The strongest form of behavioral metaphor is an event that is a part of real life, what might be called “living metaphor”—a compelling and unquestionably real experience that becomes a prototype for a new category. All the historical life-changing “imprint” experiences—both negative and positive—that affect people strongly are familiar examples of this. The experiences that Milton Erickson often arranged for his clients created prototypes for new understandings in the same way. A number of these were presented in my article “Creating an intense response.”

Movies and plays are stories that are dramatized and intensified behaviorally, so that they become vivid opportunities to watch others deal with important life issues, “step into their shoes,” and create understandings by identifying with the characters’ situations, feelings and responses, and learn from them. Although drama is an example of the “as if” category, creating a “not real” situation that we can observe safely, a viewer often “loses themselves” in the drama, and may recall it later in a way that is just as intense as if it had been a real situation.

Virginia Satir, one of the greatest family therapists who ever lived, often posed family members in “tableaus” showing how they were stuck in stereotyped hierarchical interactions with each other, sometimes using ropes to show how they were tied and entangled. Then she would untie them and ask them to interact in different ways to dramatize new possibilities. Satir’s “family reconstruction” process used group members to dramatize a client’s family of origin, so that the client could empathize with the difficulties that their parents faced while growing up, and realize that the parents’ difficult or abusive behavior toward the client had little to do with the client, and a lot to do with their parents’ history, a very useful recategorization.

Ed Jacobs has developed an approach called “Impact Therapy,” using chairs, drawings, and simple props to create vivid experiences that nonverbally illustrate relationship principles and dynamics. For instance, to dramatize the role of alcohol in a couple’s relationship, he will hold a large whiskey bottle or a six-pack of beer between them, and asks them to notice how difficult it is for them to contact each other fully with this obstacle in the way.

Danie Beaulieu, a colleague of Jacobs, and author of Impact Techniques for Therapists, has a powerful method for working with someone who feels a lack of self worth because of having been abused physically. She will take a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet, hold it out in front of her, and ask the client, “How much is this worth?” The client says, “twenty dollars,” a little puzzled and intrigued by this question and its too obvious answer. Then Danie will spit on it, crumple it up, throw it on the floor, grind it under her heel, and kick it around. Then she will point to the bill, and ask the client, “Isn’t that how you feel sometimes?” an invitation to the client to fully identify with the abused bill on the floor.

Then she will pick up the bill, smooth it out gently, hold it out again, and ask, “How much is it worth now?” Of course the client says it is still worth twenty dollars. The contradiction to their belief that past abuse results in a lack of self-worth is too obvious to be mentioned. Then Danie will offer a very useful post-hypnotic suggestion or “future-pace.” Continuing to hold the twenty-dollar bill in front of the client, she says, “Whenever you see a twenty dollar bill, you can remember this.” Then each time they see a twenty-dollar bill they will be reminded that abuse is irrelevant to their self-worth.

A number of common metaphors equate life with a card game. “It’s (not) in the cards,” “It’s (not) a big deal,” “He was dealt a good (bad) hand,” “You have to play with the hand you’re dealt,” etc. When Danie wants a client to access their personal strengths and capabilities, she uses a cheap deck of cards in the following way:

“Ask your client to recall a time when he felt successful or satisfied with some aspect of his life, and to describe a personal trait he used to create that rewarding situation. If the client responds, “perseverance,” ask whether he used an ace, a king, or a queen of perseverance to succeed. Then select that card from the deck and write ‘Perseverance’ on it with a bold felt-tip pen. (Bold is important: you want to make this a statement of strength, not a tentative, penciled-in suggestion!) Continue to elicit other traits and assets that have helped your client to succeed in the past—for example, self-discipline, generosity, technical ability, humor, family support, the caring of a special friend—and repeat the process of selecting and labeling appropriate cards. This exercise, in itself, will help your client identify and recognize resources he may have forgotten he possesses.

“When you’ve accumulated at least five strong cards, present the cards to your client, one by one. Explain that he still holds this terrific hand, chock full of talents, emotional strengths, and self-knowledge, and that he simply needs to play it in the situation he now faces. Encourage him to take some time to look at his cards and take in his triumphant array of aces, kings, and queens. This in-the-moment act of “holding a strong hand” can help a client move from merely intellectually appreciating his strengths to viscerally experiencing himself as a winner. Give him the cards to take home as reminders of the inner resources that have served him well in the past—and will again.” (excerpted from Impact Techniques for Therapists)

Using cards that are powerful in a card game (not ones, twos, or threes!) accesses the client’s power in a way that words alone can’t. Putting the cards together in a “hand” strengthens each of them by association with the others, implicitly creating a category that might be described as, “I am a capable person.”

When someone is grieving over a death in the family, Danie will set up a row of paper cups, with the name of each person in the family written on one of the cups, with the dead person’s cup at the beginning of the row. At the end of this row she also places cups with the different significant areas in the client’s life written on them: work, friends, hobbies, other major activities. Then she will give the client a pitcher of water, saying, “This water represents your energy level (implicitly indicating that their energy is limited). I want you to pour water into each of these cups to show how much of your energy you are giving to each person, and each activity.”

As the client approaches the first cup representing the dead person and begins to reach out to pour water into it, Danie reaches out and silently turns that cup upside down, indicating nonverbally that the dead person can no longer receive any energy; what has been going to the dead person needs to be given to the other family members and activities. Small dramatizations like this are emotionally powerful, and they stick in the mind as vivid prototype experiences that are difficult or impossible to forget.

Danie’s book, Impact Techniques for Therapists is a wonderful resource for innovating in ways that directly affect clients nonverbally, available new or used from Amazon.

In addition there is a great DVD demonstration of Danie using three different evocative methods with three different clients, recorded at the Milton Erickson Brief Therapy Conference in 2007. I have already watched it many times, and I need to watch it many more, in order to catch the subtleties of how Danie asks questions as she uses these methods, It is available from: http://www.ericksonfoundationstore.com/search.asp
Search for product ID # IC07-CD5-DVD

*This article is excerpted from Six Blind Elephants: understanding ourselves and each other, volume II: applications and explorations of scope and category, chapter 10, “Metaphor.”

Much of NLP was developed from the study of Milton Erickson, probably the greatest hypnotist and therapist who ever lived. He was justly famous for his handshake interrupt, in which he would greet someone by saying, “Hello,” and reach out his right hand as if to shake hands. Then as the other person’s hand rose [...]

As any field evolves, new discoveries are made, additional applications are found for existing processes, and finer distinctions permit more detailed understandings of how things work. It is particularly interesting when someone outside the field researches a topic that can be understood in more depth using NLP principles.
NLP has long recognized the importance of our [...]

On an email chat group, Seth-Deborah Roth, in Castro Valley California, reported an interesting case that I’d like to share with you:

“I was referred a 12-year-old girl with 9-10 years of Fecal Retention Syndrome. After having batteries of medical testing procedures, biofeedback, and working with a psychologist, she was told it was a ‘habit.’ The parents were beside themselves and finally gave me a call.

“After the induction of hypnosis, we regressed to the first time of the bowel incident. She was 2 years old and standing behind a big chair; her daddy was standing in front of the chair. She felt her bowels starting to move and pushed them up with her anal sphincter. It felt ‘funny.’ They started to come down again, and she pushed them back up. It was a ‘funny’ feeling that felt different. It was a new feeling that she had never felt before, an interesting, different feeling—unusual, with a tinge of humor to it.

“The little girl and I talked about it being a kind of different feeling and that it could be fun in a way to discover new things about your body. It was a new feeling and that was OK, and it is also OK to just let the stuff come down and go out the other way. I emphasized the normalness of discovering new sensations of your body. I told the story of my brother who discovered a similar function while he was a little boy in the bathtub and that this is normal for kids to discover their body and its different sensations. I future-paced these understandings by using her timeline, going to present time, and then tomorrow, then next week etc., noticing that she easily and effortlessly would go to the bathroom when she needed to. Upon follow up three weeks later, the habit is still gone, and this little girl (and her parents) is very happy about it.”

I thought this was a very interesting example of a significant problem that had not yielded to a variety of approaches, but was easily resolved by some very simple information gathering and normalization.

Seth-Deborah Roth’s web site: www.hypnotherapyforhealth.com

Ron Soderquist, an NLP-trained therapist in the Los Angeles area sent me this report:

The mother, Julie, called me and related: “Our Tommy is five years old and we are worried about him.”

“What does he do that worries you?”

“Whenever he spills milk at the table or makes any mistake, he gets out of his chair and bangs his head against the wall while saying, ‘You are stupid. You are dumb.’ ” I invited them to come in as a family.

It appeared that the parents were a normal couple. There were no red flags in their relationship with Tommy. Nor was there anything of note in Tommy’s body language. Julie reported her son enjoyed kindergarten and played well with friends. He had no other strange behaviors. However, Tommy would bang his head a few times a week on average. This behavior had been going on for at least several months.

I first considered recommending testing for autism. But in my experience, behaviors can often be addressed by simple, self-hypnotic suggestions. I looked directly into Tommy’s eyes, and began telling a story….

“Once upon a time there was a little boy squirrel named Timmy who felt bad because he couldn’t do anything right.” Tommy nodded his head. “When Timmy climbed trees with his friends he would slip and fall down.” Tommy nodded his head again. “When Timmy hid nuts he would forget where he hid them. He felt dumb.” Tommy nodded his head again. I embellished the story in great detail so Tommy would fully identify with Timmy the squirrel.

“Timmy the squirrel’s parents finally bring their little boy to visit the Wise Old Owl who lives in the big oak tree. Because owls have wonderful eyesight he saw them coming from afar, and said, ‘I see you are a squirrel family, how can I help you?’ Mommy and Daddy told the owl that Timmy banged his head against trees and called himself names when he made a mistake.

“The Wise Old Owl thought for a moment, and then he looked right at little Timmy and said, ‘Little Timmy the Squirrel, do you have a belly button? Let me see your belly button.’ At this command, Tommy pulled up his shirt and looked at his belly button.

“The Wise Old Owl continued, ‘Little Timmy, take a good look at your belly button because everyone who has a belly button makes mistakes. From now on, whenever you make a mistake, just look at your belly button and say, It’s OK. Everyone who has a belly button makes mistakes.’ ”

“Then I told him, ‘Now you and your Mommy and Daddy go home and enjoy being part of a loving family.’ ” At that, I ended the session.

Julie called the following week to report Tommy had stopped banging his head.

(Note from Steve. I’d like to point out the importance of the instruction to look at his belly button. If Ron had instead said something like, “Everyone makes mistakes,” it wouldn’t have had nearly as much impact, because it would be too vague and general, and it would not have a specific cue to trigger the thought. But by starting with the specific visual sight—or image—of his belly button, and then connecting the generalization to that, it made it much more concrete. Every time Tommy looks at his belly button, he will think of the instruction, “It’s OK. Everyone who has a belly button makes mistakes.”)