The Techniques We Use.
These seventeen methods make up most of the work in an IBPH session. Which ones a practitioner reaches for depends on you, on what the pattern is protecting, and on how you process — which is what face reading and Enneagram typing tell us early.
Parts Negotiation
Sitting down with the part of you that wants the change and the part that keeps protecting the old behavior, and getting them to agree on terms.
Almost every stuck pattern is a disagreement inside one person. One part wants the change badly. Another part is doing something it believes is protective — soothing, numbing, hiding, controlling — and it will keep doing it until it is heard.
In negotiation we give each part a voice, find the positive intent behind the unwanted behavior, and look for a new way to meet that intent that both parts can live with. Nothing is forced out. The change holds because no part of you is fighting it.
Parts Therapy
A structured conversation in trance with the specific part of you that carries the symptom, so it can update what it is doing.
Parts therapy takes the negotiation further. In hypnosis, the part holding the pattern is invited forward, thanked for its work, and asked when it first took the job. Very often it took the job at an age when the strategy made sense and never received an update.
Once the part accepts newer information — that you are an adult now, that the danger has passed, that the person it was protecting you from is gone — the symptom usually loses its purpose.
Parts Integration
Bringing conflicting parts together so they share a single, coherent purpose instead of working against each other.
When two parts have been fighting for years, the real work is not deciding which one wins. It is discovering whether they actually want the same thing underneath and can be merged into one updated response.
In trance we allow each part to recognize the other's positive intent, then invite them to combine their resources into a new part that holds the best of both. The old either/or tension collapses because the system no longer needs it.
Core Transformation
Following a limiting behavior all the way to the core state it was trying to reach, then experiencing that state directly.
Every unwanted behavior is an attempt to reach a positive core state — safety, love, peace, power, wholeness. The behavior is clumsy, but the intention underneath is not.
Core transformation asks the part driving the pattern what it wants to feel, then helps it feel that state now without the old behavior. Once the core state is available directly, the symptom becomes unnecessary.
Secondary Gain
Identifying the hidden benefit a symptom provides, then finding a better way to receive that same benefit.
A symptom sometimes solves a problem the conscious mind does not want to admit: it brings care, rest, distance, identity, or an escape from responsibility. That hidden payoff is called secondary gain.
We do not shame it. We name it, honor what it has been doing, and negotiate a way to keep the payoff while dropping the cost. Until the gain is addressed, the symptom usually returns.
Reframing
Changing the meaning attached to an event or urge so the same facts stop producing the same reaction.
A reaction is rarely caused by the event itself. It is caused by the meaning the event was given, often years ago and often by a child.
Reframing tests other meanings that fit the same facts equally well and lets the nervous system settle on one that does not cost you anything. It is not positive thinking; it is finding a frame that is both true and survivable.
6-Step Reframing Process
A formal negotiation with the part running an unwanted behavior to replace it with a healthier choice that still meets its intent.
The six-step process isolates the behavior, identifies the part responsible, uncovers its positive intent, and asks it to generate three new behaviors that satisfy the same intent even better.
The part chooses the replacement, and the practitioner installs it through rehearsal in trance. Because the part itself agrees to the swap, resistance is usually minimal.
Values Alignment
Lining the desired change up with what you already care about most, so willpower stops being the fuel.
People do not sustain changes that conflict with their real values, and they rarely fail at changes that express them. We elicit the values hierarchy first — what actually matters to you, in your own order — and then attach the new behavior to the top of it.
When quitting is about being a person your daughter can rely on rather than about a statistic, the behavior stops depending on daily discipline.
Arrow Technique
A direct, layer-by-layer descent from the surface complaint to the original decision underneath it.
The arrow follows a single thread down: what happens, what that means, what that means about you, and what you decided the first time you felt it. Each answer becomes the next question.
The value is precision. Instead of treating a symptom generally, we arrive at the specific sentence a person is living by — and that sentence can be worked with directly in trance.
Timeline Therapy
Revisiting the moment a pattern was installed and giving that younger self what was missing then.
Memories are re-recorded every time they are recalled. Working along the timeline, we return — safely and with the client in control — to the earliest event that set the pattern, resolve the emotion held there, and let the memory be stored differently.
The event is never denied. What changes is the charge it still carries and the conclusions drawn from it.
Age Regression & Revivification
Returning to an earlier experience with the resources you have now, and letting the memory be re-recorded in a safer way.
Age regression guides you back to the event where a belief or reaction was formed. Revivification brings that earlier state alive enough to work with, but always with the adult self present as a protector and witness.
The goal is not to relive pain. It is to give the younger self the information, comfort, or boundaries it needed then so the pattern can update now.
Submodality Change
Adjusting the sensory qualities of an internal image, sound, or feeling so the experience loses its emotional charge.
Every mental representation has qualities: size, color, distance, brightness, volume, temperature, pressure. These submodalities are what make a memory feel close or far, loud or quiet, overwhelming or manageable.
By changing those qualities deliberately — pushing an image away, draining its color, turning down the sound — we change the response it produces. The content stays the same; the impact does not.
Anchoring
Attaching a calm, resourceful state to a physical cue you can use in the moment you need it.
A state can be conditioned to a trigger — a touch of finger and thumb, a breath, a word. In session we build the state fully first, then set the anchor at its peak and test it.
Anchoring is what makes the work portable. It is the tool clients use in the car, before the meeting, or at the moment the craving arrives.
Resource Anchoring
Storing a specific strength or resource state so it can be called up exactly when it is needed.
Resource anchoring is more targeted than general calm. We identify the exact quality a situation requires — confidence, boundaries, compassion, clarity — and anchor that specific resource to a cue.
When the old trigger appears, the client fires the anchor and the resource state arrives on cue. It is especially useful for performance, confrontation, and relapse-prevention moments.
Future Pacing
Rehearsing the new response in the exact situations where the old one used to run.
Change made in a quiet room has to survive a Tuesday afternoon. Future pacing walks you mentally through the specific times, places and people that used to trigger the pattern and installs the new response there.
It also surfaces objections early: if some part of you does not believe the new response will hold in a particular scene, that scene tells us exactly what still needs work.
New Behavior Generator
Building an unfamiliar but useful behavior from scratch and rehearsing it until it runs automatically.
Some goals are not about removing a problem but about adding a skill no one ever modeled for you. The new behavior generator creates that response step by step: the internal dialogue, the body posture, the focus of attention, the sequence of actions.
It is similar to future pacing, but the emphasis is on constructing the new behavior rather than testing it against old triggers. Once rehearsed in trance, it becomes available in real life.
Modeling
Identifying how someone who already does this well does it, and installing that structure in you.
Whatever you want to do, someone already does it without struggle. Modeling breaks their behavior down into its actual structure — where attention goes, what is said internally, what happens in the body and in what order.
That structure is then rehearsed in trance until it runs on its own. It is the fastest route for performance goals, where the aim is not to remove something but to add a capability.