8. Using Unconscious Responses in Therapy

In my quest to learn how Dr. Milton Erickson helped so many people so quickly, one area of study I pursued was Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The group of individuals who developed NLP used their skills and tools to learn how people did what they did effectively, in order to teach others how to utilize these same strategies (referred to in NLP as modeling excellence). Why re-invent the wheel?! One of the people they modeled was Dr. Erickson.

Milton Erickson was known for his excellence in precise sensory acuity. He had polio two different times and lost most movement in his body. Amazingly, he learned how to train his mind to help his body move again. He then used this expertise to notice the most minute shifts in his therapy patients’ responses to determine how to help them. He achieved this by telling them stories.

As he told his patient a story, he would notice subtle shifts in their unconscious responses. Based on what he noticed, he would tailor his message as an intervention to help them solve their problems. Remarkably, it wasn’t necessary for him to ever ask for verbal responses from his patients to gather the information he needed. When I went to see him for a week with nine other people from around the world, he told us stories all day long for five days and guided us to make the significant changes that we did through information he gained from our unconscious responses to his stories.

So, when I was trained in NLP, including hundreds of hours of workshops and many certifications, significant hours were spent learning to develop my sensory acuity to determine a person’s emotional states of being. I was taught to notice subtle changes in skin tone, breathing rate, lip size change, and pupil dilation. In therapy it is useful for me to gather information from my clients’ unconscious responses.

There is tremendous value in paying attention to feedback to get the results you want!

NLP’s definition of communication is the response you get back. If you like the response you get, great. If not, change your communication. The deep value of what I learned in my pursuit of developing sensory acuity was the importance of paying attention to the responses I receive back from my clients. Is what we are doing helping move them toward their goal? If interventions are helping someone get  into a better state of being, great, keep doing it. If not, do something different.