Stopping or blocking a person's accessing cues is an extremely direct and powerful way of interrupting his ongoing strategy. Strategies may be interrupted and diverted by waving or moving your hands in front of someone's face and knocking away their eye position cues. Having a depressed client sit up straight, hold his head up high, take a full breath in the chest, throw his shoulders back, open his eyes wide and smile, is one of the most rapid and effective ways of drawing a depressive out of a negative state. The typical depressive posture probably does more to elicit and perpetuate the depressed state than any other element. The posture is generally slumped and hunched over, eyes and head oriented downward to produce full kinesthetic access — it's no wonder that he isn't able to see or talk himself out of his problems. As we pointed out earlier, there tends to be an inverse relationship between the internal and external focusing of the same representational system — the more you are talking to yourself in your head, the less you can hear what's going on around you, and so on. For the depressed, then, who spend most of their time focused on internal kinesthetics, tactile awareness, especially through physical exercise and sports, will be an extremely effective diversion. To interrupt someone who is depressed, have him do something, no matter how meaningless the activity may seem.
A therapist once told the authors about an emergency call she received from a person who was very depressed and contemplating suicide. At the time of the call, however, the therapist was involved in a critical intervention with another client, one she could not abandon. Out of desperation, the therapist in a firm and congruent voice told the caller that she was to go out immediately, take a bicycle ride for at least 20 minutes and was to call the therapist again when she returned. The therapist's reasoning was that this would keep the person occupied so that she wouldn't harm herself, until the therapist had finished with the other client and could turn her full attention toward helping the caller. Much to the therapist's surprise, when the potential suicide called back, the crisis had passed. The bike ride, the caller said, had been just what she needed to break the depression. Prior to the ride she hadn't been out of her house for days because she'd been feeling bad. She said that she now realized how that had only contributed to her negative state. She still needed to work on a number of problems she faced, but the bike ride had averted a crisis.
6.33 Interruption By "Spinning Out" a Strategy.
A strategy will "spin out" when the end of the strategy becomes anchored to its beginning in such a way that the strategy keeps feeding back into itself (like the proverbial snake swallowing its own tail). Because it can't exit, the strategy is forced to continue looping. Most strategies have a kind of test, a meta-test you might call it, such that if the strategy operations are ineffectual after a certain period of time, the program will exit into a completely new strategy — thus, the "spin out."
The following is an illustration of how a belief strategy may be spun out:
A: How do you know that you can't get X outcome?
B: My experience tells me that I can't.
A: How do you know that your experience tells you that?
B: Because I've tried before and failed.
A: How do you know that you've failed?
B: I remember it.
A: How do you know that you remember it?
B: Because I can see it.
A: How do you know that you can see it?
The pattern here is obvious — whatever output is received from the strategy is fed back through the strategy again. This continues until eventually the strategy essentially runs through itself.
One of the authors was once working with a young man who was having motivational difficulties in his business. He kept finding himself taking on much more than he could possibly handle. Upon eliciting his motivation strategy the author found that it was such that if the young man was asked if he could perform some task or favor by a client, friend or associate he would immediately attempt to construct an image of himself doing what they had asked of him. If he could see himself doing it he would then think that he should do it and would begin to carry out the task requested of him, even if it interfered with other things he was currently involved in. The author tested the strategy by asking the young man if he would run up and down some nearby stairs for the rest of the afternoon. The young man replied that he could only see himself running up and down the stairs for a half an hour at the most, but actually began to get out of his chair to begin the task for that half an hour. The author then asked the young man if he could visualize himself not doing something that he could visualize himself doing. A rapid and profound trance state ensued as the man's strategy began to spin out. The author took advantage of this state to install some more effective tests and operations into the young man's motivation strategy.
Another way to spin a strategy out is to establish one anchor for the beginning of the strategy and another for the end of the strategy; then, collapse the anchors so the beginning and the end become tied together. A man who came to a workshop put on by one of the authors, claimed he'd been trying to go into a hypnotic trance for over 25 years and had never succeeded. He firmly believed it was impossible for him to enter a trance state even though he had been desperately wanting to for all those years. His belief strategy was spun out as a demonstration by anchoring the beginning to the end through collapsing two anchors established for those steps. The man's initial reaction was confusion and some agitation, but within an hour he had (and most importantly was convinced that he had) the first trance experience of his life.
Each of these techniques for interruption is designed to stop the progress of an ongoing strategy so that an intervention may be made by the programmer. The same techniques can be used to stop someone's strategy if the outcomes of that strategy are annoying to you or are being used to your detriment. The subtle "knocking away" or diversion of a person's accessing cues with hand gestures or head gestures, can be used to interrupt a person's strategy if it is important or necessary for you to get the upper hand in a situation, or to gracefully force a shift in the flow or direction of the communication. (Subtle clicking noises made with your mouth tend to be a very effective covert means of causing a change in someone's internal pictures — eye movements can also be covertly directed by indicating, with your own eye movements, which position should be accessed next.)
6.4 Interference Phenomena.
Interference phenomena, commonly called "resistance," "blocks:" "sabotage, " "dissention, " "objections, " and so on, form probably the most frequently encountered obstacles to anyone dealing with human behavior to achieve outcomes. The businessperson, manager educator, therapist, lawyer, politician, etc., must deal with these phenomena, whether manifest as inefficiency, learning disability, incongruence, hesitation, personal problems or conflict.