I Have a Voice

by Bob G Bodenhamer

  Now run a movie of a similar kind of interaction but where you don’t block. What kind of movie is that, in terms of qualities, or genre, theme, and so on?

  What happens in the movies of you blocking or stuttering? How does it start? What happens next? How does it finish?

  How do you feel as you watch yourself in that Blocking movie? Embarrassed? Angry? Hesitant?

  What happens in the movies when you are fluent, and don’t block and stutter? How does it start? What happens next? How does it finish? How do you feel?

  Compare these two movies, and notice in how many ways they differ.

  The story or strategy for blocking can also be edited, changed, or directed to give a different outcome. This is why you need to know the movie’s original structure, because then you can adjust or modify any of the attributes to find out which qualities when changed alter the emotional effect of that movie.

  Associating/dissociating

  Remember the difference between being dissociated and being associated: do you see yourself in the movie or not? (See Chapter Three.) It is an important feature of editing movies in the mind. There is a relationship between the movie and the person imagining it. Does the PWS see themselves in that image, or is the image what they would see as though looking from their own eyes? If they do see themselves, do they notice that they are actually blocking? In my experience, when the PWS imagines themselves blocking, they probably do not see themselves in the imaginary picture. They imagine themselves talking to the other person and all they see is the other person. They are experiencing those fears and anxieties just as if it were real.

  For most people, but not all, imagining themselves associated inside a picture intensifies the emotion. If the PWS runs a movie in their mind of a forthcoming conversation and they imagine themselves inside that movie blocking when they speak to the other person, then, in all likelihood, their mind-body system will say, “OK, I will do that. When you are in front of that person talking, I will make sure that you block/stutter.”

  The PWS is more likely to speak fluently when they see themselves (dissociated) engaging with that other person. Ask the PWS to mentally step back, to dissociate, so that they are watching the movie as if it were on a screen in the cinema. They are likely to be very critical of what they see themselves doing. While they are thinking in that way, I ask them, “What have you learned from this? What would you like to change?” There is always something to be learned from every experience, and that starts when the person is judging or evaluating their performance. Then they can begin to coach themselves to do better.

  And then for practice, after they see themselves speaking fluently with the other person, they may wish to imagine themselves there in front of the person (associated) and imagine how it would be if they were speaking fluently.

  Changing the meaning of the context

  Once during a first session with a woman who blocks, she told me that she could not force herself to block when she was by herself. I inquired about the difference between her state when she was alone and her state of blocking. She said, “When I am by myself I have confidence because no one can hurt me.” The major factor in creating state of blocking was avoiding being hurt by someone else. Obviously, when she was alone that fear was not triggered. But in company she became concerned with the fear of being hurt. She was focusing on the fear inside her instead of concentrating on the purpose of the communication. Blocking, like most of our problems, is an inside job.

  Therefore one way out of the difficulty is to change the meaning of the context which triggers the blocking response.

  Changing the trigger

  There are three main areas for making changes:

  On a behavioral or body level, change the stimulus-response connection. By altering the meaning of the external trigger it loses its power, and fails to produce the blocking response. As the clinician you want the PWS to link a more powerful trigger (sight, sound, sensation, movement, gesture, word) to a state or strategy that will lead them to fluency. Instead of an authority-figure creating fear and blocking they trigger a resource state or strategy for speaking fluently (see The Swish Pattern in Chapter Six).

  On a cognitive or mind level, change the person’s beliefs about themselves, so that the blocking becomes “irrelevant.” This is a consequence of the Meta-stating process (see Chapter Three): the PWS applies a more powerful resource state which enfeebles the old pattern. The PWS stops concentrating on themselves: they stop running their old disaster movies, stop imagining those dreadful judgments of others, and start thinking more about the other person. They get on with the conversation, knowing they have something important or vital to say and pay attention to the other person as they communicate with them, calmly, confidently, and successfully.

  On a spiritual level, probably the single most effective way of changing the trigger to a resource state is for the PWS to immediately go to their fifth position (see Chapter Three). This is especially true if the person has some really powerful spiritual and religious beliefs and values in that position. Indeed, as I have mentioned, once the PWS can go to that position/state at will, they are well on their way to normal fluency.

  In practice, you will be working with all of these ways. But first it is useful to untangle some of the complexity. For example: discover the nature of the triggers. Are they primarily visual (a particular location, or how someone looks) or auditory (the sound of someone’s voice, or a particular word). To change their response the meaning they give to those triggers has to change. When the PWS thinks about speaking with their boss, they run the movie: “I have to go into that office and speak with my boss. He always scares me. I know I will block in front of him. I always do.” So it seems that both the sight of the office and the appearance of the boss can be triggers for the state. Therefore it is necessary to set up beforehand some other meaning for those cues. For example, “The office is just an office. It just happens to be where my boss is at the moment, but other people have also been based there, and will be in the future.” For the boss, the PWS can realise that “My boss is just another human being, with worries and cares, who wants to do the best for the organization, but who is also insecure in some areas of their life. Maybe I need to be in a position of strength where I can be supportive to them.” To hold these beliefs, the PWS needs to accept the thought, “I am a competent worker who goes beyond what is expected. I recognize my own strengths and weaknesses, and I learn from them. And I can be a role model for others.” Changing the meanings of your environment means that you will act differently.

  Strategy/pattern interrupts

  Although a blocking strategy usually runs automatically, out of conscious awareness, it is possible to stop it before it gets going. This must be true or you would never change any behavior. Your goal is to teach the PWS how to interrupt their blocking strategy so that they can do something more useful. An interrupt is anything that stops a strategy from running. The logical place to make a change is where it begins: to alter the meaning of the inciting incident – the stimulus or trigger – that sets the strategy going. Your task then is to help the PWS find how their strategy can be frustrated, prevented or sabotaged.

  An interrupt has to be powerful enough to jump the person right out of the groove. The interrupt can be a physical gesture, a sound, a movement, or a code word. For example, the person could just say “Stop!” Initially the interrupt may work better if it comes from someone else, which means the PWS should give permission to a trusted other person to interrupt them every time they start blocking. Later the PWS must initiate their own interrupts.

  Remember that people are already skilled in doing this. You know that you can inhibit your behavior when conditions change. You can probably remember a time when you were engaged in a slanging match, and then something happened and you thought “This is ridiculous! Why am I doing this?” and you changed your state, began to laugh, and the whole tense situation altered and everyone relaxed. This would be an example
of shifting your point of view to fourth position and seeing the funny side of things. The interruption changes your state and that affects your behaviour. By not allowing the blocking strategy to run, the PWS is open to find better ways of communicating to other people.

  When they interrupt the pattern, the PWS must stop what they are doing and pause long enough to access an appropriate resource state which they have chosen beforehand. It could be a resource such as courage, faith, determination or calmness – it does not matter what it is, only that it leads the PWS away from the old groove, and towards fluency. One client remarked upon first learning about state interrupts:

  I used to scream really loud inside my head to interrupt my state. I got the idea when I was reading Tony Robbins’ book, Awaken the Giant Within. It worked pretty well. If I was alone in the house I would scream out loud, really loud. It made me laugh every time because it was so ridiculous. It served its purpose … my state was interrupted every time.

  Erasing fearful movies of painful memories

  This process (adapted from the NLP Fast Phobia Cure) can dramatically assist the PWS to change their response to the fear behind the blocking. It is designed to scramble the visual images of the movie that creates the fear.

  A phobia is an automatic response to a specific triggering situation: a spider, a lift, a snake, and so on. Blocking is similar to a phobic response in that something in the context triggers the behavior. With a phobia it is usually easier to see what sets it off, but with blocking the trigger is often a more subtle aspect of the context – the associated meaning and expectations. However, whatever the trigger, the phobic response or the blocking and stuttering occurs, and therefore the technique can be used successfully in these cases. This process takes the juice out of those painful memories – those childhood experiences of embarrassment or shame – which led to the blocking and stuttering.

  Dealing with old unpleasant memories

  When you think about unpleasant events that happened long ago, your mind often seems to compulsively say, “Play it again!” And so you get to watch a full-color, three-dimensional movie of that old memory and the opportunity to feel really bad again!

  How do you stop this happening? One way is to scramble the movie so that it loses its coherence and thus its power over you and your emotions. Although you could edit the qualities of a movie one at a time, it is also possible to quickly revise the whole movie at once.

  Exercise 4.3: The fast rewind process

  Overview

  Step back from your painful memory.

  Step back from the you watching the movie.

  Let the old movie play out as you watch from a protected place.

  Step into the movie and fast rewind.

  Repeat the process several times.

  Test.

  Note: You could run this pattern effectively on any horror movie that limits you in some way. Often times the fear is not based in reality but on the consequences you imagine from a composite story based on several historical events. If that story limits you, then use this process for eliminating those painful memories.

  Lead the PWS through the following steps:

  1. Step back from your painful memory.

  Begin with a negative thought that sets off painful emotional reactions. Pick an childhood memory of a blocking incident that “rattles your cage”, that elicits strong emotional feelings. The memory could be about an occasion when other people made fun of you, or shamed you because of your blocking.

  Now imagine yourself sitting in a movie theater looking at the movie screen. On that screen put a still, black-and-white snapshot of the younger you just prior to that fearful, hurtful, or traumatic episode.

  Good. This represents the scene immediately prior to the fearful memory. Now sit back and look at the snapshot of the younger you. Do so with the awareness that you have taken a spectator’s position and can observe that younger you.

  This enables you to gain “psychological distance” from the old pain. From this spectator position you can begin to learn from that old memory: “As you now see that event from a safe distance and can look from it through the eyes of an objective adult, what do you learn from that experience?”

  In working with PWS, I find many who have gone through terrible emotional, physical or sexual abuse as children. Their emotional response to these events has become expressed in the muscles for breathing and speaking and has led to their blocking and stuttering. Following such experiences, the child often grows up hanging onto the pain, anger and fear as a reminder to not to put themselves in any position where they may be abused again. This is how blocking and stuttering become a protective device. Therefore in this step the person can learn that they are no longer a child and that they have adult resources to now handle such threatening moments. They learn that not everyone in this world is out to abuse them; they do not have to be “on guard” all the time – a very common state for PWS.

  Figure 4.3: The fast rewind process

  2. Step back from the you watching the movie.

  Now imagine floating out of your body as you watch that snapshot on the screen. You are floating all the way up to the back of the theater and up into the projection booth. Place an imaginary piece of Plexiglas in the viewing window in front of you for greater protection. From this new point of view, see yourself down there in the auditorium, the back of your head, as that you is sitting there watching the snapshot of the younger you on the screen (Figure 4.3).

  If at any time you begin to feel uncomfortable, then just put your hands on the Plexiglas in front of you and remind yourself to feel safe and secure in the control booth.

  Feel the calmness of this sense of distance.

  3. Let the old memory play out as you watch it from the protected place.

  Still in the projection booth, observe yourself watching the younger you on the movie screen as you let the initial snapshot turn into a black-and-white movie. Watch that movie of the incident until it plays out to the end.

  Now watch the whole movie again. Let it play out beyond the end to a time when that younger you felt safe and okay again. You have moved beyond that traumatic event to scene of safety, security and comfort.

  If you have to jump forward several years to a scene of comfort, do that. Jump forward to an appropriate event, and then freeze that picture and splice it onto the end of the movie so that it ends on a positive note.

  4. Step into the movie and fast rewind.

  Now, step into that scene of comfort at the end of the movie. Step in and experience it fully. See everything around you in color. You may want some pleasant music playing.

  In just a moment, you are going to do something surprising, so let me tell you about it. You are going to rewind the movie from this scene of comfort backwards to the initial snapshot before the beginning of the episode. You are going to do this really fast. So fast that happens in a fraction of a second. Now you have seen movies or videos run backwards haven’t you? Good. Well this one is going to rewind at a high speed, but with this difference: you are going to be inside it.

  From that (associated) point of view, you will see all the people performing their actions backwards. They walk and talk backwards. You walk and talk in reverse. Everything happens in a fusion of sights and a jumbling of sounds as the movie whizzes back to the beginning.

  Ready? Okay, associate into the comfort scene at the end of the movie, see what you see, hear what you hear, feel all of those feelings of comfort, OK-ness, joy, relaxation, whatever is there. Do so fully and completely.

  Now rewind: Whooooosh! Go all the way back to the beginning. As fast as that. Even faster than that …

  Good. Clear the screen of your mind. How did that feel … rewinding from inside the movie? Weird, huh?

  5. Repeat the process five times.

  Having arrived back to the snapshot at the beginning, clear the screen in your mind. Open your eyes and look around. Breathe!

  Let’s do this again. Begin at the s
cene of comfort at the end again, and as soon as you step it, feel, see, and hear it fully … rewind the movie … do it even faster this time.

  Good. Repeat four more times. Of course, as you do this over and over your mind will become more and more proficient and the rewind will go faster and faster until the rewind takes only a fraction of a second each time. Whooooosh!!

  6. Test.

  Okay. Stop, and break state. Stand up, walk around …

  Now, try to recall that original memory of the trauma and try really hard to see if you can get those feelings back. Try as hard as you can to step into the scene and feel the full weight of the emotions.

  Note: The emotional impact of that incident should have diminished or disappeared. Check that this is so. This pattern is about 70 to 80% effective. Like all NLP and Neuro-Semantic Patterns, nothing works all the time for all people. As a next step, use the Drop Down Through technique in Chapter Six.

  Rewriting your story

  Sometimes a PWS will say, “If I could only go back and start again … then I would not start blocking or stuttering.” “I want to go back and re-live my life so that I would not have to put up with what my parents did, and I could avoid having a speech pathologist saying there was something wrong with me.”