I spoke with a teenage girl who stated that she is always fighting and getting into yelling arguments with others, including her mother, her cousin, and other people in her life.

Her justification for being confrontational is that she hates others telling her what to do.  This is an issue for her now in her life, yet in the future it could also be an issue if she someday works for a boss.  The reality is that most of us need to be able to respond appropriately when being told what to do.

I decided to do a process with her in which we considered her strategy for getting angry in communication.

I compared the strategy of getting angry with the strategy of baking a cake.

I explained her that if she wanted to bake a cake she would gather ingredients, order and sequence those ingredients, place it in the oven and wait for the cake to cook.  If those ingredients were incorrect, or the time in the oven was too short or too long then the cake would be a flop.  Too much opening of the oven door in anxious expectation, and the cake may fall instead of rising.  Yet when the ingredients are just right.  When they have been sequenced correctly, and when all the instructions have been followed perfectly the cake both looks and tastes great.

I then explained to her that so it is with our behaviours.  Our behaviours are a collection of pictures we make in our mind, sounds we hear, feelings in our body and our self-talk.

I then asked her “how do you know it is time to get angry”.  In other words what has to happen for you to know that it is time to get angry?

She explained that when someone tells her what to do she gets annoyed.  She went on to say that she only gets angry when told to do something that she does not want to do.  She also explained that she gets angry when the person telling her what to do is using a firm controlling tone.

Therefore the first ingredient of her anger strategy was firmly being told do something she didn’t want to do.  (perhaps a lot of people can relate to this).

We then moved on to ingredient number 2.  She told me that she got an angry feeling in her head and that this feeling was growing.  She described its colour as red.  The colour was vibrating, moving and growing.  She described it filling her head and the ball grew even bigger still until it was outside of her head.

Ingredient 3 was described as another feeling.  This one was orange and she said that it was a stubborn feeling, and it too was located in her head.  She went on to describe all the sub modalities associated with this ingredient.

In the past I had always done a strategy scramble technique.  This time I did a 10/3 technique that I had just received as a flash of inspiration that very morning.  I had just discovered a new way to bring about powerful transformation.  I was very excited to use the 10/3 method.

I had her tell me the names of 10 people that she really liked.  I also asked her to tell me the names of 3 people she disliked.  She struggled with this and said, “I like everybody”.  I persisted and after several minutes we had all the names.

I then had her run her strategy while in her imagination she saw her ten friends all looking at her.  She was able to see, hear and feel how each individual reacted.  Some had a look of disapproval.  Others coward, while others got angry also.

We then had her run her strategy whilst the three people she did not like were standing there looking at her.  I then had her imagine them laughing at her and pointing, for her inability to control her anger.  They were saying words like, “You can’t do it. You can’t change”.  (In other words they were telling her she could not do something she did not want to do.  Stay calm).  Think about this and you will recognise the genius of this process.  Once again, this was not my creation.  It came to me as a flash of inspiration.

She then attempted to run the strategy and the red feeling in her head simply shrivelled up and disappeared.  She was confused about why she could no longer run her old anger strategy.