And you can always trust those unconscious processes … to do something … which is beneficial … and useful … if given the proper impetus to do so. And it's not really important why it didn't happen in the past. It's only important to know … that it's possible in the future.
Once a long time ago, before I had ever done any therapy, 1 sat observing a man in a restaurant. One of the interesting things about this man …is that he was completely drunk … and yet … each time a fly landed on his hand, he involuntarily twitched … and the fly would move off his hand. He repeated this process … again … and again … and again … and even though his conscious mind … did not know what was going on, his unconscious activity was organized … and methodical … and protective… .
When you're driving down a highway, sometimes the roads are icy; sometimes they're not. Sometimes you are concentrating on what you're doing … and other times your mind is elsewhere. And when your mind goes somewhere else, one of the most important things you can learn from that experience … is that if something suddenly needs your conscious attention, you're suddenly there… .
Now I want you, Ann, to take all the time that you need … to solidify all those learnings and understandings … for yourself … in a way which will be most useful for you as a human being. And it isn't really very important … whether your conscious mind knows that occurs. It's only important that your unconscious mind … begins Immediately to demonstrate to you … in new behaviors … its vast potential to make changes in your ongoing behavior … now and in the future.
Now, in a moment I'm going to come back and talk to you. And I'm going to ask you questions … and some of them you will answer willingly … and some of them you may not want to answer. There will be no need to answer them. Before I do that I am going to speak to other people … and you will always know when I am speaking to them … because I will direct my voice elsewhere. So you can take your own time and do what you know you need to do … and what you don't understand that you need to do. That's right. And be as conscious as you need to be in that process… .
Now let's talk about what I did with Ann. There was no content in any of those instructions. At the process level there was an explicit set of instructions which said basically two things: 1) engage your unconscious; and 2) solve your own problems.
Notice that as we teach you utilization methods, we're still using the tools we taught you earlier, I started by pacing everything that I could see about the way she was, and then as she would slowly begin to change, I would lead her along by slowly changing my output channels. For instance, I gauged the tempo of my voice … to her breathing so that as … I began to … slow my … tempo down … her breathing would slow down. I was watching all of the behavioral cues we mentioned earlier: her skin tone, her skin color, her breathing, her pulse rate, the movements of her eyelids, and so on. These nonverbal cues give me feedback. 1 know what people look like when they go into deeper and deeper altered states—states that are accompanied by physical relaxation.
Ann, are you consciously aware that this kind of experience has an impact on you?
Ann: Yes.
So I established lots of pacing mechanisms and set up feedback loops. I made myself an elaborate biofeedback machine for her. I watched the changes in her skin color, and as her skin color changed I very slowly began to change from my normal tone of voice to a very different tone of voice. Initially I changed my voice tone and tempo at the same rate that she changed. Then by changing my voice even more in the same direction, I could lead her further and further into an altered state.
While I was doing this nonverbally, I was also giving her verbal instructions, both at the conscious and unconscious level. Some of these verbalizations were particularly designed to give me feedback about whether or not she was with me. I talked about the drunk twitching when a fly landed on his hand, and then watched to find out whether or not her hand would twitch. And it did.
Ann: But did you use my resistance to—
There can be no resistance.
Ann: All right. When you told me to visualize the three doors, I visualized two doors at the top and one like an archway. When you started giving me instructions about the first two, after the first few words were out, I knew I was going to take that third door no matter what you said. Did you know that?
Of course. That was part of the program. The question is, how did it turn out that you would only take that door?
Ann: Well, I'm asking–How were you aware that I was not going to take that first door?
What was the difference in my descriptions of the three doors— above and beyond the words I used to describe them? … I said (low tonality, expressing slight disgust) "There's a door that you can go in and everything inside will seem familiar" Listen to that tone of voice! Does it make sense to you now that I would know which door you were going to go through?
However, if when I said 'There's one door and you can go through it and everything on the other side will be familiar'" your face lit up, color came into it, and you sighed, then ! would know something different. The rest of my communication would have been adjusted to that.
Ann: How would you have structured your communication differently if 1 had chosen the first door?
Well "chosen" is not a word that I'm willing to accept. If you had responded to that door, if unconsciously I had gotten indications that what you needed to do was to have an experience with what was familiar, 1 would have had you go in the door expecting everything to be familiar.
If I start with an opening like that, I can still do anything I want! Then I can have it transform into something unfamiliar. "As you reach for what you thought was there, you are surprised to find that. …" "Have you ever cracked open an egg and had a little bunny rabbit fall out?"
What I'm trying to do is give a set of instructions that allows Ann to make unconscious changes. So the most important rule is to respect her unconscious responses. That requires that I'm able to do only one thing—know which responses are conscious and which ones are unconscious.
Did you notice how I structured the experience of the third door? What did I tell her to do with that door? ! told her to "try in vain" to open it. If I say "I tried to open the door" that's very different than "I tried in vain to open the door." If I say "I tried to open the door" I can try again. It may even make sense to try again. But if I say "I tried in vain to open the door" there's no possibility. One has the possibility; the other doesn't.
Now why did I do that? … If she's going to go in a door which has unfamiliar things behind it, the best way to begin is to make the door have a response which is unfamiliar—to have a door that opens in an unusual way. That makes the door itself and the experience she's about to have congruent with each other.
I structure my language carefully. For instance, if I say to you (He turns to a woman in the audience.) "Now you can try to lift your hand" there's an implication that you won't be able to, but there's still a possibility that you might. But if I say "You can try in vain to not lift your hand… . It's a far–reaching experience… . And then you begin to wonder which hand won't lift first … because you thought it was that one."
Now, if you notice, this woman is completely immobilized–That's a trance phenomenon, by the way. And it's utilization of "resistance" by including lots of negations. I gave her something to respond to, found out how she responded to it unconsciously, and amplified the unconscious response. Her unconscious response was immobility, and the way to increase her immobility was to ask her to move more and more. The more I asked her to move, the more immobile she became. The point is, that response of "resistance"is as predictable as anything else, as long as you have the sensory experience to notice which response is unconscious.