Source: Robert Dilts
Chose a limiting response.
Notice your foreground awareness. Notice your background awareness.
Select a counter-example.
Explore the foreground and background of the counter-example.
Associate the background and the foreground feature of the counter-example, and connect this state with the foreground of the original situation.
Focus on the common ground experience of the original experience.
Test.
It creates resource states in people who tend to focus on the negative or disabling aspects of a situation. This technique utilizes the tendency of negative and resourceful experiences to have a great deal in common. They seem quite different because their differences are in the foreground of our awareness. This pattern is a good example of creating resourceful states by linking to them from unresourceful states. This pattern is good for people who are too caught up in a negative reality because it works with sensory representations that are shared between the problem state and the ideal state. This pattern is unique in that it does not focus on the foreground, or “driver” sub-modalities, as you would with the Swish pattern and others. It’s also for this reason that you should work slowly and methodically through the steps and note your client’s abreaction to the process. With the approach of the F/B pattern, you do not have a fight for dominance between the two foreground experiences. Many practitioners find this pattern to be a gentle and almost magical experience. In my own private practice, the clients who have experienced this process report it has been one of the most self-comforting experiences they’ve ever had. When their focus changes from a limiting or limited frame to a resourceful perception, you can see it in their eyes and in their posture. Relaxation is one of the immediate benefits of this pattern, but it is also just the beginning of the wonderful results it brings about.
Step 1: Choose a limiting response. #
Choose a clearly defined situation in which you have an automatic limiting response. An example of this is flying in an aircraft when this causes panic attacks.
Step 2: Pay attention to your foreground and background awareness. #
a. Notice your foreground awareness. As you imagine this experience, notice what is in the foreground of your awareness. What parts are you most aware of at the time that you experience your limiting response? The panicking air passenger may be aware of the sound of the engines revving up in preparation for takeoff. Check all the rep systems and sub-modalities for what is standing out. b. Take note of your background awareness.Notice what is in the background of your awareness. What are you typically not very aware of during your un-resourceful automatic response? These must be things that are not limited to the situation, or that you might experience in a situation in which you have a very resourceful response. Typically, you focus on the most pleasant body sensations that you can find, such as the aliveness of the soles of your feet or the color of the walls.
Step 3: Select a counterexample. #
Find a good counterexample to your unresourceful response. This will be a time when you could well have had an unresourceful or limiting response, but you did not. For example, memories of flying without panicking would provide counterexamples. If there is no counterexample, you want to find the closest situation that you can. For example, if you have been on a bus or a train and felt relaxed, not feeling anxious at all, then you have a good counterexample because of the similarities between the interiors of a plane and that of a bus (seating, other people, length, engine sounds, jostling). Associate into the experience.
Step 4: Explore the foreground and background of the counterexample. #
a. Explore the foreground of the counterexample. Discover the aspects of this experience of which you are most aware, that is, those that are in the foreground. Intensify the positive experience and anchor it. (We’ll call this anchor A1.) Foreground experiences may be things like a curious internal voice, or a dissociated image of the environment, or a sense of desire for the engine to wind up because it means that you are going to move forward. b. Investigate the counterexample’s background. Get in touch with the features that are in the background of both situations (this is the common ground experience). This may range from body sensations such as the soles of the feet to similarities in external perceptions.
Step 5: Associate the background and the foreground features of the counterexample, and connect this state with the foreground of the original situation. #
Weld a strong association between the background and foreground features in your counterexample situation. You can do this by focusing on the background feature and firing the A1 resource anchor. Now connect this with the foreground of the original situation. You can use suggestions to accomplish this. For example, “the more you attend to the feeling of the soles of your feet, the more you can experience how your curious internal voice becomes louder and clearer. And as your awareness shifts to the environment of the bus and its engine, increasing speed, you more easily maintain an image of the inside of the airplane.“ As you can see, we are linking the common background and the positive state with the foreground of the situation in which you experienced a limiting response.
Step 6: Concentrate on the original experience’s common ground experience. #
Return to the original experience and focus on the common ground experience that you found in (4b). For example, you could place yourself back in the airplane as the engines are beginning to rev, and focus your awareness on the soles of your feet and the color of the walls there. If this does not improve the limiting response, then try one of these strategies: Option 1- Find a more powerful fitting counterexample and repeat step 2a. Option 2- Return to step 2b, and strengthen the association between the common ground elements and the background features of the counterexample.
Step 7: Test. #
Focus on the foreground features of the original situation from step 1a. You should experience a positive state from your counterexample experience. You can use instructions such as: “Now you can place yourself into the seat in the airplane, actually focusing your full attention on the sound of the engine and the sense of acceleration of the plane.”