Steve Andreas > Articles > Selecting a Resource to Anchor

An Example

Some people choose a state in which smell is absent, such as a stuffed-up nose, or a situation in which a chemical, such as ammonia, has overwhelmed the nose. While this would work, it is equivalent to prescribing amnesia for a rape victim's memory of the rape, and it exemplifies an approach that is perhaps appropriately described in mathematical terms. Amnesia, or numbness, or absence of smell are all examples of subtracting experience, which has certain dangers. When experience is subtracted, the person has less information, less skills, less perceptual sensitivity, less resources. In short, they become a less capable human being, and more at the mercy of their environment. Amnesia for a rape memory deletes all the bad feelings, but also all the useful information about that event that could be used to protect the person in the future, and this makes the person more vulnerable to a repetition. Lack of smelling would make a person more vulnerable to the potentially harmful effects of spoiled food or leaking gas.

In contrast, good NLP work is always additive. We always want to add information, add skills, add perceptual sensitivity, add resources, to make the client into a more fully human being, and more able to perceive and choose and respond to events. So the task of choosing a state to anchor is at least narrowed to the question, “What experience can we add in order to change the situation?” We have observed one trainer who always anchors positive self-esteem as a resource. While feeling good about oneself is often a valuable state, it is no more a “cure-all” than any other state, and in this case could make him feel good about not liking his wife's breath, or good about being willing to marry her in spite of it, etc. However, her breath would still smell bad to him.

Another prominent trainer typically anchors a state of confidence. In this case, confidence is irrelevant. How could confidence have anything to do with the smell of his wife's breath? Confidence can be a very useful resource for someone who is competent and able to do something, but is hesitant about doing it. Since many people are hesitant about doing things that they are quite able to do, anchoring confidence can often be useful. However, consider a situation in which someone is hesitant and incompetent. If you anchor in a state of confidence, they will proceed to attempt to do things that they can't yet do. This will inevitably lead to disappointment, which is not a particularly useful result, and s/he and others may also be harmed if the incompetence results in physical danger.

Some people attempt to anchor a state of neutrality. As a practical matter, it is very difficult to anchor a neutral response. At any moment we are neutral about thousands of events around us that we aren't responding to, so that's a very unspecific experience of not responding. Anchoring only works with a specific neurological response. In contrast, a pleasant response to something is specific, (as well as being much more enjoyable!) so it's much easier to access a pleasant state and anchor it and it's underlying neurology.

One possibility is to anchor one or more experiences in which the client is responding pleasantly to a smell. That is certainly an appropriate kind of resource, and often it will work, particularly if the smells that result in the pleasant and unpleasant responses are similar in quality. Since we didn't try this in this case, we can't say for sure whether it would have worked or not, but it is certainly an appropriate choice.

However, it is one thing to identify a resource state and anchor it; it is quite another thing to find a path or easy transition to that state. There is an old joke that neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them, and psychiatrists collect the rent. The task of NLP is to build stairways, or transitions, so that people can actually reach their desired outcomes easily (without becoming psychotic, and without paying rent to psychiatrists!).

The desired state is that the client have a pleasant response to the smell of his wife's breath. What experience would provide a transition mechanism, so that he can easily access the specific neurology that will make it possible for him to change from his unpleasant response to a pleasant one?Nearly everyone likes certain smells that were once unpleasant to them (and may still be unpleasant to others), usually because they became anchors for pleasant experiences at some time in the past. If you elicit and anchor the moment that the response changed, you gain access to the neurological shifts that occurred during the process of transition, rather than just the desired state. This also has the useful function of convincing the person's conscious mind that the kind of change he wants is possible, because he can verify that it occurred in his past.

   Once you ask the right question, the answer is usually obvious. We asked him to think of times when his response to a smell changed from unpleasant to pleasant, and he recalled two:

1. He had never liked the smell of new-mown hay, but early one bright sunny morning, driving past fields of hay, he found himself enjoying it.
2. He had never liked the smell of carnations (it seemed “medicinal” to him), until one evening he found himself enjoying their smell.

We anchored these two experiences separately on his arm with separate touches, and then held both these anchors while we asked him to close his eyes and imagine bending down to kiss his wife. As he did this, he reported that he saw his wife's face with hay all around it, and she had a carnation held between her lips. (When you get this kind of cooperation from the client's unconscious mind, you know you're on the right track!) The reanchoring was immediately successful, and twenty years (and several children) later the problem has not recurred.

Usually people think of anchoring states. Anchoring the process as someone makes a transition from one state to another is a very specific and powerful additional refinement. To make your future work even more elegant in this way, we encourage you to identify the specific transitional process your client needs, rather than just the target state. Even if the client only experienced it once in his life, when you find it, he's got exactly what he needs to get there. Teaching a client how to identify and utilize these transition states provides them with a measure of fluidity and choice that is not available with static states.