Although a blocking strategy usually runs automatically, out of conscious awareness, it is possible to stop it before it gets going. This must be true or you would never change any behavior. Your goal is to teach the PWS how to interrupt their blocking strategy so that they can do something more useful. An interrupt is anything that stops a strategy from running. The logical place to make a change is where it begins: to alter the meaning of the inciting incident – the stimulus or trigger – that sets the strategy going. Your task then is to help the PWS find how their strategy can be frustrated, prevented or sabotaged.
An interrupt has to be powerful enough to jump the person right out of the groove. The interrupt can be a physical gesture, a sound, a movement, or a code word. For example, the person could just say “Stop!” Initially the interrupt may work better if it comes from someone else, which means the PWS should give permission to a trusted other person to interrupt them every time they start blocking. Later the PWS must initiate their own interrupts.
Remember that people are already skilled in doing this. You know that you can inhibit your behavior when conditions change. You can probably remember a time when you were engaged in a slanging match, and then something happened and you thought “This is ridiculous! Why am I doing this?” and you changed your state, began to laugh, and the whole tense situation altered and everyone relaxed. This would be an example of shifting your point of view to fourth position and seeing the funny side of things. The interruption changes your state and that affects your behaviour. By not allowing the blocking strategy to run, the PWS is open to find better ways of communicating to other people.
When they interrupt the pattern, the PWS must stop what they are doing and pause long enough to access an appropriate resource state which they have chosen beforehand. It could be a resource such as courage, faith, determination or calmness – it does not matter what it is, only that it leads the PWS away from the old groove, and towards fluency. One client remarked upon first learning about state interrupts:
I used to scream really loud inside my head to interrupt my state. I got the idea when I was reading Tony Robbins’ book, Awaken the Giant Within. It worked pretty well. If I was alone in the house I would scream out loud, really loud. It made me laugh every time because it was so ridiculous. It served its purpose … my state was interrupted every time. Erasing fearful movies of painful memories
This process (adapted from the NLP Fast Phobia Cure) can dramatically assist the PWS to change their response to the fear behind the blocking. It is designed to scramble the visual images of the movie that creates the fear.
A phobia is an automatic response to a specific triggering situation: a spider, a lift, a snake, and so on. Blocking is similar to a phobic response in that something in the context triggers the behavior. With a phobia it is usually easier to see what sets it off, but with blocking the trigger is often a more subtle aspect of the context – the associated meaning and expectations. However, whatever the trigger, the phobic response or the blocking and stuttering occurs, and therefore the technique can be used successfully in these cases. This process takes the juice out of those painful memories – those childhood experiences of embarrassment or shame – which led to the blocking and stuttering.
Dealing with old unpleasant memories
When you think about unpleasant events that happened long ago, your mind often seems to compulsively say, “Play it again!” And so you get to watch a full-color, three-dimensional movie of that old memory and the opportunity to feel really bad again!
How do you stop this happening? One way is to scramble the movie so that it loses its coherence and thus its power over you and your emotions. Although you could edit the qualities of a movie one at a time, it is also possible to quickly revise the whole movie at once.
Exercise 4.3: The fast rewind process Overview
Step back from your painful memory.
Step back from the you watching the movie.
Let the old movie play out as you watch from a protected place.
Step into the movie and fast rewind.
Repeat the process several times.
Test.
Note: You could run this pattern effectively on any horror movie that limits you in some way. Often times the fear is not based in reality but on the consequences you imagine from a composite story based on several historical events. If that story limits you, then use this process for eliminating those painful memories.
Lead the PWS through the following steps:
1. Step back from your painful memory.
Begin with a negative thought that sets off painful emotional reactions. Pick an childhood memory of a blocking incident that “rattles your cage”, that elicits strong emotional feelings. The memory could be about an occasion when other people made fun of
