In article <32c968e9.27021712@news.pipeline.com>, Leslie E. Packer, PhD <lpacker@pipeline.com> wrote:
>bgoodric@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Bill Goodrich) wrote:
>
>>In article <59ktbb$iha@camel0.mindspring.com>,
>>Leslie E. Packer, PhD <lpacker@pipeline.com> writes:
>>
>>>Lee Lady wrote:
    >SNIP<
>>>>Let me clarify, however, that the NLP Compulsion Blow-out is a technique
>>>>that usually takes less than 15 minutes. It certainly shouldn't take
>>>>longer than half an hour. Would the woman's blood pressure be so
>>>>elevated during that short space of time that it would be a threat?
>>
>>>I don't know. It seems to me that if the person is really getting
>>>into fully experiencing the anxiety, etc., that it might be.
>>
>>The blowout does not require such "full experience".
>
>Thanks, Bill. I thought that in 'flooding' (which was the analogy),
>you (the therapist) go for generating the experience intensely?
>Perhaps this is one difference between the CBO technique and
>'flooding?'

Well, yes and no. I'm going to get you a videotape and then you'll have a better idea. (I haven't seen this tape myself, though, so I don't know how enlightening it is.)

Suppose, say, you were using the Compulsion Blow-out for alcoholism. This is probably not an ideal choice, because alcoholism is more than just a compulsion, but say we try it. The most important thing here is to find a precise cue that triggers the compulsion or is closely associated with it. So say the client says, "If there were a martini sitting in front of me right now, I would have no choice but to drink it." That's exactly what I'm looking for.

So I have him visualize a martini glass. (I'm taking it for granted the the trigger is visual.) Now I need to find two "submodalities" (sensory qualities) that will intensify the feeling of compulsion. (Why two? Good question. It seems to work.)

So I ask my client, "What happens if you make that image larger?" If he says something like, "Oh, now I'm starting to feel the need to leave here right now and go get a drink," I've definitely got what I want. Maybe size alone would be enough in this case, but I can also ask, "What happens if you bring the image closer?" "What happens if you make the image brighter?" (Closeness is usually more compelling than distance, brightness usually more compelling than darkness. I worked with at least one friend, though, who found dark images more compelling than bright ones.)

Assuming that I've found brightness and largeness to be key factors, I can now start the process. "Start making that image larger and larger and brighter and brighter." I'm making the compulsion stronger. The client might say, "Oh, I'm starting to really feel the need for a drink right now." This is good, even though it's also a little scary. The stronger the impact on the client, the better the chances for success. Now I keep having him make the image bigger and bigger, brighter and brighter, maybe until the image of that martini glass fills the whole room, and is maybe sparkling like a Las Vegas showgirl's outfit, or glowing like a neon sign, and then to the point where it's like looking right into a theatrical spotlight.

If I haven't got overload by now, I have him start again with the image normal size and brightness and then repeat the process. And repeat, and repeat. It's important that the sequence be very rapid, start with normal size, blow the image up, back to normal size immediately, blow it up again immediately. You want to "ratchet" up the level of intensity.

At some point, you'll reach a threshhold. In my experience, the client will say something at this point like, "Look, I'm losing interest in this process now," or "This is starting to just seem rather generic," or "The image is really fading out on me."

A lot of practitioners like to follow this up by doing the Swish Pattern on the same image (or whatever the sensory trigger was).

When I used to do NLP a lot, I used this a number of times. I used it several times with people who wanted to stop being romantically obsessed, especially with ex-partners. It always seemed to be fairly helpful, although I can't say for sure that it was always 100% successful.

Later when I was taught it as part of the Master Practitioner training from NLP Comprehensive, I learned that it can be done much more intensely than what I had been doing. In our practice exercise, I worked with a woman who wanted to stop chewing on her knuckles. She identified the trigger for the behavior as a tactile sensation, and one of the submodalities was "roughness." I don't remember the second one, so I have to leave that out in what follows, but I used two.

"Imagine that you have that feeling on your finger," I said. "Now make it rougher. Rougher, rougher, rougher, it really bothers you, it feels so rough, it keeps bothering you, you can't stand it, rougher, rougher, rougher." Finally I made it so intense for her that she went over threshhold and then started crying.

The other people in the training thought that I had been unreasonably severe in working with this woman. Perhaps I was. I knew my fellow student reasonably well, and I was pretty sure that she could cope with that level of intensity. She herself said afterwards that what I had done had been fine.

I asked her later whether the process had been successful in stopping the compulsion, and she said that it had helped a lot but that she had later had someone do a Six-step Reframe to complete the work.

--
Universities are nurseries of orthodoxy. The university, while offering a nurturing environment, is not a creative one. It can't be. That isn't the function of higher education.   --- Rita Mae Brown

In article <33798aa9.42095592@news.pipeline.com>, Leslie E. Packer, PhD <lpacker@pipeline.com> wrote:
>
>Bill, Lee, and interested others:
>
>I've been somewhat erratically following up on our past
>discussion/threads on NLP, and obtained a videotape from the NLP
>Comprehensive where Steve Andreas demonstrates the Compulsion Blow-Out
>Technique (I've also watched a bunch of other videos on NLP and have
>been doing some reading, but still feel like a 'baby bird' <g>).
>
>Anyway, one question I had about the technique:
>
>In the examples/demos used, it seemed like there was always an
>external stimulus that drove or triggered the compulsion, and that the
>therapist works with the submodalities of that stimuli.
>
>What would you do if there was no external stimulus, however? What if
>the stimulus, such as it is, is an intrusive, repetitive thought?
>What part does the client then picture?
>
>Let me give you an example, and maybe someone can show me how to apply
>the technique:
>
>Suppose that you're working with someone who suddenly gets intrusive
>and repetitive thoughts/worries/obsessions that they're going to have
>a heart attack. Let's assume just for purposes of example/demo, that
>their compulsion is to then check their pulse repeatedly.
>
>Where do you start or where might you start?

It is an axiom in NLP that everything in subjective experience occurs in sensory form, if we understand that as referring both to sensory information that comes from the outside and sensory information that the brain/body generates itself. This assumption is taken so much for granted in NLP that I seldom see it explicitly stated.

Now one of the things that complicates this is that one of the NLP sensory categories is called "kinesthetic" --- I think that most psychologists today prefer the term somasthetic --- and is really a grab bag consisting of a myriad of different kinds of sensations: tactile, proprioceptive, visceral, feelings in the sense of emotions (which presumably can mostly be broken down into muscle sensations, although I've never heard or seen that issue discussed).

Also it seems to be useful to treat language as a separate category, even though it is experienced in auditory, visual, or tactile form (for instance braille). Presumably this is because such a large part of the brain is devoted to processing language and there's presumably more processing involved in handling language than other auditory information.

Based on this assumption, any sort of thought or worry (or belief, or memory, for that matter) could be presumably be broken down into images and kinesthetic sensations. Usually I think one would find a visual image, together with words or sentences, that trigger a compulsive act. In some cases, isolating such images and feelings ("Where specifically in your body do you have this feeling?") would probably be the most difficult part of the work, requiring extremely good rapport with the client and a lot of resourcefulness from the therapist.

In some ways, I think that this is similar to the cognitive-behavioral approach (not that I know much about that). What's different is the type of intervention one uses once one has the information.

I think that the example you give would really be pushing the envelope as far as the use of the Compulsion Blow-out. Perhaps some other NLP people who read this can give an answer based less on theory and more on actual experience.

--
After a while one gets used to being a frog,
Even though eating flies is rather off-putting at first.
One day a lovely young maiden came along and kissed me.
For a moment, I thought I'd been changed into a handsome prince.
But then she said,
     ``Can't we be just friends?''
<Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady/>