Man: There is a replacement, though, with relaxation.

Sometimes it's done that way, but relaxation is not the resource that everyone is going to need in a phobic situation. If you're driving across a bridge, you don't want to become relaxed suddenly. If somebody is in a situation in which they need to cope and you give them feelings of relaxation, they may not cope! There may be real, genuine dangers in that situation, so one of two things will happen: either the symptom will come back later because it's protective, or the person will get hurt. We got a very strong anchor for confidence and for the resources that she has as an adult woman. We used that; we did not use relaxation. She was very alert during this process. Desensitization was an important step, in that people were able to cure phobias with it. I think that it just needs to be dressed up a little bit. Instead of using relaxation and associating it with everything, try associating other things besides relaxation. There are much more powerful resources in people.

There is nothing that we have offered you so far, nor is there anything we will offer you during the rest of this seminar or in an advanced workshop, that isn't already in someone's behavior somewhere. What we've done as modelers is to figure out what the essential elements are, and what is unnecessary. Every therapy has dissociation. Every therapy has the kinds of sorting techniques we're using here, whether it's chairs or knee anchors or words. What is useful to have in every therapy is some way of doing all that: some way of sorting, some way of dissociating, some way of integrating. The names you use are wholly irrelevant, and most psychotheologies are also irrelevant. There's really nothing that different between what we did and what gestalt people do by taking people back through time. TA people do a process called "redecision." They are all very, very similar.

We looked at all those different processes and tried to find out what the essential elements were, and what was extra and unnecessary. Then we streamlined it to try to find something that works systematically. I don't think there's anything wrong with desensitization, except that sometimes it doesn't work. That's because there are a lot of things that are extra, and some things that are essential are not always there. Some people who do desensitization also add the necessary resources unconsciously. But when they teach somebody else to do it, they don't teach that, because it's not in their consciousness. Our function as modelers is to sort those things out.

The other thing is that I don't know what kind of desensitization you are referring to specifically. Some use meters and machines. I am a far more sophisticated biofeedback mechanism than any set of machines. I use really sophisticated sensory apparatus and internal responses as a way of amplifying or diminishing certain parts of the response that I am receiving. That's part of what makes one-trial learning possible in the kind of work we've been doing here with anchoring.

Man: What if a client is unable to use visual imagery?

It is not essential that people visualize to be able to do the phobia process, because the same formal pattern can be done auditorily or kinesthetically. The pattern of this technique does not require visualization. We wanted to use all systems as a demonstration. We don't need to do it with all systems. You could also first take a little time to teach the person how to visualize, using overlap.

Woman: Could you do this process without touching?

Sure, you can use a tonal anchor or a visual anchor. You can do it without touching. However, I would recommend that you do it with touching. Kinesthetics is an irresistible anchoring system. When somebody is touched, they feel it. When you make a visual sign at someone, they may look away or close their eyes.

Man: So the bail-out anchor could be a certain tone of voice?

Yes. Tonal anchors in this society are the most powerful because most Americans do not hear consciously. The number of people in this country who hear is almost nil, slightly more than the number of card-carrying musicians.

In England it's considered important to make class distinctions. In order to make class distinctions, you have to be able to hear different accents and tonalities. So English people are more acute at hearing tonal changes. Anyone who is bilingual or polyglot, and who has learned a tonal language, will have a good sensitivity to those kinds of changes.

Most people in the U.S. do not actually hear the sequence of words and the intonation pattern of what they, or other people, say. They are only aware of the pictures, feelings and internal dialogue that they have in response to what they hear. Very few people are able to repeat back, in the same intonation, what you say to them. We hear people literally. We do not add anything or subtract anything from what they say. That is a rare human experience, and for a long time we didn't realize that; we thought everybody heard words.

The real beginning of all this work started when we began taking people's words as a literal description of their experience, not just a metaphor. We started communicating back as if they were literally the way they had described themselves, and we found out that was the case. When someone says "When I focus on those ideas they feel right, but I tell myself it wouldn't work," that is a literal description of their internal experience.

Now we would like you to pick a partner, preferably somebody you have not had much contact with. It's easier to operate at the process level with strangers because their behavior is less apt to be an anchor for some behavior in you. We assume that you are all going to get changes with one another, given your usual patterns of communication. Try something new. The whole point of going through the exercise is to be exposed to new material and to do it, to discover how well it fits with your own personal style as a communicator. Until you engage all your sensory channels in playing with this material, you won't have it. Understanding fully is to be able to comprehend it in all representational systems, including behavior.