What happens in the movies when you are fluent, and don’t block and stutter? How does it start? What happens next? How does it finish? How do you feel?
Compare these two movies, and notice in how many ways they differ.
The story or strategy for blocking can also be edited, changed, or directed to give a different outcome. This is why you need to know the movie’s original structure, because then you can adjust or modify any of the attributes to find out which qualities when changed alter the emotional effect of that movie. Associating/dissociating
Remember the difference between being dissociated and being associated: do you see yourself in the movie or not? (See Chapter Three.) It is an important feature of editing movies in the mind. There is a relationship between the movie and the person imagining it. Does the PWS see themselves in that image, or is the image what they would see as though looking from their own eyes? If they do see themselves, do they notice that they are actually blocking? In my experience, when the PWS imagines themselves blocking, they probably do not see themselves in the imaginary picture. They imagine themselves talking to the other person and all they see is the other person. They are experiencing those fears and anxieties just as if it were real.
For most people, but not all, imagining themselves associated inside a picture intensifies the emotion. If the PWS runs a movie in their mind of a forthcoming conversation and they imagine themselves inside that movie blocking when they speak to the other person, then, in all likelihood, their mind-body system will say, “OK, I will do that. When you are in front of that person talking, I will make sure that you block/stutter.”
The PWS is more likely to speak fluently when they see themselves (dissociated) engaging with that other person. Ask the PWS to mentally step back, to dissociate, so that they are watching the movie as if it were on a screen in the cinema. They are likely to be very critical of what they see themselves doing. While they are thinking in that way, I ask them, “What have you learned from this? What would you like to change?” There is always something to be learned from every experience, and that starts when the person is judging or evaluating their performance. Then they can begin to coach themselves to do better.
And then for practice, after they see themselves speaking fluently with the other person, they may wish to imagine themselves there in front of the person (associated) and imagine how it would be if they were speaking fluently.Changing the meaning of the context
Once during a first session with a woman who blocks, she told me that she could not force herself to block when she was by herself. I inquired about the difference between her state when she was alone and her state of blocking. She said, “When I am by myself I have confidence because no one can hurt me.” The major factor in creating state of blocking was avoiding being hurt by someone else. Obviously, when she was alone that fear was not triggered. But in company she became concerned with the fear of being hurt. She was focusing on the fear inside her instead of concentrating on the purpose of the communication. Blocking, like most of our problems, is an inside job.
Therefore one way out of the difficulty is to change the meaning of the context which triggers the blocking response. Changing the trigger
There are three main areas for making changes:
On a behavioral or body level, change the stimulus-response connection. By altering the meaning of the external trigger it loses its power, and fails to produce the blocking response. As the clinician you want the PWS to link a more powerful trigger (sight, sound, sensation, movement, gesture, word) to a state or strategy that will lead them to fluency. Instead of an authority-figure creating fear and blocking they trigger a resource state or strategy for speaking fluently (see The Swish Pattern in Chapter Six).
On a cognitive or mind level, change the person’s beliefs about themselves, so that the blocking becomes “irrelevant.” This is a consequence of the Meta-stating process (see Chapter Three): the PWS applies a more powerful resource state which enfeebles the old pattern. The PWS stops concentrating on themselves: they stop running their old disaster movies, stop imagining those dreadful judgments of others, and start thinking more about the other person. They get on with the conversation, knowing they have something important or vital to say and pay attention to the other person as they communicate with them, calmly, confidently, and successfully.
On a spiritual level, probably the single most effective way of changing the trigger to a resource state is for the PWS to immediately go to their fifth position (see Chapter Three). This is especially true if the person has some really powerful spiritual and religious beliefs and values in that position. Indeed, as I have mentioned, once the PWS can go to that position/state at will, they are well on their way to normal fluency.
In practice, you will be working with all of these ways. But first it is useful to untangle some of the complexity. For example: discover the nature of the triggers. Are they primarily visual (a particular location, or how someone looks) or auditory (the sound of someone’s voice, or a particular word). To change their response the meaning they give to those triggers has to change. When the PWS thinks about speaking with their boss, they run the movie: “I have to go into that office and speak with my boss. He always scares me. I know I will block in front of him. I always do.” So it seems that both the sight of the office and the appearance of the boss can be triggers for the state. Therefore it is necessary to set up beforehand some
