Visual Variation
Another way to do the same exercise is to ask them to see the sentence in front of them as they say it to themselves, translating it from the auditory to the visual.
"Now I want you to see that sentence out in front of you, as if it's on a small billboard, and notice what the sentence looks like in detail Tell me how far away from you it is, what size the letters are, whether they in boldface, italics, or regular type, etc"…
"Now I want you to begin to stretch the sentence apart, creating longer spaces in between the words, first noticing the new locations of the words, and then to attending to the spaces in between the words, rather than the words themselves." …
This is a figure/ground shift of attention. If I don't see a dramatic shift in their breathing and posture, sometimes I ask them to put space between the letters as well as the words. "Now I want you to separate the letters in each word. Put spaces between the letters, and then pay attention to the spaces between the letters, rather than to the letters." This further changes the meaning of the sentence, and is also a demonstration that they can voluntarily change their feeling response.
If the sentence has a negation in it, like "I can't — " I have sometimes suggested that they, "Remove the apostrophe and the t in the second word of the sentence" being very careful not to say the word that I am referring to. This reverses the meaning of the sentence entirely, and they find themselves able to do what they previously thought, "I can't." I often delete any other word that causes a problem, for instance, "And now take the fourth word and do the same thing. Start to fade it out a little bit more, a little bit more. And then there's a certain point where — pfff — white it out. So it's not there. You know it's not there, because when you look now, it s not there." When doing this it is important to not say the word, but only refer to it indirectly by its position in the sentence.
Kinesthetic tactile variation
An additional variant is to ask the client to reach out and feel the words and letters in front of them, as if the words are solid, and they could touch them with their fingers, translating from the auditory or visual systems to the kinesthetic. Then I ask them to use their hands and fingers to spread out the words — and then sometimes to also spread out the letters — and to feel the empty space between them.
In some cases I will ask them to run both the auditory and visual versions of this exercise at the same time, or to add in the kinesthetic aspect as well.
After doing this, it is imperative to do a thorough congruence check again, by carefully rehearsing and testing the new response in all the different contexts in which they previously had the old response. Any concerns or objections need to be respected and satisfied in order to preserve any other useful outcomes that may have been served by the old response. This could include keeping the old anxious response in certain contexts, to maintain the protection. Usually an even better solution is to elicit or teach some kind of coping behavior in those contexts that are still perceived as dangerous, so that they no longer need the anxious response.
The verbatim transcript that follows is from a session that I did recently with a professional trombonist who got anxious whenever he played in an orchestra. In this example, I utilize aspects of both the variations described above. The transcript begins with me talking to Fred (His name has been changed):
When people come to see me, they're mostly in some kind of state of anxiety. They don't come because they think, "What shall I do? I've nothing else to do. I know — I'll just go and see Nick today." (Fred: Yeah.) So they arrive with something, number 1. Number 2, it's something that they're doing over and over again, so no matter how much they've thought about it, they don't feel any different. (Fred: Right.) So they've got to the point when they decide to see me, they're really thinking, "You know what, I've got to do something different." (Fred: Yep.) So everything's reached a bit of a boiling point. (Fred: Yeah.)
Now most of the time, what they're experiencing is the end — the final behavior at the end of the sequence. So, the final behavior is, you know, doing this. And before you get to that, you have how a person feels. And before you get to the feeling, you have what happens here, which is what they're thinking, and how they're thinking about it. Because you can't just get a feeling. (Fred: No.) You know, if I said to you, "I want you to feel wildly enthusiastic," but you're not allowed to picture anything, look at anything, think anything to yourself, or hear anything, you can't get from the state that you're in to that state. (Fred: No, no.) There's got to be some translation here. (Fred: Yeah.) So here's the good news:
In order to change the final result, you've got to change this stuff up here. (Fred: Yeah.) So it's the way in which you think and how you think that creates the feeling, that then creates the end behavior. (Fred: Right.) So, we'll explore some of that. Now, somebody goes to somebody, and they get some kind of relief for a short period of time, then usually that means it's not been contextualized enough. So the person feels totally relaxed during the session and goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, all is well," etc. etc.
And they go away and then they go, "OK, what's the first number? (Fred laughs.) Stravinsky's Firebird. Damn." And you start thinking to yourself, "Is it gonna go well? Is it gonna go well?" And then, "Oh, well, now I'm starting to run the anxiety program." Think this in anxious voice, probably a fast anxious voice, start to get a feeling which could be here or here (gesturing toward his chest and belly area.) then start to think, now you're feeling anxious, then you start to think, usually predictive things, "What if?" or future tense, or future case things. All anxiety's into anticipation. Now, I'm not even in the orchestra; I'm already feeling anxious. (Fred: That's right. Yeah.) I'm running through my head scenarios of different things. Now I'm thinking, "Maybe I could just run." (Fred laughs loudly.)
So, the states that people crank up, in terms of their feeling states, are through the process. The secret is to unravel the process, so the person can get what's appropriate for them. Because it's all very nice and delightful for someone to say, "Hey, a bit of adrenalin is no bad thing." And you go, "Step into my head for a day (Fred: Yeah.) and see how that feels, and then tell me if that's the same thing." (Fred: Yeah.)
Because if you're sitting there thinking, uhhhhh, over and over again in the same way, then as somebody who is a performer and who's measured on their final ability to perform, I know that this is like, "I can get through it." But I don't want to be sort of like, you know, sort of "just getting through it." I want to be enjoying what I'm doing. (Fred: Yeah, absolutely.) Because, chances are, if you're doing it in rehearsals, exactly the same music, exactly the same plays, even if you're sitting in the same seat in the same theater, with the same conductor and the same musicians, it would be absolutely fine — because you're not running the same process. (Fred: Yeah, Yeah.) Sound familiar?