Jim is a colleague and occasional coaching client.  He gave me permission to tell this story.

When I started the following piece with Jim, I realized that he was in a seriously stuck mental state.

Often times when people are feeling intense negative emotions we get stuck and find it hard to get ourselves out of them.  This is because when negative emotions come up, the cerebral cortex begins to shut down.  Most of the mental processing moves to older parts of the brain in preparation for the fight and flight response.  We literally loose access to much of our creative and problem solving abilities.

Jim was feeling depressed about how often his organization’s management above him has kept changing directions recently.  He sounded depressed on the phone so I invited him to go to lunch.

Jim was in this situation whenever he was at work, or even thought about work.  But he wasn’t in a place to quit, or slack off, or even look for another job.  He needed to get to a place where he could feel good enough again to at least take care of some immediate business.

On the way back to his office he confessed that he had a lot to do but was so overwhelmed with it all that he hadn’t really been able to get himself to do what he needed to do for the past few days.  He couldn’t take a vacation, but he also couldn’t keep sitting at work doing nothing.  Deadlines were creeping up on him quickly.  His project was seriously behind schedule.

I asked him, “Jim, what are you feeling right now?  He said he was feeling frustrated.  It didn’t look like frustration to me so I asked him, “Are you experiencing anything else?”

He thought a moment and said, “Well, I guess I’m just kind of numb from it all.  I don’t feel like being here at work anymore; it is hard to get or stay motivated with all this crap going on.”

I empathized with him to strengthen rapport.  Then I asked him, “Jim, what is the feeling under the numbness?”  

He thought quietly for a few moments again and then said, “Well, I guess I just feel sad.  It is such a shame that this place will never be what it used to be.”  

I said, “So what you are telling me, Jim, is that what you are feeling is a sort of loss, a loss of what once was.  Is that right?”  

“Yeah, that’s about it, I guess.”  

I asked him, “Would it be helpful if you could feel something different?” hoping to get him to move a bit from his contracted emotions.  

“Of course it would be helpful, but I can’t just ignore what is going on here.”  He wasn’t budging.  “This is a tough place to work these days.”  

Once again I agreed with him.  “Well, Jim, you are saying that you’ve been feeling a loss,” holding out my right hand in front of him between us.  He glanced at my gesture, not realizing I was intentionally anchoring his problem state in space before him.  “But at other times,” I continued, “you’ve felt something else, something more like excited, or motivated, is that what you are saying?”  As I said the words “excited” and “motivated” I gestured with my left hand between us to anchor this more resourceful state to his other side.  

“Yes, that is right,” came his answer.  

“Well let me ask you couple of questions about that,” I said.  “So recently you felt this,” gesturing to my right (his left).  “But you have felt that in the past,” gesturing to my left.  “How is this (right hand) different than that (left hand)?”  

He thought again and said, “Well, before I was happy, but now I am sad.”  

“So ‘happy’ versus ‘sad,’” I said – echoing his key words.  

“Well then, how is this (left hand) similar to that (right hand)?”  But this time as I said the word “this” I reached out and gestured with my left hand instead of my right as I had done previously.  I made sure that that gesture was pointing to the same place in space where previously I had anchored the positive resource state.  And when I said the word “that” I gestured with my right hand to the place where previously I had said “this,” the place where the stuck state was anchored.  

He had to think longer this time, but eventually came back with, “I think that because they both effect my motivation they also affect my behaviors and probably my performance on the team.”  

Probably? I asked, in a teasing tone of voice?  

“Yeah, probably.”  His voice tone let me know that he was responding to my joke.  

One more question,” I said, “How is this (left hand) now different than that? (right hand)”  

Jim looked bewildered for a moment.  Almost shocked.  “Wow!  It seems like it is closer some how.  Like it is more possible for me now.  What did you do?  How did you do that?”  

“I didn’t do anything, Jim, nothing at all.  You’re the one that did it.  I just helped you with a sort of slight of mind trick.  Do you feel like you can get back on this project now that you feel more motivated?”  

“You bet,” said Jim, “Thanks Keith, Thanks for coming by to see me.  Thanks for lunch.  Thanks a lot!”

This conversational pattern that I used with him was modeled by NLP Trainer, John McWhirter from the UK.  It works great when you need to help a person switch states from a problem state to a resource state in a conversational way so that it doesn’t feel like you are putting them through an NLP process.

It depends upon re-categorization (a meta-category of which reframing is one sub-class – see Steve Andreas’ two book series, Six Blind Elephants), visual anchoring with gestures, plus the intentional use of the demonstrative pronouns “this” and “that.”

Can you figure out how this works?  I'd love to see what you think.  Leave me a comment here or on Facebook where we're at:  NLP Resources Austin fan page, if you are not already there.

Next time I will share my own explanation of how I think that this pattern works and give you a procedure that you can practice to help you learn to use it in a regular way.  It is not too complicated but takes a little getting used to, so practice makes progress.

Be sure to put us in your RSS feed so that you will remember to come back for the conclusion and won't miss it.  Until then I look forward to hearing why you think this pattern worked.

~ Keith

 

You can check out the second part of this article here.


Keith Fail is an NLP Trainer, Coach, and Master Modeler in Austin, Texas, and Director of NLP Resources Austin.  He writes and speaks about tools and techniques that help people to communicate better and live their dreams.  He works with teams and individuals to create contexts and communities that support a better world.  He can be reached at +1-512-507-5464.

 

 

 

This conversational pattern that I used with him we modeled by NLP Trainer, John McWhirter from the UK. It works great when you need to help a person switch states from a problem state to a resource state in a conversational way so that it doesn’t feel like you are putting them through an NLP process.

 

It depends upon re-categorization (a meta-category of which reframing is one sub-class – see Steve Andreas’ two book series, Six Blind Elephants), visual anchoring with gestures, plus the use of the demonstrative pronouns “this” and “that.”