For a context reframe, ask yourself «In what context would this particular behavior that the person is complaining about have value?» Think of different contexts until you find one that changes the evaluation of the behavior.

For a meaning reframe, ask yourself «Is there a larger or different frame in which this behavior would have a positive value?» «What other aspect of this same situation that isn't apparent to this person could provide a different meaning frame?» or simply «What else could this behavior mean?» or «How else could I describe this same situation?»

When you have found a new frame for the behavior, take a moment or two to think of alternative ways of delivering the reframe, and then select the one that you think will get the maximum response. Pacing and leading will be extremely important in doing this. If you have difficulty, take the observer aside for a moment and use her as a resource.

When you have thought of a reframe, ask the client to repeat the complaint, and then deliver your reframe. Carefully observe the nonverbal changes in the client as he considers what you have said.

The observer and the programmer both have the job of getting a sensory–based description of the nonverbal changes that occur in the client as he makes the transition from complaining about a behavior to at least a partial appreciation of how the behavior has value for him within a different frame.

Do you have any questions?

Woman: What is the purpose of pausing before you reframe?

I want you to take the time to employ one of the specific strategies I offered you to come up with a verbal content reframe. If you are practiced in content reframing, and you have an immediate response, fine. Go ahead and make it. But if you have any hesitation, I want you to drop out. Go into internal experience and check all representational systems to figure out visually, auditorily, or kinesthetically how you could verbally reframe the content of the complaint.

If you are practiced in reframing, it will be to your advantage to take a little time to figure out what your own typical strategy for verbal content reframing is, and use any other one, so that you increase your flexibility. If you usually lead visually and search for alternate contexts visually, try doing it kinesthetically or auditorily.

Come back to me with a successful example of each kind of content reframe, and with a specific sensory–based description of the changes that you saw in the client. We'll compare the descriptions to find out how we can generalize about the things that you observed. Any other questions about this exercise? . , . OK. Go ahead.

Discussion

Woman: I had a lot of difficulty reframing the problem that my partner presented. It was an interaction with his wife, and when she does something that she—

Did he give you one sentence?

Woman: Yes. He wants to stop making so many visual side trips when he's talking to his wife.

That doesn't fit one of the two forms that I asked him to express the statement in, so it has nothing to do with what we are doing here today, unless he rephrases it for you, or unless you question him until you get a statement which fits those forms. I want you to use the two forms that we demonstrated earlier, so that you have some control over your language and your sense of expression. I said «Describe a problem in one of these two forms.» He did it in some other form, so it has nothing to do with what's going on here. If you were to Meta–Model him, eventually it would come out in one of these two forms. You weren't the only one who did that, by the way. A lot of people came up and asked «What do you do with this sentence?» And I said «Nothing. It has nothing to do with what we are doing here.»

An important part of being successful in NLP is knowing what kind of problem your procedure works on. If you know that, you can do successful demonstrations any time you want to. You just ask for volunteers who have exactly what your procedure works on. You say «Who has a problem like this: you go into a context and you want to have a certain feeling, but instead you have a completely different feeling, and it happens every time?» If you have a therapeutic model like reanchoring which is designed to deal with that, you can't lose.

People often come up to us after seminars and say «You guys do therapy so fast!»" It's fast because we ask for problems that fit the form of what we want to demonstrate. As soon as somebody raises his hand, we're done.

Being able to identify these forms and ask for them is very important. If you have a client who comes in and says «Well, you know, I have all kinds of problems» then you can say «Do you have anything like this?» And he'll say «Yeah, I have a couple of those. I've got these two.» You can fix those, and then you can describe another form and ask «Well, have you got any of these?» It's a very different mental set for doing therapy. If you've got certain things you do that work, being able to describe the kind of problem that they work on is very important.

If you take one of these two reframing models and use it where it's inappropriate, it won't work. That would be like taking the phobia cure and using it for something else. It just won't have an impact, because it's not designed to do something else. One man who was in a workshop we did in Chicago phoned me about a month later and said «You worked with a woman who had a phobia of birds, and it worked really well, but I've been doing that with all my clients and it doesn't work.» I asked «Well, do they have phobias?» He answered «No, I don't have any clients with phobias.» He came right out and said that! I said «Well, why are you using that technique then?» And he said «Well, it worked!» He really understood the seminar!

In essence that's the biggest mistake that has been made in therapy all along. Somebody did something and it worked. Then he thought «It worked! Good! We'll use it for everything! And we'll call it a new school of therapy.» And then he went out and tried that one thing with everybody. It worked with some people and not with others, and he couldn't figure out why.

It's really quite simple. The structure of what he did was appropriate for accomplishing certain goals and not others. Since those specific goals were not described, people didn't know how to look for them and find them. I am hoping that you will come to realize that there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use these tools. It's important that you know what your tools do, and what they don't do. Otherwise you have to find out by trial and error.

Jim: I'm interested in getting others' reactions to a reframe that I did. My partner role–played a patient who had attempted suicide several times. She said to me «You people profess to know a lot about human behavior. I don't like it when all you do is continue to lock me up instead of letting me kill myself.»

Marie: Well, there was something else that I said: «I really know I want to kill myself.» His response to that was «Good! I'm really glad you know what you want.» Then I responded «Well, if you appreciate that, why do you lock me up here? I don't like it that you send the police for me when I swallow pills.»

OK. That's the complaint. All of you take a moment to figure out a content reframe you might make to that input, and then Jim can tell us what he did… . OK, now go ahead, Jim.

Jim: I said to her «You know, I have never really understood suicide before. We really don't know what goes on with people like you, and you are offering me an unprecedented opportunity to learn. What I would like to do is cooperate with you, but what you have proposed is too simple, and I won't learn enough. What I would like to do is make your death more complex, so that I can really learn about it.»