CASE NUMBER 101
Miriam is a lively, friendly Israeli 32-year-old mother and grade-school teacher, an Orthodox Jewish woman, who has a shameful secret: She is addicted to smoking. This is a habit that is totally unacceptable in her religious circles, especially for women. She has tried nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and other conventional approaches, but she always ended up going right back to smoking.
I am using the Meta-program in order to understand her better and come up with an appropriate intervention,I had it translated from the original Hebrew, as Miriam finds the English language to be a challange because it is not her mother toung. I have also changed her name and specific information about her/her family and friends that she shared with me, to ensure patient/practitioner confidentiality.
Contemplative/Action Oriented
Q. Do you consider yourself to be more of a “thinker” or more of a “doer”?
A. I would have to call myself a doer. Maybe that’s because I have so much to do – I have several children, and also a part-time job. I feel that I’m always so busy, so I just have to keep moving to get things done.
{{she seems to be smoking because of the stress in her life during one of our many meetings she had told me how she has been raped on her way to work she was 20 years old. Knowing this I will use the "changing the past" time line and the "re-invent yourself" time line, in the begining of every setion she enjoys me doing the "kinesthetic swish" with her. I have taught her "eliminating fear" method she told me she uses it every day, at some point I plane on doing the "visual squash exercise with regression"}}
In Time/Through Time
Q. I have the pationt stand up with the eyes closed and ask them on a time line to show me. When I say the words “past,” “present,” and “future,” can you point to each direction as you see it and describe to me where it is?
A. When I said “past,” Miriam pointed behind her. When I said “present,” Miriam pointed down to the ground, directly in front of her. When I said “future,” she pointed straight ahead in front of her. This information will helps me when we make a time line I understand better how she sees it.
Independent/Team Player
Q. In your job and at home, if you have a choice, how do you like to do things – by yourself or together with others?
A. I’m the independent type. I’ve been a homemaker, a wife, a mother and a teacher for years, and I’m pretty confident in all those roles. Of course I’m respectful toward my superiors at work, but I really don’t appreciate when they try to offer unsolicited guidance to “help” me in my teaching. I read a lot and keep up with new trends in the field, and I believe I know more about my job than my principle or vice-principle!
At home as well, I have systems that work well, and if I feel I need help or advice in dealing with things in the house or with the kids, I’ll ask for it. Anyone who’s ever tried to give me well-meaning, unsolicited advice in those areas is never on-target – no one but me knows what I really need.
{{I have found that Miriam is more of a Visual/Kinesthetic type of person through our conversations I have asked her to imagain how it will feel when she stops smokeing, to see how it will give her more time not needing to run and hide every few minutes, she will have the extra money to buy the cream she wants for her dry hands }}
Once/Several
Q. How did you come to the decision to see me for help with stopping smoking finally?
A. As I mentioned to you in our first phone conversation, I’ve tried so many ways to stop on my own. The conventional approaches just haven’t worked for me, and it’s been going on for way too long. I heard and read a lot of positive things about the effectiveness of NLP, and so I decided to give it a try.
{{ first with love and warmth I reminded her about the word "try" and she switched it to "to go for it" I have given her a few web sights and names of books that talk about NLP and the methods I use also told her " when you have a falt tier do you go to your Rabbi to fix it or a macanic? You go to your Maanic, so when you are talking to people about NLP make sure they are people who know what they are talking about"}}
General/Specific
Q. Have you formed a vision – some sort of idea for how your stopping smoking will happen with NLP?
A. Since this is my first experience with NLP, I really haven’t been able to visualize anything about how it’s going to work. I’d love to hear from you what I should expect, how you’ll go about helping me and how long it should take. Naturally, I’m most interested in seeing results as quickly as possible, so that’s what I’m hoping for. ((( As time is going on she keeps finding more things about her life she want's to change (ie. before talking with me she did not even take into account that the rape could be part of her need to smoke)
Q. Can you tell me a bit about your goals in this process?
A. My main goal is simple and straightforward: I want to walk away from this process as a nonsmoker, and I want it to happen quickly, because my smoking is affecting my day-to-day life in so many negative ways, not to mention what it’s doing to my health!
{{I say: that's great so I think I might be able to fit you in next week for a few more setions I think it's just so amazing how when you see what you want you go for it}}
Matching/Not Matching
Q. What would people from your naberhood think if they knew you ware smoking? {{}}
A. I want to fit in with the women in my society and what is called apropreat for a "religous woman" . I don’t want to stand out or be considered dangress because of the negitve habbits I have. (when she said this I went straight to the "new behavior generator" and knowing some of her back ground we did the "logical levels"
Q. Do you have an opinion about other people who smoke or if they should also stop ?
A. In my neighborhood, there are certain behaviors that are excepted by the magarity and certain behaviors that are not of their women. Generally, if someone deviates too much from those behaviors, people tend to think they’re a bit weird and stay away from them or in the extreem cases x-comunitate them.
{{does that scare you? If you got caught how would that effect the people around you? what re-sorssies do you already posess to stop? what else do you think you need?}}
Internal/External
Q. What would you consider some signs of success? How would you know that you’re making progress in quitting smoking?
A. For starters, I guess I would want to see that I stoped smokeing and that I don’t get a headache or start to feel nervous or jittery or depressed with out it.
{{we do the "superhero technique" and the zipping up to help with energy (after I always remind her how much better shes doing)}}
Toward/Away from:
Q. And what was it that made you finally decide to make an appointment with me?
A. I’ve reached the point where I’m just disgusted with myself for pretending that I’m just like everyone else and always having to hide the fact that I’m smoking. I’m sick of living this way! Living this double-life as a smoker is probably a worse experience than quitting smoking would be, but I haven’t been able to manage to quit on my own.
{{at this point I would say Miraim is leaning towards the away type and I have her see with V-A-K-O-G and have her step into circul of excellence how she will feel and look when she stops and have her bring that into the here and now}}
