Taking Back Your Buttons!

By Jonathan Altfeld

(Republished by expressed written consent of the author)

I'm often asked by acquaintances throughout my travels and daily local life about 'what can people get from learning NLP?' And when answering this question for people who've literally never heard of NLP before, I often like talking about the golden rewards we earn from learning to manage our own emotions more, from gaining more control of our emotional states. And usually people agree with me that it would be pretty useful, but rarely do people truly appreciate the sheer power of remaining emotionally resourceful in more areas of our lives!

Part of the reason for that is that we humans have very selective memories, and if I ask you (while you're perfectly calm) to remember situations when you needed to be more in control, you'd rarely have immediate access to more extreme memories when you were really out of control; you'd typically scan through memories of when you were originally in a perfectly calm place & time, and became mildly unresourceful.

But if I chose to make you outrageously angry as a test, then, once you were feeling more angry, you'd be more likely to remember situations where/when you were outrageously angry. Because, stored memories are contextually memorable based on external factors (such as where we were when something happened) and internal factors as well (such as our emotional state at the time of the memory).

In other words, to remember a calm situation, we can do so more easily when we're calm. (Which is one of those minor little challenges to learning emotional state control from NLP books as opposed to live training -- a coach or trainer makes all the difference!).

Perhaps this little story will illustrate better...

Why Emotional State Management is SO incredibly useful:

I was out with a friend a short recently just before Christmas, having a light meal. And during the meal, he received a call from his ex-wife, with whom he's still "engaged" in a nasty custody battle (if you're thinking "one of those battles nobody wins" -- you're pretty close to accurate). He reached for his mobile phone and said "talk to me." And that was the last calm phrase out of his mouth.

During that phone call, I was treated to a blazing display... of how his ex-wife had learned to push a vast array of emotional buttons for my friend. And vice versa -- they both knew each others buttons.

It was truly amazing, to see how little positive control over themselves that either of them had, and how much negative control over each other's emotions, that they both had.

And before I reached over to grab his arm and mouth the words "STOP, & HANG UP!", I was reminded of something that would be useful for me in helping them both to cool down.

First, every group of people that's been with each other long enough (family, couple, friends, business partners, whatever) -- tends to habituate & practice a wide range of behaviors -- both positive & negative.

Some of these behaviors are empowering, functional, loving, supportive behaviors. And over time, these become habits, and people can become very gifted at cyclically practicing their empowering behaviors.

Others of these behaviors (that groups of 2 or more people tend to practice) can be dysfunctional behaviors. Every group's got them, and fortunately, some have far fewer than others. Every group gets very, VERY good, at practicing these dysfunctions.

As a result, each member of a group learns to push each others' buttons, reinforcing those negative emotional states, and people don't make good decisions in bad states. Which is why 2 or more people are rarely ever able to solve their own problems, by themselves.

So let's look at these "buttons" people press, from an NLP perspective. Quite simply, these are anchors. And every member of a couple, when engaging in their dysfunctional behaviors, knows that if they push the other person's buttons.. and if those buttons can evoke the usual response, it makes the button-pusher feel slightly more in control. So button-pushing is all about controlling SOME the other person's emotions. It usually happens when someone can't evoke or control agreement or the positive emotions we'd like to evoke, so instead, we control the few we still can control, despite the consequences. In NLP we'd say, the other person is "firing our worst anchors off."

So there I was at Dinner, thinking about how my friend is on the phone with his ex-wife, and they're both still pushing each other's buttons, getting nowhere, repeating the same argumentative phrases over & over again, getting nowhere.

So I decided I was going to teach him something about Emotional State Control. I grabbed his arm, paused, and calmly mouthed the words, "STOP; HANG UP." (And yes, I had to do it several times before he finally did).

And after he hung up, I told him "she's got you wound up unnecessarily, you're completely out of control yelling at her and vice versa, you & she are saying the same thing over & over again... and getting nowhere. You've both given up ALL your power."

He looked at me like I was nuts. Given up all his power? "Nonsense," he said.

Second, people trap themselves, with their own Emotional Distortions. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the distortion!

I asked him "what percentage of your phone call with her was spent in a calm voice?"

He said (in a semi-annoyed state) "About half."

I responded with "Bullshit! The only words you spoke in a calm voice were your first greeting, "Talk to me." To which he eventually agreed.

And then I shared with him my opinion that by engaging in raising his voice, he was showing her he was out of control. That every time he raised his voice, he was "losing it," (his cool) and he'd given HER the power to make him "lose it." Just as she had done the same -- given up all her power to him. They were both still at the mercy of their "negative" buttons.

While he sat there staring at me, he began to oscillate back & forth a little bit (one of many potential signs someone is integrating a new idea). And I knew that's when it *just *began to sink in for him.

But remember, this is not someone who knew anything about NLP, so, my telling him this didn't yet mean he was going to be good at it. To change bad habits like this takes practice, ideally it takes having someone there to deliver pattern interrupts, and keep you in the right lane, so to speak. Intellectual knowledge does not equate to built-in skill!

I told him further that "Your first inclination during that previous phone call when she insulted your behavior in a way you didn't like, was to deny it and make her wrong. If you argue with her, you're actually GIVING her control. By contrast, if you acknowledge her complaint, and tell her she's actually right, you're not losing control, you're actually GAINING control."

And apparently, this latest lesson was too much for him to appreciate, yet. He laughed that lesson off. I told him "you'll see for yourself." And then I quoted a phrase made popular by Anthony Robbins...

"What you resist, persists. What you accept, you gain power to change."

Sure enough, the phone rang again, and it was his Ex-wife calling again. Before he could answer it, I grabbed his arm in the same place gently, and told him to "STAY CALM." He took the call, and stayed calm for a minute or so (not bad!), and then I heard her raising her voice, and he started to raise his voice...

Time for a pattern-interrupt, I thought. So I reached over, grabbed his arm, and calmly mouthed the words, "STAY CALM." Which he did! He stopped & took a deep breath! And then he spoke calmly again. After which, her own tone died down shortly afterwards. And as the conversation unfolded, they continued to argue, and up her voice went again, and so did his. (Old Habits die hard).

Another pattern interrupt! So I reached over & grabbed his arm again, mouthing "STAY CALM." Which he did. And I could see after the smile began to form on his face, that it began to dawn on him that just by dialing down the intensity, he was now influencing her responses in a way he hadn't been able to do before.

But her frustration with not getting her point across apparently got the better of her, and she finally yelled an insult into the phone which was loud enough that even I was able to hear it. That was really uncalled-for. And what did he do?

He insulted her back, and then they were back in a pissing match again.

Yet another pattern interrupt. So I reached over, grabbed his arm, and mouthed "HANG UP." Which he did.

Progress is Movement, and Movement leads to Momentum!

After he hung up, he changed his state from angry to excited, rather quickly! He got very excited about how staying calm actually worked -- and described how it had affected her during the phone call, made it difficult for her to make him out to be the bad guy.

I acknowledged this, pointed out that my lesson had magically worked to keep him in slightly greater control of his own emotions, which had a major impact on the conversation he was having. I then asked why didn't you also try to "accept her insult?"

He replied "that would be going too far, she could use that against me."

I said "you still think you're losing control by accepting her insult/ argument. You're not. What you're really doing... is sucking the wind out of her sails."

Then he looked back at me with a strange expression. You know the kind of look a dog gets, when they're confused.

I said "what can it hurt to try it just once? You might surprise yourself with how amazingly empowering it'll be -- to accept her insult/criticism rather than argue it. You'll retain all your power, and remove her ability to affect yours. Do me a favor & promise me you'll try -- JUST ONCE."

He said "OK, I'll try it - once."

And with that in mind, he called her back, and picked up the conversation again where they left off. The next 2 minutes were like a replay of the previous call, with her raising her voice, me interrupting his gut reaction, him taking a deep breath, and staying calm. Finally, yet again, she insulted him with one of those overgeneralized "you always bla bla bla...".

I heard it coming -- I was anticipating him to blow up in response -- I was ready at his side for a pattern interrupt to stop him, but give the guy credit when it's due... he was ready for her!

He calmly replied, "You know what? I think you're right about that. I do do that sometimes."

And if I had to count how long it took for her to respond -- it had to be at least 15 seconds. He had induced a form of surprise or shock trance in her. She had no frame of reference for hearing him calmly admit to a weakness, so in essence, she didn't know how to reply to that.

In admitting an occasional weakness, there is strength, paradoxically.

And her response changed from one of anger, to one of surprised respect. And she calmly thanked him for admitting what he did.

His response was pure Gold -- big wide open eyes, jaw wide open, silently mouthing back at me "YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!!! SHE THANKED ME!!!"

It was a completely new dynamic for them to experience on the phone, let alone in person.

I know she never knew what hit her -- her ex was getting live world-class NLP coaching, real-time, while dealing with their ongoing conflict. Well I figured, that was a battle nobody was winning, and typically it's the kids who lose the most. So from my perspective, I was mostly aiming to help their kids out. (No, not their inner children -- we leave that to the psychologists).

I hope this little recent story effectively gets these points across...

There are no magic 5-second bullets for taking back all our unresourceful emotional hot-buttons, but it's still an immensely worthwhile thing to do. To do so requires:

• the intent to do so

• the identification of a specific unresourceful response we give to others

• an idea of what positive emotional/behavioral response we'd prefer instead of the unresourceful response

• internal or external pattern-interrupts for stopping our habituated gut-responses (i.e. planned & practiced in advance, or provided by a coach or trainer), and re-directing into positive responses

• A feedback loop to allow the JOY from the rewards we get to help condition in the new behavior!

And... also... that paradoxically there is immense power and strength and credibility in knowing about and admitting to some weaknesses. After all, how many of us love to hear stories from our most revered mentors how they failed miserably time & time again until they finally found X solutions or Y ideas or Z choices?

Please feel free to use these ideas... and email me once they've worked for you.

Jonathan Altfeld
© 2009

Author: Jonathan Altfeld is a leading international NLP trainer who has developed a number of highly specialized training programs that have been presented all over the world, from London to Australia. A pioneer in the fields of advanced communications, Jonathan is the author of numerous home-study programs - including 'Finding Your Irresistible Voice', 'Belief Craft' and 'Flirtopia' - and offers some of the most comprehensive systems for development within the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Website: www.Altfeld.com