Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

by Richard Wayne Bandler

  5. Test.

  a. "Now picture that first image. . . . What happens?" If the swish has been effective, this will be hard to do. The picture will tend to fade away and be replaced by the second image of yourself as you want to be.

  b. Another way to test is behavioral: Find a way to create the cues that are represented in your partner's cue picture. If that picture is of your partner's own behavior, as it was with Jack, ask him to actually do it. If that picture is of someone else offering a chocolate or a cigarette, or yelling, then I want you to do that with your partner and observe what she does and how she responds.

  If the old behavior is still there when you test, back up and do the swish pattern again. See if you can figure out what you left out, or what else you can do to make this process work. I'm teaching you a very simple version of a much more general pattern. I know that some of you have questions, but I want you to try doing this first before asking them. After you've actually tried it, your questions will be much more interesting. Take about fifteen minutes each. Go ahead.

  As I went around the room, I observed many of you succeeding. Let's not talk about that unless you had difficulty and then came up with something interesting that made it work. I want to hear about when it didn't work.

  Amy: I want to stop smoking. But when we tested, I still have the urge to smoke.

  OK. Describe your first picture for me.

  Amy: I see myself with a cigarette in my mouth, and—

  Stop. It's very important that you don't see yourself in that first picture, and that you do see yourself in the second picture. That's an essential part of what makes the swish work. The first picture has to be an associated image of what you see out of your own eyes as you start to smoke — your hand reaching for a cigarette, for instance. If you see your hand with a cigarette in it, do you feel compulsed to smoke? Or is it seeing the cigarettes? Whatever it is, I want you to make a picture of what you see that fires off that feeling of wanting to smoke; make a picture of whatever precedes smoking. It might be reaching for a cigarette, lighting it, bringing it up to your lips, or whatever else you do. Try the process with that picture, and report back.

  Man: Which book has this process in it?

  None. Why would I teach you something that is already in a book? You're adults; you can read, I have always thought it was really idiotic for someone to write a book and then to go and read it to people at seminars. But a lot of people do exactly that, and some of them make a lot of money, so I guess it has some use.

  Woman: In a lot of the earlier NLP techniques you substitute a specific new behavior. But in this one you just see the way you'd be different if you changed.

  That's right. That's what makes this pattern so generative. Rather than substituting a specific behavior, you're creating a direction. You're using what's often called "self–image," a very powerful motivator, to set that direction.

  When I was in Toronto in January, a woman said she had a phobia of worms. Since Toronto is frozen over most of the year, I didn't think that would be too much of a problem, so I said, "Well, why don't you just avoid them?" She said "Well, it just doesn't fit with the way I see myself." That mismatch motivated her very strongly, even though the worm phobia wasn't actually that much of a problem for her. It wasn't even what I call a "flaming phobia." It was an "ahhh!" phobia, rather than an "AAHHGGH!" phobia. She didn't yet have her brain directionalized appropriately, but that image of herself kept her trying. So of course I asked her "If you made this change, how would you see yourself differently?" The effectiveness of this pattern depends most importantly on getting the answer to that question. This process doesn't get you to an endpoint — it propels you in a particular direction. If you saw yourself doing something in particular, you would only program in that one new choice. If you see yourself being a person with different qualities, that new person can generate many new specific possibilities. Once you set that direction, the person will start generating specific behavior faster than you can believe.

  If I had used the standard phobia cure on her, she wouldn't care about worms at all, and wouldn't even notice them. To get somebody to not care about something is too easy, and there is enough of that going on in the world already. If I had built in a specific behavior, like picking up worms, then she'd be able to pick up worms. Neither of those changes are particularly profound in terms of this woman's personal evolution. It seems to me that there are more interesting changes that a human being can make.

  When I swished her, I set up a direction so that she is drawn toward that image of herself as more competent, happier, more capable, liking herself better, and most important, able to believe that she can quickly make changes in the way she wants to.

  Woman: I think I understand that, but I'm trying to fit it in with some of the NLP anchoring techniques I learned earlier. For instance, there's a technique where you make a picture of how you'd like to be, then step into it to get the kinesthetic feelings, and then anchor that state.

  Right. That's one of the old techniques. It has its uses, but it also has certain drawbacks. If someone has a really detailed and accurate internal representation, you can create a specific behavior that will work very nicely. But if you just make a picture of what you'd like to be like, and step inside it to feel what it's like to be there, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are there with any quality, or that you learned much along the way. It's an excellent way to build self–delusions, and it also doesn't give you anywhere else to go.

  A lot of people go to therapists asking to feel more confident, when they're incompetent. That lack of confidence may be accurate feedback about their abilities. If you use anchoring to make someone feel confident, that feeling may allow her to do things she actually could do already but wasn't confident enough to try. That will increase her abilities as well. But it may only create overconfidence — someone who is still incompetent but doesn't notice it any more! There are plenty of people like that around already, and they're often dangerous to others as well as to themselves. I've been commenting for years about how many people ask a therapist for confidence, and so few ask for competence.

  You can change somebody so that he believes he's the very best at something he does, when he can't do it very well at all. When a person is good at acting confident, he usually convinces lots of other people to trust in abilities that he doesn't have. It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that if an "expert" acts confident, he must know what he is doing. I figure that as long as you are going to have a false sense of security, you might as well develop some competence along the way.

  Where's Amy? Did you finish doing the swish with the new picture?

  Amy: Yes.

  How long did it take you to do that five times? Amy: Quite a while.

  I thought so. I want you to do it again faster. It should only take you a second or two each time. Speed is also a very important element of this pattern. Brains don't learn slowly, they learn fast. I'm not going to let you do the process wrong and then come back later and say, "Oh, it didn't work." Do it now, and I'll watch you. Open your eyes after each swish. . . ,

  Now make that first picture. What happens? . . .

  Amy: It goes away now.

  Do you want a cigarette? (He holds out a pack of cigarettes.) Amy: No thank you.

  Is the compulsion there? I don't care if you smoke or not. I want to know if that automatic urge is there or not. A few minutes ago you said you had the urge to smoke.

  Amy: I don't feel compelled to smoke right now.

  Here. Hold the cigarettes; take one out and hold it between your fingers. Look at them; fool with them.

  When you do change work, don't back away from testing it; push it. Events in the world are going to push it, so you may as well do it so you can find out right away. That way you can do something about it. Observing your client's nonverbal responses will give you much more information than the verbal answers to your questions. (Amy smells the cigarettes, and her facial expression s
hifts quickly.) Oops, there it is again; the smell of the cigarettes brought back the compulsion. You'll have to go back and do the swish again, and add in smell this time. In that first picture, when you see someone offer you a cigarette, you'll smell that cigarette smell. And in that second picture, you'll see yourself satisfied that you can smell cigarettes and not be compulsed. Go back and do it again that way.

  This is called being thorough. A mathematician doesn't just get an answer and say, "OK, I'm done." He tests his answers carefully, because if he doesn't, other mathematicians will! That kind of rigor has always been missing from therapy and education. People try something and then do a two–year follow–up study to find out if it worked or not. If you test rigorously, you can find out what a technique works for and what it doesn't work for, and you can find out right away. And where you find out that it doesn't work, you need to try some other technology.

  What I've taught you here is a simplified version of a more general swish pattern. Even so, some of you got lost and confused. Another way to be thorough is to swish in all systems to start with. But it's usually much more economical to just do it in the visual system and then test rigorously to find out what else you need to add. Often you don't need to add in anything. Either that person doesn't need it, or she will add it in on her own without realizing it.

  Amy, what happens now when you smell a cigarette? Amy: It's different. It's hard for me to say how it's different. Now when I smell it I want to put it down, instead of smoking it.

  Brains don't learn to get results; they learn to go in directions. Amy had learned one set of behaviors; "Would you like a cigarette" — "Yes" — light up and puff. Chairs can't learn to do that. It's quite an accomplishment to learn something like that so thoroughly that no one could influence it for years. She has just used that same ability to learn to go somewhere else.

  When you start beginning to use your brain to get it to do what you want it to do, you have to rigorously set up the direction you want it to go, and you need to do it ahead of time. Disappointment is not the only thing that requires adequate planning. Everything else does, too. Without adequate planning you become compulsed to do things you don't want to do: to show yourself old memories and feel bad about them, to do things that destroy your body, to yell at people you love, to act like a mouse when you're furious. . . .

  All those things can be changed, but not while you're in the situation. You can reprogram yourself later, or you can program yourself ahead of time. Brains aren't designed to get results; they learn to go in directions. If you know how the brain works, you can set your own directions. If you don't, then someone else will.

  What I've just taught you is what I often do in a one–day or two–day seminar. The "standard" swish pattern is something that somebody can grab hold of and use, and it will work more often than not. But it doesn't demonstrate to me any competent understanding of what the underlying pattern is. If you give anyone a cookbook, he can bake a cake. But if you give a chef a cookbook, he'll come up with a better product. A really fine chef knows things about the chemistry of cooking that guide what he does and how he does it. He knows what the egg whites are doing in there; he know what their function is. To a chef, it isn't just a matter of throwing a bunch of stuff together and whipping it up. He knows that certain things make things gel into a certain consistency, certain things have to be added in a particular order, and certain other ingredients have to do with changing the flavor in one way or another.

  The same thing is true when you begin to use the swish pattern. As a first step toward becoming a chef, I want you to try using the swish pattern again, but find out what happens if you change one element. Last time we used the submodalities of size, brightness and association/dissociation as the elements that change as one picture swishes to the other.

  Two of those elements, size and brightness, are elements that change continuously over a range. Anything that can be changed gradually is called an analogue variable. Association/dissociation is what we call a digital variable, because it's either one or the other. You are either inside of an experience, or outside of it; you don't gradually go from one to the other. Association/dissociation will always be one element of the swish. The other two analogue elements can be any two elements that have a powerful effect for the person.

  This time I want you to keep everything the same, except you'll use distance instead of size. The first picture will start out bright and close. The second picture will start out dark and far away, and then it will quickly come closer as it brightens, while the first picture recedes into the distance and darkens. This is a fairly small change, and to some of you it may not seem different at all, since size and closeness are strongly correlated. But it is a first step toward teaching you how to use the swish pattern in a much more general and flexible way. Take another fifteen minutes to do the swish with distance, instead of size.

  Did using distance rather than size make a difference for some of you? You can use any submodality distinctions to do the swish, but it will only work well if the distinctions you use are subjectively powerful to the person you are working with. Brightness and size are powerful for most people, so the version I taught you first will work more often than not. Distance is another submodality that is important to many people, so I had you try that one next. But if size, brightness, and distance aren't important to the person, then you have to find out which submodalities are impactful, and design a swish using those.

  A couple of years ago I saw three clients for a videotape session (see Appendix II). The first client I saw was a woman who was suffering from "anticipatory loss." I love the names they come up with to describe how people are messed up! What it boiled down to was that if she had arranged to meet someone who was close to her and that person was a half–hour late, she had what she called a panic attack. She lost her marbles and began to step on them. When I asked her what she would like to have from the session, this is what she said:

  I have a problem with a fear that is almost disabling to me at certain times. When I have it, I sort of go into panic attacks. What I would like to do is distance myself, so that when I'm in the situation I wouldn't experience the fear to the degree that I have it, where I could control myself and make better decisions.

  Since she talked about wanting to "distance" herself, she gave me a clear indication that distance was an important submodality for her. She also talked a lot about people who were "close to her" and "close relationships." Later when talking about what she did when someone was late she said, "I need to allow them some distance — I mean allow them some time." With this woman a swish using distance will be much more powerful than one using size. In fact, I went ahead and tried the standard swish using size to find out if it would work. It had very little impact. Then I used distance, and it worked perfectly.

  The most important part of doing the swish in a really artistic way is to carefully gather the information you need to set it up appropriately. When someone talks about something being "bigger than life" or being "blown out of proportion," that's a pretty good indication that size is an important variable to use.

  When somebody describes a limitation he wants to change, you need to be able to pay attention to how this particular problem works. I always keep in mind that anything that anybody has done is an achievement, no matter how futile or painful it may be. People aren't broken; they work perfectly! The important question is, "How do they work now?" so that you can help them work perfectly in a way that is more pleasant and useful.

  One of the things I do to gather information is to say to the client, "Well, let's say I had to fill in for you for a day. One of the things I would have to do is have your limitation. How would I do it? You have to teach me how to have this problem." As I begin to presuppose that it's an achievement — something learned that can be taught to someone else — it entirely changes the way the person is able to deal with and think about the difficulty.

  When I asked the woman who panicked when people
were late to teach me how to do it, she said:

  You start telling yourself sentences like, "They're late; they may never come."

  Do you say this in a bored tone of voice — "Ho hum"?

  No. The voice starts out slowly, "Give them another half hour." Then it speeds up as the time gets closer.

  Do you have any pictures in there?

  Yes. I see a picture of the person maybe in a wreck, as if I'm standing there looking on, like through a zoom lens. At other times I'm looking around through my own eyes out at the world and there's no one there.

  So in her case she has a voice that speeds up and rises in pitch as time goes on. At a certain point the voice says, "They'll never come" and she makes close–up, zoom–lens pictures of the person in a wreck, or of being all alone.

  When I asked her to try making the picture of the wreck, I found that zooming in or out had a very strong effect. When I tested brightness, she said, "The dimness creates distance." That tells me that brightness is also a factor.

  Now I want you to pair up with someone and ask him to think of a limitation — something that he considers a problem and wants to change. This time I don't want you to fix it; I only want you to find out how this achievement works. Use the frame of "Let's say I had to fill in for you for a day. Teach me what to do." Do the same thing you did earlier when you found out how a person got motivated to do something.

  Whenever someone is compulsed to do something he doesn't want to do, something inside has to amplify to a certain point. Something has to get bigger or brighter or louder, or the tone changes, or the tempo speeds up or slows down. I want you to find out how this person achieves this particular limitation. First ask him when to do it, and then find out how he does it: what does he do on the inside that drives his response? When you think you have identified the crucial submodalities, test by asking your partner to vary them one at a time, and observe how it changes his response. Then ask him to take a different picture and again vary the same submodalities, to see if it changes his response to this other picture in the same way. Find out enough about how it works so that you could do this person's limitation if you wanted to. When you have this information, it will tell you precisely how to swish this particular individual. Don't actually swish them; just gather the information. Take about a half hour.