What is important for the outcome of the strategy, of course, is the information carried by the representation.
Many of you readers can make internal images that you can see almost as vividly as you can see the words on this page. Others may be unaware of internal imagery unless you are in an altered state of consciousness, but in your normal state you can remember voices extremely clearly.
For some people, such as schizophrenics, the substitution between internal & external experience is all too easily made. For others, the inability to make these substitutions can be very limiting.
The ability to cross–substitute internally generated experience for externally generated experience, and constructed or imagined experience for remembered experience, is a valuable tool for the neurolinguistic programmer and a very valuable resource for your clients. Often when we are attempting to access or elicit experiences and representations from people, to be used as resources, they will respond something like, "I forget," "I don't know," or "I've never had that experience." In such cases we simply say, "Imagine what it would be like if you could (or did)." When a person's imagination or fantasies provide the same information as the actual experience, there is essentially no difference in the significance of the representations.
4.3 Anchoring — Accessing and Reaccessing Representations.
When it is important to control the content of a representational system, as when you are working with a decision point, you will need a way to assure easy access and reaccess to the particular representation associated with that decision point. This is accomplished in neurolinguistic programming through a procedure we call anchoring.
Most of you readers have had the experience, in communicating with a client, friend or associate, of reaching a certain level of rapport and understanding that was a very positive resource to both of you. Later on, however, the flow of the conversation, discussion or negotiation changes. The interaction becomes more tense, strained or difficult, and you wish you had a way of reaccessing the positive experiences that you shared before. Anchoring is a process that allows you to do this.
An anchor is, in essence, any representation (internally or externally generated) which triggers another representation, 4–tuple or series of representations or 4–tuples (i.e., a strategy). A
basic assumption behind anchoring is that all experiences are representated as gestalts of sensory information—4–tuples. Whenever any portion of a particular experience or 4–tuple is reintroduced, other portions of that experience will be reproduced to some degree. Any portion of a particular experience, then, may be used as an anchor to access another portion of that experience.
Anchoring is in many ways simply the user–oriented version of the "stimulus–response" concept in behavioristic models. There are, however, some major differences between the two. These include: (1) Anchors do not need to be conditioned over long periods of time in order to become established. That kind of conditioning undoubtedly will contribute to the establishment of the anchor, but it is often the initial experience that establishes the anchor most firmly. Anchors, then, promote the use of single trial learning. (2) The association between the anchor and the response need not be directly reinforced by any immediate outcome resulting from the association in order to be established. That is, anchors, or associations, will become established without direct rewards or reinforcement for the association. Reinforcement, like conditioning, will contribute to the establishment of an anchor, but it is not required. (3) Internal experience (i.e., cognitive behavior) is considered to be as significant, behaviorally, as the overt measurable responses. In other words, NLP asserts that an internal dialogue, picture or feeling constitutes as much of a response as the salivation of Pavlov's dog.
Establishing an anchor requires the setting up of a synesthesia pattern. "Synesthesia," as you recall, is the correlation between representations in two different sensory systems that have become associated in time and space. As we have pointed out before, a stimulus, or representation is only "meaningful" in terms of the response it elicits in a particular individual.
Natural language is probably one of the most common, yet sophisticated, anchoring systems available to us. The written words "dog," "warmth" and "love" are all visual anchors for internal representations from the reader's past sensory experience. To make sense out of the visual symbol "dog" you have to access past experience (sights, sounds, feelings and smells) of a particular class of mammals, in the form of the 4–tuple. We can show this relationship in the following way:
T his shows that the letters "dog" anchor a particular set of representations. By changing the form of the stimulus, or by adding to it, however, we can also change the representations that are anchored. If we wrote "wet dog," or "spotted dog," for example, different representations would be anchored. Some anchors, depending on the type of anchor and the state of the individual, will not elicit representations in all sensory systems. Phrases like "look at that," "this will send shivers up your spine" or "his voice was so gravelly," each appeal to different representational systems and will anchor representations in those particular systems to a greater degree than the others.
Patterns II contains a good deal of background information on anchoring and our language systems. We suggest that you review the first few sections of the book to sharpen your understanding of the process of anchoring.
Anchors, of course, may become established through any of our sensory modalities. Facial expressions (V), gestures (V), voice tonality and tempo (At), touches (K) and odors and tastes (O) can all be anchors for other representations. Internal sights, sounds, smells and feelings will also be anchors for other experiences. A strategy is a string of representations in which each representation is anchored to the one preceding it.
4.31 Anchoring In Action
The following transcript of a typical anchoring demonstration at an NLP workshop conducted by one of the authors ("A") will illustrate the process and uses of anchoring. The volunteer will be represented as "S".
TRANSCRIPT
A: I'd like to do a demonstration of anchoring now. Would someone be willing to come and be a subject? Someone who hasn't had any experience with anchoring before? (A woman from the audience volunteers.) Your name is … ?
S: Jan.
A: Thank you, Jan. Would you sit here please … I'd like to show a couple of other things with this demonstration as well as anchoring. One of them is how to use your sensory experience to gather information and get feedback. I'm going to whisper into Jan's ear and simply ask her to think of a couple of different experiences. Then I'll anchor them. As she thinks of them, you're going to notice both subtle and perhaps dramatic changes in Jan's ongoing behavior. So I want you to tune your sensory apparatus now to watch and listen to any changes you may observe in Jan's facial expressions, breathing rate, muscle tonus, skin color, body posture and eye movements… . Okay? (Whispers in left ear.)