Some (many) years ago, when I was in training for the work I do today, a guest trainer named Richard Bandler (of NLP fame) was working with my group of ‘therapists-in-training.’ And I vividly recall him telling us the following story:
Richard had met a man who came to him for therapy - with the question “How can I help you?” The man quickly responded, “I’m not going to tell you” - as if setting up a classic passive-aggressive encounter. Richard, without missing a beat, responded, “OK, tell you what, how about you go home and completely make up a problem that has nothing to do with the one you want to keep from me, come back in a week, and we’ll work with that one.” “OK Doc”, the man replied, and in a week did return with a completely made-up situation - which they then spent some time working on. After a handful of sessions, Richard casually asked, “By the way, how are you doing with that problem you didn’t want to share with me.” He replied, “Oh, that one, it completely went away a few weeks ago.”
