People sometimes consider AA members obnoxious because they don't want anyone else around them to drink either. Their reason for this, of course, is that seeing someone else drink stimulates that choice in them by identification. Since the old motor programs haven't been integrated into having new choices, this elicits the old drinking behavior in them. When you don't have this kind of sensitivity in an ex–drinker, that's another good indication that you've got full integration.
Woman: I have a question about the anchoring. Would you anchor the sober state first, when the client walks in, and then access the drunk state?
There are lots of ways you can do this. You don't even need to anchor the sober state in order to get integration. After your client has accessed the drunk state, you can say «Hey! Pay attention here. What do you think you are doing, acting like a drunk in my office?» Then you'll get the sober part back. Your client will say «Oh, I'm sorry! I thought that's what you wanted me to do. I was just trying to follow your instructions.» You continue with «What? Pull yourself together here.» You then hit the anchor for the alcoholic state at the same time that you are saying «Stay sober; pay attention here.»
Woman: Is the sober state a powerful enough anchor to be collapsed with the drunk state?
The sober state does need to be as intense as the drunk state. If you collapse anchors and don't get an integration, but rather something which looks like the drunk state, that indicates that you need to get the sober state anchored more intensely. I would stop doing the integration and say «Hey, wake up! Come on! Hey, wake up!» I would bring him back to a sober state completely. I'd stand him up, move him around, give him a cup of coffee, etc. When he's sober again, I'd ask
«Do you know where you are? Do you know what you are doing here? What's your purpose for being here?» I'd get the sober part back fully, and then I'd anchor it.
Man: Couldn't accessing the alcoholic state be dangerous if the client gets violent when he's drunk?
If that's the case you'll need to take extra precautions. You would use visual or auditory anchors instead of kinesthetic anchors. You might keep six feet and a chair between you and him, with the exit behind you. Or you may be well–trained in martial arts and have full confidence in your ability to protect yourself, as I do. You deserve to be sure that your physical and psychological integrity is always preserved. You are a psychotherapist; you are not being paid to put your body or your psyche on the line.
Woman: Would you be able to interrupt such a violent state if you'd anchored the sober state first? You could then use that anchor to bring the client back out of the alcoholic state.
Sure, but don't use a kinesthetic anchor for that. If you're close enough to touch someone who is acting violent, then he is close enough to hit you. An anchor that interrupts a rage state can be a good choice, as long as you can fire it from a distance. You can use auditory or visual anchors for that. A student of ours is teaching foster parents in halfway houses how to use non–tactile anchors to interrupt rage states. Depending upon the clientele you deal with, you may need that. You can anchor from a safe distance by a clap of your hands or some gesture. Another way to do it is to start talking to him using one voice tone, and as he goes into the alcoholic state, you change to another voice tone. Your voice tone then becomes an anchor. Then if he starts to go into a rage state, you say «Hold on a minute» in the tone of voice you used for his normal state.
Man: I appreciate your comment about giving content–free post–hypnotic suggestions to the alcoholic after collapsing anchors. I think that many programs for alcoholics have failed because the therapist or agency has tried to come up with specific alternative behaviors to drinking. They tell the alcoholic «Let's all go bowling» or «Let's all go do leatherwork.» That approach is painfully ineffective.
Absolutely. Bowling and leatherwork are very unlikely to be able to satisfy the secondary gain in drinking.
Man: It seems as if it would be a good idea to have an indefinite amount of time available if you're going to use this approach with alcoholics. This might be difficult to do in hour–long sessions.
Yes, that would be ideal. However, you live in a world of hourly schedules. I'm not a good model for a practicing psychotherapist in this respect. I don't make my living doing psychotherapy anymore. I don't even do psychotherapy anymore. I did for a while to make sure that I tested all the patterns I'm teaching you with a wide range of presenting problems. So when I offer you something, I know it works, and I can demonstrate to you that it works. However, even when I had a private practice, I wouldn't schedule more than two or three clients a day, and I'd leave huge gaps between them so that I could run the session anywhere from ten seconds, which was the shortest time I've ever worked with a client, up to something like six and a half hours, which was the longest.
Man: You've got to tell us about the ten–second client!
You can easily do a content reframe in ten seconds. But I was thinking of a man whose presenting problem was that he couldn't stand up to people who were aggressive. As soon as he told me that, I threw him out of the office! In those days, a group of us had arrangements with each other and with some of the neighbors that they would interact with our clients in certain ways when we offered certain signals. So as soon as I threw him out, I yelled to my wife «Catch him!» So Judith Ann strolled out on the front porch just as this man walked by almost whimpering «He threw me out.» She started talking to him, «Oh, no! Did John do it again? Did he throw you out without any sympathy, without any sensitivity to your needs as a human being?»
At this point, of course, she had perfect rapport. He was saying «Oh, take care of me! Help me!» As a friend who happened to be there, she then told him how to cope with the situation. It took ten seconds for me to access the problem state, and then she picked up the client and programmed him in the next few minutes.
If you work in an agency, you have lots of opportunities to do that kind of thing. You can teach your clients things through role–playing, and the learning will transfer if you future–pace them well. However, it will always work better if you don't announce that the frame is role–playing; you just do it. You can behave in exactly the way that they can't cope with, thereby accessing that limited state fully and purely. They're not just pretending or thinking about it. Then if you have somebody pick them up on the bounce, you can do really amazing things very quickly.
Woman: From what you've said, we can assume that alcoholics and hard drug abusers have very dissociated states, and also be alert that some people who smoke or overeat have these sequential incongruities. Are there other indicators of sequential incongruity?
I don't know of any fail–safe way of detecting sequential incongruity, but there are some things you can watch for. Sometimes I've done what I thought was really great work and it didn't work at all because I didn't detect sequential incongruity. With these «almost multiple personality» cases, sometimes whatever you do seems to work really well. You get all the appropriate responses; you get new choices for the client, you test and future–pace and everything. Then he leaves, and when he comes back the next week he can barely remember what you did last week, and can't even verify whether it worked or not. However, you can tell that your work hasn't been effective at all. If the problem is something like smoking or overweight, it may be very obvious.
When this happens, you can suspect sequential incongruity. The main guideline I use to identify this is to notice that over some period of time you see really radical shifts in a client's behavior. When people who overeat tell you things like «I find myself staring at a pile of chicken bones, and it's as if I just woke up» that's a good indication of sequential incongruity. Sometimes you can suspect it if their behavior sounds very strange, or if your work goes too easily.