Some years ago a client came to my office for a first session who presented a real challenge. She was a referral from my then girlfriend, who had a great deal of confidence in my skills as a hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner. X proceeded to tell me her tale of woe. She had been living "on the street" making a living in prostitution, selling drugs and odd clerical jobs, none of which she was able to hold for any length of time, and she wanted something more for herself. She had consulted with a psychologist for three or four months, by which time he had concluded that she was beyond his capability to help, so he referred her to a "specialist" of some sort. This man lasted for about three weeks before coming to the same conclusion. He referred X to yet another "specialist" who decided that she was too much for him to handle in the initial interview.

X's voice became more tense, high pitched and her words were spoken with increasing tempo and desperation as she told me of each successive experience with the "experts". So I repeated to X what she had told me, that she had seen this one for three or four months, that one for three weeks, and the third one for one visit and that they all thought she was too much for them, and added that she might be too much for me too. However, I would do my best with her, and that if I felt that she had gotten all that I had to offer I would inform her, and that we would mutually decide if she wished to continue on with me, or not. Reassured that she would not be abandoned as hopeless yet again, X calmed down somewhat. This was long before I trained in Neurolinguistic Programming with Richard Bandler and others, and at that time I thought of hypnosis and NLP mostly in terms of techniques and inductions. So my abilities at conversational changework were much less developed at that time. X was much too agitated to go through a "technique" or sit still for any obvious hypnotic induction, and simple reframes and embedded commands, were not going to be enough to do the job. So I asked myself, "What can I do help X?", and an answer came up.

My studies in NLP had introduced me to Milton Erickson's hypnotherapeutic work, especially as it related to his use of therapeutic metaphor, and it struck me that metaphor might just be the route to begin opening X to some new possibilities unconsciously. Great idea, but this was long before I had any real facility in improvising metaphor, and I had no backlog of memorized material either. People who could use metaphor elegantly and easily at that time seemed to have a skill beyond my meager abilities. Back then I used to try to construct metaphors consciously. But, being rather desperate to do something to help X, I picked up my copy of "Tales of Enchantment" by the Lanktons, riffled through the table of contents, and picked several stories. I read them to her. One was about letting go of the past, thoroughly and completely. Another had to do with appropriately expressing emotions, and trusting that other people could handle tactful honesty. And, there may have been a few others....

X's response to those stories taught me a tremendous amount about using metaphor. What I didn't realize then was that it's possible to do any technique, affect any change through metaphor, and conversationally at that! Milton Erickson was notorious for answering his students questions about hypnosis with a story or few, and many of them got quite frustrated when he did that. They wanted to have a sense of conscious understanding, never realizing the gift that he offered was infinitely more valuable. When I came across the idea that it's possible to "install" a strategy or pattern of behavior through metaphor I was skeptical. However, Erickson, Bandler, and Carmine all taught through metaphor and I decided to test the idea for myself. I taught an advanced change technique class for some of my hypnotherapy and NLP students by giving them metaphors isomorphic to the technique. The patterns in the metaphors were identical to those of the technique, only the content differed. They all got the basic concepts and began using the pattern of the technique immediately. I was impressed. Now I use metaphor and nested loops (a way of patterning metaphors to increase unconscious installation of information, strategies, etc.) in all of my trainings. Many of Erickson's students would go away wondering why Milton wouldn't answer a simple question in a straightforward manner, never realizing that Milton's stories precipitated creative new choices for them. And, even without knowing why consciously, they found themselves attending more seminars with Milton, because every time they did somehow they became more effective with hypnosis. The story
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