Stalking: Reprogramming Behavioral Patterns

At a Moscow seminar on the New Code of NLP in 2004, John Grinder and Carmen Bostic introduced the “Stalking” technique for reprogramming patterns of unconscious automatic behavior. The name of the technique accurately reflects its essence, and despite its simplicity, it has proven to be highly effective. One of its most notable effects is that new behavioral options (alternative actions) become apparent right during the process. Most importantly, Stalking helps you become aware of every moment within the pattern you want to reprogram, giving you the ability to make conscious choices in similar situations in the future.

Stalking works especially well in communication scenarios where interactions can develop along different paths but often cross the line between common sense and emotion. If you find yourself in situations where you want to shout at someone, “I’m going to kill you in such-and-such a way…!” or, conversely, someone wants to shout at you like that, try working through the situation using the Stalking technique—you’ll change the usual course of events.

The Stalking Technique

1. Choose a space that you’ll call your “safe place.” Enter it and mentally mark its boundaries.
2. Leave the safe place and select a new space. In this space, lay out the process you want to work on along a timeline. At the start of the timeline is the “trigger” point (the very beginning or what precedes it), and at the end is the “exit” point (when the process ends and something else begins).
3. If the process is long, you can also mark key points that separate different stages, so you can keep track of where you are at any moment.
4. Return to your safe place and fill yourself with a resourceful state, for example, by playing the Alphabet Game.
5. Now step onto the timeline, just before the trigger point, and fully associate yourself with the situation in all three sensory systems (Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic). Begin to move forward very slowly through the events, paying attention to everything happening around you, noticing all the details, including your own reactions and thoughts as they arise.
6. If at any point you feel yourself losing your resourceful state, immediately jump out of the process and return to your safe place.
7. While in your safe place, restore your high-performance state. If needed, use the Box Breathing technique to release unwanted emotions.
8. Then return to the process space and step onto the timeline again, just before the trigger point. Associate with the situation and move at your own pace through the part where you feel comfortable, then once again proceed very slowly, noticing everything happening both outside and inside you in all three sensory systems.

Continue this way until you reach the exit point of the process, and then take one more step beyond it. If necessary, don’t hesitate to retreat to your safe place to regain your resourceful state. Always enter the timeline just before the trigger point.

I know this technique may seem like a children’s game. But despite that (or perhaps because of it), the results are amazing! Maybe it’s because we so rarely give ourselves the chance to move slowly enough to notice everything happening around us.