Sydney NLP Articles

While helping a client fall out of love with his ex-girlfriend, I became a bit impatient at the time it was taking to satisfy the objections of his younger “self” towards changing. And so, I changed what I was doing. The conversation/interchange continued thus:

JL:         Well, Little Fred, how old are you?
Client:     Three.
JL:         And so Little Fred would you like to contact  Fred’s learning and understanding and filekeeping Self to update your understanding up to Fred’s chronological age?
Client:     OK.

Fred could then see his younger self growing up before his eyes. And so the session continued, no talk about positive intent, only updating various infantile selves’ understandings of the situation. Apparently these objections were indeed infantile and once the relevant Self grew up it lost its objection to change, having gained a real-time perspective on Fred’s situation.
Finall y, noticing Fred’s gestures and wishing to speed things up (Fred had a lot of objecting Selves) I said:

JL:         Are there any other objecting Selves?
Client:     Yes, I can see a group of them just over there (pointing down-left).
JL:         Well Fred, could you just pick-up those Selve, one at a time, and move them over here (pointing up-right) where your learning and understanding Self is?

And that did the trick too. It is of course, necessary for the learning-understanding-growing-up-filekeeping Self to be more powerful and integrative than the infantile Selves, or the change would go in the wrong direction.
I have used this technique often and have found it fast and effective, only needing further intervention if the infantile Self refuses to grow-up, or if there are ‘real-time’ objections.
For example, one woman’s 4-year old Self did not want to grow-up because it was responsible for her sense of beauty. She had a traumatic experience at the age of 5, and to protect its function that “beauty Self” had frozen itself in time so it would not have to go through the desensitising experience. It said it didn’t want to ‘leave that sense of beauty behind’. Asking the Self to bring that sense forward with it met the objection.
Suggesting that the younger Selves can enjoy 30 (or whatever) extra birthday parties can be a useful persuasion (we might as well make sure that they have a good time growing-up).

An outline of the relevant steps follows:

VERBAL

1. Establish rapport and all the usual prerequisites for effective intervention.

2. Elicit desired state.

3. Elicit any objecting Self.

4. Get objecting Self to grow-up by asking it to contact the learning/understanding etc. Self and updating its own understanding of the client’s situation. If it refuses, other interventions such as Reframing will be appropriate. If it agrees give it time to do this a nd then return to step 3 and continue until all infantile Selves are ‘updated’.

5. When all relevant Selves have matured to the present chronological age, check that the client has the desired state. If not, then other interventions are needed eg negotiation. I have found that this Updating Technique is often all that is needed.

NON-VERBAL

1. Establish location of learning/understanding/etc. Self (Self 1)

2. Establish location of objecting Self (Self 2).

3. Move Self 2 to position of Self

This non-verbal intervention can be used for other reasons than ‘updating files’ and in the outline above no mention is made of time. It may need to be ‘set-up’ first by using the verbal technique so the client knows what is expected of her.
One of the benefits of this technique is that the client can quickly learn the technique and use it by herself. If she needs to return at some later stage, at least she will bring in more interesting problems.

TEMPORAL REFRAME 2

In 1989 the article When Selves Won’t grow Up outlined a technique for integrating “younger selves or “Selves” to use a more generic term”. This article discusses the technique 4 years on.
The original technique was as follows:
VERBAL

1   Practitioner asks the objecting Self how old it is
2   When the age is younger than the Client’s chronological age the Practitioner asks the Self to “update” its skills to the present by contacting the Client’s “file-keeping/memory/integrating Self/the Self that has kept track of the things that have happened since the age of X” (whatever the “age” of the Self).

SPATIAL
after
1 locating where in space the Self and the
2 resource (updating skills) are – perhaps by reading the Client’s gestures etc.
3 Practitioner instructs Client to move the objecting Self to where the resource is.
This is especially good when there are lots of objecting younger Selves
Very often the objection goes once the Self has been “updated”.

AND TODAY
Nowadays the conversation usually goes like this:
JL  and how old or young is that Self of you that

i)   doesn’t want to do this
ii)  makes you do this

Client  X years old
JL  Well (when the Self is younger than the client’s physiological age) no wonder the poor thing is having trouble (the younger Selves love that phrasing, just as a young person would). It’s been trying to cope with an adult’s life with the skills of an X-year old. It must be very difficult. Self (or the name of the Self, if it has one), do you have a hard time coping with the demands placed on you?
(I’ve never had one say no!)
Well then Self, so that you can cope with (Client)’s life, would you like to contact (Client)’s Memory and Understanding of Self which does know how to grow up, since s/he has already done it.
Sometimes updating one Self leads you to another and usually an even younger one.
So the sequence might go:

Self 1      Ten years old
Self 2      Three years old
Self 3      2 years old
Self 4      One year old

Sometimes you send the desired emotion etc down time to the needy Self. This is particularly so for “Past Lives” Self. The Self “belongs” in a previous life so it may have objections to ‘Updating” and the appropriate intervention may be to put it in contact with a needed experience from the present life.
In one workshop Ronda went from 3 years to 2 years to 1 year and then to “I don’t know its age”.  Rather than spend time teaching that Self about time, I asked what it needed and her response was: “Freedom”. So she sent the experience of “Freedom” down through time ( before time) and it just kept on going! She was tranced out somewhat while “Freedom” kept on going and going through time. Eventually we shut it off from consciousness so it could continue its journey out of awareness, allowing Ronda to come back to the workshop.
If the Self is older than the client you can point out how it is failing in its function (whatever that may be) because it is not using the resources of the younger “real” self (the present age) and to contact that resource it needs to grow backwards and then
“Grow forward again at the proper  pace, taking the younger more energised self with you into your new future, noticing the enjoyable differences in your future now all that is past”. Changing basic psychological structures enables rapid change of the moods and feelings and perceptions which those structures control.
Due to our use of Time as a major structuring principle in our thinking, we can effect significant change by working with that metaphor.

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