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Protected: NLP Practitioner Training: The TOTE Model

Stuart — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:36:39 +0000

NLP Practitioner Training: Submodality Protocols

Stuart — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 03:05:40 +0000

I’ve just started to develop a set of submodality protocols in order to enable trainees to go through processes that will yield more consistent results. In most NLP Practitioner trainings, I find that the quality control of the trainings themselves is poor, and an attempt needs to be made in order to develop trainings in a way that yields consistency not just of the trainer, but of the results generated by the processes espoused by NLP.

Preparation.

In NLP, preparation work about submodalities needs to be made for a variety of reasons. I find that if I jump into submodality interventions, I may not have much of a response because I’m dealing with an individual who has certain limitations explaining their model of the world verbally. A certain level of preparation needs to be done to talk an individual through the unconscious processes that are happening in the mind of the audience. I would encourage a series of three simple demonstrations.

The first demonstration should be a “natural submodality disposition” test, just to show that submodalities are a natural thing to them, not something the practitioner put in their head. Tell the participant to think of two distinct items. I prefer to ask about something they like to do versus something they dislike doing. By asking them about the characteristics of the mental image, they can understand the submodalities a little better.
The second demonstration is the “mind-body connection” test. Individuals who are experiencing NLP the first time may not be convinced about the shift. In the picture of dislike, I ask them to rate how bad they feel about it. If they are at level 5, I then test one or two driver submodalities to intensify the sense of dislike (e.g. “what happens when you remove the color from the picture, and make the movie go slower?”). This is to show the relationship between the mental image and emotional state. Do remember that some individuals do not respond very easily to the mental image.
The third demonstration is the linkage of the submodality through triggers. This will show that submodalities are not a static element, but a dynamic element. I will ask them for a situation where they habitually did something, such as laze around instead of going to exercise. On one or two occasions they may have been able to exercise, and I want to know why they managed to do that. Often, it is because of the situation that triggered them. They may have seen someone running. They may have been told by their doctor to exercise or suffer consequences. Whatever the trigger, that is just ONE trigger. I’ll explain to a participant that a stable behavior is created through developing a series of triggers to lead to the same outcome.

Elicitation. This process requires the practitioner to know what kinds of questions to ask, but ultimately they need to know the Meta Model.

Start off by eliciting a problem state. For instance, a problem state could be procrastination (one of the top favorites). Most practitioners will start by asking details about the submodalities right away. Don’t do that. You need to know a bit about the context. They procrastinate for various reasons (i.e. find out the root causes/context), and the procrastination may be caused by elements in the environment and therefore ecological. One such example would be where an individual is procrastinating because the reward structure encourages last minute bursts of sales. I know some companies have incentives in the last quarter that unconsciously encourage sales people to wait until that quarter before actually taking action.
Once you know what the problem state is, you need to decide what the solution state is, and test it with your client. For instance, it is a common mistake for a practitioner to immediately assume that “motivation” is the answer to procrastination. Often, the solution state presents itself when you find out the root context or root cause. Sometimes, fear might be a better resource state to tap into. Sometimes, anger. Relaxation. Or humor. In the above case, it may appear that self-serving “fear” may be a better motivator than the others. I typically ask the client to test it out first before entering into the intervention stage.

Intervention/Installation

During the time of the intervention, you, as a practitioner, need to make a decision about the end outcome of the intervention. Do you want this habit that needs to be propagated? Or is it merely a way to disconnect an old behavior/habit?
Examples of situations requiring propagation of new behavior: overly anxious people, suicidal thoughts, depressives, negative thinking, peak performance preparation.
Examples of situations requiring disconnect an old habit: compulsions, phobias and fears, overeating/snacking, smoking.
In the first case, you will need to utilize the submodality Swish Pattern to reinforce habitual patterns.
In the second case, you will need to utilize other possible patterns such as the Compulsion Blowout Pattern or the Mapping Across process
In certain occasions, where the individual does not appear to be resourceful enough to develop changes, there could be issues associated with the belief (a blocking belief) or other associated ecological issues.

Finally, as a practitioner, test your interventions. There are ways to test if the intervention will work and transfer in the long term. It is about enhancing motivation, developing a higher level of clarity of how to use the change in different moments of the future. This is commonly known as future pacing. One process you can use to integrate future pacing into your interventions is the Comparative Future Pacing technique.

NLP Practitioner: Submodality Mapping Trouble

Stuart — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 03:19:23 +0000

It’s a common question: what happens in doing Mapping Across when you found that your client has the desired state image and problem state image submodalities as identical?

According to Bandler, it is through the process of contrast that we learn. LaValle (during our training) mentions this: “The brain learns from what is different, and recognizes what’s the same”. So, it’s going to be quite impossible for a client to have two different experiences and have the same submodalities.

It must mean, therefore, error on the part of the practitioner!

Most practitioners follow the steps as indicated inside a textbook. Now, I’m not saying that’s bad, but I’m suggesting that the issue associated with this is a highly rigid practitioner!

Let’s do a simulation here:

PR: Think of a time when you were motivated.

CL: Ok.

PR: Is is close or far away?

CL: Close.

PR: Is it black and white or color?

CL: Color.

PR: Think of the image of your procrastination.

CL: Ok.

PR: Is is close or far away?

CL: Close.

PR: Is it black and white or color?

CL: Color.

PR: (wait a minute… they are all the same)

PR: Uh… (raises hand to look for Stuart)

You see… the issue here is the practitioner does not know how to determine the “difference that makes the difference”. The practitioner should say something like this:

PR: Think of a time when you were motivated.

CL: Ok.

PR: Is is close or far away?

CL: Close.

PR: Is it black and white or color?

CL: Color.

PR: Think of the image of your procrastination.

CL: Ok.

PR: Is is close or far away?

CL: Close.

PR: Hm, which is closer, the motivated picture you saw earlier or this one?

CL: The motivated one.

So, remember, it’s not that difficult to ask the client to do a comparison. Most beginners who experience NLP may not be able to articulate their representations very well. So, it is up to us to be able to communicate in a way that best fits our client.

NLP Practitioner: Submodality Strategies

Stuart — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 07:11:24 +0000

There are three distinct categories of submodality work that can be done. I think it is important that I first assert the issues surrounding submodality work that many trainers of practitioners seldom address.

Reasons why submodalities are not fully used

I’ve seen a lot of different ways in which submodalities are used, but why are they sometimes not used? Here are some reasons:-

Submodalities appears to be complicated. This is sometimes due to the technical nature of submodalities. It is necessary to address this and to second position the learner and understand what exactly is the barrier. Often, beliefs are the barrier to learning, and by addressing the belief and shifting it, you could allow your learner to advance much more.
Don’t know how to use submodalities. This issue comes across when the mechanics of submodalities are not addressed. For instance, it may be easy for a trainer to say “make your picture dimmer” but the student has no concept of ‘making’ it dimmer. First, they might not be able to get over the idea that they are in charge. Second, they might not understand the difference between ‘analog‘ and ‘digital‘ submodalities.
Don’t know how to apply. This often comes as a result of reliance on a script. In many cases, I’ve found it interesting that the client’s frame of thought actually enables me to identify the solution. A client once said “I keep cleaning other people’s mess uncontrollably when I see their mess”. By exploring their submodalities, I can see why that ‘mess’ is ‘uncontrollable’. It was due to the subjective scale that makes this client far more sensitive to mess than others. What is a level 3 mess for you is a level 10 mess for him. I believe that once practitioners know how to determine what submodalities are used for, and the varied extent of their applications, they will be able to know how to use them.
Inability to remember definitions. Ok this is something that will require another strategy: a memory strategy
Definition meanings. Some practitioners fail to define the meanings of what a client says effectively. While NLP is great in exploring issues without the need to ask for the content behind the issue, it becomes a problem if the structure of the issue is not first clarified. The term “motivation” is sometimes misunderstood, for example. Some people think of motivation as a really big sense of achievement. Of course, not everyone has had ‘massive’ achievements.

3 Categories Of Submodality Work

Comparison of states, beliefs and values
Modification of states, beliefs and values
Associating states, beliefs and values

I’ll cover each of them in turn in future articles.

Psychotherapist Tips: Minding Your Language?

Stuart — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:56:52 +0000

Recently, I had a chance to witness what a person does in a therapeutic setting. He was working with a client who had a depressive episode and used Cognitive Behavior Therapy as the principle mode of therapy. This client had an issue that some of us might find familiar – he had broken up with his partner of several years and the principle outcome was to stop having to feel the negative sensations of a breakup.

So, the therapist appeared to me competent in what he did, and came toward the closing of the session pretty well. But something strange happened: at the end of the therapy session, he said something along the lines of “imagine a time when you might experience a breakup again. She says you’re not worth the trouble.”

Now, according to my knowledge, I had not heard that phrase “you’re not worth the trouble” crop up in the entire therapy session. The therapist had the good intent of testing a future response. However, this particular phrase “you’re not worth the trouble” caused an emotional outburst. After calming the client down, it so happened that his was the phrase that he remembered hearing when his mother left his father (client was much younger).

Maybe this is a shout out to therapists who think that their mode of therapy is good enough. I think I used to be in that category, until I discovered NLP, learnt how to learn and model other modes of therapy (amongst many other things) and apply it to my current practice.

Language has hidden layers. In NLP, we call them ‘presuppositions’. According to transformational grammar theory (a little archaic, but still useful as a model), we have the deep structure of experience and the surface structure. The Deep Structure represents connections that people have beyond just the statement. A factual statement like “He is jumping into the pool” presupposes a few things.

at this very point, he is near the pool (a presupposed fact by the nature of the statement)
the pool has water (it is, after all, a ‘pool’)

You can’t assume, however:

he is happy jumping into the pool

This is a straightforward statement. Imagine if the statement was “I can’t believe my mother would treat my sister so badly”

Your mother treats your sister badly
Your mother did not tell you
You were ignorant that your sister was treated badly
Your sister was treated to a degree that is worse that your mental average

See… layers and layers of presupposed information.

Language, in my opinion, is the most complex of the layers within a therapeutic relationship, and I believe it is essential to know how language is used in order for us to maximize the therapeutic alliance, and to really hear what the client is telling us. If for no other reason at all, learn NLP for the purposes of discovering language and the way it functions in any kind of therapeutic relationship!

Protected: LCP Case 1: NLP Communication: Highest Positive Intention

Stuart — Sun, 02 May 2010 02:01:12 +0000

NLP Glossary: Hebbian Theory

Stuart — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:22:53 +0000

As extracted from Wikipedia
photo credit: neurollero:

In 1929, Hans Berger discovered that the mind exhibits continuous electrical activity and cast doubt on the Pavlovian model of perception and response because, now, there appeared to be something going on in the brain even without much stimulus.

At the same time, there were many mysteries. For example, if there was a method for the brain to recognize a circle, how does it recognize circles of various sizes or imperfect roundness? To accommodate every single possible circle that could exist, the brain would need a far greater capacity than it has.

Another theory, the Gestalt theory, stated that signals to the brain established a sort of field. The form of this field depended only on the pattern of the inputs, but it still could not explain how this field was understood by the mind.

The behaviorist theories at the time did well at explaining how the processing of patterns happened. However, they could not account for how these patterns made it into the mind.

Hebb combined up-to-date data about behavior and the mind into a single theory. And, while the understanding of the anatomy of the brain did not advance much since the development of the older theories on the operation of the brain, he was still able to piece together a theory that got a lot of the important functions of the brain right.

His theory became known as Hebbian theory and the models which follow this theory are said to exhibit Hebbian learning. This method of learning is best expressed by this quote from the book:

When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased

This is often paraphrased as “Neurons that fire together wire together.” It is commonly referred to as Hebb’s Law.

The combination of neurons which could be grouped together as one processing unit, Hebb referred to as “cell-assemblies”. And their combination of connections made up the ever-changing algorithm which dictated the brain’s response to stimuli.

Not only did Hebb’s model for the working of the mind influence how psychologists understood the processing of stimuli within the mind but also it opened up the way for the creation of computational machines that mimicked the biological processes of a living nervous system. And while the dominant form of synaptic transmission in the nervous system was later found to be chemical, modern artificial neural networks are still based on the transmission of signals via electrical impulses that Hebbian theory was first designed around.

Learn NLP – What Is NLP

Stuart — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:58:06 +0000

Neurolinguistic Programming is one of the most powerful approaches to understanding behavior to date, unparalleled by any other method at present.
photo credit: robclimbing

Contrary to popular belief, NLP has no formal roots in psychology. Richard Bandler, the founder of NLP, has also on several occasions disclaimed NLP’s position in psychology. The main reason for this is that the methodology is not psychological, but linguistic in nature.

NLP, based on its description at first glance appears to be a field within “neurolinguistics”. The definition of neurolinguistics by Wikipedia is “the study of the structures in the human brain that underlie grammar and communication”, which deviates from the original intent of NLP, which is the means to study the underlying representations within the mind in order to reconstruct behavior and turn such modeled behavior into permanent unconscious habit. Technically, it means that NLP should really not be just “neurolinguistic”, but really “neuro-psycholinguistic” in nature.

One of the main influencing theories that shaped NLP is the field of General Semantics (not related to the main field of linguistics, developed by Alfred Korzybski.

Here’s what NLP does.

First, NLP studies three patterns of behavior: (1) physical, (2) linguistic and (3) cognitive (in Dilts, 1990, “Modeling With NLP). Physical modeling can be done by identifying patterns of physical behavior, sequence and structure. For example, one observe the processes of playing tennis and detect recurring patterns of physical behavior under differing circumstances.

Linguistic modeling requires one of observe sentence structure and patterns of behavior in speech and communication. Bandler and Grinder created something known as the Milton Model by observing the linguistic patterns of behavior of the clinical hypnotherapist, Milton H. Erickson. They also created another model called the Meta Model by observing the linguistic patterns of Fritz Perls, the developer of Gestalt Therapy, and Virginia Satir, the developer of the Satir Model of Family Therapy. It must therefore be noted that such models are merely a representation of reality, and NLP is the process to conduct such modeling.

Cognitive modeling in NLP itself was based on the models derived from Korzybski. Dilts utilized Korzybski’s processes in General Semantic theory to analyze how cognitive strategies are processed in four parts: (1) the trigger which is what kickstarts a cognitive strategy; (2) operations, the process within the strategy, (3) the test, which allows alternatives or contingencies in the event that a goal is not achieved, and (4) the exit, which tells an individual that the goal has been achieved.

NLP Glossary – Chunking

Stuart — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:53:15 +0000

As quoted from Wikipedia,

The word chunking comes from a famous 1956 paper by George A. Miller, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two : Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information.

In NLP we have adopted the term “chunking” as a process of moving to details and specifics as “chunking down” versus “chunking up” which is a process of moving to abstractions and conceptualizations.

photo credit: PhotoDu.de

For instance, a starting concept like a “car” when chunked up will go into a higher abstraction called “transport” and can also chunk up toward “convenience”. If chunked down, “car” can be chunked to “brand” like BMW or Toyota. Subsequent chunking down can go into parts of the car.

The use of chunking is primarily for the purpose of getting different individuals to think at the same “chunk size”, because in mismatching chunks, we will end up breaking rapport due to a mismatch of our level of focus.

Learn NLP – Depression In Men, Supression Of Feelings

Stuart — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:50:12 +0000

I started doing a little research in the area of ‘emotional detachment’ and distancing. It appears that NLP has a great way of reducing the emotional impact of emotions and does help an individual to be more resourceful in handling matters – provided that the dissociation is followed by another resource state.

In the case of some people, this is what seems to happen in depression:

When women are depressed, 99 out of 100 times you’re dealing with people who have lost their voice. With depressed men the issue isn’t that so much, it’s disconnection, and that goes right to the way we raise boys, the way we turn boys into men is through disconnection. We pull them away from their mothers, we now think far too early. We teach them to disconnect from their feelings, disconnect from their vulnerabilities, and to be honest, disconnect from caring all that much about others. And when I deal with a depressed man, I am always dealing with a guy who is cut off.

In other words, a man who gets depressed may show it by being emotionally wirhdrawn – almost similar in nature to the standard dissociative techniques in NLP such as fast phobia cure.

One of NLP’s tenets is the use of well-formed outcomes. To be able to manage our future direction more effectively, it is often recommended we set goals, but I think NLP has gone one step further to infuse cybernetic outcome clarification into human behavior.

By considering the outcome clearly, we can be a little more certain that the direction we are moving toward is more effective. It also struck me, this quote:

When men are distressed, we tend to externalize. They reach out. They get into action, and for years that was one of the favorite explanations about why men are quote unquote, protected from depression. Well, many of the things that men move toward, like drink, or compulsive behavior or rage are not good. I don’t think that they protect men from being depressed. I just think they protect men from feeling depressed. And they don’t work all that well. And even when they do work, they come at a very high cost to their lives.

So in the event where emotional expression is deemed by society to be only a “woman” thing, it causes suppression, and habitual suppression turns into habit and often gets subsumed into unconsciousness. So now, you have someone who may be highly attuned to emotions but completely hides it without knowing why.

In planning the outcome, one ought to be more focused in the state that creates a solution. Depression cannot engulf someone who is acting on the feelings of playfulness, compassion and intimacy. A lot of the time, these states will also drive different kinds of actions than depression and supression.

Emotional detachment, however, does not always mean it’s a guy thing. I also know women who claim that “crying” is for babies.A healthy expression of emotions allows others to see what you are feeling because in the case of people who are unable to experience it, there’s hardly any empathy for someone who does feel sad. The experiencer may feel a Level 10 emotion but the observer may only calibrate to a 1.

Scaling Empathy For Depression

We know that people who are around depressed people need some kind of skill for empathy – that is for us to recognize the feelings before it is too late – relationships could be lost, and lives destroyed, simply because such experiencers don’t know how to really understand the emotions in others.

In NLP, we can do a variety of things to assist in handling our depression.

Learn to experience the full-blown emotion and process it externally, rather than just internally.
develop a belief pattern that it is okay to be emotional about certain feelings, simply to process and experience the emotion; to stick it out may not be the best thing.
generate a sequence of reframing to the process of the emotional experience. When you feel bad, it’s not just about stopping the bad feelings completely. Sometimes, bad feelings are signals (like pain) for something that’s going wrong. We need to experience the bad once in a while, and understand what we need to learn and do after this experience. It could be a breakup, a business issue, a loss of a loved one, a betrayal from someone you care about, etc. What did you learn from this experience?
generate a timeline sequence that helps you to sustain a corrective action. How do you carry out your change process? What are you doing that leads you closer toward your desired relationship/career/social outcomes once you have learnt what to do?
Build a propulsion mechanism that enables you to link pleasure toward moving in the direction of your desired goals no matter how distant it may appear to be, while creating an away-from to that which caused your depression in the first place

Finally, learn to create positive feelings everywhere you go and make people around you feel good. I think that’s a great full-dress rehearsal for making things better in your life.

Sources:

http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/mendepressionscript

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/152/3/358