One of my favourite NLP queries is “How do you know?” While I love using it for information gathering, I was pleasantly surprised when someone on one of our NLP trainings asked me “How do you know when someone has experienced real change?”
Those of you doing coaching or changework may already know that clients often want to please you. Sometimes this means they’ll report that internal change has taken place even when it hasn’t. I got fooled by this a few times when I first started doing changework, so over the years I’ve developed a kind of ‘spidey-sense’ about whether people have really experienced a shift, or whether they’re just trying to please me. When the Practitioner asked me “How do you know?”, I had to go inside my own experience and make explicit some of the things I’m responding to that let me know a change has taken place:
Long-term change in circumstances
This is the most reliable indicator of change. If you help someone to stop smoking, and a year later they still aren’t smoking, that’s an excellent sign that the change has taken place.
Reality-Based Testing
If you do a phobia cure with someone who has a fear of dogs, go find a dog! If you think you’ve sorted out their fear of heights, find a tall building. If they were scared of talking to people, get them to go out and speak with strangers. Whenever I do changework, I want to find the most immediate way to test my work that I can. If the change has worked, the test creates a strong convincer for the person. If it hasn’t worked, then you know asap that there’s more to do.
Imaginary Testing
Sometimes this isn’t practical. If you do a phobia cure with someone who has a fear of flying, you may not want to wait until they next fly to find out if it’s worked. Fortunately, the nervous system processes a vividly imagined experience in a very similar way to a ‘real’ experience. Get them to vividly imagine the context where they wanted a change (“See what you’d see, hear what you’d hear, and feel what you’d feel etc), and notice their non-verbal responses (skin colour, breathing rate, expression etc). If you already know how to use hypnosis, you can intensify the experience by leading them into a trance first.
Involuntary Shifts
When a person experiences a shift in their patterns of thought and associated behaviours, their ‘involuntary patterns’ also change. If you are tracking these patterns prior to the change, you can notice the differences after the change has taken place. Examples include:
- Skin colour changes (especially around the face, neck and upper chest)
- Postural shifts (general posture, head-tilt, etc)
- Eye-accessing (the patterns of their eye-movements)
- Sensory words
- Internal strategies (sequences of internal sensory processing)
- Meta-programs, etc
Covert Questioning
This is one of my favourites. Use an embedded question (eg. “With some clients I ask ‘Has your unconscious mind really accepted this change’, but with you it seems clear”) and observe their unconscious response. If you are in rapport, their head will nod or shake depending on their unconscious mind’s answer to the embedded ‘Has your unconscious mind really accepted this change’. Sneaky, huh!
Changes in Other Patterns / Novelty
If the client reports sudden and major shifts in other areas of their life, or changes a habitual pattern during the session, this can be an indication of change.
The Conscious Mind Report
The conscious mind report (“My goodness, I feel so much better. Thank you, you really are amazing!”) is (sadly) the least reliable evidence of change. In my opinion, the unconscious mind is running the show. All of the above evidences of change are reports from the unconscious mind. These are always more reliable than the conscious mind report.
