I don’t know about you but that is music to my ears.
It is important to understand that the person utilizes their own resources to bring about change. Everybody, regardless of his or her station in life, operates from a belief system. This belief system is what we utilize to determine our self-esteem, our personal limitations, our viewpoint on the meaning of life, how others view us, what we can and cannot accomplish in life, and every other judgment we make about ourselves, others and the world we live in. There are as many belief systems as there are people. In assisting individuals to overcome cognitive problems, Neuro-Semantics first attempts to discover the person’s unique belief system and then utilizes it to bring about change.
With that being explained let me move on to tell you about our first phone session together and the day I was handed the emotional tools to immediately control stuttering.
The first tool was actually given to me by Bob through an email he sent me on the day I requested consultation with him. He had already determined that I held a strong Christian belief system and therefore he used that system to bring about change in how I perceived things relating to stuttering. He said, “… I do believe that there is a great chance of taking care of this through phone consultations and email. For what will happen when your fear, anxiety and/or phobia comes into the presence of God?” When I first read that email my initial response was shock. Then laughter as I immediately envisioned a picture of three teeny, tiny men called Fear, Anxiety, and Phobia shrinking back and cowering in the awesome presence of God. Bob had effectively used my belief in God to reframe my thoughts of fear, anxiety, and phobia by forcing them together knowing full well that my beliefs would not allow the two to reside together.
A note on resources
In NLP/NS we hold the belief that each person has the resources they need for their own healing. We also believe in utilizing each individual’s resources. We do not judge the resources, we use them. This subject found her highest resources in her Christian faith. I have learned over the years that a person’s religious beliefs usually provide very effective resources, and that when they are applied to the problem state, the person experiences healing. However, even those people who do not hold any religious beliefs already have sufficient and appropriate resources to overcome any cognitively-based problem they may have. It is the nature of every human being to have the potential for healing themselves.
The consultation
Then came the phone consultation. After a brief period of getting acquainted Bob zeroed in on the feeling of anxiety that was so familiar to me, and to so many other people who stutter. He utilized a technique called “The Drop Down Through Technique” (see Chapter 5) which had its foundation in the works of Alfred Korzybski in his classic work Science and Sanity. From that work Tad James of Advanced Neuro-Dynamics devised the current “Drop Down Through Technique” and later it was revised by Bob and Michael by adding additional resources to it from Neuro-Semantics. The technique is designed to address unconscious thoughts like those that drive stuttering. The following transcript is taken from the therapy notes of Bob Bodenhamer:
In our first phone conversation I (Bob) associated the client into her anxiety which simply means I had her really feel the anxiety. She had a “heavy and tightening” feeling in her stomach, a feeling she described as “holding back.” Now move that up to the muscles that control the vocal cords and you have stuttering.
From her position of experiencing this “heavy and tightening” feeling in her stomach I asked her to drop down through that feeling. “What do you feel underneath that feeling?”
“I feel fear. Fear is there!” (Note that here we have a thought of fear, which ties right into anxiety.)
“Drop down through the fear. What do you feel under the fear?”
“Nothing. I don’t feel anything.”
“Good. Now, just imagine yourself opening up the ‘nothingness.’ And drop down through and out the other side of the nothingness?”
“I see people. It is a little bit scary. They are watching me. They are expecting me to say something.”
“Yes. And what does that mean to you?”
“Well, I have a sense of wanting to go away and hide.”
“OK. That makes a lot of sense to someone who tends to stutter when she speaks to a group of people. Now, just drop down through that thought-feeling. What do you feel below that?”
“Ummh. I feel safe. I feel pretty safe now.”
“You are doing really great now. That is good and it is going to get better. Now just drop down through the feeling of being safe and what or who is underneath that?”
“I feel contentment. I feel alone but safe.”
“Now just drop down through that feeling of contentment and safety. What or whom do you feel below that?”
“Warmth. Total acceptance! I feel total acceptance. There is no judgment here. I see a yellow light.”
“Great. Is the light really bright?”
“Yes, it is. It is very bright.”
“Yes, I know it is very bright. And Who said, “He is the light of the world?”
“Jesus.”
“That is right and He is there isn’t He?”
“Yes, it is God. He is the Bright Light.”
“Very good and just be right there with God in the presence of warmth and total acceptance. Now, what happens to the anxiety in the presence of God?”
“It is gone.”
“What happens to the fear in the presence of God?”
“It is gone.”
“What happens to the sense of wanting to go and hide in the presence of God?”
“It is gone.”
“Yes, they are all gone, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are.”
“And in the presence of God, what happens to stuttering?”
“It is gone.”
“Yes,
