One of the concepts of NLP that tends to be overlooked is the way thresholds influence human behavior. Everyone is, of course, familiar with the idea of the last straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. It wasn’t, of course, the final straw that did the breaking—it was rather the accumulation of straws over time. A camel, after all, can carry only so much weight before giving up in one way or another.
The concept of thresholds has a long history in Western culture, and—I would assume—in other cultures as well. Most Westerns, for example, are familiar with the metaphor of crossing the Rubicon even if they are not familiar with the origin of the saying. The original was a warning (in 49 B.C.) to Julius Caesar, that if he (and his solders) crossed the Rubicon River in northern Italy, he and his soldiers would be subjected to death. When he led his troops across the river toward Rome, Caesar is reported to have said, “The die is cast.” Caesar knew what he was doing when he crossed the threshold of the Rubicon. Those in power fled Rome, and Caesar took over and changed the course of history.
While most of the thresholds we might cross will not have the historical ramifications of Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, the concept is essentially the same. Once you have crossed a threshold, there’s no going back. If you can, in fact, go back, then you may have flirted with a threshold but failed to cross it. For many, it is similar to the difference between a separation and a divorce. If a married couple separates, “going back” is simply a matter of deciding to get back together. If, on the other hand, they divorce, they can never really “go back.” Except in very unusual circumstances, a divorce can’t be “undone.” The couple may decide to marry again, but the previous marriage no longer exists from a legal perspective. Remarrying doesn’t undo the divorce.
Mark Twain is reported to have said, “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.” Many smokers have had similar experiences. They separate from cigarettes rather than divorce them. At the same time, however, there are those who adopt a never again stance. They quit, and never go back. Richard Bandler is among those who quit after a health crisis. His physician told him that he didn’t understand how difficult quitting smoking was going to be. Richard’s response was that his physician didn’t understand: he had quit. That illustrates the power of a “never again” decision when it truly is a “never again” decision.
Many NLP techniques take advantage of naturally occurring thresholds in behaviors to facilitate change. For any behavior to occur, a threshold needs to be crossed for an individual to engage in it. At the other end, the individual will encounter a threshold that basically says, “stop.” If the threshold for starting is too “low” (intensity, rather than distance from the ground), the person will engage in the behavior too often. If the starting threshold is too high, the person will never engage in the behavior. If the person has a really low threshold for feeling that his or her hands are dirty, he or she may engage in compulsive hand-washing. If the person has a really high threshold for feeling that his or her hands are dirty, watch out….
The “Compulsion Blowout” (see pp. 228 ff. in Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication, by Bowman and Basham) is based on the recognition of thresholds. A woman in one of our workshops felt compelled to eat slice-and-bake chocolate chip cookies. Her husband liked the cookies for dessert, so after dinner, she would bake a batch. Her husband would eat two. She would eat the rest. One of the things about slice-and-bake cookies is that they taste good when they first come out of the oven, but if they sit for a while, their chemical composition does strange things, rendering them inedible by humans. Saving them for another day wasn’t an option. The woman crossed the “low threshold” for eating when the cookies came out of the oven. The high threshold for her proved to be too many cookies too close to her face, so the “blowout” for her was a visual submodality shift (big picture, very close) that also brought the kinesthetic (primarily sense of smell) with it. (The submodality that influences the others is usually called the driver submodality.) Once she had crossed the upper threshold in her mind a few times, eating just two was easy. After that brief intervention, she and her husband each had two cookies, and the rest went out for the birds.
“Never again” thresholds are like that. Once the threshold is crossed, the behavior changes automatically. If you or someone you know engages in a compulsive behavior, it is easier to stop the behavior by exceeding the upper threshold than it is to limit the behavior. The observation about a number of compulsive behaviors (alcohol abuse, drug abuse, gambling) is that the individual needs to “hit bottom” before the behavior will change. Unfortunately, “hitting bottom” for such behaviors is a risky proposition. Fortunately, earlier thresholds can be set that will allow the individual to change behavioral directions before reaching a point of total devastation.
Recognition of the starting threshold is often the first step. What “triggers” the behavior? How does a person know when to begin the behavior? Sometimes just bringing the starting threshold into conscious awareness is sufficient for setting a new direction. In other cases, the recognition of the “high” or ending threshold is a good first step. At what point will the person know that “enough is enough”? When the behavior isn’t especially harmful (compulsively washing one’s hands, for example), it is usually easy to persuade the person that his or her hands need even more washing. If the person has to wash his or her hands repeatedly and note and report on each washing, he or she will soon tire of the activity. If the behavior is harmful, get the individual to recognize the consequences of continued behavior, find the driver submodality, and then bring the threshold down to an acceptable level or eliminate it completely, depending on the nature of the compulsion.
Different people will, of course, have different ways of confirming a threshold. When it comes to losing weight, for example, some people will hit an “I’m too fat” threshold when they look at the numbers on a bathroom scale. Others will hit that threshold when they look at themselves in the mirror (especially naked). Others will hit the threshold when a doctor tells them that their weight is putting them at risk. Still others need to overhear gossip about their weight or have a salesperson say, “That isn’t available in your size.” Driver modalities are sensory system specific. And it’s always nice to know which is the one that “does it” for you.
If, just by chance, you are now feeling compelled to learn more about NLP, that means you’ve crossed the first threshold….
