Five Minute Anxiety Cure – Swish Pattern

From Using your Brain for a change by Richard Bandler.

1. Identify context.

First you identify an area where you are broken or stuck. Where or when would you like to behave or respond differently than you do now? It might be something like nail biting, or getting angry with your husband. In my case, it was getting nervous at team meetings.

2. Identify cue picture.

“Now I want you to identify what you actually see in that situation just before you start doing the behaviour that you don’t like. Since many people are on ‘automatic pilot’ at that time, it may help to actually do whatever has to proceed the behaviour, so you can see what it actually looks like.” For nail biting it would be physically moving your nails up to your mouth. For me, it was the fidgeting as I vividly imagined my turn to speak approach. Since this is the cue for a response that you don’t like there should be some unpleasantness associated with this picture. For me, I could be safely sitting in the comfort of my own home, with my eyes closed, imagining myself at a meeting and being next to speak. Just by imagining this vividly I could be close to a panic attack and I wasn’t even there! I think this is why this technique works so well, because it uses the language of the brain (images). If you were to be sitting at home and tell your heart to beat faster, it wouldn’t respond. But, if you were to imagine walking down a dark alley late at night in a dodgy neighbourhood then your heart is likely to be pounding.
The more unpleasant this cue picture is, the better it will work.

3. Create outcome picture

“Now create a second image of how you would see yourself differently if you had already accomplished the desired change. I want you to keep adjusting this image until you have one that is really attractive to you – one that draws you strongly.”

4. Swish

“Now ’swish’ these two pictures. Start with seeing that cue picture, big and bright. Then put a small, dark image of the outcome picture in the lower right corner. The small dark image will grow big and bright and cover the first picture, which will get dim and shrink away as fast as you can say ’swish.’ Then blank out the screen, or open your eyes. Swish it again a total of five time. Be sure to blank out the screen at the end of each swish.”

5. Test

a. “Now picture that first image…. What happens?” If the swish has been effective, this will be hard to do. The picture will tend to fade out away and be replaced by the second image of yourself as you want to be.

b. The other way to test is to put yourself back in the cue situation.

If the old behavior is still there when you test, try the process again. You may need to try a variation on it. For me “distance” worked much better than “big and small.” That is, rather than starting with the cue image big and bright and shrinking it while making the outcome picture big and bright, I would start with the cue picture “in my face” and move it off into the distance draining all the colour away while moving the outcome picture from off in distance to be up bright and close and in full colour.

Try it – it works.