Dick, what was your experience after you asked the question?

Dick: Confusion.

OK. "Confusion" is a nominalization. It's not experience; it's a conscious judgement about experience. It's irrelevant to talk about his conscious judgements because he's already done the best he can with his conscious resources, and it hasn't worked. We need to work with experience. What was your experience that you labeled "confusion"? How did you know you were confused?

Dick: Flushing.

So you felt a flushing, a change in blood pressure. Was there a temperature change that went along with it, or a sense of pressure? Was it localized in some part of your body?

Dick: Some of both, mostly in my stomach.

In your stomach. OK, now that's a really elegant non-verbal response. In doing reframing we strongly recommend that you stay with primary representational systems: feelings, pictures, or sounds. Don't bother with words, because they are too subject to conscious interference. The beauty of a non-verbal kinesthetic signal such as this, is that it's considered involuntary. And you can test to be sure that it's involuntary. Dick, can you make that feeling of flushing happen consciously?

Dick: Maybe

Try….

Dick: No.

That's also a really good way to subjectively convince someone that they are communicating with a part of them that normally is not available to them at the conscious level. And of course most hypnosis and biofeedback is based on the principle that you can alter consciousness and gain access to parts of your nervous system and physiology which you normally don't have access to. The question was a "yes-no" question; the response was a kinesthetic change, a feeling change. Now, so far all we have is a response; we don't know whether it means "yes" or "no" and neither does Dick, consciously.

One of the ways people really get into trouble is that they play psychiatrist with their own parts without being qualified. They interpret the messages they get from their own parts. So they begin to feel something and they name it "fear," when it may be some form of excitement, or some kind of aliveness, or anything. By naming it and then acting as if that is the case, they misinterpret their own internal communication as easily as they misinterpret communication externally. We don't want to run that risk, and there's an easy way to be sure what that signal means.

Dick, first I'd like you to go inside and thank the part for the communication it gave you, so that you validate that part for communicating with you. Next, say to it "I would like very much to understand your communication. So that I don't misunderstand what you mean, if you are saying 'Yes, you are willing to communicate with me in consciousness,' please intensify the same signal that you gave me before—the flushing in the stomach. If you are saying 'No, you're not willing to communicate with me in consciousness,' reverse it and diminish the response."

As Dick does this and you are watching to get the answer before he gives it to us, realize that if the signal had been a picture we would have simply varied the amplitude of the signal. We could make it brighter for "yes" and darker for "no." If it had been a sound we could have asked for an increase in volume for "yes" and a decrease for "no." In this way you avoid the risk of consciously misinterpreting the meaning of various internal kinesthetic, visual, or auditory signals. It gives you a very clean channel of communication with the part of Dick that is responsible for the pattern of behavior he wants to change. And of course that's just the part that knows how to make the change.

This process gives you an excellent opportunity to practice seeing what are traditionally called hypnotic responses. One of Milton Erickson's more useful definitions of deep trance is "a limited focus of attention inward." That's exactly what we asked Dick to do here—to limit his focus of attention to a signal which is internally generated. And the corresponding changes in the texture of his skin, breathing, skin color, lip size, etc., are all characteristic of what official hypnotists call trance phenomena.

Dick, rejoin us back here. What happened?

Dick: I had the feelings.

So the feelings intensified. You got a verification. We now have communication with the part; we have a "yes-no" signal. We can now ask that particular part any question and get an unambiguous "yes-no" answer. We have an internal channel of communication that Dick is running himself. We're not doing it. We're simply consulting with him about the next step. He now has established an internal channel of communication which allows him to communicate unambiguously with the part of him responsible for the pattern he wants to change. That's all you need. You can do anything at this point.

Step three is to distinguish between pattern X and the intention of the part that is responsible for the pattern. Dick, this part of you which is responding to you at the unconscious level has a certain intention it's trying to carry out for you. The way it's going about it is not acceptable to you at the conscious level. Now we're going to work with that part, through your channel of communication, to offer it better ways to accomplish what it's trying to do. When it has better ways than the way it goes about it now, you can have what you want consciously and this part can continue to take care of you in the way it wants to.

I want you to go inside again and ask a question. After the question, be sensitive to the signal system you have. Go inside and ask that part "Would you be willing to let me know in consciousness what you are trying to do for me by this pattern X?" Then you wait for a "yes-no" signal…. (Dick smiles broadly.)

I just said to ask "yes-no"; I didn't say "Give me the information." If you were attending, you noticed that something fairly dramatic happened. He asked for a "yes-no" answer. He got the "yes-no" signal and he also got information about the intention in consciousness.

Dick: Which pleased me.

Which pleased him and surprised him. Therapy is over at this point. There is now a conscious appreciation of what this part—that has been running pattern X—has been trying to do for him at the unconscious level. Dick, you didn't know what it was trying to do before, did you?

Dick: No, but I got a clue to it while you were talking, before l went down in. I got a feeling that it—

Part of our problem doing demonstrations is that after two days with you we have such good rapport with your unconscious there's a tendency for you to do it too fast.

So now he has a conscious understanding of the intention of this part of him that has been running X. Dick, is it true that you would like a part of you to have the responsibility of taking care of you in that way, even though the specific method it uses is not acceptable to you? You may not like the way that it goes about accomplishing pattern X, but do you agree that the intention is something you want to have a part do for you as a person?

Dick: Yes.

Now there is congruency between the intention of the unconscious part and the appreciation of the conscious.

That means it's time for step number four: to create some new alternatives to the pattern X that are more successful in accomplishing the intention, and that still allow consciousness to have exactly what it wants. What we're going to do is hold the intention—the outcome— constant, and vary the ways of achieving that outcome until we find some better ways of achieving it, ways that do not come into conflict with other parts of Dick.

Dick, do you have a part of yourself that you consider your creative part?

Dick: Humpf!

The creative part hops out! "Hi! Here I am. What do you want?" I hope you all appreciate the sense in which I said before that multiple personality is an evolutionary step. So you do have a part of yourself that you consider your creative part.