Joe pauses.
“Nothing. There is nothing else there.”
“That is great Joe. Now just imagine yourself opening up that nothingness and imagine yourself dropping down through that and what is out the other side of that nothingness?”
“I don’t care. There is the thought that I don’t care about all that stuff.”
“Wow! Joe. That is fantastic. Now, just drop down through the ‘I don’t care’ and what thought or feeling is underneath ‘I don’t care’?”
“Strength. I feel strength.”
“Great. And what is underneath strength?
“There is that part of me that I mentioned earlier to you that loves me. It is the part that I sense of my loving myself.”
“Yes, you mentioned to me earlier that you always sense that you had a part of you that truly loved yourself and that you just had trouble accessing it. Well, we know where it is, don’t we? And what is there underneath the part that loves you?”
“Resilience. I see the sun. I have a picture of the sun and it is warm and calm. I feel safe here.”
“I am wondering Joe, what does this state of being in the sun mean to you?”
“It is God. He is here.”
(Joe was speaking in complete fluency and indeed had been since he dropped down through and out the other side of the nothingness. Most people who block do speak fluently once they reach this point.)
“That is great Joe. Now what we want to do is to really get this state anchored in so you can fly there anytime you want to.”
(Those who have come to master their blocking have been able to get this state so locked in and so familiar that they can just go there at will. It usually takes some weeks of practicing but you will get there. So just note what you see, hear and feel and put a word or a phrase to it as a trigger so that you can recall this state anytime you want to. If you fear a block coming on, you can just think of or see the sun and go there.)
“Now, Joe you are doing really well. Being there now in the sun light feeling that warmth; having that sense of strength, resilience, safety and calm I want you to take that state and apply it to the shame from your step dad. How does this transform and enrich shame?”
“It evaporates it.”
“And once it is evaporated, what state takes its place?”
“Healthy. I feel healthy.”
“That is great Joe. Now having the state of strength, resilience, safety and calm I want you to take that state and apply it to the anger. What happens to anger in the presence of strength, resilience, safety and calm?”
“It evaporates it. But I can still feel a little bit of it. I see one mad little boy.”
“That is OK Joe. Now, if you take that picture of the mad little boy and move him inside the sunshine, what happens to him?”
“Oh, he is playing and doing what little boys should be doing. He is having fun.”
“Fantastic. Now having the state of strength, resilience, safety and calm I want you to take that state and apply it to the sadness. What happens to sadness in the presence of strength, resilience, safety and calm?”
“It evaporates it. The sadness is gone. It is now joy.”
I continued this same pattern of questioning Joe as Joe took his resource state and applied it to each of the negative frames one at a time. (Applying resources – meta-stating – is the additional step I added to the original Drop-Down Through Pattern.) Did this move Joe to complete fluency? No, but it sure provided an excellent piece for the total therapy. And now that Joe knows how to do the Drop Down Through Pattern, he can do it on himself. We continued to utilize this pattern throughout his therapy.
Exercise 6.4: The Drop-Down Through pattern
Overview
Identify the experience with the emotion that you want to transform.
Step into that experience, and re-experience the emotion to some degree.
Drop down through the experience until you reach “emptiness” “void” or “nothing”.
Confirm the emptiness and then continue to drop-down through and move to the “other side” of emptiness.
Associate into your resource state (fifth position) and apply that resource state to each problem state.
Test.
1. Identify the experience and emotion you want to transform.
What do you feel just before you block?
What feelings/emotions are behind your blocking?
What emotions or experiences are there which undermine your success as a fluent speaker, and which you would like to eliminate?
2. Step into that experience.
Being aware of a particular experience you would like to work on, associate fully into that experience. Be present in that memory, looking through your eyes, hearing what you heard and feeling what you felt then.
Where do you feel this emotion in your body?
What does it feel like?
On a scale of 1–10, how intensely are you experiencing this emotion?
Good. Just be there with it for a moment, noticing … noticing it fully … knowing that it is just an emotion, and knowing that you are so much more than any emotion …
3. Drop down through the experience.
This may feel strange at first, but you do know what it feels like when you drop … So feeling that feeling of dropping, just drop down through that experience until you find yourself underneath that feeling …
What thought, feeling or emotion lies underneath that original emotion?
And now just imagine dropping down through [that feeling] (use the exact words the person gives you)
And what thought, feeling or emotion comes to you as you imagine yourself dropping down through [that one]?
Repeat this dropping down through process until the person arrives at some version of “emptiness” (Figure 6.6). That is, they experience a lack of feelings, some kind of void or nothingness.
Note: Not everyone experiences the void or nothingness. They drop straight down through the negative frames into the positive ones. Sometimes they may just pause briefly as they make the switch from negative to positive.
Some people reach a point near or at the void where they say things such as, “That is it. There is nothing else” or “I am at the bottom. There is nothing else below. I can’t go any further.” This may be visual (some kind of barrier or floor) or kinesthetic (a feeling of impenetrability or resistance). If this happens, suggest that this is to be expected, and that all they have to do is to imagine opening up whatever is blocking them in any way at all (they can be very creative here) and simply drop down another level. For example, one client reached the bottom and said, “I am standing on a two inch thick steel plate.” I invited the client to imagine taking a cutting torch and cutting through the steel plate and then drop on down through. That worked. Use your creativity to do whatever it takes to get down through and out the other side. It’s a case of asking your mind to find a way to “just do it” rather than agonize about how hard it is. As they let go of their resistance they will drop down through that and out the other side.
4. Confirm the emptiness and move down through to the “other side” of emptiness.
Just experience that “nothingness” or “void” for a moment. Good.
Now let that nothingness open up and imagine yourself dropping through and out the other side of the nothingness.
What are you experiencing when you come out the other side of the nothingness? What or whom do you see? What resources are you aware of?
Repeat this several times … to elicit further resource states.
When you drop down through to the level of nothingness or the level where there is no meaning and from there you go through that “nothingness” you become able to access resource states. If you keep going you arrive at a fifth position point of view. For instance, if you ask a PWS, “What is behind your belief that other people think you are stupid if you stutter?” and keep asking them, “And what is behind that?” and so on, you will event
ually elicit their fifth position beliefs. Whichever metaphorical direction you travel in, you eventually arrive at your “higher” frames of mind. You could say that every problem brings with it its own resource for healing. This is true for any problem for any person.
5. Associate into your resource state (fifth position) and apply that resource state to each problem state.
Apply each resource state to each problem state.
And when you feel X (resource state) about Y (problem state), how does that transform things?
And when you even more fully feel X – what other transformations occur?
Validate and consolidate: just stay right here in this X resource, and as you experience it fully, what happens to the first problem state (step 1)?
6. Test.
Let’s see what now happens when you try – and I want you to really try – to get back the problem state that you started with.
When you try to do that, what happens? (There is a presupposition here that they cannot do this, at least to the same degree as before.)
Do you like this? Are you able to say Yes to validate the change?
Would you like to take this into your future – into all of your tomorrows and into all your relationships?
Figure 6.6: Dropping down through
Conclusion
I am concluding with the Drop Down Through Pattern because it beautifully summarizes the ideas in this book. This pattern presupposes that blocking and stuttering are learned behaviors. The pattern elicits the unconscious meanings that keep the block in place. It then engages the mind in thinking in a different way, changing the PWS’s point of view, and thereby changing the meaning of their experience. It also uses the meta-stating pattern – applying a positive, life-enhancing resource – for reframing those negative frames ofmind which are triggered by all those old memories which hold the block in place long after it has ceased to provide a service to the PWS.
The ultimate goal of this pattern – as is the case with all the patterns in this book – is to lead the PWS to the point where they are no longer fixating on how they talk. Instead they are paying attention to the other person and engaging in mutually satisfying communication. The blocking and stuttering is no longer on their mind. When they reach that point, they have normal fluency.
Appendix A
Pioneers
John Harrison
I am not the first one to indicate that blocking has its roots in cognition (thinking). In the field of stuttering, John Harrison (1989, 2002) has provided a basic systems model describing six key variables or factors involved in stuttering. He calls this system, The Stuttering Hexagon (Figure A.1. See also Chapter 1):
Figure A.1: The Stuttering Hexagon
The six factors are: physiological responses, physical behaviors, emotions, perceptions, beliefs, and intentions. Harrison points out that in a system every element is influenced by the other elements, positively or negatively (Harrison 1989: vi).
Harrison has also noted numerous other systemic factors about the stuttering hexagon:
As a system, stuttering involves the entire person and is not just a speech problem.
Once operating as a system, the hexagon “has a life of its own” (1989: 3).
As a system, the stuttering system will develop default settings.
“A permanent change in your speech will happen only when you alter the various default settings around the Stuttering Hexagon.” (106)
Change a critical factor in the system, and the entire system changes.
Not everyone develops a blocking system. That emerges from a natural tendency for speech to stumble under stress. Harrison calls such stumbling in speech “bobulating”. Harrison describes it as “… kind of a relaxed, stumbly disfluency that you hear when people are upset, embarrassed, confused or discombobulated. The person is able to talk but their emotions are causing them to trip all over themselves.”
Bobulating is effortless disfluency; it is not blocking because it often shows up when one is embarrassed, upset, confused or disoriented.
Harrison believes that to move from “bobulating” to blocking necessitates a certain way of perceiving speech and believing things about yourself and others. It invokes a specific sense of fear and apprehension, a certain attitude about how to cope and respond and this then coaches and trains the muscles involved in breathing to produce blocking.
For Harrison this means that there is a non-blocking mentality just as there is a blocking mentality. I agree totally. Notice in his Stuttering Hexagon how many of the six factors relate directly to the PWS’s thinking and the interaction of thinking with the body:
Intentions – what the person desires.
Beliefs – what the person affirms as true for them.
Perception – how the person’s model of reality reflects their experience.
Emotions – how the person feels about the experience.
Behaviors – how the person responds to their perceptions.
Physiological responses – the embodied consequences of their thinking.
Dave Elman
The hypnotist Dave Elman (1900–1967) was inspired by his father to take up hypnosis. Elman went on to train medical doctors and dentists. He describes the times doctors brought stutterers to the classes on hypnosis that he taught hoping that he could help them. He spoke of the pity he felt for these children and even more so the distress he felt when he met an adult who had a similar problem. Concerning stuttering he concluded, “There is no such thing as a congenital stutter. A stutter or stammer must be precipitate.”
In the mid-twentieth century hypnosis was considered by many in the medical profession to be hocus pocus. However, Elman had a great understanding of cognition in addition to anatomy and physiology, and by limiting his trainings to doctors and dentists he successfully managed to make hypnosis more respectable. He knew that for hypnosis to work the cause of stuttering could not primarily be physical or inherited. He concluded:
It is my firm belief that every stutter has a basic, investigable cause. Over the years, I have tried to get doctors to change their attitude towards stutterers and treat the cause rather than the effect …
Even a minor trauma can, like suggestion, be compounded by repetition. Every stutter has its beginning in a situation in which the victim reaches a point where he doesn’t want to talk and yet is obliged to.
In other words, he firmly believed that blocking was caused by traumatic situations.
Carl H. Scott
Carl H. Scott, a California State licensed and ASHA-certified speech pathologist, suggests that blocking should not be treated just as a physical problem but as a cognitive problem. In working with people who block, he “considers the whole person and works toward a balance in mind, body and spirit.” Scott has a three stage approach for therapy with people who block:
The first stage in this healing process is to guide the individual to identify the beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and behavior that may serve as obstacles in daily living and in accessing fluency.
The second stage is this therapeutic journey calls for initiating a healing process. This may involve working with his inner child, dialog or forgiveness.
The third stage of therapy is to guide the person who blocks into a healthy belief system with new and powerful positive thoughts and the ability to experience self acceptance and love. It also calls for manifesting changes in behavior.
Tim Mackesey
The speech pathologist and former stutterer, Tim Mackesey, writes about his experience using the tools that work most effectively in these cases:
Neuro-Semantics and the NLP Drop Down Through Pattern offer great possibilities in the treatment of stuttering. Traditional speech therapy has centered around modifications at the behavioral level (i.e., breathing, easy onset of speech, light articulatory contacts, etc). The perceived stigma of stuttering and the overwhelming urge to “not stutter” often overpower behavioral level strategies. Periodic relapse after tr
eatment is common. The missing Holy Grail from traditional speech therapy has been a consistent, swift, and thorough reframing strategy for meta-states to alleviate the pre-stutter phenomenon. Situation and word-specific anchors form along the timeline of stuttering development. As an NLP practitioner and person with a residual, mild stutter, I was game to explore the Drop Down Through process personally. I have experienced a significant increase in spontaneous fluency after just a few telephone consultations with Bob.
The Drop Down Through technique is explained in Chapter 6.
Systemic thinking
Current neuro-scientific thinking confirms our conjecture that the mind-body system works as a systemic whole and parts cannot be separated, and that as a consequence, emotions can and do find expression in particular areas of the body.
When a person has a panic attack, there are definitely physical symptoms. The bible for describing mental and emotional disorders used by those practitioners of counseling and psychiatry in the United States is The American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic Criteria better known as the DSM-IV. DSM-IV offers this description on diagnosing a panic attack:
A Panic Attack is a discrete period in which there is the sudden onset of intense apprehension, fearfulness, or terror often associated with feelings of impending doom. During these attacks, symptoms such as shortness of breath, palpitations, chest pain or discomfort, choking or smothering sensations and fear of going “crazy” or losing control are present. [italics added]
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