The compulsion blowout is a submodality-based approach designed to address intense behaviors or urges that feel uncontrollable. Many compulsions are relatively minor and don’t significantly disrupt your daily life—like needing to straighten a crooked picture frame.
Some compulsions can be irritating either to yourself or others, such as picking lint off clothing, counting bites while eating, avoiding cracks in pavement, or repeatedly checking whether the iron is turned off before leaving the house.
Not all repetitive actions are negative; some are beneficial routines like brushing your teeth before bed or washing dishes after a meal, which help keep things running smoothly.
A behavior becomes a compulsion when it feels unavoidable—like a necessity for survival. For example, in the story of Rapunzel, the pregnant woman insists on getting radishes from a witch’s garden because she believes her life depends on it. Similarly, if you feel compelled to straighten a picture at work despite instructions not to, this can cause problems.
More serious compulsions, such as binge eating, chronic skin picking, or compulsive shopping, can have significant consequences.
Use this technique with caution, as it doesn’t address the underlying positive intention behind the behavior. Other NLP methods, like Core Transformations or the Six Step Reframe Technique, might be preferable when working directly with intention and ensuring ecological balance.
Compulsions typically involve four elements:
- You experience a representation of something—often visual, but it can also be auditory or kinesthetic.
- This representation is distorted in some way. For instance, the image of chocolate may be unusually large.
- There’s a compelling feeling of having no choice.
- The compulsion leads to a repeated behavior you feel driven to perform.
How the Compulsion Blowout Works
Have you ever loved a song so much that you played it on repeat, only to suddenly find you couldn’t stand it anymore? The “blowout” technique works similarly by drastically changing your mental representation until it no longer triggers the same compulsion.
Key points to effective blowout:
- Identify the main submodality driving the compulsion. For example, if enlarging the image of chocolate makes it more tempting, focus on manipulating size or proximity.
- Move quickly. This technique depends on disrupting the ongoing chemical and neural processes that maintain the compulsion. Going slowly can actually strengthen the urge.
- Only change the representation in one direction. For example, shifting from distant to close repeatedly (like a seesaw) won’t be effective.
- Conduct an ecology check beforehand. What might happen if the compulsion disappears? Is it fulfilling a need? Could another behavior replace it? For example, quitting smoking may affect social interactions if sharing cigarettes is a bonding activity.
- Be specific about the compulsion. Instead of targeting a broad trait like control, focus on a particular behavior—such as compulsively reading every email.
Techniques Within Blowout
Single Submodality Increase:
Rapidly intensify the key submodality that fuels the compulsion (e.g., size, brightness, or closeness). Once the associated feeling crosses a certain threshold, the compulsion’s hold begins to break.
This is a good first step, but remember some submodalities have limits on how much they can be increased.
Repeated Ratchet:
This involves doing the Single Submodality Increase multiple times in succession. You repeatedly ramp up the compulsion’s driving submodality, then reset to the original image and do it again.
Example Demonstration
In a video by Steve Andreas, he shows how to perform a repeated ratchet compulsion blowout focusing on a kinesthetic sensation. Notice how quickly the process repeats and how the participant’s body language and facial expressions change, reflecting a shift in their internal experience.