The RESOLVE Model – Facilitating Generative Change

(c) Richard Bolstad

Why Use RESOLVE?

I like to take the magic of NLP to the challenges with which it only it can deal. I have and continue to train psychiatrists, psychologists, and emergency service staff in places such as Bosnia (after the 1992-–1995 Bosnian civil War), the Caucasus (after the 1999-–2000 Chechnyan Chechen War), Samoa (after the 2009 tsunami), and Christchurch and Japan (the 2011 earthquakes). In these crisis situations, we don’t have weeks to get helpers able to use NLP elegantly and magically.

To cope, I decided to utilize the latest research, from the broader field of psychology, about what truly works in NLP. Why does the same NLP process work magically at one time and not work at all at another? Can you show a new practitioner how to get the “magic” from their first day? There are hints in Psychology research. For example, studies by James Prochaska and Carlo Diclemente make it clear that the success of coaching interventions depends on understanding the stage of change that the client is at.¹ The same NLP process that succeeds amazingly later in a session may not work if offered before the client feels that you understand their problem or before they have defined an outcome that they truly want. 

What the coach does after the official NLP change process is also crucial. Scott Miller’s research shows that simply asking the client a question that presupposes success, “What has changed positively as a result of that last process?” increases the client’s self-report of successful change from 33% to 60%.²

It is also important to notice that the same NLP process cannot be applied equally to clients with fundamentally different metaprograms, a fact explored by Shelle Rose Charvet in her work with the LAB Profile (see Chapter 2). To state the case more strongly, NLP processes do not in themselves “work.”

RESOLVE shows you how to transform a textbook technique into a clinical success. The secret of achieving seemingly magical results is not in the processes themselves, but in what happens before and after them.

What Is RESOLVE?

The hundreds of techniques and models that make up NLP present an overwhelming collection for new practitioners. For me, one thing initially missing in Bandler and Grinder’s work was an overview. NLP trainer Steve Andreas says:

“I think that someone who uses the NLP methods exceptionally well has several ways of gathering all the different skills and techniques under a single overarching framework of understanding.²³”

This is also important because by and large it is the skilled presentation of the therapist’s underlying expectations and attitudes that make change work, more than the mere choice of a specific NLP technique. NLP author Joseph O’Connor introduces prefaces my book RESOLVE (2002) by affirming with me that successful NLP coaches “are real people working with love from a grounded methodology to help the client mobilisemobilize their powers to heal.” In parallel to Michael Hall’s reworking of NLP discussed elsewhere in this book (see Chapter 1), the RESOLVE model gives a structure for sequencing and selecting NLP interventions to create success. 

Using RESOLVE

RESOLVE is an acronym which I developed to teach helpers to quickly access NLP in challenging situations. RESOLVE provides a checklist for new practitioners, as well as a series of layered NLP interventions to enhance advanced practice. The acronym “RESOLVE” helps practitioners become fluent with a useful sequence of interventions, meta-frames, and techniques in a few short days of training. These are not merely a series of steps leading up to and closing after “the process” –— actually each of the 7 seven steps has the potential to create change in itself. 

• Resourceful state for the practitioner 
• Establish rapport with client
• Specify an outcome
• Open up client’s model of world
• Leading (NLP change technique)
• Verify change
• Ecological exit 

The best way to explain the seven steps is to take an example. In Sarajevo in 1998, my partner Margot and I worked with a woman I’ll call Fatima. When we met, everyday sounds such as a car backfiring triggered Fatima’s memories of gunfire and gave her frequent panic attacks. Her sleep was filled with terrifying flashbacks where she relived her family being killed in the war. I’ll use her case as an example as I explain the RESOLVE model step by step below.

Resourceful State

Milton Erickson demonstrated established in his research that a hypnotist who does not expect their client to demonstrate a particular trance phenomenon cannot elicit that phenomenon, and Robert Carkhuff showed in the 1950s that a client’s success is linked to the personal functioning of their counsellorcounselor.³⁴. Part of the practitioner’s resourceful attitude is knowing that, just as in the sports situation where the “coaching” metaphor comes from, change is the client’s job and not the coach’s. This requires a skill in dissociating, rather than in getting caught up in the client’s horror of what happened to them. 

Another part of creating a resourceful state is creating powerful resource anchors for yourself, based on times when you knew beyond doubt that something was working. We began working with Fatima in Sarajevo by explaining that her panic attacks were simply a result of an “anchored response” and could be quickly changed.

Establish Rapport

Research on “mirror neurons” since 1995 has explained the neurological basis of what NLP calls “rapport”— – a feeling of shared understanding, trust, and empathy which emerges when you synchronisesynchronize your verbal and non-verbal communication with your client (pacing).⁵⁴ Verbally, this involves restating the client’s initial comments to convey your understanding and , using their sensory language (matching sensory systems). Matching another person’s breathing, pulse rate, gestures, and tone of voice have all been demonstrated to increase their positive responses to suggestions and personal change.

In his study of intimate relationships, John Gottman has shown that by identifying such synchronisationsynchronization on during a 5 five-minute video, he can predict whether or not a couple will stay together for the next decade (predicting divorce with 95% accuracy and the precise year of divorce with 80% accuracy).⁶⁵ We created this rapport non-verbally with Fatima as she described her feelings of fear and anger about the war. Just listening and using reflective and clean language (as described by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley in Chapter 4) in itself often allows a person’s problem to be transformed.

Specify the Outcome

The most common way that new clients state their outcome is to tell mesay what they don’t want (e.g., “I don’t want my business to fail,”; “I don’t want to feel anxious when I’m in a group”). ScottWilliam Miller and the other researchers in the solution focused therapy movement have shown that simply focusing people on what they want instead of what they don’t enhances both commitment to coaching and success.⁶⁷

Richard Wiseman did a very large study showing the same result.⁷ He tracked 5,000 people who had some significant goal they wanted to achieve (everything from starting a new relationship to beginning a new career, from stopping smoking to gaining a qualification). Dramatic and consistent differences in goalsetting made the mere 10% who were successful stand out from the other 90%. Most of all, successful goalsetters described their goal in positive terms, and considered carefully what challenges they would face actually doing the work to achieve it (“ecology” in NLP). 

Guiding the person to do this involves using meta-model questions to help the person shift from general nominalisationsnominalizations (“I want happiness”) and unspecified verbs (“I want to nurture myself more”) to sensory specific descriptions (“I will take 10 ten minutes each day to focus on what I have done well and write three examples of actions I’m pleased with in my diary”). Prior to the war, Fatima had been a medical student, and she wanted to recover from her panic so that she could be relaxed enough to successfully complete her medical studies. 

Open Up the Client’s Model of the World

Clients change when they believe that they can change and that there is a reason to change. New clients frequently feel as if they are suffering as a result of events and responses they cannot control, and they hope that an NLP coach will magically “fix” their brain. My aim is instead to give them charge of their brain. I utiliseutilize their own motivation style (esp. ecially Towards-–Away From) to create a compelling reason to change. 

I also want to demonstrate that they can change. ScottWilliam Miller’s collation of solution  focused research suggests that all successful personal change is preceded by a change in the “locus of control” from external to internal.⁸ In their study of NLP psychotherapy, Martina Genser-Medlitsch and Peter Schütz in Vienna also found this characteristic client shift to clients experiencing themselves as in charge of their life (“at cause” in NLP terms). 

This meta-level change can be elicited linguistically by asking the client to demonstrate how they do the problem and (eliciting the strategy they use to create the problem) and pointing out that if they change that, they will have achieved their outcome. For me, this step of the RESOLVE model, more than any other, is the key to transformative change. It is done with a series of metaphors, reframes, sleight of mouth patterns, and presuppositional questions. 

In Bosnia, Wwe asked Fatima if she could get the feeling of panic just by thinking about the war. She could, and we pointed out “So that means that the feeling is a result of the way you think about that. You’d know if thinking about those experiences felt different in 20 twenty minutes time wouldn’t you?” Our question presupposed that her thinking strategies generate the problem and could be changed within twenty20 minutes in order to generate the solutions she wanted. In nodding her agreement, she accepted the reframing of her feelings as generated by her thinking, and accepted her changing quickly as a possibility.

Leading

Leading is the step in the RESOLVE model where the official “NLP change process” is done. In selecting which process to use, I assess the depth of the issue using Robert Dilts’s neurological levels.⁹ As a generalisationgeneralization, interventions work best when done at a deeper neurological level than the issue itself. 

• When a person states that they want something external to change (environment level), we at least help them change their behaviour or anchored responses. 
• When they state that they want to behave differently, we at least help them install new skills and strategies (capability level). 
• When they say they want new capabilities, we at least help them change their beliefs about the situation and the possible responses. 
• When they say they want to change their priorities (values) or let go of old beliefs, we at least help them to change their sense of who they are and what their overall purpose is. 
• When someone wants to change at that deeper (identity) level, we help them connect with a sense of what is greater than them that can give their life meaning (spirituality).

Another important aspect of selecting from the hundreds of NLP processes is to notice what “personal strengths” the client has and match these with NLP processes. Significantly, some clients describe their problem as an internal feeling response (demonstrating a “skill” with anchoring) while some describe their problem in a more detached way (demonstrating a “skill” with what NLP calls the sub-modality of dissociation). Some clients talk about their problem globally (using the “Milton Model” language patterns of trancework) and some talk in intricate detail (using the “meta-model” language of detailed planning). 

In the RESOLVE Model I recommend beginning with what clients are already good at, and then shifting to the opposite pole (NLP “pacing and leading”). For example, Fatima was already good at anchoring herself into a panic attack using sounds, so we had her remember the enjoyable sounds of a party in her pre-war life, and anchored that good feeling with a touch on her arm. This “resource anchor” created a safe state of mind for her to begin the simple NLP Trauma Process, in which we teach the person’s brain to dissociate or step back from the traumatic memories. Dissociation is the opposite skill from anchoring. This technique is currently the subject of an extensive research study by Frank Bourke and others, referred to elsewhere in this book.

Leading is distinguished from manipulation by what happens before opening up the model of the world and leading occur. The key components of ethical leading are:

• The practitioner is not trying to make themselves feel comfortable or benefit from the client’s change; they are available simply to help the client (resourceful state).
• The practitioner gains an understanding of the challenges, intentions, beliefs, and values of the client, and aligns with these (establish rapport).
• The practitioner creates a sense of clear contract with the client about the outcome that will be used as a measure of the appropriateness of each intervention (specify outcome).

Examples of interventions	Chunk up / associate (e.g., depression, joy)	Chunk up / dissociate (e.g., psychosis, awareness)	Chunk down / associate (e.g., anxiety, fun)	Chunk down / dissociate (e.g., borderline Personality Disorder, goals)
Spirit	Core transformation	Dis-identification	Drop through	Mind backtracking
Identity	Parts integration	Time- Line Therapy	Reimprinting	Core questions
Values-Beliefs	Meta-stating	Submodality SMD belief change	Mind to muscle	Values elicitation
Capabilities	Chain anchors	Swish	Strategy installation	Ideomotor signals
Behaviour	Resource anchor	Trauma cure	Collapse anchors	Plan towards outcome
Environment	Community involvementmt.	Move to retreat centre	Tidy up environment	Move to new environment

The above table does not seek to categorize NLP processes, but merely to give examples of where they could be used in terms of this model.

Verify Change Has Happened

A new, more positive response pattern can sometimes be “anchored” in place during the NLP session without the person’s conscious mind realisingrealizing;, just as at times a panic response happens when the person’s conscious mind doesn’t expect it. The conscious mind is the reality testing component of the brain, and after changing response patterns it is important for it to reality test and confirm the change. 

Asking the person to notice and even celebrate the difference installs a solution -focused pattern which allows change to continue. As mentioned, simply asking, “What has changed positively as a result of that last process?” increases reports of successful change from 33% to 60%. After doing the NLP trauma process, we had Fatima think of the most disturbing situations that she had experienced in the war. A little surprised, she smiled and said, “I’m seeing the pictures and it’s as if they’re just over there and I’m here.” We test the change using the client’s own convincer strategy.

Ecological Exit Process

Finally, it is important to have the client plan for the situations in which their new response will be useful and for situations which may challenge it or even temporarily evoke the old response. Prochaska and Diclemente say, “Just as one swallow doesn’t make a spring, one slip doesn’t make a fall.” 

Planning for such challenges also allows us to check if anything else needs to change to make the new response fit ecologically (in a way that works for the person’s life as a whole system). This involves both future-pacing and tasking. With Fatima, we had her think into the future and notice that she could relax and still keep safe. When we met her again a year later she’ had had no further panic attacks or nightmares, and was amazed to remember how disabling they had been. Her life was back on track.

Another Personal Example

RESOLVE is based on the idea that often how we frame something is more important than the thing itself. One case that brought this home to me dramatically was a demonstration case I worked with while training psychiatrists in SarajevoBosnia. I expected to demonstrate using an example from the war, but the man asked that we use another example. When he was 18 he went on his first date and met his young woman friend in the old town of Sarajevo. It was a romantic moment and she told him she had something to show him. She reached under her blouse and brought out … a pet white mouse. He was startled, and then embarrassed lest his startle be seen as fear. In humiliation, he ran from the scene and never dated the woman again. He had since developed a phobia of mice.

Years later, the war broke out. As the bombs fell on Sarajevo, sirens would sound urging people to head immediately into the nearest house and into the safety of the cellar. But this man could not go. Instead he stood out in the street, surrounded at times by the wounded or dead … because there might be a mouse in the nearest cellar. He would rather die than face that terror. It is not what happens to people that scars them. The mouse did him no harm at all. It is how we code what happens that shapes our lives. And similarly, it is not what technique I use that heals my client. It is how they code that technique.

Does It Work?

I frequently tell my clients that neither NLP nor any specific NLP process “works” in some context-independent way. Human beings work, and NLP is just a way of explaining how you work so perfectly, even when the results you are getting are not results those you would choose. 

Panic attacks and compulsions, for example, are not merely problems; they are successful programs that your brain may be running in inappropriate situations. An anxiety response when a venomous snake is nearby, or a compulsion to wash your hands whenever you go to the bathroom are examples of healthy applications of these natural skills. RESOLVE is just a map; it neither works nor doesn’t work by itself. Experienced practitioners will of course shift more fluidly between steps and make more “intuitive” decisions once they know the territory of coaching. 

Another Example

A man I’ll call Robert came to me saying that for 8 years he had suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He became anxious whenever he needed to go through a door. He had a persistent fear that if he did not open and close the door repeatedly, someone he cared about (either a friend or a family member) would be harmed. A number would come into his head (he would hear it spoken as if as an instruction) and that would be the number of times he felt compelled to open and close the door. As a result, just going down to the supermarket was a challenge, and certainly he was unable to hold down a job. Although he understood that this fear was irrational, he had also developed an interest in new age thinking, and had come across the idea of manifestation. His fear was that, even though it was irrational to believe that, merely thinking about it might cause his thoughts to “manifest” the feared result (as claimed in The Secret¹⁰). This meant that even his conscious mind was now convinced of the danger to his loved ones. 

After listening to this story, I checked the ecology of a goal to be able to walk through doors. After all, if he could walk through doors, then he would lose his sickness benefit. I pointed out that he may decide to maintain the arrangement to get the benefit until he was confident that he could change. 

In opening up his model of the world, I asked Robert if he had ever tried to manifest anything else, like $1,000,000. He said he had, and I checked that he had been unsuccessful, and asked him why he thought he had been unsuccessful. He explained that manifestation only worked if you congruently wanted the goal of manifestation. If you feel ambivalent about earning money, then the universe will return only this ambivalence. I asked Robert next if he had ever congruently wished for his friends or family to die, without simultaneously worrying and hoping they lived. Of course he had always worried at the same time as imagining them dying. This opening up of Roberts model was the crucial step in designing a solution which matched his personality skills.

The change technique I recommended was to practice the same type of skill as required by the problem Robert experienced. He thought in detail until he was so associated into his fear that he had to act (so obsessed that he felt compelled to repeat his ritual). I told him that to keep his loved ones safe, it was most important that he worry as much as possible, and so when he next came to a door, he should deliberately worry as much as he could. The more he worried, the safer they were. He appeared puzzled but agreed that this was true. 

Since the only reason for Robert to worry was if his friends or family were in danger from his thoughts, the moment he tried to worry, they were safe and there was nothing to worry about. If he doubted it, he had only to worry again for a moment to reassure himself. The next week he came back to see me and told me he had been walking through doors without a thought all week. The solution was now in his hands. He had proved that he was able to “overcome” OCD. The reframe I used was very simple. I said, in effect, “Worry doesn’t mean that your friends are going to die (which would justify even more worry). Worry means your friends are safe (which means the worry itself is no longer necessary).” Our second session involved dealing with some of the background issues related to OCD, and future-pacing further change sessions to support him creating a lifestyle which would need to be radically different to the last 8 years.

Where Else?

So far I’ve discussed RESOLVE only as a model for coaching. It also sheds light on the structure of NLP applications such as training or business consulting. Checking that students are motivated to a learning outcome before beginning a lecture, and providing them with evidence that they will now be able to use their new skills in the real world, are just as essential in classroom education as in personal change. I have a series of articles on line which explore uses of the model in these other contexts and give more detail about its use with specific client issues. 

Notes

1. 1. Bolstad (2002b),Prochaska, Norcriss and Diclemente (1994) Bolstad, 2002, pp. 113-–117.
2. 2. Miller et alia (1996), pp. 255-256
3. 3. Andreas (1999)Bolstad (2002b), 2002,pp. 3 p. 1.
4. 4. Carkhuff and Berenson (1997), pp.5 and pp. 35Bolstad (2002b), , 2002, pp. 122-–123.
5. 5. Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004) Bolstad (2002b), , 2002, p. 128.
6. 6. Gottman (1999)Gottman, 1999, p. 27.
7. 7. Miller et alia (1996) Bolstad (2002b), , 2002, p. 133.
8. 8. Wiseman (2009)Wiseman, 2009, pp. 88-–93.
9. 9. Bolstad (2002b),Miller et alia (1996), Genser-Medlitsch, and Schütz, (1997)  , 2002, p. 140.
10. 10. Dilts (1996) pp. 18-23 Bolstad, (2002b),  2002, p. 159.
11. 11. Prochaska, Norcriss and Diclemente (1994) pp. 227
12. 12. Byrne (2006)

References

• Andreas, S. (1999) “What Makes A Good NLPer?” pp 3-6 in Anchor Point, Vol 13, No. 10, October 1999
• Bolstad, R. (2002a). Transforming Communication. Pearsons, Auckland: Pearsons.
• Bolstad, R. (2002b). RESOLVE: A New Model of Therapy. Carmarthen, UK: Crown House Publishing. Bancyfelin, Wales
• Bolstad, R. (1995-2011) An extensive series of on-line articles on the applications of RESOLVE for specific client issues exists at www.transformations.net.nz 
• Byrne, R. (2006). The Secret. London: Simon & Schuster.
• Carkhuff, R.R. and Berenson, B.G. (1997) Beyond Counselling and Therapy, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
• Dilts, R. (1996) Visionary Leadership, Capitola: Meta Publications
• Genser-Medlitsch, M. and Schütz, P. (1997) “Does Neuro-Linguistic psychotherapy have effect? New Results shown in the extramural section.”  Vienna: Martina Genser-Medlitsch and Peter Schütz, ÖTZ-NLP, 
• Gottman, J. M. (1999) . The Marriage Clinic. W.W. Norton and Co., New York: W.W. Norton.
• Hall, L. M., Bodenhamer, B. G., Bolstad, R., and Hamblett, M. (2000). The Structure of Personality. Carmarthen, UK: Crown House Publishing, Bancyfelin, Wales..
• Miller, S. D., Hubble, M.A. and Duncan, B.L. (1996) Handbook of Solution Focused Brief Therapy, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
• Miller, W. (1985) “Motivation for treatment: a review with special emphasis on alcoholism.” In Psychological Bulletin, Vol 98 (1), pp. 84-107
• Prochaska, J.O., Norcross, J.C. and Diclemente, C.C. (1994) Changing For Good. New York: William Morrow & Co.
• Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004) “The mirror-neuron system.” Annual review of Neuroscience, 27, pp. 169-192
• Wiseman, R. (2009). 59 Seconds: Think A Little, Change A Lot . Macmillan, London: Macmillan.