Milton Erikson was a master of the use of stories to effect trance and therapeutic change. Towards the end of his life, people observed Erikson noticed he did not seem to finishing his stories he was telling his clients.
With the advent of video recording, it become clear that he did finish the stories, but at a different stage of the intervention. This became known as nested loops
- Decide on 3 to 5 stories you can tell
- Decide upon the states you want to elicit with each story
- Tell the stories in succession, only 80-90% of the story at this stage
- Do your intervention
- Close each story in reverse order
Term nested loop:
Instructions, which are, placed one inside the other loops to function precise decision tree and decision gate, go in and out one loop close it enter another loop-
Symmetrical open close process has to occur
Stories, analogies, quotations, within quotation, examples, demonstrations, pay attention, response attentiveness, deal with interruptions, stay focused
Practise examples demonstrations-quotes
Focus on emotions you would like to generate
emotions can get connected to each other by presenting them sequentially
So, if you think of your start state (usually also known as a problem state) you already have an introduction. Now, think of your end state, and you build a conclusion, which should also be a solution state.
Between these two states, you structure a series of intermediary states to build other emotions within them
Nested loops are meant to create the same effect in hypnosis as fractionation – interrupting the state by causing the person to go in and out of trance until they go much deeper into trance. Nested loops do this through the use of story structures. Basically, if you don’t complete your story, you cause an open loop. Ideally, before you close the loop, you embed ideas and suggestion within the story that create a meaningful close to the story that goes into the unconscious; people seldom remember things that are completed.
A typical nested loop structure starts this way: open story A – story b – story c – story d – close story d, story c, story b, story a. Just prior to closing each loop, you insert an embedded command that will be useful and can serve the individual