226 Part III: Opening the Toolkit
A useful way to think about this concept is to start from the premise that at
some point your unconscious mind is a complete whole. When you experi-
ence an SEE, a part is created and a boundary forms around this part of your
unconscious mind, separating it from the rest of the unconscious mind.
This part functions like a ‘mini you’, with its own personality and values and
beliefs. Just like the ‘conscious you’, this part exhibits behaviours that have
purpose and intent. Unfortunately, the behaviours can be in conflict with
the actual intention of the part. For example, a person who believes they
were never loved as a child may develop shoplifting tendencies because the
unconscious part craves attention, even though this kind of attention isn’t
what the person really wants.
Understanding a part’s intentions
A major NLP presupposition is that every behaviour has a positive intent.
For example, the positive intent behind someone smoking a cigarette may
be to relax. (Head to Chapter 2 for more on the main NLP presuppositions.)
Sometimes the behaviour that your unconscious part makes you exhibit
doesn’t satisfy your underlying need.
Perhaps an alcoholic drinks to numb the pain (positive intent) of being aban-
doned by their spouse. The unconscious part is in fact crying out for love,
but the manifested behaviour – drinking heavily – doesn’t satisfy the underly-
ing need. The answer to this problem lies in identifying and understanding
the real need and satisfying it in a positive way. So if the alcoholic can come
out of their stupor and recognise that alcohol isn’t what they need but love
is, they may dry out, clean up, learn the lessons from their failed marriage,
and pick themselves up to find love.
Getting to the heart of the problem
Often a part of your unconscious mind can create problems for you. The rea-
sons for these problems can be hard to understand logically. For example,
you may suddenly develop a fear of an everyday activity like travelling or
meeting people. You can reach the real, hidden purpose behind the intention
of the part by peeling back and exploring each reason or intention as it sur-
faces. When you arrive at the true, underlying purpose of the part, you can
then assimilate this purpose into the bigger whole of your unconscious mind.
The following anecdote illustrates what can happen when your unconscious
mind drives the motivation of one part. Later in this chapter, in the section
‘Trying the visual squash technique’, you discover how to integrate two parts
that are in conflict.
