With "results" I mean that something changed. Something should observably and demonstrably be different. And of course positively different is what we are interested in.
There is a difference between thinking one has gotten results and actually demonstrating the results. The results we want are that people will feel different, act differently, and manifest a better life around them. If they are also aware that they are doing this, that is all the better. But a person who only thinks she has gotten results, that she actually doesn't demonstrate, has not been helped. She is probably worse off than if she didn't believe she had gotten results.
The tricky point is that one of our main tools to create change is by pretending to do it. If we can get the client to pretend well enough that she has already gotten what she is asking for, and if she can do that so convincingly that she believes it herself, well, then she has changed. That would be the result. If she pretends to have changed, and she then feels, and acts accordingly from here on out, that is a completely valid change. As a matter of fact it is the only way to change.
There is a subtle difference between primary creative illusion and secondary reactive delusion. One is the way you are cause over your reality, and the other is the way you deny your power and become effect. They appear very similar, but are really 180 degrees different from each other. One is cause and one is effect.
Maybe the best way of explaining it is as primary or secondary thoughts. A being has the capability of creating any reality whatsoever. She can start with a blank canvas and put whatever she wants on it. But if there is already a canvas there with a painting on it, that is a different matter. Then I will start denying what is already there if I pretend that it is something else.
If I start on my blank canvas, throw on some red, some yellow, some blue stripes, some green dots, and I produce a picture of something never before seen, and I say "This is a clasmodrof!" then I have engaged in a primary creation. It is a primary thought. It hasn't existed before, I just created it from scratch.
But what if Joe came along before me and painted on the blank canvas something he proudly called a "thehytophone". Then I come along and look at it and say: "Oh, that must be a banana." Joe and I might get into a big argument about it then. Mainly because I failed to duplicate his creation and I came along and mistakenly perceived it as something else. My thought about it was secondary.
The primary thought is always true. The secondary thought is always a lie. Primary thought is an act of creation. Secondary thought is erroneous interpretation.
What will create change for our client is when she changes her primary thoughts. All we do is directed at inviting her to access the primary creativity in her world and express it the way she wants it to be. When she does that, her feelings and her actions will follow along. Her feelings and actions will reveal her true reality, even when she gets lost in secondary thoughts and interpretations.
In processing we are skating along between secondary and primary creation. We take up situations that are mis-aligned and full of secondary thought. We gradually convert them to being aligned and to being based on primary thought. While we are in the process of doing that we are kind of in-between.
If a client comes in and says "I am great with people, I can connect with anybody" and it quite obviously isn't true, then you don't start arguing with her. You work on getting the actual primary thoughts to surface. You work on getting access to what she is actually creating and how and why. And when she gets access to her primary creativity she can then change things to what she wants. So, if she wants to be great with people, she can start feeling and acting that way and it can then actually be true.
If a client comes in a says that she wants to be successful, then what we are aiming for is to have her create in her world that she is successful. There are many tools we can use for that. For example, one tool is reframing. We can change the meaning of what is going on in her life. Like, she might be talking about how poorly everything is going right now. And we can then ask what she expected, and she might admit that she expected things to go really poorly. And we can then reframe that to mean that she is 100% successful. She got exactly what she set out to get. If she goes along with this change it can be very powerful and she might actually change her direction 180 degrees and start being really successful, simply by expecting success rather than failure. Usually it takes a bit more work, but one never knows.
What the facilitator suggests as a reframe might at first glance seem as just an erroneous assessment. The person is late with her rent, and her car is about to be repossessed, and you suggest that she is successful!?! Well, it depends what she does with that suggestion. If she concludes that her current situation is as good as it will get, she is as successful as she will ever be, well, that is more like an apathetic delusion, that is not going to do much for her. But if she realizes that her current situation is an example of her ability to succeed and that means that she can succeed in all kinds of other ways too, that would be very valuable.
We are aiming for the cause attitude. We want to prove to the client that she is already cause and invite her to cause what she really wants.
While we are still in the process of getting the client to see the light, the change is a bit fragile. If my client wants to be able to communicate comfortably with others, I might start by having her visualize herself doing that. That might make her feel good and she is actually starting to create it. She is not sure about it, and, if tested, she might retract to her old way of being. If, after the first visualization, I put her up in front of 200 people and asked her to give a speech, she would probably break down. That doesn't mean my visualization didn't work. It just means we weren't done, the change is not yet complete, solid, and permanent.
However, when the client really appears to have changed permanently and completely, then it can be very useful and appropriate to test the result. For one reason, that will show us how good our work was. Secondly it will prove to the client that she has changed, which will strengthen and reinforce the result further.
If it is clear to you from the client's behavior and body language that you achieved a good change, then, if at all possible, get the client to test it right away. See, the client doesn't see what you see. Even though all the signs of change are there, she might later on start thinking about it, get doubtful and "logically" invalidate her own change. If you can have her test it right away, and show her that the change is valid, then she will consciously be convinced, and that will stop her from screwing it up later on.
Not everything is easily testable, of course. If it is something really tangible, like being afraid of elevators, then by all means, have her go find an elevator right away and ride up and down in it.
At the very least, make sure that the client notices how she responds differently after the session. Just tell her to notice it, and then ask her about it in the next session if she doesn't mention anything by herself.
Notice that there are both small and large testing loops. Each time you finish re-experiencing an incident you would test it by having the client feel the feeling again. That is a rather subjective test, but it is still very valuable. After processing a whole big area, you might get the client to check it out in life and that might be a somewhat more objective test.
As our client advances, we could get more and more demanding in terms of tests and we can more and more use the person's life as a measuring stick. With a new client we would not necessarily expect dramatic life changes right away. At first the aim is to make her feel different and think differently. Then later on she can get around to acting differently and manifesting different things.
The client needs to realize that she is cause over her own reality before we begin demanding or challenging that she is. And we start with the inner reality, and then, when she is mastering that, we move on to the outer reality.
The very first hurdle is to get the client to realize that she can change her own state. Those first steps are fragile, so we won't quiz her too much about how the session worked. Only when she starts realizing that this stuff really works will we make it clear that we will use actual results as a measuring stick.
A result is when the client feels and acts in a more resourceful way.