other person’s body, looking at the world – and at yourself – through their eyes. “As this other person, what do I see, hear, and feel in this relationship, this communication?”

  Experiencing how someone else perceives a situation provides you with empathic understanding. Although this is your imagination, the remarkable thing is that the more exactly you copy how the other person is, in terms of body, mind and spirit, the closer you come to experiencing things as they do, to seeing things from their point of view.

  In everyday life you may wonder, “Now, what would he or she do in this situation?” Only by temporarily becoming that other person can you begin to find out. Adopting second position is important when you need flexibility in dealing with someone else, especially if there is any conflict.

  When you find yourself thinking about someone’s point of view objectively, then you have moved to third position. It is easy for the PWS to get into trouble here. They think “If I were in your shoes …” but instead of empathizing with them they mind-read them as judging the PWS’s stuttering. Sometimes the PWS in second position looks back at themselves in first, sees their facial contortions and so on, and that jumps them back into the first position and ratchets up their emotional state.

  The dissociated points of view

  Third and fourth positions are dissociated: you are thinking about experience. If you recall a memory and see the whole thing, including yourself, as if from a fly-on-the-wall position, or as if you are watching a movie in your mind, then that memory is dissociated.

  Being dissociated from an experience you can act more objectively because you are not involved in those events in the same way. There are two essentially different dissociated points of view: third and fourth positions. These positions are about interpreting and responding to what is happening. In third position you are evaluating or judging the entire event or conversation. This invokes your system of values, and moral outlook. In fourth position you observe, witness, and explore the situation in terms of metaphors, connections, ramifications and possible consequences.

  Third position

  Third position is about evaluating and judging what is going on. Imagine that you are being a critic of the movie you are watching. How does it make you respond? Ask yourself, “How do I feel about this conversation; how am I judging my own performance?” You are able to notice your emotional response, but as long as you can see yourself “over there” you will not get too caught up in it. You have that particular emotion, but you can also watch it change. Whereas (for most people) first position intensifies the feelings, third position diminishes the feelings because you can distance yourself from the memory.

  Another aspect of third position relates to social or peer pressures to conform. You know that you are influenced by what other people say, do, think, and so on. Third position includes understanding the larger systems (family, cultural, institutional, business) that influence you and all of the people in your social groupings. Because “No man is an island …” you need to think about your relationship to others in terms of moral values, and social norms. Many of your “oughts” and “shoulds” come from thinking about how society will judge your actions. (As these may be unrealistic it would pay you to check them out.) In order to remain a member of a group, to retain their approval, you need to take into consideration the needs of the group or society. You should consider: “If we consider our common goals …” and find ways of
conforming to the agreed norms of that group.

  Note: I am putting what is referred to in traditional NLP as the system position in third position rather than in fourth, because it has the same function of judging and evaluating. This revised understanding is explained in the work of Peter Young (2004).

  Fourth position

  Fourth position also has several aspects. In fourth position you think about what is happening from a story point of view and consider likely outcomes: “What happens next?” You use your imagination to foresee probable scenarios and explore the likely consequences of each one. You are also able to see things from a multiple perspective, knowing that everyone has their own story, their own understanding of what is happening, their own way of explaining and making meaning of the situation. A question to ask is, “What is the story? What does this mean to you?”

  Fourth position allows the PWS to take an ironic view of their situation. That is, they begin to see the funny side of what they are doing in stuttering and blocking. Several PWS have told me that as they came to understand that most blocking and stuttering has its roots in childhood, they laugh at how they were using a behavior that served them in childhood but did the opposite in adulthood. Looked at in this way, the stuttering behavior appears crazy, and the PWS can ask themselves, “Am I bored with doing this? Do I need to go on doing this for the rest of my life?”