I wave my hands and your problem is gone
A good blog if you are a coach or therapist. After all, are you selling your technique to your client?
Yesterday I had a training day where we practiced a foreground-background switch. It’s part of the 2.0 master’s program, which delves deeper into the basic techniques of hypnotherapy and NLP. The foreground-background switch is a technique that takes only 5 seconds to perform, and because it happens so quickly, there are a few things that are extremely important.
I think that if you help people—as a coach or therapist, for example—it’s important that you sell your own technique. Not in the sense of selling your own product so that someone will book a session with you. I’m talking about the technique—your method, your idea—which you need to sell effectively to the client. I sometimes see this go wrong because some techniques—and we see this in hypnotherapy as well—are very logical for the client to grasp.
Regression technique sales
Let me just mention the regression technique as an example - where we go back to the origin of your problem. For example, you come to me because you have a problem you want to get rid of. You say "Ed, I've been afraid for a long time. Okay, I say, how long? 'Yes, from my childhood, somewhere there it originated'. Then I say, 'Well, then we go back to the moment it arose, we solve it there, we grow up, so you don't suffer from it now'.
So we take the sting out of the situation, so to speak, so that it doesn't fester afterwards, as if it never happened. Of course, it did happen in your experience. Well, that technique is easy to sell because most people already believe that.
You may be thinking as you listen to this, "Yes, somewhere it originated" - so that all sounds very logical. Only if I tell you now that that's not true at all, that it originated in your past and that there is no past at all. Then it already becomes difficult for most people. If I say, 'There is only now,' then it is much easier. If I say 'There is no past,' then it's crazy again. This cannot both exist at the same time. You cannot say, "There is a past and there is only now. You can think of your past now, but that is not the past, that is your thoughts of the past. Then you may say, 'Yes, but that is the past anyway.' Fine, we have indeed labeled it that way.
This is quite a concept. It's already hard to understand cognitively and emotionally it may be even harder. This is the concept we work with with that foreground-background switch, though. The bottom line is that so it doesn't matter where the ' problem' arose because there is only a now. If you change the now, that feeling, that idea, that belief, that image or whatever, you also change the past.
How acceptable is your technique
Most people picture the past as a line from left to right or front to back. A horizontal line anyway: the future is in front of me and the past is behind me. It's a timeline. I don't know anyone who has the line vertical, like a pole, that they are simultaneously in the now and in the past. However, that is how our body experiences it, our body is that vertical line. Only our brain has made that there horizontal line so that we can understand it a little bit. How else are you supposed to plan things? That's very difficult on a vertical line, so we have a horizontal line.
We’ve also attached labels to these moments: tomorrow, yesterday, last week, next week, last year, next year, the future, the past. They’re convenient labels, but it’s all “now.” Only along that horizontal line can we travel with our thoughts. We can think about last week. We can also imagine what we’ll do next week. Then you might say, “Yes, but that one thing hasn’t happened yet.” Well, neither has that other thing. The funny thing is that what happened last week might not have happened at all the way you remember it. You imagine things that might not have been there at all, so in essence, you’re also making up your past. Just as you imagine the future through a kind of logical prediction. This is based on what you think might have happened, but essentially, your brain is just making an educated guess.
You may have a few memories of feeling good in kindergarten. Did you always feel good? No. Did you always feel bad? No, neither but you have generalized and now think, "Well, I did have a good time in kindergarten. Of course that's not true because you probably also had periods - just like now - when it wasn't fun at all. Maybe you were bullied or pushed into a corner, but you generalized that overriding emotion. You actually fantasized that. Similarly, people can say, "Yeah, my whole school days were shit," when that's just not the case. It may often be like that, but not always. There you go with that fantasy because for your brain it doesn't matter if it's fantasy or reality, it just does both. 'The future would be the same as the past'. So you can also go to past lives and next lives that way because if you're on that line then you fantasize, think about and experience things.
Foreground background switch explain
When we start working with the foreground background switch technique, we must first explain this principle. This way, people can contain, "Hey, my brain works fast, it's going to happen very fast right away, it's about focus. If I change my focus - so not on a scary spider - then I feel less afraid'. I then tell stories about why focus triggers fear, I explain what happens in the head, in our fear center (the amygdala). The amygdala sends all sensory information through a short route when it is on focus. Those routes through the amygdala then go on tilt because, with very little sensory information, for example, you already get a panic reaction or an adrenaline shot.
Imagine you are walking through the woods and you suddenly see a shadow that looks like a tiger. You then get an adrenaline shot and go into freeze or flight mode. Of course, you're not going to think long about all the different choices. Should I hide? Is it a Siberian tiger or a Javan tiger? Is it a tiger at all? Isn't it a jaguar or a cougar? What do you care, you just have to take action! Danger is imminent so your amygdala has already made a decision. You react immediately, without having a very sharp image. This reaction can also be attuned to a spider, to people, to public speaking, or whatever. When you just think about your phobia, boom! That's where it starts.
Suppose you are afraid of spiders, and when you see a spider you think, "Ooh, those legs, those legs. Some people already notice that the feeling of fear immediately becomes stronger. Then what happens in your mind? You make those paws huge. Suppose we are going to change that image, we are going to include the background, in switch form. It happens so fast that you can't think about what is happening but something is changing very fast. Suddenly the focus on that spider is gone. There are no more legs, the spider has become unimportant. It is absorbed into the rest of the environment, it no longer triggers danger. When it no longer triggers danger, then you feel fine with it. Then you see the spider walking and think "Fine, nothing wrong. So it has to be explained first that it is fast. That it's because of focus, you initially leave out the background. Then when the background suddenly merges into the whole, you see how small that spider is. Then suddenly that feeling is gone. So speed is one thing. The second thing is: what is the real problem? Is it really that spider?
Sample
A good example of this is from someone who came to me because he wanted to be motivated to build a website. I say, "All right, let's invoke more motivation," but during the conversation we found out that he was actually just scared. He was afraid to make himself visible. So that has nothing to do with motivation, but something that had been going on for a long time. When you understand the real problem, it can also be taken out of the way quickly.
So technology moves very quickly: one, two, three, four, five and it's gone. Of course, people don't believe it can be done that fast, so I have to take very extensive time to explain it. So you really have to sell the belief, that technique as a coach or therapist. If the technique is not clear, it probably fails as well. Look a regression I don't have to sell so much, everybody understands that almost immediately. Then I spend about 45 minutes looking for the cause of the problem so I can then solve it.... The foreground-background technique solves it in 5 seconds, only I spend extensive time explaining the technique first. So I end up spending the same amount of time on both sessions.
So that's what I sometimes see going wrong with people. Who don't sell their technique, their system well during a session. They think "Oh that customer is in," and just go and do a session. Then they still didn't get the desired result for themselves and for their client. Think about that as a coach or therapist. Am I selling my technique well? I'm sure if you spend more time on that, it will yield more results.
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