NLP Techniques: Anchors and Anchor Collapse

We’ve all experienced moments when memories and emotions from the past suddenly wash over us, transporting us back to a different time and feeling. Only after a few seconds do we realize that we just walked past a bakery with the same aroma as the one near our grandmother’s house. Remember how much we loved it when grandma brought home fresh bread? Or maybe it was that same song playing that was on when we first met our spouse. Or, “Hey, where did you get that little spoon? I had one just like it as a kid, and I loved it!”

All these situations have a common origin, connected to how our brain works. In 1903, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov presented at a medical congress in Madrid, where he outlined the principles of higher nervous activity physiology. Specifically, he described the principles of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes.

This is where the famous “Pavlov’s dog” comes in. In reality, Pavlov conducted many experiments with different animals, but the public mostly remembers the dogs. Pavlov discovered that if, at the moment a dog is given food, a certain stimulus—like a sound or a light—is introduced, the dog’s reaction to the food becomes associated with that stimulus. The next time the stimulus is presented, the reaction appears even without the food.

Seventy years after Pavlov’s research, the creators of NLP revisited his discovery. They were interested in two contexts for using conditioned reflexes: psychotherapy and influencing one’s own or another person’s experiences.

This led to the development of the model known as “anchors,” and the process of setting an anchor is called “anchoring.” Anchors can be visual, auditory, sensory, olfactory, or tactile.

Three Requirements for Anchors

1. Choose a moment when the person’s state is at its most intense.
2. The anchor must be repeatable. You should be able to reproduce the anchor exactly as you did during the initial anchoring.
3. The anchor must be unique. The person shouldn’t encounter this anchor frequently in the next five minutes. For example, if you use a specific gesture as an anchor, it shouldn’t be repeated often. It should appear only when you want to bring the person back to the anchored state.

How to Set a Kinesthetic Anchor

1. Establish rapport with the person.
2. Help the person enter the desired state.
3. Guide them deeper into this state with your words.
4. Set a kinesthetic anchor by touching their hand or leg.
5. Distract them, change the subject, and wait for their external signs to change.
6. Trigger the anchor and observe if the external signs of the original state return.

Anchor Collapse Technique

This technique is designed to change a conditioned reflex. For example, it can help with unpleasant sensations from the sound of styrofoam on glass, a marker on a whiteboard, touching a jellyfish, the smell of incense, or the taste and smell of certain foods.

1. Establish rapport with the person.
2. Identify the stimulus that triggers the unwanted reaction.
3. Make sure the person believes the reaction can change, or help them believe it.
4. Have them recall a memory when the stimulus was present and set Anchor #1.
5. Find a stimulus in the same sensory system that triggers a positive reaction. For example, if the problem is a sound, pick a sound they like; if it’s a smell, pick a pleasant one. Think of the squeak on glass versus the sound of a guitar, or the smell of onions versus the smell of steak.
6. Have them recall a memory with the positive stimulus and set Anchor #2.
7. Trigger both anchors at the same time and hold for five seconds.
8. Distract the person with a new topic or have them stand up and shake it off.
9. Do a “future pace.” Ask them to imagine encountering the original stimulus again and observe their reaction.