Woman: What do you do if a client says, «No, that's not what I want» (She nods her head up and down.)?
How you deal with incongruence is a whole subject in itself. My typical response to that is «Yes, I really think it is» (He shakes his head side to side.) At that point, he will «short circuit» and go into an utter confusion state, and I can do pretty much anything I want.
Alternatively, I can simply utilize his response and feed it back. «I didn't think so» (nodding «yes»). «However, let's pretend that it is.» By doing this, I have validated both the conscious and unconscious communication, as if saying «I recognize both of you are there.»
Then I go on to install the behavior that the unconscious agrees to. The overall strategy I have when I receive conflicting messages like that is to always go with the ones outside of awareness, because I'll always win that way. It's his unconscious that's running the show, anyway. He's just not able to acknowledge it, and there's no need for him to.
This is a problem that the Simontons have run into in doing their work with cancer patients. They will only accept clients who are consciously willing to accept the belief that they are creating their own cancer. That eliminates a large percentage of the population who have cancer. In fact, most cancer patients have a belief system that precludes taking conscious responsibility for their disease. Most cancer patients believe that they should not overtly ask for help or attention or whatever secondary gain they derive from having cancer. That belief is what made the disease itself necessary.
Both insanity and disease in this culture are considered to be «involuntary responses," so you are not responsible for them. So one way to get help and attention is to have something happen that is involuntary and that you can't be held responsible for. Insanity and disease are both very powerful ways to get other people to respond to you without taking responsibility for it.
The Simontons insist that their clients take full conscious responsibility for creating their own cancers, which is a remarkable way to approach it. The one big disadvantage of that approach is that it makes their way of working with cancer patients available only to a very small percentage of the population.
Woman: But you could work with the population that consciously believes that they aren't responsible, and ask them to suspend their disbelief for a period of time.
Right. Ask them to pretend. You can even agree that they aren't responsible, but you've discovered that by going through certain «psychological» steps, people are often able to have a healing impact on problems that are clearly physical in their origin. Then you go ahead and do six–step reframing in the same way you would with someone who says «I believe I caused this.»
I don't even know who is «correct» in their belief system. I do know that reframing can have an impact on physical symptoms.
Man: Are you suggesting that one could use the Simontons' system—their whole approach—at the unconscious level?
Yes. All you would need to do is use six–step reframing entirely at the unconscious level. The positive intention and the new choices can all be left unconscious.
When the unconscious mind refuses to inform consciousness of the positive intention, I typically turn to the person and say «Are you willing to trust that your unconscious is well–intentioned, even though it won't tell you what it is trying to do for you by this pattern of behavior?» If I have rapport, they agree. «OK, I'm willing to try that out.» If I get a «no» response, I ask if they are willing to pretend. Or you can say «Look, do you really have a choice? You've already done the best that you know how to do, consciously, to change this behavior. When you made the assumption that this was a bad part, you failed utterly. Let's try the reverse assumption for a two–week period, and you tell me at the end of two weeks whether this is a more effective way to pretend.»
Woman: At a conference recently I heard the Simontons mention how much they learned from you. They gave the example of adding representational system overlap to their visualization techniques.
Yes. They get good results just by having patients visualize the white blood cells eating up the cancer cells. If you overlap from that visualization into congruent sounds and feelings, it becomes much more powerful. Did they mention anything about the difference between conscious and unconscious belief systems?
Woman: They mentioned that they realize the difference, but they don't know how to deal with it.
That's exactly where we left off. I was with them long enough to feel that they had a good, clear, solid, resonant understanding of the notion of representational systems and overlap. They found it easy to do, and they were delighted by it.
They also recognized that reframing has advantages, just in terms of requisite variety, but they didn't have enough experience with it to incorporate it into their system. If they used unconscious six–step reframing, they would be able to work with the large numbers of cancer patients who are not willing to consciously adopt the belief that they are responsible for their disease.
Woman: Can you work simultaneously with more than two parts in reframing?
Yes. I have worked with as many as twelve or fifteen at the same time.
Woman: So you might have six objecting parts talking to each other, and to the part that is responsible for the behavior?
Yeah, I get them all together in a conference. But I never talk with more than one at any moment, unless I have first gotten them all together to elect a spokespart that will communicate for all of them.
I say «Now, all you other guys hold; we're going to go over here to part A and find out blah blah blah.» And then after that «Now, do any of the other five of you blah blah.» Time is never a real limitation because you can always say «All right, we're going to pause now. We'll meet here again at eight o'clock tomorrow.» The only real limitation is how many parts you the programmer can keep track of. I'm pretty good at keeping track of a large number of things going on at the same time; I've had a lot of practice doing that. You will have to find out how many you can remember. If you start going «Oh, yeah, it wasn't that one, … it was ah … the other one … ah … ah … " then you are probably going to confuse the person.
Man: I had a client who used to give names to the parts. She had the sex goddess, and she had the lady in white gloves who had a congenital malformation—her legs were permanently crossed—and several others that she could identify and talk about and have talk to me.
Yeah, some of them have names, and if they don't, you can always give them names. There are many things you can do to help keep track of them. But you also have to keep track of who said what, and who's talking now. With some people, all the parts have the same voice tonality, while other people's parts all have different voices. It's purely a matter of how many you can keep track of well.
Man: How can I use reframing for self–growth?
The first reframe I would make is to use any other predicate but «growth.» There are certain dangers in describing evolving as a person as «growth.» People in the human potential movement who are really into «growing» have a tendency to get warts and tumors and other things. As a hypnotist you can understand how that happens with organ language.
You can always just do conscious reframing with yourself. But one of the best ways to do it is to build an unconscious part, what we call a «meta–part," whose job it is each night to review the day just as you are dropping off to sleep, to select two important things to reframe out of your behavior, and to do the reframing each night just after you have dropped off to sleep. We used to do this with everybody in our early groups, and the kinds of changes that people made were fantastic.