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This is a wonderfully rich session. I know well how much easier it is to play “editor” after the fact than it is to conduct a session from scratch, and I doubt very much that I could have done as good a job with Mike, particularly in such a short time. Nevertheless, there are a few things that I would have done differently, and they might be of interest.
I would have done some serious reframing of his abusive past, so that when he thinks of it, he could look on it in a more balanced way, and see that despite the pain and unpleasantness, there were also valuable learnings there. “You have experienced how awful that was, and that is valuable information about what you don’t want to do with your loved ones. If you hadn’t had those experiences, you might have made the same kind of mistakes that your father made with you.”
Rather than build a “wall” between Mike and his unpleasant past, I would have suggested either distance, or a more permeable barrier, so that he could continue to have useful access to the unpleasantness, while controlling its intensity so that it no longer overwhelmed and depressed him.
“You want to become free of those depressing memories, and that is very important. But if you were to forget your past entirely, that would be a great loss to you. No matter how painful they were, you learned many valuable lessons from those experiences, and not the least of those lessons is that you had the will and the stamina to survive them. You can learn to see all those events at a comfortable distance, small and far away, perhaps through a curtain, or as if shrouded in mist, knowing that they are still there and can be called upon and reexamined whenever you decide it might be useful to you.”
I am very wary of disregarding any part of a person’s experience, because of the danger of losing the valuable information contained in even the most unpleasant memory. This is definitely my strongest comment about what Michael could have added to the session. (Michael and I have had an exchange on this topic, and we agree on the importance of retaining access to the past; we still disagree somewhat on the best way to accomplish this.)
I also would have done some vigorous reframing with the commentary voice, inquiring about its positive intent, and redirecting its attention toward positive outcomes in the future, and adjusting its behavior (voice tone, orientation to the future rather than the past, etc.) to align it with those outcomes. Again, I am wary of simply disregarding voices; often they have very important and useful messages, no matter how badly the messages are expressed, and no matter how much difficulty they cause for the person. Often the outcome of a discouraging voice is to avoid disappointment, and it is very comforting and healing to realize this, particularly when it the outcome is stated in the positive “I want you to have a good life.’
In Mike’s report, he describes his experience of depressing himself in present tense rather than past tense (“I’m living in the past; I’m not living in the present.”) which indicates that he is not fully associated into the new behaviors. There are a number of interventions familiar to NLPers that could have made the movement from past-orientation to present- and future-orientation more complete, and if this review were not already quite long, I would mention some of them.
I found Michael’s jerky head movements distracting (only when my eyes were open) and did not detect any positive use for them. To me, at least, these movements were quite different from Erickson’s, but I may be missing something here. Certainly they did not seem to distract Mike, who was in excellent rapport throughout the session.
Finally, I would have avoided (infrequent) negations like “not stick to you,” “not take it in,” “not being a magnet,” during the hypnosis session. These are negative commands, which tend to re-elicit the problem state. However, they did not seem to detract from the overall effectiveness of the session.
This is a videotape that is well worth experiencing, studying repeatedly, and using in teaching. I have learned a lot from it, and I think every NLP institute or training program could benefit from making use of it.
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