Changing the Colour of a Visual Submodality to Change Behaviour

The challenge

This young man was sent to me by is present headmistress. He had been expelled three times for punching other boys at school. He had attended anger management sessions bt still lashed out at others

The effect

He was a very bright boy but this was affecting his education and future career prospects. No-one had been seriously hurt yet, but he was now over 6ft tall and was worried about what damage he might do in the future He wanted to change but every time someone made him angry he 'saw red' and could not help punching them. He was trying to stop but each time he 'saw red' he 'lost it' and could not control his actions

Solution

The moment I hear him say "I see red" I decided to work with the visual sub modality. I stood to his side and asked hime to take himself into the last time he had punched someone. See what he saw, hear what he heard and feel what he felt. His eyes became totally focused on something in front of him and his had shot out into a punch. I asked "what do you see" he said a big red rectangle. I got hime to do this a couple of times and on the third time as his hand started to punch I shouted "red is now blue' His hand stopped in midair. We tried this s few more times and each time when he change the red rectangle from red to blue he was unable to punch. The finished with a trance session that future paced every time he saw red he would say blue and change the red to blue. I also included some suggestions about the red being in the past and moving into the blue he would become much calmer with everyone and everything thing around him and more able to discuss solutions.

Result

He loved the fact that he had a strategy he could use to stop punching. In the past punching had been automatic now he saw the 'trigger' to the punch. He also said that he now knew that if he did punch someone it would be because he had chosen to. This demonstrated to me that he was able to take responsibility for what actions he choose rather than an automatic punch for every situation