MP: All right, welcome to the Teleclass. This is Mark Peysha with the Robbins-Madanes Training, Cloe Madanes from the Robbins & Madanes Training and we’re very excited to get started. This week has been an intense process for all of us and we’re very happy that you made it here. It’s a great class. We’ve had communications with so many of you – a very diverse, very interesting people from all over the world, of different types of professions, professional backgrounds, from people who have a lot of training experience as a coach and to people who have no training experience as a coach but who want to become coaches or want to implement this in your professional life or in other areas of your life. So, we’re just so happy to have you here. We have some new countries on board that we never had before. It’s a very international group. And so, Cloe, if there’s anything you’d like to say, I will then go on to – it may – it takes a few minutes to be very clear about with what’s ahead for us in the training.

C: Yes. Go ahead and if I have something to add, I’ll interrupt.

MP: Great! Okay. So, I just want to be very clear about what the sequence is for the training. We’re right now in the first five weeks, we’re going to be more intensive and it’s going to be – we’re going to be releasing one module and one call per week for five weeks, and then it will shift down to once every ten days and the reason is 'cause we’re all very excited and it’s great to get this fundamental concepts under our belts.

So, the sequence you want to follow is: 1. You will watch the video of any module. So, you’ll go to the modules you have in your membership site and you can watch the video. 2. Complete the homework and as you’ll see the homework gets emailed to us immediately where we read it and it gets placed in your personal homework archives. So, to see that no one else gets to read her homework, you can be completely confidential about it. It’s only going to be seen by Cloe and myself and yourself. 3. You attend the teleclass with us and this is an intercession right now where we will be sharing with you some of the foundational strategy and the strategic intervention which we call mega strategies and we’ll talk about them in greater depth in a few minutes.

And so those are the first three steps, the teleclass will be recorded…

C: Mark, let me interrupt just for a moment. And my little lecture that comes before the sale, how do they get that?

MP: Yes. I’m sorry.

C: The little lecture that comes before the sale, am I right? It’s for the module. Where is that?

MP: That’s right next to the homework.

C: Okay.

MP: So basically the video, the little lecture and the home work – all of one piece – and those who actually, those that record parts of the training requirements, “is to watch the film, read the little lecture and do the homework.” And so then the teleclasses are a bonus that we feel a very important bonus in the training because in that Cloe now will be giving you a whole another way of looking at the films in the intervention. So even if you have had experience watching the Ultimate Relationship Program films, or if you’ve seen this film, or you’re familiar with them, you’re about to open up a whole another level of understanding and how those strategic, how those interventions work, exactly what Tony did.

Inside the films, we created the films to help people who are in a relationship trouble not necessarily for coaches or for people who want to understand exactly how Tony unlocked, you know, that person’s problem and solved it. And so, in our sessions we will really be going into the detail. And so, after those three steps, watching the video, reading the lecture and completing the homework and then attending the Teleclass, the additional activities are for you to join the forum where you get to interact with each other, share ideas, master mind, ask for advice, we have incredibly talented and good-hearted people on board. People are generating new ideas about core concepts like the Six Human Needs, doing their own analysis of Tony’s interventions. It’s fascinating. It’s amazing, their expertise. You can contact there so spend sometime there.

The study buddy program is the next piece and so if you need to be hooked up with a buddy, look for an email from me later this week. This applies to anyone in the training, whatever your membership, you can get a buddy. So, we’ll pair you with someone. You will receive a series of study buddy assignments, and exercise that you can do together. This is short. The two of you can work at the logistics but assignments take maybe 30 minutes and each person takes it 15 minutes or so. And you can schedule this however you like if you work it out between the two of you, once a week, once every two weeks and so forth.

And if you want two buddies or three, you know, that’s fine. We can help you put as many people and we also recommend that time to time people switch buddies. So people need to switch as often if they just want to get a little more variety, interaction with more people, experience with a little more different type of people. So I’d say it is a kind of thing where people you know, makes friends with the buddy and then they can get another buddy as well, and that’s totally cool with us.

C: Let me add something to that, it’s not mandatory to have a buddy however.

MP: That’s right.

C: Some people prefer not doing that kind.

MP: Yes. So, we want to be, we want to be clear with that. The mandatory parts are to watch the films.

C: And do the homework. Just that.

MP: Read the homeworks and do the little lecture that is associated with the home work. That is the mandatory part. The other parts are just for engaging more deeply and more thoroughly and spending more time.

So the next piece to know about is the private podcast so everyone can be getting the films and audios on their private podcast in your iTunes account. So, if you don’t have an iTunes account yet, that’s fine. If you have a computer, it takes a few minutes to set it up and we’ll help you with that. And iTunes means that you will get your stack of videos and audios delivered to your computer in a way that is easy to transfer to your cell phone, or iPod or other device. I’ll be sending out information on how to do that later this week or possibly Monday.

And we need to have our text support ready for you to make sure that everyone if you have any problems, we’ll be right there with you. Hopefully get everybody resolved from then the next week. And this is also great. It makes it very portable. So if you spend a lot of time in transit, or you travel on the plane you could just open up your laptop or your device and watch all your films and do another module of training. And also why sometimes you hear from people who have sometimes spent time in places with internet is very poor so this is the place where you could load up on all your materials and even if you’re traveling in, in the hour you know the northwest or the mountains or wherever the signal is not very strong you can continue with the training.

So the next piece is the acceleration program, that’s the program where you can basically – people who don’t want to go the modules – they want to go there more quickly – I’ll talk to you later this week about how to open your questionnaire and you can request that option. And just a quick overview, the other bonus that we mentioned the marketing module, the workplace intensive will start around in September when people are back from summer vacation. I think we’ll all be more present and to dig our teeth into into those topics. We’ll have the syllabus and schedules are free by Monday and you’ll get the big view of what’s ahead.

The basic summary though is that we’ll be going five weekly teleclasses, five Wednesdays and for the foundational concepts of strategic intervention that we’re moving to another area called Mastery units. And the Mastery unit is a cluster of four to six modules focusing on a specific topic that you could have mastered. And the mastery unit focus on understanding the different phases of life or some mastery units focus on areas of life which is health.

In each case, the purpose of mastery unit is to deliver the most useful strategies that you could contribute to someone in that area. You may not become an expert with this but if someone is having a problem in that area, as an interventionist you going to understand the key points, the key progress that can be made. And so if you happen to be working with a client who’s frustrated about their weight you’ll have ways to understand and help. Or if you’re working with someone who’s have career performance issues and you

learned that it’s because they have little kids and they are fighting with their spouse, well you’ll know how to make a difference in a very elegant and effective way.

And finally, the big picture our goal here is to equip you guys to be awesome, strategic intervention coaches. So, wherever in society you happen to be operating we think it’s time that professionals and people in general had a higher standard for knowing how to make others, help other people make changes and we’re really looking forward to the develop ourselves and take this mission forward. So, whether you’re going to be a full time coach or work in another profession, or help people around you, wherever you are you’re going to be able to change some lives and so with that wish that we start this program. So one last thing, practicality about 45 minutes at the end of this call we will be answering questions. So if you have any questions at any point feel free to press star-two and raise your hand and get in line. Also I can see you guys on the webcast so feel free to enter your questions a well. Okay. So, Cloe, shall we start? C: Yeah. So I’m going to talk a little bit about what’s strategic intervention and coaching are and what is strategic coaching.

MP: What we’ve done is that we took the best of the coaching field and the best of strategic intervention and integrated the two. So what that means, is that if this is the best of Tony Robbins combined with the best of my work and we built on the contribution of important people in the field such as Milton Erickson. Ericsson originated three main schools of therapy and that will be strategic brief therapy and strategic family therapy. And if so in that sense Tony comes from an NLP background and I come from a strategic therapy background but we both – it comes from the work of Milton Erickson that influenced Tony greatly through the work of Grinder, one of the creators of NLP.

So we also took the best of Gestalt therapy and the best of social psychology, organizational psychology and integrated with the work of the Harvard School in terms of mediation and negotiation. So what is characteristic of this approach is that whether you’re working with an individual, a couple or a group, this is an interaction of view. So we never have the narrow perspective of just an individual that we’re trying to influence. We are always influencing relationships, we are always thinking of the larger social context, the social structure, the interactions between people. And we are very aware of hierarchy and cross-generation of relationship. And all of this will come through to you in the next few modules.

So what we’ve done with Tony’s footage is that we’ve taken the most important concepts and put a narration and explanation to with and added a short lecture like by me like Mark was explaining. Actually, Tony has been asking us to do this for 5 years at least. And I kept thinking that it was too difficult but finally, we did it and we’re very happy to have done it because this is the best training anywhere and it’s my work definitely at the highest level and the same for Mark. So…

MP: Great. So this is truly an inter-disciplinary project. We think of it as something – as somewhat – open ended, we think of it as very compatible with other forms of work. So

if you come from a different field, we have people who are educators, mediators, managers, CEO’s, best-selling authors as part of this training. We also have people who are trainers, coaches and therapists. And we basically want your ideas, we want to use what you need to learn and use what you know how to do and make it open ended so you can apply it but you can also bring something to strategic intervention.

C: Yeah. What is wonderful about strategic intervention is that you can always develop new strategies. So this approach is not an orthodox. So far there’s only one way of doing things. Anything, we take anything that works. The test for an intervention is that it works or not. And whatever you can contribute, if it works, it will be wonderful to incorporate and to develop new strategies.

MP: Absolutely, we really believe that it is important to be creative and the way to keep this tradition alive is for people to be innovating and applying it to different areas. So we’re really gang ho about that.

And we’re getting some great stories from people, also. We have – every week we get stories from different professions with their ideas. Okay. So let’s start on the mega strategies. The next five weeks we’ll be focusing on the mega strategies and these are large scale strategies that were responsible for probably around 80% of your success in intervention and then the conversation. And our mega strategies are extremely simple and powerful; it’s something that you can use in any conversation in life and if you want to use a core strategy this week, you do not have to go looking for a coaching client. You can do it anywhere.

And our goal is to describe the mega strategy; show how it works. And then invite you to introduce it into your communications, in your normal life or in your practice. Just become aware of that level of communication. You can do with your buddy as well. And mega strategy is, it’s one of those things someone looks at what’s something that Tony’s doing then say, “Wow! They did this great job and they did this.” You know, went to these three steps and then someone else says, “Why I can do these three steps.” Well, we are able to do them that well. Well, it’s kind of like a – you know the Michael Jordan who is the basketball player and what people used to say about him is, “He’s incredibly talented but he also spends tremendous amount of hours just shooting the hoops.” It was like a fundamental right? But being focused on the fundamentals that you need to have.

Well, I believe that any person who is a master in any area has got certain fundamentals of him if he’d just put in the time. And so the mega strategies are the areas of intervention that we’re picking out better something like, “Hey! These are the five things. If you practice these five things, you’re going to have an amazing muscle and amazing ability to make interventions work even if you don’t have to know all the other steps.

So, let’s start talking about the mega strategy in the Lindsey film. The first one is a strategy of metaphor in communication. Right, Cloe?

C: Right. So everybody has watched the Lindsey film. So do you remember that she talks about the heavy bag that she is carrying and the heavy bag is her debt and she has to repay this debt and it brings her down and it’s so heavy and Tony very skillfully, through metaphorical communication helps her to get rid of that bag? If you remember, first he asked her to put it down. When she puts it down, she shows in her physiology that she’s actually experiencing putting down that bag. It’s very interesting to watch her body movement then.

And ultimately Tony has her shoot it into the air and it disappears. And Lindsey responds to that and is obviously immediately relieved. It was so interesting to me that right after that, where in the beginning of the conversation she was referring to her work as a terrible pain for her, difficult thing, no joy in it at all but she had to work to pay the debt. When she has rid of that metaphorical bag, she explains she actually loves her work and she’s very happy about it. And it’s as if she can’t even remember the way that she talked about her work at the beginning which was completely disparaging kind of a reference. So this is the power of metaphor. Metaphors are extremely powerful when you are able to change a metaphor, you change the meaning and you change a person’s behavior.

So, let me explain a couple of things about metaphor. Metaphor can be simply a communication. For example, this heavy bag that I carry around as high as a kite. So, it can be a phrase, but it can also be an image. For example, the cross, which is a very powerful metaphor. But a metaphor – and this is really my contribution to the fields of metaphors – a metaphor can also be an interaction. For example, you can have an interaction between two people that is a metaphor for an interaction between two other people – sounds complicated but it’s really very simple. For example, a brother and sister might fight with each other in a way that is metaphorical of the arguments between the mother and the father. So, what happens with the interaction on metaphors is that often the metaphor in the interaction replaces the original interaction. So, for example, mother and father might be arguing, fighting with each other when the brother and sister begin to fight and their fight reaches a certain point. The mother and father are not arguing with each other anymore. They’re focused on the children. For example, they are talking about how could these children be so bad, how can we stop them from being violent? That kind of thing. But the fact is, that the fighting of the children replaced the fighting of the parents and it replaced the unpleasant or disturbing interaction between the parents.

So I’m sure that some of you are wondering whether children can actually do something like this deliberately. Yes, sometimes they do it deliberately, sometimes they do it unwittingly or unconsciously. But children can plan behaviors much more complicated than this. Just look at the kinds of things that they do in the computer games and so on. So, it’s no surprise that children might say, “Oh, when we fight with each other then mom and dad stop fighting so let’s do more of that.” And in this way, they are protecting their parents and to the point where their father might be even have been at the point of pushing the mother or hitting her and that negative interaction was interrupted by the children’s fighting.

MP: Yeah. The protective instinct of children is extremely ingenious. And children may not consciously realize that they’re doing something for that reason except that they feel it releases some tension in the family and children kind of lived in the space of the family. They feel it; it’s as if it’s their own body. So if it takes the tension off for the parents’ tension, the little boy or little girl know that they can ask certain annoying questions at certain times to get the people in the family to shift the focus to absolutely do that. And so…

C: But adults also do that to a great extent. So when you’re talking with someone or coaching an adult, it’s important to think, “Who is this person trying to protect? What are they protecting from what? Who? How are they are doing it?” And in Lindsey’s case, of course, she was being very protective of her children because her children had such a serious problem that she was – in doing that, she was neglecting her husband who was her greatest strength and her greatest resource.

MP: Yeah. And so often with metaphors that’s also the language of experience. What seems to make it so effective? It’s that when people are usually in the point where they’re feeling upset overwhelmed. You know, I meant it usually comes out with a metaphor. “I am at the end of my rope. I am feeling like I’m shut out here. You can’t stop me.” These are metaphors and that is how people experience them. And so when Tony gives her another metaphor or just brings her to the consciousness of – basically use that metaphor and does something with the metaphor – he actually does something in her. There is something strange in the human body. And I believe the husband had to deal with the fact that when we were children, we learn, we program our nervous system. We learned through play and play is imaginative. And when people are having imaginative play, they are inhabiting the space of metaphor. So, you’re being, “I’m going to be a dog and you are going to be a cat.” “I am going to be the fireman and you will be my friend fireman and we are going to go fight that fire.” It’s all – the scenarios that you put in your body are metaphors. I have a four year old boy and he’s – definitely runs into a lot of situations where he just does not want to do something. So, he wanted to get in the car and he says, “I want to go in the car. I want to go,” you know. “I will stay home.” And then, but I found that you know, it can be as simple as this, but I used a metaphor and said, “But you’re not getting in the car. We have to get you a new vehicle because we’re going to the moon.” And he goes, “Whoa!” “Yes, we got to go get some of those moon jeeps.” And whatever it is, you can use metaphors and so you know adults respond the same way. It was weird, isn’t it? And so often you’ll see in the intervention, when you’re watching Tony you’ll see that he is working with someone with a bit of little resistance and the kind of not accepting it – and usually people aren’t accepting it. They either don’t feel understood or they feel like it’s the wrong metaphor you are asking of them. So you shift the metaphor into left. Shift like a glove and they can do that thing. So…

C: Okay. So, I want to point out also that the behavior of an individual can also be a metaphor for another person’s behavior. I wanted to tell you a story of this case and it’s very interesting because the words several different levels of metaphor. And this was a little boy that the family consulted because he had terrible headache and the doctors could

not find any physiological cause for this headaches. And when we began to interview the family, we discovered that the father had terrible problems at work. He didn’t get along with his boss and he got a very stressful job. He actually worked for a newspaper and he had terrible deadlines. And so he was afraid of losing his job and he came home with a metaphorical headache which was the headache that his job was. Now, he would come home eager to pick a fight with his wife and as a way of letting off the scene. And typically, he would come home and say something and then rush to the wife. And at that moment, the little boy would complain that he had a headache and he had terrible pain. And so the father would focus off his attention on the boy trying to distract and help him and at that moment was disconnected from his grouchiness towards the wife. And so, it is interesting because the child provided a temporary solution but ultimately he only added to the father’s problems and it is always like that, when people are trying to protect someone in an indirect way.

So, it was interesting because there were more metaphors in them and other metaphorical interaction between the children. It was that they would fight with each other. And in that way replace the parents fighting with each other.

MP: That’s right. It’s almost like in an unhealthful immune response in the sense that it prevents the primary problem from becoming severe but he creates a side problem and you know that is very, very common that if you’re working with a family, you’re understanding a child like their teacher for instance, and the child has got issues, then often that is the result of the metaphorical kind of use of attention in the family or more metaphorical acting out that is protecting the family, protecting the parents from experiencing another level of problem. Well then, it is very confusing, if sometimes when you work with the child directly and it’s confusing but we know how to deal with it. When you work with the child directly and for instance you work with the boy, too with the headache and he gets better, then often the real problem will resurface. And then…

C: That’s one – one of the ways of solving this is that you focus on the original problem. And so you help the father to deal better with his work, to deal better with his wife, to be more explicit about what he needs to have to change that work and then the child’s headache disappear. And that’s exactly what we did in that case.

MP: Great! So basically, there is one way you can look at something that you don’t understand the behavior, you don’t understand the symptom. It doesn’t have any physiological basis. And so you think, “Hmm, this could be a metaphorical expression without the problem. Work on the primary problem and the metaphorical one looks – stops being useful and stops being triggered. Does that make sense?

C: It makes sense to me.

MP: Great.

C: So, only first dealt with the metaphor of the heavy bag with Lindsey and then when she began to look at things in her life and did it more brightly and began to consider that she actually enjoyed her work, then Tony led her to be able to enjoy her husband and to see him as the greatest resource. And I know that some of you are thinking, “How did Tony know that the husband was the greatest resource?” And when you think about it, it’s completely obvious. This man stayed with Lindsey in spite of her drinking, gambling, incurring bad huge debt. He stayed with her even though they had two children who were so sick. Many husbands cannot stand the pain of seeing their children with so many problems and they leave. But he stayed through everything and he obviously was tolerant and compassionate. And even though Lindsey complained that he didn’t do enough to obtain what had to be done for the girls and so on, probably Lindsey blocking him from doing those things because Lindsey was the great expert who knew exactly what had to be done about the daughters. So, it was obvious to me from the beginning of the intervention that the husband had to be a great asset and a great resource and Tony immediately caught on to that and have Lindsey in the best possible way that he could which was to get her to appreciate her greatest resource.

MP: Exactly. So in this case, we’ll have some – if this sound complex to you – we’ll break it down for you. So don’t worry but we’re just basically trying to open up the discussion here that there are many different ways that you can work with metaphors as a mega strategy once you develop this instinct. And so, in these case, Tony worked with the metaphor first and then after the metaphors, he was able to work on the primary problem.

Other times, you might see that there is a metaphorical symptom say of – you can work with the primary problem first and the metaphor goes away. So it’s just kind of two ways of understanding how things happen and if you’re thinking about this, you might think about people that you know that someone has got a problem that‘s hard to explain like something that has a physiological basis or something where the person is not acting to their capacity. And you can think about it, like well, so who is the metaphor for someone would? What is he actually doing in that group? Whose attention is he getting? How was it diverting the attention and the actions of all the people? What are they not doing because that person has gone bad? And it’s just the way of thinking interactively and where creatively gets you a lot more flexibility and you understand some of the interactive patterns in groups. So that you can even think about in work places where there is someone who has some certain types of complaints that seems that’s not quite as substantiated or some kind of experience. So I just want to put that out there. Cloe has some great stories about ways to be a better person.

C: Yeah. I want to tell the story that is related to how to change a metaphor. Sometimes some metaphors are so ingrained in the culture that the meaning is taken for granted and never questioned and sometime the metaphor can be an unfortunate metaphor. So let me tell you the story.

A friend of mine asked me to do a consultation with a man that he was friendly with and that he was very worried about because this man had actually moved to San Diego and

certain that he was going to find a job here and the job had not materialized. And he had been out of work for quite awhile and he couldn’t get any job and he was very depressed and talking about suicide. So my friend asked me if I would see him once. So he came into my office looking very sad and overweight, middle-aged man and he sat down heavily in front of me and I said that I hear that you have been concerned and sad and troubled because you can’t find a job and he said, “Yes, it’s been nine months now that I’m looking for a job and I’m completely discouraged that I have even thought about committing suicide.” And I said, “Isn’t the thought about committing suicide of over not having a job over not working?” And he said, “Yeah, I am very depressed about the situation.” And I said, “Wait a minute. You’re going to have to explain this to me more clearly. What’s quite so sad about not having work?” He looked at me like he could have said that I was coming from another planet. He said, “A work is very important for a person not only to be able to making a living but a man’s self-esteem is tied to his work. I have no self-esteem right now.” And I said, “You know, I don’t get it. I’m quite older than you. I’m really from the ‘60s generation and we didn’t want to work and none of my friends worked and we were very proud of that. We called work the rat race. We wanted to turn on, tune in and drop out. We’re not going to be a part of that rat race. And here you are about to kill yourself because you don’t have work, I do not get.” And so at this point, he was smiling a little bit. And I said to him, “By the way, what kind of work do you do?” And he said, “I’m an engineer and I have always worked in plants that manufacture weapons.” And I said, “Oh great! So the world is a better place because you’re not working.”

At this point, he was laughing. So I said, “Anyway, do you have a girlfriend?” And he said, “No. I can’t have a girlfriend. I don’t have any money.” And I said, “Since when money and love are connected? There is no connection there. You know what?” I said, “You should be enjoying the time that you have now to spend in any way you wish because you are not working. Because eventually you’re going to have to go to work and that’s inevitable. And then you will be sorry for all this things that you didn’t do while you didn’t have work.” “For example,” I said, “Go to the mountains, go the beach, go to the zoo.”

So he laughs then later on he left in a much better mood than he had come in. And the next morning, I had my work in my office and the phone rings and it’s him. And he says, “I just wanted to tell you that it’s a beautiful day.” And I said looking out the window, “Yes, it is. It’s a really beautiful day.” And he said, “And I’m at the zoo.” He paused and then he added, “With a woman.” So, he had followed my advice and a couple of months later he wrote to me saying how much I have helped him and that he had gotten a job eventually and then everything was okay.

MP: I think so. You know, you were in danger of permanently turning him off from work.

C: I know.

MP: But it is something that you didn’t corrupt him.

C: No, I wouldn’t have minded doing that.

MP: Cloe Madenas is here at Medical Society, if you’re making people here – encouraging people not to work that’s hilarious. But in a short term, it sounds like he was at the mercy of an unfortunate metaphor. If you feel that way.

C: Exactly.

MP: And that metaphor was actually instrumental…

C: I shifted that metaphor. It’s difficult to go back so he was completely into the Protestant ethic culture and he couldn’t see beyond it. Work was the most important thing. Work was like Godliness and when you open the door to the idea that there’s another way of living, you don’t have to be like that, it’s difficult to move back to that restricted way of thinking.

MP: Yeah. And metaphor has it when it’s unconscious when someone has it, it has a certain charge to it and just by making a conscious questioning it or tweaking it or asking the person to try it or change a little bit, it removes the charge – that kind of the unconscious charge from it that causes the suffering.

C: And then you’ll free her restrictions of the particular culture. So this is where a factor – another factor of strategic intervention that is very important is that our goal is to expand these assumptions to make more options available. There are many different ways of living. So what I made available to this man was that he could be happy without having work and before talking to me that was for him was unthinkable.

MP: Yep. And sometimes specially in your work, the people are in suffering because they feel like that there are options and there are actually other options but the person has shut them down inside themselves. So, even if they – it maybe something that’s frowned upon by the society like the idea that a man won’t work, that he is unemployed, he is going to go have fun.

C: In my day, it wasn’t frowned. We all did. That was the truth.

MP: But I’m - I am saying that you found the option of that he’d been shutting off from himself. You opened it up. Truly, the metaphor.

C: That’s right. And the same that Tony did with Lindsey having the image of the bad being blasted into the sun and she also have the image of the husband not preventing her from gambling and drinking and getting into debts is something bad that the husband had done when Tony in fact pointed out to her that that were acts of love, that the husband love her so much, that he would do anything to see her happy even for a moment. Once she knows that her husband was like that, she couldn’t go back to thinking of the husband as someone unhelpful.

MP: What’s great about metaphor is that people accept it because it’s an image and it’s a feeling. People accept it so you can flip, you can change. If you’re keyed-in to what metaphor someone is using, you can shift that metaphor without even – you don’t have to announce it, you don’t have to say, “Hey, you’re in a metaphor. I’m going to shift it.” You just do it. You can just give him a different metaphor, offer a little – change it or poke fun at the money – metaphor. You know, say, “This has been the simplest thing in the world. Hey, nice today. Yeah I know, but – my – you know, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my umbrella today.” That’s a silly thing but if you’re shifting your metaphor – you know what I’m saying?

C: Yeah.

MP: So, this is one of the things that you can use anywhere, anytime and if you’re aware of the metaphor, basically, most times that someone is in a height of emotional state; they’re experiencing a metaphor of some sort.

C: Right.

MP: If you’re aware of that, then you can know how you can shift that metaphor towards one that might be more helpful. Again, this is an advance thing, that just being aware of the metaphor, thinking about it, watching it, it’s very useful at this point.

C: The least [Inaudible] of expanding the unit.

MP: Yeah. So this is the next mega strategy which we call expanding the unit. And so, there is also an evidence in the Lindsey film and in this situation where Lindsey originally presented her situation with symptoms of helplessness and she presented a problem that was very isolating. And people in our culture tend to take upon themselves their problems and make them individualistic. So, it was, you know for Lindsey was something that she had done in the past that she can’t change. She was dealing with the consequence of what she had done. It was the debt. No one is going to change the debt; no one is going to change the money. It was very difficult that someone will present a problem like that without presenting the larger relationships in their life. And so for instance Lindsey did not mention that she had daughters who were ill. Or she did not mention her husband until they came into the case. So, until Tony brought it up, right.

And so, you know the idea behind expanding the unit is that if you’re working with someone and they’ve got a problem, there’s a whole dimension that you can bring it to by bringing in the relationships becoming aware of them. So the relationships do more than just help you understand the problem. For instance, the problem is a metaphor for something else. You can learn these by interviewing and speaking to people in the person’s life or just by learning about the relationships.

C: But you can also – you can also, instead of bringing people physically into the situation when you cannot do that, you can bring them into a telephone call or you can even just ask the individual with whom you’re working for, “What would your wife say?

What would your husband say? What would your father say? What would your grandmother say?” And it’s a way of bringing those people into the room.

MP: Exactly. And often you’ll find, if you ask the person what was your wife saying you’ll see the person shifts, their mood shifts. “Oh. She wouldn’t like that. Well, then you know what’s you’re working with. You know you’re expanding the unit enough to understand that.

C: So I want to tell a story and disregarded it. This is interesting. This was a work-related problem. A woman came to consult. She was in her late thirties and she had a very good job selling medical products to pharmacies. So, she had to drive around to the various pharmacies and all of a sudden she had developed terrible panic attack to the point that she couldn’t do her job anymore because she was afraid of having a panic attack on the highway which had happened several times and she had almost had a couple of very bad crush and this was a situation that I was supervising a therapist talking to her and this woman had no explanation of why the panic attack.

Whatever questions were asked about her life, everything was okay. Nothing much related to this. And she had a mother who was sick, but it was okay. She had a sister but she had never been close to the sister and it’s just that we could not figure out what this was. So, after struggling like this for a while, I said to the therapist, “You know you’ve got to convince her that you need to speak with her mother; that you want to call her mother on the phone because the mother might give us a totally different perspective on this.” And it’s a serious problem. We need to understand it.

And so the therapist spent an entire hour trying to convince this woman to let her call the mother on the phone and she always had an excuse. Now it’s the time when my mother is taking a nap, I don’t want to wake her up or she’s too sick to really talk with you. Finally, I suggested to the therapist to just ask the woman to call the mother herself right there and the therapist would just observe how they talk to each other. So it was very funny because she accepted to do this and the moment that she dialed the phone and the mother picked up is she said, “Mom, I’m here talking to a therapist and the therapist needs to speak with you so I put her on.” She passed the phone through there. And the therapist said to the mother, “I am talking to your daughter because I don’t know if she really knows that she had some anxiety problems that had become quite severe and I want your opinion about what might be the cause of these.” And the mother immediately told her, this woman had been very close to her sister, was her only sister and to her sister’s children; that the woman was single, she had never been married and she didn’t have children so she had taken on her niece and her nephew as her own and loved them deeply.

Now the two sisters have had some disagreement about money and the sister refused to let her see the children again so she was cut off from her most important relationships. All these were explained by the mother. And we knew exactly what had to be done. We have to reconcile the sisters and we did that. And actually, the woman was right about the money issue. The sister was not right. But we just have to understand that sometimes

it’s more important to keep your love, your connections, your relationship than to be right and to be a little more flexible then reconnect with the sister so she could have the children again. So she did that and the whole problem was solved. So basically, it was solved only because we were able to talk to her mother.

MP: Yes. And you know in our culture, it’s a little weird in that people suppress that. They suppress that relationship – relational aspect or you can think of that panic attack as a metaphorical expression of something that was happening in the relationship where the key problem was between her and her sister. Right. And then repression that was happening in their family. So, it’s one of the things where if you were working with her and this individual as a coach and you’re working on panic attacks and breathing in all that stuff, you’re not getting to the key source. The source was the relationship and it’s much more effective and quick and long-lasting if you go out and you find that relational – you expand the unit, you find out the other source of conflict that was happening and the solution was actually pretty simple. It was basically asking – you know telling her, “Look. I think you should prioritize it. You should put this money issue behind you and focus on solidarity with your sister and be able to spend time with those nieces of yours.”

C: That’s right. And I want to tell another story because I want to make another point. And this story is going to be both about the importance of metaphors and the importance of expanding the unit. In terms of metaphor, what is important to understand is that the intensity of the metaphor that you choose to use has to be comparable to the intensity of the problem that you’re trying to solve. So, if it’s a minor problem, you’ll use a minor metaphor. If it’s a very serious problem, you’ll use a very intense serious metaphor.

So, this was a situation of a family that I saw myself when I was living in Washington D.C. There is a hospital. They are, that is famous for working with anorexics and it’s at Georgetown University Hospital and from time to time they would send me their worst cases when a girl was basically dying, I would get the referral. And of course, in the hospital they had an individual point of view so they just tried to get her to eat and she would gain some weight in the hospital and then she would come home and again. And this girl had been in and out of the hospital for about a year and a half. It was very serious. She came in looking like a horrible skeleton. She had been expelled from her school because she was too scary to look at by the other children and obviously she couldn’t do the work because she was so weak. And of course, she was delusional and thinking that she thought there was nothing wrong with her.

The father is a famous lawyer, a Washington prosecutor, and the story, his story was that he had married this girl’s mother – we’ll call her Amy. Three months after his own father had died, he married Amy’s mother and he said that he was just acting out because of his grief over his father’s death. He really never got along well with this woman and they divorced while she was pregnant with Amy. And they live just two blocks from each other so ever since Amy was an infant; she was shot off from one house to the other. The father, it was so horrible, divorced her even though the father provided for mother and daughter well and so on, he had told a contempt for Amy’s mother. She hated him and took me awhile to find this out because she was a society type of person and she didn’t

even come to see me. The father and daughter came the first time, the mother had some charity travels – some trip with her charity. So, I had to get her on the phone and convince her that she absolutely have to speak with me because her daughter was basically near death.

And so I found out that the mother was the only child of holocaust survivor. Her parents were dead now. She had had an aunt who had died of anorexia. She had no other relative – only her daughter. And quickly I realized that for this little fifteen-year-old girl, she said that she was never going to be able to leave her mother. The mother had nobody else to help her, to take care of her. And I thought she, that Amy would be thinking, I’m never going to be able to leave for college, I’m never going to be able to get married. I have to say with my mother especially because of the contempt and the constant attacks by the father. I could see that Amy felt that she had to be in a protective position towards the mother and this was a daunting task for a little girl of that age because the father was a famous prosecutor so when he began to verbally attack the mother, he was extremely skillful at doing that and his attacks were devastating.

So, when I realized the extent of the antagonism between them and how alone in the world the mother was, and how Amy felt that she would never be able to grow up and do normal things like other girls, I said to the father, “I need to see you alone.” So, I sat down with him and I said look, “I know that you’re a very intelligent person and you’re a very busy person and I don’t want to waste your time. I’m a very busy person also and I don’t want to waste my time so I’m going to tell you what you have to do to save your daughter’s life. If you want to save her life, you’ll do it. If you don’t do it, she’s going to die.” He said, “Well, of course, I want to save her life. What do you want me to do?” So I said, “The war between you and your ex-wife must stop because your daughter is taking all the bullets. So this is the metaphor I introduce “the war and bullets to the daughter.” This is a powerful metaphor.

So I said, “What you have to do is that you have to tell your ex-wife that you’re always going to take care of her no matter what, that she will never be lacking in anything, that you will always be there with your strength to support her and to help her in every way and you have to tell her this not once. You have to tell her this every day, two or three times a day, every single day. You call her on the phone and you ask her if she needs anything and whatever she needs, you provide it. If you need to hire another assistant to help you with this, to provide things for her, you hire another assistant and you do this three times a day.”

Now, I knew that he saw his daughter three times a day so I said when you see your daughter because he will take her to school, pick her up from school, take her to the organic market where she would buy the little vegetables and feeds – that she ate. I said that three times a day when you see your daughter, I want you to tell her that you will always love her mother and protect her and take care of her. Not as your wife. She’s not your wife anymore. But as the mother of your daughter who you adore and so she has nothing to worry about because you will always take care of her mother and they can count on you.

Then he looked at me from feeling incredulous and said, “And then she will eat?” And I said, “Yes, then she will eat.” And he was a very intelligent man. He did exactly what I told him to do and in a matter of weeks, Amy was out of danger. In about three months, she has gained enough weight and she wants to go back to her school. I had to call the principal and explain that there was no danger, that she would relapse into anorexia and she went on with her normal life. I just saw them a few times just to see how Amy was looking but I really didn’t need to do any other interaction, intervention after speaking with the father and I knew that he was going to do exactly what I had asked him to do. And this was a man who previous to the intervention, he was so overwhelmed by the near-death situation of his daughter that he was completely paralyzed. He adored this girl and he couldn’t do his work. He couldn’t do anything because of the problem with the girl.

MP: Wow. So you have this girl whose basically the hospitals are passing her on ‘cause she’s weeks or months from death. No one wants to deal with her because no one wants to have her death on their hands. And what changed it was the metaphor.

C: That’s right. When I said, “The war with your ex-wife has to stop because your daughter is taking the bullets,” that was the powerful metaphor.

MP: And it was very powerful. I mean it’s a very strong metaphor.

C: And the wife and his daughter didn’t even have to know that this is what I have said to the father. And all it took was for the father to intervene in this way and it was all solved.

MP: Yeah. So what’s interesting is this is not what people often think about as therapy or as being some, you know, people wonder with this kind of work, is it so complicated? It’s not. There are simple ways that you can work strategically. And this situation where you found the person needed to make the change in the system. Right? This could be…

C: And this is – as an illustration of coaching and the intervention coaching, I could have this situation when working as a coach with the father because he was so troubled that he wasn’t doing his job and he might have come and consulted with me because he was distracted or too depressed to do his work. And but as soon as we have found out about his family and his daughter’s illness, I would have focused on that and with this intervention; this situation would have been solved. So, what I’m saying is that you can approach it from the angle different family members.

MP: And it could have been, you could have – I mean this situation where you’re dealing with three people in a certain type of conflict then you introduce a metaphor and assign it to one of them that shifted the dynamic between the three, that can be applied to different situations as well and there could be a work situation. We have a work team and people having certain conflicts and then maybe at the mercy of certain metaphors or a metaphor will shift the way that they interact. It’s definitely without having to deal with the –

directly, you know with all three people. You can work with one person that shift all three and that all three they’re related to three people each so shifting nine people’s lives very quickly.

C: Uh-hmm.

MP: Great. And so the other thing that’s very interesting about this…

C: Here’s where we’ll take some questions now?

MP: Okay. Great. So, guys I have a bunch of questions here in the Q & A and if you are on the phone, just press star-two and we will line you up for some questions. Okay. Here are some questions from Becky. Those are some great questions. I think you’re asking about the questions that I mentioned earlier. Yes. Will we have learned more about what to ask? Yes, we will give you questions. Right now, we’re outlining some of the mega strategies so you understand how strategic intervention works. You’ll get [Inaudible] [55.42.8] and the power of some of these mega strategies. Later on, we’ll give you a very step by step way of understanding someone in terms of their relationships and the different dimensions so that you can take action.

Another question here: How did Tony know that Lindsey’s husband was such a source of strength? He might have had a low sense of self-esteem. Cloe, would you like to take that one?

C: Yes. We will just discuss it so probably that question came from before and when – I’ll repeat it briefly – when you think about the husband, putting up with Lindsey’s drinking and gambling and the debt and so on we knew he was a good man. And just the fact that he stuck with her and stayed in the marriage with the two sick daughters and with all of Lindsey’s problems, tells you that he was away a very strong, very compassionate, very tolerant person and in that sense, he was strong.

MP: Also the way that Tony worked with him also, you have got – in this case, he was working with a family of four – Tony’s working with only one person. He gave her an assignment in relation to the husband and the assignment he gave her remember? It was to be sexually generous.

C: Mainly sexual.

MP: Yes, it’s very sexual and that was enough to raise his self-esteem, I guess. You know you will give the person the right directive, the right assignment and that will – the other person will rise to the occasion.

So, we’ve got a great question here from John. He says, “Personally, I love using metaphors but in my profession, I work with mentally-ill patients, I find that there is a thought process that is so concrete when they simply don’t get it. Any suggestions to make this principle more effective to those who think concretely.

C: Yes, I worked some patients it’s very difficult to use metaphors either because they think very concretely or because they’re so skillful at metaphors that they twisted around you since when you don’t know anymore what you’re talking about. So, I think that with the concrete patients, you can do very simple metaphors like: when you’re happy, you feel like you’re tall and when you’re sad makes you feel small, the things like that with very simple words that you can use but I know because it’s not metaphor, it’s not universal, in some extreme times of a disturbed behavior you cannot use metaphors.

MP: Yes, but we will have other ways that you can work with people and metaphor is just one of the strategies. So expanding the unit is another strategy and people of your – you’re working with people and their relationships and understanding their relationships. For instance, anyone that they’ve ever had affection with, and talking about someone they’ve loved in the past, that’s going to create a shift. So that our…

C: You’re right and definitely with those concrete thinking patients, expanding the unit is the strategy of choice because you have to help them to have better relationship.

MP: Great. So we have a question from the 313 area code? Hello. Hi, there!

Caller: Hello.

C: Hi.

Caller: Hello, just at the other [Inaudible] [59.10.8] center, I was just wondering how you can know which person you have to make the shift with. So, you’ll find the system, you have a lot of people and then how do you know which person you need to switch to be more effectively?

C: Yeah. Good question, Alexandra. Very good question. Thank you. So, well, in the case of Tony and Lindsey, he only had Lindsey there. So, he didn’t have a choice but when you have access to several people, one way of choosing the person is to choose the strongest person. And so in this story that I just described that I choose the father because he definitely was the most together person of these three and the most competent person of the three. In the case, of the little boy with headaches, actually I also chose the father because he was the one that had to change not because he was necessarily drawn but because I felt that if he changed, that would initiate the change in the others. So, this is making me think actually. So you can…

MP: Well, I think that you chose them… Sorry. Go ahead.

C: You can choose the strongest person or the person who should change first. Sometimes I choose the better communicator, the kindest, most tolerant, most compassionate person who communicates better with everybody else and just have the change go through that person. Sometimes I choose the person that is like the elder in the

family that will get everybody’s attention or that might get everybody’s respect like a grandparent. So what did you want to say, Mark?MP: Well, we’ll talk more in depth about the different ways of looking at these and what kind of assignments or you know what kind of metaphors and assignments should be associated. But also Cloe often it’s the leader in the unit and the leader is blocking it. They’ve had some misguided attitude that they have taken.

C: Right. Yes.

MP: So if the person who is threatening to leave, the person is criticizing the other people, often they feel like they’re a leader and they’re frustrated in the situation they find themselves in ‘cause they don’t have the tools. So you turn that person around, give him a metaphor, give him an assignment, and suddenly the person whose energy was creating all the blockage, and all the criticism becomes the person who’s suddenly motivated to create change. And that’s…

C: Right. Yeah. Exactly. And it’s interesting how people don’t think about the most obvious things. For example, the father who was such an intelligent lawyer, it had never crossed his mind that it was not good to verbally attack his ex-wife in front of his daughter. He never thought of that. That it wasn’t good for the girl, then he would have done anything to help his daughter. It just had never occurred to him. Okay. Thank you for the question, Alexandra. That’s been answered?

Caller: Yeah. It’s okay. Yes.

C: Okay. All right.

Caller: Thank you:

MP: Okay. We have another question here from – I don’t see your entire phone number so I guess we should just say hello and see who are here? Hello?

C: Anybody there? Hello. Yes. Hi.

Caller: I guess that could be me.

MP: Yes.

Caller: So, what if the other person like you worked with the leader and the person, their wife for example is refusing to pretty much just give him up? How do you – like if you only have contact with the husband, how do you get through you know the rest of the family if the wife would just like not want to do anything? Is that just like I’m kind of stuck right there.

C: Yes. Well. You can coach their husband for example if you’re talking about the husband-wife situation, you can coach the husband as to how to better understand the

wife, better understand her needs, be able to fulfill her needs in a better way and the same with the children. For relationships to change basically you have to change only one person and there’re repercussions and everything changes. Does that make sense?

Caller: Okay. Yeah. Absolutely.

C: Okay.

MP: And there’s a way that people are locked in to certain limitations in the way they communicate so even if you coach one person to disrupt the limitations of the way communicate, they start doing things. You can figure out from them what the person the relationship with is actually looking for that they’re not doing then you can give that person exactly the most powerful actions to do and that will create a shift. The wife will be saying, “Wow.” He’s been talking about this all this time and now he’s doing something different. I’ve noticed the difference. Yeah.

Caller: Okay. Thank you.

C: Thank you.

MP: Great. We have a question here from – great question saying, “I’m an IT project manager. How can this training help me become a greater project manager?” I did say that the insights of these types of strategic approach, theses interactive approach is essential to teams. Basically, we treat families like teams so in this case, there is a leadership problem and there is a problem in communication, and you can apply these strategies to any team of three to five to ten people where any leadership issue where there is leader who’s getting stuck with a certain pattern – a certain communication pattern and understanding how by the leader can shift to one thing. You will often – IT or any kind of technology, you have teams of four to six people and there’s dynamics between those people and so if you understand how like a metaphor can come up in a group and limit people for instance. We’ll get more in detail but I’m just saying that these patterns can be applied to any kind of team or group.

C: And in the next few modules, we’re going to go quite deeply into the Six Human Needs and both of the tools that you can use to understand the needs that are behind the behaviors of people.

MP: Great. Okay. We have a question here from the 702 area code.

Caller: Hello.

C: Hello.

Caller: Oh, you can hear me?

C: Yes.

Caller: Yes. My name is George Sinatra and I have a question regarding the two stories that were related about the anorexic girl and the boy with the panic attacks. I noticed that in Tony’s videos, there’s some element of provocation through the process in which the subject understands what its – what his reactions were, his reactions are in a way I don’t see them reverting to these because they understood. Do you think that [Inaudible] [1.06.32.7] would be an element of reversion on both cases that were related because I understand that it was so pretty cool to fix the problem right away but in the future if the anorexic girl will have another situation, do you think that she will revert because the element of education on the problem that she was experiencing was not there?

C: No, I don’t think so. No. I think that Tony is very successful using an educational method and the enormous and that’s what I’ve integrated with my work because the huge advantage of the frame work that he brings with the Six Human Needs and you’ll get more of that later, is that it’s a very compassionate tolerant non-judgmental way of looking at things. People are just trying to satisfy their needs in the best way they can and that educational aspect is present in the works that I do and in the examples that I gave. The lesson to that father is to not be aggressive within the family was huge. He was never going to behave like a prosecutor inside his family again. The girl’s lesson was to understand that the father actually loved her mother even though sometimes he was so nasty and that he could stop being nasty, that he could change that behavior and that was hugely educational by example. Does that make sense? Sometimes the education happens by modeling not necessarily by teaching. Now, because Tony, doing these interventions in the context of the seminar, he has to teach. Does that make sense?

Caller: Yeah. Thank you.

MP: And each case, it was a crucial distinction that you gave the person. And you gave it to him in a powerful way.

C: Right.

MP: And you didn’t lay out those principles. Also the Six Human Needs, someone was asking what questions do you ask when you want to understand people. The Six Human Needs which we’ll go into a detail is an extremely efficient way to understand relationships and not only understand relationships but to help people evaluate the way they are doing in a relationship. So if you ask someone in a relationship, well, how are you meeting – you know how are your six needs being met in the relationship. Then you ask how are you meeting your partner’s needs? Well, then you ask the partner, how their needs are being met by the person you’re speaking with? And that brings out a dimension of reality and objectivity in a relationship where people can really say, “Wow. I’m really meeting my partner’s needs in three’s and four’s. No wonder there’s a problem.” And that’s a huge way to shut things. So, we have another question here.

C: Thanks, Roger. Great question.

MP: Great question.Caller: Thank you.

MP: Great question. Absolutely. We have a question. When you’re helping someone, do you warn them you may be using shocking or strong language? I’m always concerned that they maybe taken the wrong way which will result in lost client.

C: I never use strong language. That’s Tony. Although the worst thing that I can – that I sometimes say is the word ‘stupid or silly.’ If – I would look ridiculous using that kind of strong language so you don’t have to. I use strong language for example talking about an attack or a war or bullets but not strong language in the sense of foul language.

MP: Often that you know, everything has got its place and so sometimes the languages are used to shock people but you can shock someone just by talking about a relationship if they’re not prepared to talk about it. You know you can bring up a love in their life or a conflict that they have and if you’re looking to create a – for that person to have an emotional shift so that they be more receptive to talk about different things, you know that can be it. And Cloe is extremely clever in the way she finds ways to shift the situation without using strong language. So there’s a – if you have any other questions, star-two. I have another written one here.

As a self-growth tool, how do I know if the situations or patterns I see around me are metaphors or reflections of myself at an area of my life? Okay. So, the metaphor… Cloe, do you want to start with this one or?

C: This is a difficult one. Let me see if I understand the question. How do I know if whether I see around me is a metaphor or reflection of myself at an area of my life? Let me see how I can understand that?

MP: Let me give it a shot here.

C: Yes.

MP: The metaphors that we’re talking about – we all have metaphors inside of us, that’s how we operate as human beings. So, if you’re having a really good day or especially if you’re stressed, Tony told a story about a man who said he was so stressed out that he was at the end of his rope. And Tony says, “Well, then put the rope down and come over here.” Right? And so metaphors are the way that we experience things. So that’s the way that we think about metaphors. Sometimes a metaphor is good – you give someone a new metaphor. If you find out what their metaphor is, you can modify their metaphor or give them a new way, a new metaphor and that would help the person create the change in himself. So that the example of that was in the Lindsey film where Tony gives her, he says you know, drop the bag or – and shoot it into the sky, and then later – or into the sun, or later Lindsey herself said ditched the bag. That was her metaphor. She said ditch the bag, that’s what she could do. Okay. So that’s one way to think of an individual

metaphor where people have a certain metaphor that they inhabit for instance and then you give them another one to inhabit and that creates a change.The second type of metaphor we talked about is when someone’s experience in a group is a metaphor for something else that’s happening so the little boy with the headache, his headache was a metaphor. He was arising in metaphor meaning that in relation to the conflict between the parents. Right?

C: And the father’s word. Yeah. MP: So, you would look at someone who’s had a problem that you can’t quite understand. For instance, the story of the panic attack where the lady is panicking. She doesn’t know why everything seems fine, she doesn’t know what the big deal is but she had the panic attacks and you realize, “Oh, those panic attacks are a metaphor or expression of another problem.” So, you find the source problem which was her conflict with the sister and then metaphorical problem, the panic attack, goes away. Does that make sense? So those are two ways of looking at metaphor in yourself and everyone has them. Personally, as a way of living and then you have ways that people have them in relation to other people and it’s usually we think of this as when it’s becoming a problem is when we worry about it. So, the headache, panic attack, de-motivation, people can’t find direction, people who’s talented and intelligent can’t move forward, people like the man who can’t find a job and he’s feeling suicidally depressed because he needs to work that’s a metaphor. Does that make sense, Cloe? Is there?

C: Yes. Very much. Very good.

MP: Great. Okay. So, we’ll ask the other questions here. Can we ask – so, I think that guys today, I think that we’ve answered that. Let’s see. Oh, we do have another question here. What do we do when people shut down when talking sensitive issues? I think we’re going to go get into that a little bit more deeply. Don’t worry. This is just one teleclass. We have a teleclass…

C: Let me add something to that.

MP: Yes.

C: When people shut up about talking – oh head down, I’m sorry, when talking about the sensitive issues. I like to say to the person, “You don’t have to tell me anything that you don’t want to tell me. So be careful and think about what you really want to tell her. And make sure you don’t tell me if you don’t want to tell me. This is an Ericksonian technique and it’s wonderful to be specific. Get teenagers to talk?

MP: Oh, well.

C: And it’s typical of the teenager where they don’t want to say anything and so you just emphasize the distinction between what you really want to tell me and what you don’t want to tell me. And it was the person in sort of a trance where they begin to tell you a

whole bunch of things that they have not really planned to tell you. And that another thing that I do is that I would say, “I really don’t need to know any details. If you’d just give me the general picture of what you’re talking about, I probably can imagine the details. You don’t have to tell me the details. And that’s true. There are many things that you don’t need to know the details. So, for example, sexual issues, intimate conflicts. You just – just what the general idea of what this is about, you can think of an intervention. Does that make sense, Mark?

MP: Oh, that’s brilliant. So it means – basically, what happens is when you’re doing it you’re telling me the part of that person that’s afraid because they don’t want to communicate about certain things or they’re too upset about certain things. You just give them the permission not to communicate fully.

C: Exactly.

MP: And when you give someone permission not to communicate fully, you’re also giving them permission to communicate partially.

C: That’s right. Then it freezes them.

MP: Uh-huh. That’s brilliant. That’s amazing. Do we have another question? Is there a risk of using the wrong metaphor? That’s a good question.

C: Yes. There is always a risk but if you don’t do anything, you don’t help anyone, and you don’t change anything so you just have to take the risk. But – you know it’s like with everything you get practice at it and metaphors repeat and you will develop certain metaphors that you like to use, certain stories that you tell or certain images that you come up with and as you see that they work, you will repeat them.

MP: I think I agree. And I think also this is going to be one of the tools in your tool kit so if you present a metaphor, it’s really nice to work with a metaphor someone’s already has in many cases. And I would argue that even with Cloe with the metaphor that you used in the story of the anorectic girl that there was already a war going on. So, when you said the war has to stop…

C: Oh, yeah. I said instead of calling it a fight with the ex-wife, I called it a war but a fight was what they were doing all the time.

MP: Metaphors are really very good if you tap in to what’s already happening, what’s already being the modus operandi of the person. So you don’t have to invent a metaphor that comes straight from your brain and you’re pointing it to the person. You can elicit the metaphor that they’re already using. You often hear it and you get them to refer to that. And if the person gets very upset about the metaphor that you proposed, just say [Inaudible] [1.18.57.4] it’s just a picture. That’s stupid.

C: No, you apologize and come up with something else.

MP: Uh-huh. Yeah. You can dismiss them because they are just imaginary – you know they are kind of ideas. They are just images. Right?

C: Sometimes in order to bring about change, the metaphor that you come up with is absolutely the opposite of the way that person is thinking like I did with the depressed man who couldn’t find work. I thought you know some people are so happy when they don’t have to work and I came up with the idea of turn on, tune in and drop out and the rat race.

MP: Because they’re good, it was a good opposite.

C: So just by hitting you know what has made this man miserable is what would make somebody else happy.

MP: Yeah. And so you used a metaphor as a counter-example?

C: Exactly.

MP: Great. And it is so much more effective than trying to do some verbal thing. The metaphor works so efficiently, so quickly.

C: That’s right.

MP: Okay. So we do have a couple more – we have a couple more minutes. So how do we get enough information for an effective intervention and not get caught in the story?

We’ll get in, you know some of these things – these are just our first teleclass of many and so we’ll be layering on all these tools and I think you understand why it’s good to wait a week between one of these classes.

C: Yeah. But still let me give an answer to that.

MP: Yes.

C: You don’t get caught in this story because the strategic approach is that every problem is solvable. Only death is unsolvable. And even that depends on your spiritual orientation. And so when you are presented with a story that is particularly sad or traumatic and you feel a lot of compassion for the person, still this is – strategic intervention is you have to think, “Well, I still have to turn this person’s this life around so that they are not stuck in being the victim of that story so what can I do to bring them out to see that that story is in the past and now there’s a future ahead of them and a present and that all we can really change is the present and the future. Of course, you have to understand the past because even though you cannot change the past, you can change the understanding of the past and in many cases, it’s really important to listen to the story because you can change the understanding of that story. Who did what to

whom? Who was the victim? Who was the victimized? Why did that happen? And that’s very important so you can change the understanding of the story and then you can move the person into the future. Sometimes the person has the correct understanding and you don’t have to change that. Does that make sense, Mark?

MP: Well, that’s great, that’s a great answer. And when you catch on to something like a story like that that’s what you want to understand. You want to understand what this person feels their story is. And then you know stories can be written, they can be revised and they can be looked at in a different way. So, we have another question. What kind of metaphor might you use for someone who really wants things not to get better and resist all your ideas?

C: That is so difficult. Yes. There are some people like that and so one of the things that Erickson used to do was that he would say to the person, “I want you to think very carefully about what part of the problem you want to keep, what you don’t want to change because I want to make very sure that I let you keep that, that I don’t change that. So think about what is the part that you want to change and what it is it that you want to keep?” That is very effective. It’s similar to the idea of think about what you don’t want to tell me and be sure to not tell me that.

I actually did an intervention and a demonstration recently with a young couple. And this was Mark, at the Evolution Conference where he had temper tantrums where he basically got grouchy with the wife and he said that he didn’t like the idea that I had said in the lecture that it’s important to reassure a person that one can change any problem and then one can solve any problem. This young man was a therapist himself that I was working with and so I said to him, “Oh, I see. So, you mean that want to keep the right to be grouchy and you want to be grouchy sometimes and of course, you have the right to be grouchy. I’m not going to change that. The only thing that I suggest,” because this conference was actually in Disney Land, as I’ve said, “You need to buy the hat of the grouchy little dwarf from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and when you want to be grouchy you put on the hat so your wife knows that you’re deliberately grouchy because you want to be and you have the right to be.”

MP: That’s great.

C: Yeah.

MP: Once you – when you have these skills then any response can be used by you.

C: Yes.

MP: So, when someone gives a strong resistance, it’s like “Umm, that’s a good response. That’s some strong energy that we can use here.”

C: Yes. And you know sometimes that happens also with students. I have live supervision most of my life where I have been behind a two-way mirror or sometimes

called the one-way mirror observing at therapists working with people or through video observing the work of people and sometimes you get a student who doesn’t want to follow your directives and doesn’t want to change what they’re doing. And I just say, “Well, I’ll be curious to see how you solve this case. I’m just going to watch and wait for you to solve it.”

MP: Exactly.

C: And that’s a good answer. Instead of fighting it, you just go along with it. All right. Any other question?

MP: And so we have another question. We do have one more question here. This one is very specific. My father calls my mother “Miss Piggy” and picks at her for overeating. She has a lot of weight to lose and he doesn’t understand how she can’t lose it. How can I help my father to switch his approach?

C: Well, you could tell him that calling her Miss Piggy has not worked so maybe something completely different could work. Maybe understanding her needs and fulfilling them better, maybe being more kind or more compassionate or more loving to her but it’s difficult to change your parent while you’re in there although I’ll tell you we’ve had some students in this training that did amazing jobs of changing their parents behavior so I suggest that a heart to heart talk with your father explaining that that kind of mocking remarks sometimes humor is used as a weapon and could be experienced by your mother as a very painful thing that probably provokes her to overeat more instead of the opposite. Well, he should never continue to do if it doesn’t work.

MP: Yeah. First step is to make sure that you have a – I mean you can think of this – this is something that you’d like to work on. As Cloe said, it’s very difficult to work with parents. They are at their most resistant. Parents and children are the most resistant clients you could have. And so…

C: For instance, your own children. Other peoples’ children are okay.

MP: Yeah. So the general advice for working with any family members is I think as a multi week process and start with making sure there is plenty of respect given to you – given by you to them. So, think about how you can respect them, how you can meet their needs. There are things that [Inaudible] [1.27.32.9] done that no one – that people tend not to do for them. Do that. Build up your relationship with your father first. Then, when we talk about the Six Human Needs which is coming up you will have a way that you can – you can share with him what you learned about the Six Human Needs and maybe enlighten him on how the Six Human Needs can work in a relationship that he might actually think about – you know there’s a stuff that people need to take that if they realize that they’re in the relationship where they have to take accountability for their part in whatever’s happening.

C: Yes. By the way, I want to say to everyone for those of you who likes to read. Read my latest book, Relationship Breakthrough and that has a lot of interesting exercises and interesting material I think will complement the training for you very well.

MP: Yeah. You can just get that on Amazon. Okay, we’re up at just about 2:30 so let’s demute everyone and we can – we’re going to see you guys next week so let’s say good-bye. You can all hear each other now?

C: Yeah. Thank you very much for coming.

MP: Good-bye, everyone.

C: Take care.