We would like you to thank this part for all the work it has done. It's got what it needs; it's already satisfied with that. Now we want to find out if any other parts have input to this process. Ask "Is there any other part of me that has any objection to the new choices that are going to occur?" Then be sensitive to any response in any system: feelings, pictures, or sounds….

OK, you've got a response. And?

Dick: They have no objections,

How do you know that? This is important. I asked you to attend to all systems. You came back and said "No. There's no objection." How do you know there's no objection?

Dick: I felt no tension anywhere.

You felt no tension. Were there any changes you could detect either in your kinesthetics or visually or auditorily?

Dick: Well, the relaxation.

A relaxation. OK, that was an overall body relaxation. Just to be sure, just to check for congruency, thank whatever part made your body relax. And then ask "If this means no objection, relax me even further. If there is any objection, make some tension occur." Again, all we are doing is varying the signal for "yes" or "no." It's arbitrary whether you go "Yes for positive increase, No for diminish," or the reverse. It doesn't matter.

Dick: I'm getting some objection.

OK. What exactly was your experience? Were there changes in muscle tension?

Dick: Yes, around my eyes.

OK. Whenever you get a response to a general inquiry, it's important to check and be absolutely sure what that response means. Thank that part for the response of tension in the muscles around your eyes. Ask for an increase for "yes" and a decrease for "no" to the question: "Do you object to the new alternatives?"...

Dick: There was a decrease.

It's slightly unusual to have the tension here. Typically at the ecological check almost everybody's heart speeds up. Most people associate a speeded-up heart rate with fear or anxiety. When I ask them to stop hallucinating and simply ask for an increase for "yes" and a decrease for "no," the heart rate usually slows down. My understanding of this is that it's simply a signal that some part of them is quite excited about what's going on.

Dick: I was also aware of a pulsating in my hands, but the eye tension seemed more dramatically different than the hand sensations, so that's why I mentioned the eye tension.

OK, let's check this, too. This time go in and thank the part that gave you the hand signals. Then ask the same question "Do you have any objections?" and ask for an increase for "yes" and a decrease for "no."

Dick: Decrease in sensation.

Decrease, so that part also doesn't have an objection. If there had been an objection at this point, you would simply recycle back to step three. You have a new "yes-no" signal—the pulsating in the hands. Now you make a distinction between this part's objection and its intention. You continue cycling through this process until you have integrated all objections.

We usually hold the first set of three choices constant and ask any part that objects to find alternative ways of doing what it needs to do without interfering with the first set of choices. But you could also ask both parts to form a committee and go to the creative part and select new alternatives that are acceptable to both.

The ecological check is very important. Many of you have done elegant work, and the client is congruent in your office. When he leaves, another part of him emerges which has concerns that are contextually bound. When he gets home, suddenly he doesn't have access to what he had in your office or in the group. There are other parts of him that know that if he goes home and simply changes in the way that he was going to change, he would lose the friendship of this person, or blow that relationship, or something like that. This is a way of checking to make sure that there are no parts whose positive contribution to him will be interfered with by the new pattern of behavior. Of course the only real check is in experience, but this is a way of doing the best you can to make sure that the new choices will work.

OK, now, Dick, what happens if six or seven weeks from now, you discover yourself doing the old pattern of behavior X? What are you supposed to do, then? ... You can accept that as a signal that the new choices that you came up with were not adequate to satisfy the intention. And you can go back to your creative part and give it instructions to come up with three more choices. The pattern of behavior is a barometer of how effective the new choices are. If the old behavior emerges after a test period, it's a statement that the new choices were not more effective than the old pattern. It's a signal for you to return to this process and create better choices.

Regression to previous behavior isn't a signal of failure, it's a signal of incompetency, and you need to go back and fix it. Reframing will work. I guarantee his behavior will change. If his behavior changes back, that's a signal that the new kinds of behavior were not as effective at getting something for him as the old pattern. Then he goes back through the process, finds out what other secondary gain is involved, and creates new ways to take care of that as well.

If you don't explicitly make the symptom a signal to negotiate, the person's conscious mind will call it a "failure" if the symptom comes back. When the symptom is identified as a signal, the client begins to pay attention to it as a message. It probably always was a message anyway, but they never thought about it that way. By doing this, they begin to have a feedback mechanism. They discover that they only get the signal at certain times.