A Relationship Problem?

One of the things I love to do with someone's issue is to do 'reframing’, helping someone see things in a different way. You can often get profound and instant changes with a simple sentence, helping someone get new insights and learnings – and instantly change the way they think around that subject.

And if you change the way they think, you change their physiology.

And if you change the way they think, and their physiology, you change their state.

And as state drives behaviour, and behaviour drives results – you can see that by just one statement, one sentence, you can help someone act and achieve completely different things.

I had the opportunity last week to reframe an issue with a military client of mine. It was at the end of the session, and he let slip he’d had a row with his girlfriend the previous night, and he’d returned home rather than staying the night.

Apparently she had been asking about military life, and how if they were together the constant movement of location and periods when he would be away would be a burden. Having grown up adjacent to this military environment I know this to be a major issue with military families, a source of hardship and also of burden on relationships.

My client took this to mean that she was looking for a way out of the relationship. This frustrated him, as he really liked her, and said he’d have to work at it a bit harder.

Then the reframe.

“Hold on,” I said. “If she’s talking to you about the movement and periods when you are being away – then she’s talking about a future life with you. And she’s thinking it through realistically. Isn’t the very fact that she’s actually thinking about a future with you a positive thing?”

Then I had the look that many hypnotherapists get – that lovely confused look in a client when they think about something from a different angle.

“Damn, I hadn’t thought about it that way!” He said, a smile breaking out on his face. “She did look annoyed when I started to leave, like she wanted me to stay. I’d better give her a call straight away!”

Ah, the joys of seeing something from another side.