You are undoubtedly familiar with the saying, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” from the film “Mary Poppins.” Most adults, however, are taught to take their medicine “straight,” without the sugar. That may be good thing for some kinds of “adult medicine,” but some medicines still need a metaphorical spoonful of sugar if they are to go down.
The Healing with Language equivalents of the spoonful of sugar are called softeners because they help unpleasant facts slip past a person’s natural defense mechanisms. Compare the following “medicine” with and without a softener:
- Without: You really need to stop smoking.
- With: You may want to consider how much better you would feel when you have stopped smoking.
Some of the key words and phrases for softeners are possibly, perhaps, maybe, could, among the possibilities, you might consider, when you think about it, others have found…. Such words and phrases change a directive or command, which often creates resistance, into something to think about, a suggestion. You can also use quotes for that purpose, either quoting someone else or quoting yourself, and statements presupposing acceptance to help the medicine go down:
- I hear people say, “I felt 100 times better once I had stopped smoking.”
- Last month I had a patient who said she had been a “die hard smoker,” but when she thought about what that really meant, she knew to live she needed to be able to quit.
- I wonder, if I were in your shoes, what would let me decide to quit that bad habit.
- You seem to be a person who can face the hard truth about your need to quit smoking right away.
When you have “unpleasant medicine” to administer, notice the improvements in compliance by your using a softener. You might be surprised and pleased to find that softeners also work with family and friends, especially in conversations about sex, politics, and religion.
Send your questions about how other-than-conscious communication skills can hurt or help your patients and clients to Joel P. Bowman (Joel@SCS-Matters.com) or Debra Basham (Debra@SCS-Matters.com), co-developers of Subtle Communication Systems. We will provide answers to those for you. For more information about Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy, or about the Imagine Healing Process, visit:http://ImagineHealing.info or http://SurgicalSupport.info.
Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication is available for a limited time for $10 plus $5 shipping within the U.S. For volume orders and overseas shipping, check with Debra. See the Table of Contents and List of Exercises in PDF format for more information about this comprehensive text and training manual.