The main ingredient you need to be able to function as a communicator is sensory experience. If you can make the distinction between what is conscious and unconscious, and amplify the unconscious responses, you will alter someone's state of consciousness. One way to do this is to ask, as Fritz Perls did "What are you aware of?" If she says "Well, I'm conscious of talking to myself and tightness in my jaw" then you say "But you weren't aware of the warmth where your hand touches your face, and the feeling of your feet on the floor, and your elbows against your thigh, and your breathing, your chest rising and falling." That is all you need to do. That person will start to go into an altered state because you are directing her awareness to places where it would not normally go. That's one way to amplify unconscious responses.
It doesn't matter if the conscious mind is involved in the process. In fact, it's more useful to engage the conscious mind in something of relative unimportance—like which of three doors it's going to go through. Who cares which door it goes through? What's important is that we alter her state of consciousness. Once we've done that, then we can begin to create experiences by which she accesses unconscious resources. She's still consciously concerned with which door she went in, and why, and it really didn't matter, because as soon as she gets inside the door, I can put anything I want in there! The important thing is that in experience she goes through a door. That experience is leaving her usual state of consciousness and entering one that is altered with respect to her normal state of awareness. Once she is through that door, I give her unconscious a process instruction—a program for positive change.
I gave her this program using very unspecified language, for the reasons we discussed earlier. It's very important to understand when to use unspecific language, and when not to use it. When you give process instructions, make your language very unspecified. However, if you want someone to do something very specific, like bake a particular cake or cure a phobia, it will be important to give that person very specific instructions, so they can understand how to do it. If you want someone to bake a cake and you tell him to "take all the appropriate ingredients from your refrigerator, mixing them together in the most satisfying way …" you probably won't get the cake you wanted.
Often I hear people using the unspecific language we use for process instructions when they are trying to communicate something specific to another person. And they have no idea that the other person has no way of understanding them, because of the words they are using. For example, in therapy, people talk about how important it is to have high self–esteem, or a positive self–image rather than a negative one. But they don't talk about exactly how you build those things, or how you know when you have them.
Sally: It happens in comparing their personal experience.
What are they comparing with what?
Sally: They arc comparing their child emotions with their adult understanding of what they think is happening in the present.
OK, and when they compare those, what do they do with the comparison?
Sally: They then have an improvement in their own self–image — their own self–esteem. How?
Sally: By seeing. You see, sometimes a person has a feeling of badness about herself because it is incorporated in a memory. So as you take the present experience or knowledge in the person, and you look back at that, then at the same time you're helping that person in the session. She can then rework things so she has a different—
Let me ask you something. Do you understand that there is nothing in the description you are giving me that allows me to know what you are saying? This is not a criticism of your understanding, because I think you know what you're talking about. But you aren't talking to me in a way that will lead me to understand.
Sally: Maybe it's the knowledge base that I have. Our communication is a little bit different.
Well, it's not that, because I even know what you want to tell me. I know because people have told me many times. However, the discrepancy between how you're telling me and the way you would need to tell me in order to communicate what you want me to know, is an important distinction for what we're learning here.
You see, the kinds of descriptions you are using will be exactly what works in hypnosis. If I want you to make something up, to go off on your own and hallucinate, then I use the kind of non–specific linguistic structures that you were just using.
However, if I want you to do something specific, I have to tell you something specific. If I want to give you information about doing something, I've got to make sure that you know every detail about how to do it. You see, if I wanted you to use a particular mental program that I believed would raise your self–esteem, I might say "OK.. I want you to pick a specific unpleasant memory from your past—a memory in which you realized that you did the worst you could possibly have done… . And as you look at that memory and feel the feelings you had back then, what you don't yet realize is that without unpleasant memories like that one, you wouldn't have learned anything of importance in your whole life. If you'd never experienced the pain of a burn, you wouldn't be smart enough to avoid fires."
That instruction is at least somewhat specific. It tells you to take some unpleasant memory, feel the feelings, and then reevaluate the memory in a specific way. While that instruction doesn't tell you detailed content, it does specify the kind of memory you are to think of and what you are to do with it.
If I don't care how you make a change, I unspecify my language even more and use lots of nominalizations. Close your eyes for a minute and try something. I want you to go inside and pick two, three, or four pleasant past memories which may seem unrelated … but your unconscious never chooses anything in a random fashion … because there's a learning of importance for you as a person… . Now I know in your past, there's a wealth of experience … and that each and every one of those experiences . . , constitutes the basis for building a learn ing …or understanding for yourself … that is relevant to you … only as an adult … that wasn't relevant to you as a child … but it can serve as the basis … for building something that you learned.
Now take a few moments to let that relearning begin to take shape …to crystallize. . , . You might be beginning to see an image . , . which is not clear … and which you do not understand… . And the more you look at it … the more you realize how much you don't understand … and as you watch at the unconscious level … you can be building that learning in a way … which is significant… . The significance of your building that learning … is something that consciously … you can appreciate only when it's complete … and then you'll realize … suddenly… the ideas … and understandings about how to make changes in yourself … can begin to flow … into your conscious mind… . But those ideas have nothing to do with that new learning … because when one of those ideas comes into your mind … if it's truly an unconscious one … it will have to have a giggle attached to it. …
Now, the way I just communicated with Sally is very much like the way she communicated with me. However, there's a big difference between trying to get the conscious mind to understand something and trying to get the unconscious mind to do something. The description that she made is the kind of description I might make to a client when I want her to do something, but it's not what I'm apt to give a clinician when I want him to understand something.