Bobby G. Bodenhamer

By Sarah White
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)

I was always led to believe that the key to fluency was practice. “I must use my smooth speech all the time; spontaneous speech inevitably leads to stuttering. If I practice with my speech buddy every morning on the phone, attended Speak Easy and Toastmasters meetings, record my speech to monitor difficult situations I would be fluent. I just have to find the time and energy.” Right? Wrong.

On numerous occasions I would spend all day, or all weekend on a Speak Easy fluency workshop, practicing intensively for eight hours per day. I would use flawless smooth speech throughout; even on my transfer exercises when we would go into town in pairs, to ask questions. Then when it came time to buy my train ticket home, I would freeze up and block. Why was it that when it really mattered, there was no assurance I could use my technique and be fluent?

In the past I have noticed that my emotions affect my speech, and I know many other PWS have also reported this. After a lot of frustration I came to realize that I had been practicing how to control and modify my physical symptoms, but not addressing negative thoughts and anxieties around my stutter. If I went into a situation still believing I was going to stutter, despite days of practice, it was bound to happen.

All this has led me to believe that stuttering is a thinking problem. So when I discovered Bob Bodenhamer’s Neuro-Semantics website, a quote caught my attention:

“If you can speak fluently in even one context, you can speak fluently in any context.  You already have the skill; it’s just a matter of breaking free from the interferences.”

Bob Bodenhamer D.Min., along with many others professionals in this discipline, believe that it’s not the stutter itself; but the meanings we place upon stuttering that do the damage. The moment young children are corrected, criticized or teased when they stutter, they attach a negative meaning to it: “I am bad when I stutter”, “stuttering is bad”. One of Bob’s first client’s was a woman named Linda Rounds. Bob helped her to take the meaning out of her stuttering. “Stuttering is no longer in my mind,” Linda now says.

The power of positive thought has become a multi- million dollar industry. Positive thoughts can manifest positive experiences, and of course vice versa. If people can heal themselves with the power of the mind doesn’t it seem only sensible that we apply this to stuttering?

I had the privilege of attending Bob’s five-day workshop, “Mastering Blocking and Stuttering” in Perth, the week before the World Congress. The course content is based on Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and Neuro-Semantics (NS). It is the study of how our words and the words of others affect our thoughts, feelings and emotions. We were all told to read the course manual first to understand the theory, so that on the course we could focus on practical application.

Although Bob does not stutter, he has worked extensively with PWS and for much of his life had struggled with his own insecurities and limiting beliefs. He is an International Master NLP Trainer, has co-founded the institute of Neuro-Semantics with Michael Hall Ph.D. who he has co-written nine books with. He has served as a Pastor for 33 years and has had extensive training and experience in counseling. His NLP and NS techniques have helped people all over the world to overcome addictions and limiting beliefs in many different areas.

Students on our course were immediately put at ease. Bob is a man who exudes compassion and understanding. His quirky sense of humor, tireless patience and enthusiasm kept a group of 26 individuals thoroughly entertained and focused for five intensive days. This is no minor achievement! We laughed and cried, all to the sound of Bob’s cheerfully distinct accent, which he refers to as ‘Hillbilly’!

In NLP Meta States can be defined as our ‘state of mind’ when we do different things. Effectively they are a ‘state about a state’. For example, when we are in a fluent state we are calm, confident and we are often not conscious of how we are speaking, only of the content. We are putting a positive meaning on being fluent. When we’re in a blocking/stuttering state we are anxious, lack confidence and are plagued by negative thoughts, thus defining this state with a negative meaning. If we can put a state of acceptance on top of this anxiety (meta stating) the acceptance will take over and the anxiety goes away. The higher frame always governs the game. In this case, acceptance is the higher frame.

Understanding our blocking state was the first exercise we did. By identifying what we see and hear, as well as any physical sensations we feel in feared situations we can learn to re-frame them. These states are invisible when we first try to access them because we have been slipping in and out of them unconsciously for so long that they are automatic. When we make these unconscious frames visible we can pull them apart, and ultimately step outside the frame.

Bob encouraged us to mentally place ourselves into a “blocking state” by recalling a situation where we had recently stuttered. I recalled a barbeque where I was stuttering and blocking whilst meeting new people. Just by visualizing this scene I found that my throat and chest became restricted and I felt like I couldn’t breath. I began to hear my internal voice saying; “They think you’re a freak”, “They don’t respect you when you stutter”, “You are inferior”. Yep, this the ghastly state!

However as far as visuals went I saw nothing. Just black. Then I realized that when I stutter or block I ‘check out’. I try to escape the situation and therefore cannot retain eye contact. I practiced slowing the scene down in my mind and I began to see a visual that looked like a TV screen that hadn’t been tuned in; white noise. It was a small frame, right in front of my eyes. To me this symbolized chaos, having no control over my speech, thus the situation. I was surprised to discover that I could push this scene away with my intent. I could make it so big it dissolved into nothingness, I could add color. After a while it didn’t seem as foreboding anymore.

In NLP a Resource State is a mental place you create, that contains all the resources you need to be fluent, confident, courageous, peaceful, creative – whatever qualities you need to be the best you can be. It is when we replace our blocking state with a resource state that amazing things start to happen.

I have two resource states that developed whilst on the course. The first one made me peaceful and calm. I have always felt very connected to the beach, so it was only natural that it should be there.

I am sitting on the soft white sand looking out onto the sparkling blue ocean. A golden beam of sunlight shines down through my crown chakra at the top of my head (chakras are spiritual energy centers according to yogic philosophy) It travels through my throat and into my chest dissolving a black tar-like substance (my stutter.) My throat and heart chakras expand and connect out in front of me, allowing me to speak my truth in all situations. The light continues to travel through my body expanding my other chakras, before pouring out the soles of my feet, connecting me to mother earth. Through this scene I gain inner peace and calm.

Then I look to the clear blue sky spotted with white fluffy clouds. I am energized by the sheer power of the universe and through this scene I gain courage.

With practice this has become a very powerful resource to access a state of peace and calm. No matter where I am, I experience a strong physical sensation of euphoria flooding my body; my chest and stomach actually feel warm!

Resource States are different for everyone, but usually they are panoramic scenes filled with bright colors. Whereas blocking states are small scenes that appear to be right in front of you face in black and white.

To anchor this state, I go into the feeling and gently pinch my earlobe (you can touch any part of your body). We use physical anchors to kinesthetically allow us to recall our resource states; this works effectively because there is a strong link between mind and muscle. So now every time I inhale and pinch my earlobe, my resource state floods in. I am placing meta-states of peace and courage on top of my blocking/fear state, thus the higher states govern the game.

We then practiced doing this in pairs, and comparing notes. Many times throughout the course we were witness to some amazing results by using this technique. Bob would invite someone out the front to demonstrate a pattern. If they got into a block, Bob would tell them to disassociate from that frame (it helped if they physically stepped to the side to break state) and then draw in their resource state. In every case the person was able to access fluency, even if it was only for a few words at a time. This does sound time consuming and it is a little at first. However the more you practice the quicker and more effective it will become.

I practice my patterns every day. When I’m sitting on the bus in the morning on my way to work I practice foregrounding (bringing to the front) my resource state and back grounding (pushing away) my blocking state in my mind. When the phone rings at work I use my physical anchor to access my resource state before I answer, or use it to anchor calmness and courage before I walk into the room to talk to my boss. In some situations I can effectively use Meta-No (Mentally saying ‘NO’) to push stuttering thoughts out of my mind.

I would like to stress here that NLP is not a quick-fix or cure. We need to devote time to practice NLP as we have practiced our fluency techniques. On a journey like this one we need to realize that some of the steps we take will be in leaps and bounds, and others will be small and very subtle; at times we may even feel as if we are regressing.

For example, after the NLP course in Perth I really felt that I could conquer the world (leaps and bounds here)! My fear of speaking had diminished to the point where I was enjoying public speaking. At the World Congress I volunteered to take part in one of John Harrison’s workshops by making an impromptu speech to demonstrate some of the public speaking techniques he was teaching. When I was out the front, standing in front of an audience of about one hundred people he asked me how I felt. I thought for a moment, and then replied that I felt excited, my heart was racing, adrenalin was pumping through my veins, but I wasn’t scared. Considering I used to suffer panic attacks at university when I had to give a presentation, this was a big thing.

When I arrived back in Sydney the week after the Congress my fluency continued. However, spending time with friends and family I noticed the stutters and negative thoughts gradually starting to creep back in. My first thought was one of despair; I’d stumbled upon yet another technique that didn’t last. Then I realized that I wasn’t stuttering with everyone; my negative thoughts were only surfacing with some people in some situations. This has always been the case, but before I applied NLP principals I didn’t realize as to what extent.

I contacted Bob with my observations and he gave me some questions to consider.

“What happened in Perth that so empowered you? What were you letting go of and what were you replacing it with? What beliefs did you change to bring about the change in Perth?”

In Perth I focused on what my stutter meant to me and only me. I realized that by assuming people were judging me unfavorably when I stuttered; I was placing a negative judgment on them. How did I really know what they were thinking? I allowed myself to let go of fear and shame, and replace them with inner peace and courage.

I also recognized that my feelings about my stutter were closely tied to my grief for my father, Peter White. He died of cancer ten years ago when I was fifteen. He stuttered and I know he carried around an enormous amount of guilt because his daughter stuttered too. I believe that after he died my stutter really locked into place. Perhaps by stuttering I was trying to keep a part of him alive. I am still reframing these thoughts with love and forgiveness. This realization made Bob’s course a very emotional experience for me, something that I have to deal with to move on with my fluency, as well as my life.

“What is it about family and friends that re-triggered the old thoughts and feelings?” Thoughts flooded into my conscious mind. “I have always stuttered with them, therefore I always will – they expect me too.” Sometimes I feel guilt toward my family; “I owe them fluent speech, to repay them for their hard work and support over the years.” Isn’t this thought ridiculous! What about all my hard work? Surely I owe it to myself to esteem Sarah no matter what! Here I am meta stating self esteem on top of guilt.

My father used to become very frustrated with me when I stuttered, he obviously didn’t want me go through the same pain that he had. He drove me speech therapy every Saturday, and oversaw my speech homework. I remember him crying out in desperation “Sarah, just stop stuttering.” So from a young age I have associated stuttering with doing something that was forbidden. Here I am meta stating courage over fear. I visualize my adult self, visiting my child self in these memories and giving her courage, self-esteem and peace.

I still believe that the key to fluency is practice; it’s just a matter of what you practice. For me personally, practicing only smooth speech , even with transfer exercises is like laying bricks with no mortar. They remain standing for a while, but as soon as a storm hits, the bricks tumble down. I believe that NLP is the mortar that holds everything else together; the missing link. I still practice every morning on the phone with my speech buddy – we have good chats! I’ve found that when I anchor in my resource state, smooth speech seems to come effortlessly and automatically. Be patient with NLP, give it time. Perhaps it’s a matter of “Keeping the Faith”, not letting old castles of negative thoughts rebuild themselves. And by becoming impatient with and doubtful of the journey of NLP and fluency that is exactly what we’re doing.

Please note:

My aim in writing this article was to share my personal experience of some of the processes covered in Bob’s “Mastering Blocking and Stuttering”, to provide some practical and personal examples of processes. Please refer to Bob’s website for more detailed information.

www.neurosemantics.com

Bob Bodenhamer, D.Min.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)

If every experience has a structure, then the experience of stuttering has a structure and so does the experience of stuttering resolution.

What is the structure of stuttering?

What is the structure of resolving stuttering?

After having explored this with numerous people, we first developed a profile on stuttering, then having working with numerous people who no longer stutter, we have formulated a model for resolving the processes, framings, beliefs, and skills that create and maintain stuttering. Using the modeling processes in Neuro-Semantics and NLP, we know that by discovering and learning howa person engages and performs a set of actions that creates an experience allows us to intentionally mess it up and/or refine it so as to give new choices and resources. That’s the design and purpose of this pattern.

The Structure of Stuttering

 

Stuttering offers one of the most powerful and profound examples of how human beings can take an idea and in-corporate it so much into the body, into the muscles that it becomes one’s “way of being in the world.” The idea? At the most simple level “the awareness of non-fluency.” This was the discovery of Wendell Johnson, psychologist and general semanticist (1946). He discovered that in Indian (native American) cultures, parents and elders did not punctuate or pay attention to non-fluency and so there were no cases of stuttering. It was only in Anglo-European families and cultures. The only Indians who stuttered were raised by Anglo-European families.

After punctuating and becoming conscious and mindful of non-fluency, then we have to add a semantic frame that makes the awareness unpleasant. We have to add psychological “pain” to it by accessing a negative state of dislike, disgust, fear, anger, shame, guilt, etc. We feel these things about the non-fluency because we given it semantic meanings on the order of “it means I’m inferior, bad, defective, etc.” Or we could give it a multitude of others painful meanings: I won’t be able to succeed, I’m different, people will think bad of me, less of me, etc.

This describes the primary of most people who stutter. By punctuating experience around the production of speech and people’s response to it, they take an on-guard, cautious, and self-conscious position.

Then to solidify the process, we add in another frame that sets this mind-body system into a spin. We invite the person to be conscious of non-fluent speaking, get him or her to keep catching themselves while or just prior to speaking, then their attempt stammers or stutters and being conscious of what this “means,” then trying hard to not do it … to stop themselves from doing it ─ the more they “try” to “stop” themselves the more it loops around and starts a downward spiral. Out of that emerges more fear, anxiety, sense of threat, anticipation of all the loaded semantic meanings, etc. The command negation in the form of “Do not stutter… Do not make a fool of yourself,” “Do not…” only makes it worse and adds to the spin.

The next step is practicing this way of thinking and feeling so that through repetition it becomes habitual … so that the muscles in the mouth, throat, and lungs learn (are conditioned) to knowing how to do this well. The longer it goes on, the more entrenched, habituated, and embodied it becomes. That then adds “proof” and “validation” to all of the initial feared meanings which then turns it into a belief and then a belief-of-a-belief which closes the system off to new input and processing.

That which holds this entire matrix of semantic frames in place and so creates a person’s neuro-semantic experience is the belief that non-fluency is bad and unacceptable. Yet it is this very thought and thinking pattern that created the problem and it is this thinking that cannot solve the problem. It is this thinking also that views, looks upon, and considers the solution to stuttering the most unacceptable, asinine, and counter-intuitive thing in the world.

Namely, acceptance of the non-fluency.

That is precisely what the person who stutters does not want to do does not believe in doing and will not do. Everything inside their mind-body system will resist that! Why? Because from the inside of that matrix that would mean giving in, tolerating it, that they are stuck, doomed, hopeless, etc. They start to draw conclusions about things that then become even higher level frames: “Stuttering is inevitable for me; it is permanent; nothing can change this.”

And from the perspective of the thinking that created their problem, they are right. So they more they try, the worse it gets.

The Pattern for Resolving Stuttering

 

The solution?

The solution involves being able to step outside that matrix. Only then can they see and experience a new matrix.

Kissing and embracing the “dragon” of non-fluency is the heart of the solution. But how do we get a person who stutters to kiss the dragon? We use the following patterns as the primary patterns for working with people who stutter to get resolution.

Patterns for Resolving Stuttering:

1) The Drop Down Through Meta-Stating Pattern.

This reverses the meta-stating or framing that created the problem and gives the person a chance to step out of the matrix.

2) Meta-Stating Acceptance, Appreciation, and Awe of Self pattern.

This separates person from behavior so that one steps out of the semantic frame that “how I talk is what I am.”

3) The Magic Question

This uses the miracle question of de Shazar to let a person use the “as if” frame in a powerful way.

4) Glorious Fallibility Pattern.

This establishes a Matrix for personal centeredness that allows one to de-energize all of the meanings around “self” and other.

5) Meta-Stating Playfulness

This enables us to playfully stutter and treat it as a skill, gift, and tool. It enables us to take ourselves less serious.

6) The Meta-Model of Language

This model is the model upon which NLP built itself. We challenge the ill-formed frames that drive the stuttering. We tear those “linguistic dragons” apart to see if they will stand the test of linguistic well-formedness.

7) Mind-Lines

This model is based on our book, Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds. Here we take those frames that construct the stuttering and we find “new ways” to think about them. And, in discovering these new ways, we teach the client to “change the meaning” of those frames so that they serve the person without the need for stuttering.

 

Contrastive Analysis

Stuttering	Resolving Stuttering & Opening the way for Fluent speaking
Painful self-consciousness in the recognition of non-fluencyPainful semantic meanings about self and identityFearful anticipation of reactions of others to stuttering Confusion of self and future of success with stuttering	Playful mindfulness of non-fluency as being about speech and not self.Semantic meanings of self-esteem for person, self-confidence for behaviors Non-punctuating of stuttering … a de-energizing of what it means, being playful Separation of “self” from current actions & reactions ─ Stubbornly refusing to let past or present control and predict future success.

The Non-Stuttering Matrix

To stutter and to teach one’s body, physiology, and neurology to automatically stutter, a person needs those kinds of frames and some practice with them. Conversely, what frames create and support a non-stuttering pattern? It obviously involves not being self-conscious about speech production, not loading up non-fluency with all of those meanings, and not over-investing one’s sense of self and identity into speech production. If that is what we are not doing, what does the person not engage in stuttering thinking, focusing on, feeling, and doing?

1) Focused and engaged in something to the point of absorption.

2) Caring most of all about expressing self or ideas.

3) Excited and passionate about something.

4) Feeling free to be direct, expressive, gesturing, etc.

5) Playful in exploring and discovering.

The stuttering experience involves self-reflexive consciousness to make self, speaking, and what others think front and center. These are the concerns in the foreground of awareness. Yet even people who stutter do not stutter 100% of the time. There are times when they do not stutter. Typically it is when they are engaged and absorbed bout something in a context where they feel safe and comfortable. This allows them to swell up in feelings of confidence, excitement, and playfulness about something else.

 

The Stuttering Resolution Pattern

After using the numerous specific patterns that we mentioned above, we began exploring what they have in common and how they contributed to the resolution of the old Matrix of Belief Frames that create and sustain the experience of stuttering. From that we have constructed the following pattern.

1) Access and anchor a state of liking.

 

What do you really like? Is there anything that you really, really like?

As I touch your arm here, I want to set an anchor for this state … because this is a good and pleasant and powerful state, isn’t it? And when I move my hand up your arm like this … does that give you the sense of increasing the pleasure or decreasing it? When I move my fingers down your arm, do you feel the liking increase or decrease?

This sets up a sliding anchor.

2) Extend and expand the liking state from acceptance to awe.

 

Now just enjoy that thing which you really enjoy and feel it fully and congruently … that’s right … because this is a state of pleasure and appreciation, isn’t it? Because you do appreciate that, do you not? Good … just be with that … and notice what appreciation of a highly desire object feels like…

Turn it Down: And let your mind begin to think about something that you just barely like as we turn it down … because you don’t need to appreciate everything, there are some things to just like … and some things to just accept … the traffic, cleaning the toilet … no need to appreciate that … just accept it, put up with it. No need to dislike or hate it … just accept it … welcome it into your world but you don’t need to throw a party. This is just acceptance.

Turn it Up: Good, now lets turn this up to the point of warm and exciting appreciation again … and think about something else you really appreciate … There you go … that’s right. And if we turn it up more and more … notice how the appreciation becomes a sense of awe … standing in awe of something so big, so wonderful, so majestic like the universe and the heavens on a clear night. It’s like being speechless before something so valuable … that you’re beyond words, are you not?

3) Apply to Self and Your Life.

 

Now as you feel this awe and ultimate value … I want you to feel this about yourself … about the wonder and mystery of your mind and your person…. and to build self-esteem … as you esteem yourself as having worth and value … unconditionally … because you are a human being and therefore a somebody.

And now you can easily feel appreciation for your skills and abilities and mind and creativity and your powers to respond to the world …

And you can feel acceptance about those things in your life that you may not like, that you might hate and fight about … and now you can just accept … not condoning, but just welcoming …

And when you feel self-acceptance like this … it takes the fight away … does it not so that you can now feel appreciation even more for yourself … self-appreciation … and notice how that changes things … because you are a somebody.

And as you feel esteem for yourself as a human being and appreciation for your abilities and skills … there’s no need for any judgment against yourself, is there? In fact, every time you are tempted to feel critical of yourself  ─ you can feel this! Can you not? Yes, that’s right. Beyond self-criticism … only accurate self-evaluation so that you can become everything you can become … you can appreciate moving in that direction, can’t you?

4) Access the feeling and experience of stuttering and set sliding anchor.

 

So keeping all of these feelings in your mind and in your body so that nothing we do from this point forward needs to elicit any negative emotion … I want you to feel so resourceful and centered …

And just inside answer this question … When you think about the last time you stuttered, what were you aware of that might have been the triggering stimulus?

Go back and see, hear, and feel that experience.

As I touch your arm here, I want to set an anchor for the stuttering experience. So as you feel that sense … whether it is tension, pressure, anxiety, fear, frustration, or whatever emotion you experience… just notice it.

Break state, test anchor.

When I touch you like this … does this elicit that experience? And when I move up your arm does this feel like you’re experiencing more or less? And when I move down your arm, does it feel like you’re experiencing more or less?

You now have a sliding anchor indicating more and less.

5) Access the primary frames that hold the stuttering experience.

 

I want you to think of one of the worst times when you stuttered … and as you feel that … just go back and be in that feeling for a moment…. That’s right… And nod when you are there.

Now rise up in your mind above that experience … perhaps even seeing yourself down below you in that experience … and as you rise up … I want you to just notice ─ and notice without judgment … what that person thinks and believes that supports the stuttering … for example, maybe “I have to speak fluently… to stutter is bad, people will think you are stupid…” That kind of thing.

6) Kiss the dragon.

 

Now with all of your self-esteem and self-appreciation, I want you to feel this stuttering and notice how the feelings and thoughts of stuttering transform … as you feel this … and as you do … just accept the non-fluency as just talk … just speech which means nothing more than trying to find your words …

And as you do … hear these words and notice how the dragon may roar in the back of your mind … “I give myself permission to stutter and to enjoy it knowing that I am so much more than my talk and I refuse to let this mean anything about me …. I am a somebody and I have the power of speech and I can and will learn to stop giving so much power and meaning to stuttering…

Now how well does that settle? How many more times do you need to give yourself this kind of permission so that it settles well and changes the internal “logic” that created the stuttering frames?

7) Gather up objections and complaints from the dragon.

 

So are there any objections from the dragon?

Reframe each one and build into the permission until the permission settles well.

 

8) Re-access the stuttering experience and Drop Down Through it.

Now let’s see if you can get the stuttering feeling back. I want you to feel this (fire the stuttering anchor) … try to talk … try really hard to stutter for me (fire the self-esteem and self-appreciation anchors as you say these things) … come on, is that all you can do?

Good … there’s some … and I want you to just drop down through that feeling and notice what’s below it … (repeat several times until you get to a void or emptiness)

Now be with that nothingness … and in just a moment drop down again to see what’s below the emptiness … (do three times)

9) Apply the positive frames to the original stuttering.

 

Now as you feel x, y, and z about this (stuttering anchor) … notice how they transform the experience of finding your words.

10) Access highest Intentional executive state.

 

Now as you rise up in your mind feeling self-appreciation and self-esteem (fire anchors), I want you to notice all of your reasons for resolving stuttering. Why is that important to you? Just inside … notice why … this is important. And when you get that fully and completely ─ what does that do for you? What do you get from that? Nod when you know. .. . good. And again, when you get that fully in just the way you want it, what does that do for you? (Continue until you get to the top).

As you now step into that ultimate and highest intention … and imagine moving through life with that frame of mind … and speaking in an easy and comfortable way … is the part of your mind that makes decisions willing to take responsibility for letting this be your way of being in the world?

 

Note: This article is a “work in progress” and is subject to further revision with new experiences and knowledge from our work in modeling stuttering to fluency.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)

The easiest thing in the world is to get into a fight with symptoms. We all do it. We all do it constantly. And no wonder–symptoms make our lives miserable. So it’s easy to get into a state where we hate the symptoms and go into battle with the symptoms. We fight with our negative feelings, we fight with our habitual patterns that hold us in gridlock, we fight with our imperfections and flaws. And fighting symptoms would be a productive way to handle things if we were not systems, mind-body systems, neuro-semantic systems with levels and layers of thoughts and feelings.

Systems? Neuro-Semantics?

Yes, we have many interactive parts within our mind-body-emotion system and it is our systemic nature that makes “fighting symptoms” unsuccessful.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that when we fight the symptoms we fight our own internal mind-body communication system. Symptoms are not bad things. They are indicators or communications from the system that something is out-of-balance, needs adjustment, or is in pain. Symptoms are like the indicators of gauges and warnings lights in the panel of your car. Suppose you get into a battle with them every time you got a message that you need to add oil, or that a door is not shut, or that the radiator is over-heating?

Symptoms indicate the possibility of a problem, but is not the problem itself even though we can make it a problem. As communication about the health, vitality, and wellness of the system, they indicate the condition of the system. That’s why mere symptom management only deals with the symptoms of problems and not with the real problem. This radically differs from identifying and transforming the frameworks that create the problem from which the symptoms comes.

Would you like some examples?

Relationships:

Symptom Management is trying to fix or stop the headache, the yelling, the anger, the frustration, the sense of being misunderstood and misrepresented, the disloyalty, etc.

Changing the Framework is identifying the frames of mind that govern the relationship and that deals with what the individuals are trying to do and what they want from relating.

Stuttering:

Symptom Management is feeling bad about stuttering and trying hard to not stutter and anticipating in fear what it will mean if one does stutter again, and hating the non-fluency and wishing to be more perfect and flawless in fluency.

Changing the Frameworks means identify the frames that punctuate a piece of speech as non-fluency and classifying it as stuttering that creates the problem and identifying the frames of mind a person would have to employ to not create that reality.

Emotional Intelligence and Management:

Symptom Management is feeling ashamed of one’s sadness and fearing that being sad makes one a pessimist and hating that and being angry at not being able to command the negative emotions to just go away.

Changing the Framework means recognizing that sadness is just a human emotion that indicates something of value feels violated or lost, accepting that, coming to terms with the loss and then creating a new meaningful goal that gives a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

To the degree that we are engaged in symptom management we focus our energies on the results that occurs when our frame of mind interacts as we experience some thing or someone. Focusing on symptoms means that we’re dealing with peripheral issues and not the foundational or over-arching issues. Merely trying to deal with the symptoms yet with little or no results, in fact, has caused many practitioners and theoreticians of various fields to draw a hasty and ill-formed conclusion. Namely,

The problem is insolvable, it is just the way things are, it is inevitably, it is permanent, at best we can only management it. It cannot be cured.

Many (but not all) working in the field of drug and alcohol addiction drew this conclusion in trying to get the so-called “alcoholics” to stop drinking. They ordered them to stop and that didn’t work. They coaxed and gently persuaded them and yet they continued to drink. They got them to make decisions to stop or to drink only moderately, they linked pain to the drinking, and they did many other things without success. The symptom of over-drinking and binging led to more symptoms, namely, not being able to “consciously” force themselves to stop.

It’s the same with fear and anxiety states. Most people find the mental and emotional as well as the physiological symptoms of fear and anxiety as very unpleasant. Most of us want the symptoms to stop. So we focus on the heart racing and then think that we’re going crazy, that we’re out-of-control, and we feel stupid, inadequate, then we feel ashamed, guilty, and then we feel really anxious and so the systems spirals out of control as we hyper-ventilate and worry about dying, etc.

It’s the same with arguing with a loved one about a misunderstanding. It begins innocently enough. We just want to make the other understand our point. Of course, the other also just wants to make us understand. Soon, we’re feeling even more misunderstood and so we begin defending ourselves and as our state shifts to feeling threatened and attacked, angry words come which escalates things so that it is a “fight.”

What do all of these “problems” have in common?

We are focusing on symptoms and trying to control the symptoms without looking at the over-arching frameworks that create them. That’s why we cannot solve these problems at the same level of thought that created them. Our dislike of the symptom will only generate more dislike, anger, fear, frustration, stress, upset, etc. and as these expressions go round and round the system, they get worse each time. They degenerate. The system spirals downward in a vicious way as we turn the symptom into a problem!

Systemic Problems for Systemic People

So what is a person with a neuro-semantic systemic nature to do?

This is the beauty and power of recognizing the levels of the mind and that the mind does not only go out in a linear fashion to think, but also goes in circles. We think, reason, and feel in circles. After we have our first thought, “I don’t like that symptom…” we frequently make things a lot worse for ourselves, by our second thought. “That means I’m inadequate.” Then our third thought complicates matters even more, “I am so ashamed of this; I have to try hard to not do this!” So we focus on not doing the behavior and any sign of it brings forth more anger, then depression, then self-contempt, etc.

This describes the structure of the problem. The meta-levels of states and responses reflect back onto itself to create the higher frames that put us at odds with ourselves and the world. At the center of the problem is our judgment and non-acceptance of the symptom. We then spiral round and round with more judgment, anger, rejection, denial, stress, and the like. Our attitude toward what was a communication signal, the symptom, has misdirected us.

The Counter-Intuitive Solution to Meta-Problems

That which will be the solution will change our frames. Of course, for the most part, this means that the solution will be the most counter-intuitive thing that we can imagine. It means that the solution will involve going in the very opposite direction that we have sent our thought, emotion, hope, and desires. That’s why it seems “paradoxical.” It is not paradoxical or contradictory. It is not “reverse psychology.” Yet these are the words that we have come to use to describe the counter-intuitive nature of the solution.

What is the solution?

To accept the symptom. To fully welcome the symptom into awareness and to non-judgmentally notice it, become aware of it, to explore it, to understand it’s positive intentions, to align with it, and to de-energize all of the negative frames and meanings given to it.

• It is for the alcoholic to accept the psycho-drinking and to explore those urges that moves him to drink. It is to ask, “What am I trying to do by drinking that has some positive value for me?” It is to be social, to be less self-conscious, to forget some pain or humiliation, is it to be one of the guys, what value does it seek to obtain for me?
• It is for the over-eater to accept the psycho-eating and to explore the internal urges to eat and what psycho-pleasures the eating brings: comfort, love, fulfillment, reward, the good life, etc.
• It is for the one who stutters to accept the stuttering as just speech, just non-fluent speech and to explore what the hesitating is seeking to accomplish that’s important and to flush out the fear and anxiety frames that has coached the person to become self-conscious about the speech.
• It is for the one who yells and argues and says “angry words” to accept the anger and frustration and the sense of threat and to welcome such and to wonder, really wonder, what does the person hope to accomplish by raising the voice or using hurtful words.

The symptom is not the real problem, it is but a symptom of the real problem. Nor is the problem the person–we are not inadequate or destined for staying stuck. We are just inside of a Frame Matrix. The frames that drives and governs us to interpret things in a certain way and to believe in certain things–that’s the problem. Typically we raise our voice and yell because we don’t want to be put in the wrong, because we want to be right, because we want to be respected, because we want to think that we are good persons, and to have others think the same. When we stutter, we want to be fluent and flawless and perfect, we want to be accepted and valued, we don’t want to be inadequate or to embarrass ourselves, etc.

Good motives drive our behaviors, but the intentions are not able to succeed because of the frame that drives how we go about the tasks. Rejecting, hating, shaming, and guilting ourselves for our anger only makes it worse. It does not enable us to be more calm, thoughtful, or respectful in sharing our anger. It turns our thoughts and feelings against ourselves. It’s counter-intuitive that by accepting our anger, welcoming the knowledge of a sense of violation, and willing to explore our anger gives us more control over our anger.

It’s similarly counter-intuitive that by accepting our non-fluency and even practicing it, exaggerating it and giving ourselves permission to be fallible human beings who sometimes care too much about what others things gives us more control and management over our speech productions. Then we relax, breathe easier, and de-energize all of the loaded semantic meanings that we give to non-fluency.

Getting to the Frameworks

Beliefs hold our feelings, actions, behaviors, thoughts, memories, and communication in place. You can’t train yourself and incorporate response patterns into your physiology and neurology unless you believe certain things.

What do you have to believe about having a negative emotion, being flawed and fallible, not getting everybody’s approval, etc.?

We solidify our symptoms by believing that they are inevitable and permanent. We drive them deeper into neurology when we believe that “they are just the way it is,” or that “that’s what I am.” Identity beliefs especially solidify and install symptoms so that they have even more of a gridlock on us. That’s why it’s the identity statements, “I am…” “He is…” “They are…” can lock us into a toxic system.

It’s the embedded frames of beliefs about beliefs all the way up the levels of the mind that actually control and govern our primary states. The frame Matrix supports the reality that we live in whether it is a Universe of Stuttering or Out-of-Control Anger or Pessimism or whatever. We have to move up to the belief systems of norms, rules, expectations, and cultural patterns to truly deal with the symptoms.

We first meet Neo in the Movie, The Matrix when the camera zooms in on his computer screen. A message is coming in, “Neo, Wake up! The Matrix has you!” So it is in our lives. The matrices of our frames have us. Waking up to the frames and the frames-within-frames of beliefs, values, identifications, decisions, etc. alerts us to the universe that we live in. Then we can Quality Control that Matrix to see if it really serves us well to enhance and empower our everyday lives.

Are you still fighting the symptoms and the symptoms seem to be growing to become Dragons in your mind?

Then stop. Embrace the Dragon … plant a juicy kiss upon it and see what happens. More often than not the Dragon shrinks to a smaller size and may even shrivel up completely. Rejecting your symptoms turns your psychological energies of mind and emotion and physiology against yourself. Welcoming, embracing, and kissing your symptoms transforms them, slays them, alters them.

Getting to the over-arching frameworks that make up the higher frames of the mind means getting to the beliefs and the belief systems. The framework of problems and solutions exists at this level. Once we destabilize the old structure, then we can rise up in our mind to set new and empowering intentions, visions, values, identifications, expectations, pleasures, etc. Meta-magic awaits us at those higher levels because we can tap into the systemic mechanisms of change. We can find those leverage points in the system and by simply setting up some new policies, invite the system to self-organize around the new beliefs and ideas.

Welcome to meta-land.

Author: L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. is a Cognitive-Behavioral Psychologist and entrepreneur in Western Colorado.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)…

You have a very special human power or ability, a power unique to us humans, one that sets us apart from the animals and one that enables us to engage in “time-binding.”

What is this power? It is the linguistic power of speech. By words, language, and speech we use the power of symbols that can stand for and represent the thoughts in our heads─ the ideas that we create. And by speech and writing, we can pass this knowledge on to the next generation so that they can begin where we ended. That’s time-binding according to Korzybski (1933).

Yet what and how we think about our speech abilities determines how we experience this power. This really becomes obvious when it comes to “public speaking.” That most people fear and dread and anxiously seek to avoid this experience tells us something about some of the personal and culture frames in which we have embedded “public speaking.” Imagine someone giving you the following assignment before an audience of five hundred people.

Stand up and speak for ten minutes on Einstein’s theories of the time-space continuum and relate how he developed his relativity theories and the difference between his general and special theories of relativity.

Would you stand up and speak fluently in that context? Most of us would not. We would hesitate, search for words, stumble over various terms and unfamiliar vocabulary words and then, if we dislike making a fool of ourselves (yes, some people have that frame in their mind), we might stammer and stutter. Or if we anticipate that we’re going to stutter, we might block ourselves from doing so by restraining our breathing. That would enable us to generate some strange facial gesturing which we might then feel self-conscious about and feel embarrassed.

The World of Non-Fluency

 

We are all non-fluent whenever we are put on the spot in a situation where we want to do well and make a good impression and are under pressure to speak about things outside of our area of knowledge or expertise. We are all non-fluent with language and vocabulary that’s beyond our experience. We are all non-fluent when we are searching for words, thinking aloud, and indecisive about what to say or how to say it. We are all non-fluent when we are feeling unresourceful and out of our league.

And, just as interesting, we are also all non-fluent when we are in a creative state, searching for new words to articulate a new idea that’s just on the edge of our awareness. Non-fluency occurs to us when we’re excited, thrilled, and experiencing ecstasy. It occurs when we’re making love and almost speechless in passion.

But far, far more important than the fact of non-fluency is how we respond to our non-fluency. What do we think-and-feel about such? How do we react to our non-fluent responses?

Do we like it or dislike it?

Do we enjoy it or hate it?

Do we feel embarrassed and then feel ashamed of our embarrassment or do we feel embarrassed and then have fun with that feeling?

Do we become self-conscious in a painful way or in a pleasant way?

Do we make a big deal out of the non-fluency or do we not give it that much thought?

All of these questions, of course, are meta-stating questions and introduce the meta-states or frames that govern the higher levels of our mind. They all essentially ask,

How do we meta-state ourselves when we experience some non-fluency?

What frames of mind do we create and set for ourselves when we speak non-fluently?

What emotional states do we apply to ourselves when we feel embarrassed?

These are the questions that identify, define, and create our mental-emotional frames of mind about the experience. They create our internalized neuro-semantic environment. Then, we don’t have to depend on the thoughts-and-feelings of others or of our culture, we can now take our own internalized culture with us. Yet if our internalized semantic environment is judging, harsh, insulting, critical, and/or negative─ then we can abuse ourselves easily, automatically, and systematically regardless of the attitude of others, especially supporting and validating attitudes.

What’s a Neuro-Semantic Environment?

 

Wendell Johnson’s original work (People in Quandaries, 1946) on stuttering focused on the significance of semantic environments in relation to stuttering. He focused on the mental-emotional environment of the family about speaking. He did so as to identify and explain the “second-order evaluations” that a person would learn about non-fluency. Second-order evaluations was the old General Semantics terminology for Meta-States. Here’s what Johnson wrote:

“We see certain inter-relationships among the child’s semantic environment, his own evaluations, and his overt behavior. The more anxious the parents become, the more they hound the child to ‘go slowly,’ and ‘stop and start over,’ to ‘make up his mind,’ to ‘breathe more deeply,’ etc., the more fearful and disheartened the child becomes, and the more hesitantly, frantically, and laboriously he speaks… It is a vicious spiral, and all the factors involved in it are closely interrelated.” (447)

“An attempt was made to create a semantic environment for the child in which there would be a minimum of anxiety, tension, and disapproval for him to interiorize. In this way we undertook to produce in the child such evaluations of his own speech as would permit him to speak spontaneously, without pleasure, and with confidence, confidence not in his ability to speak perfectly but in his ability to speak acceptably.” (448)

“Just as you might speak hesitantly in a situation in which you feel that you are not welcome and that what you say is not being well received, so a child tends to be less fluent when too much criticism and too little affection raise doubts for him as to whether his parents like him and will stand ready to give needed help and encouragement.” (450)

Semantic environment refers to the interpersonal context and explains why context plays such a key role in our responses. As long as we care about how we do and what others think, as long as we are ready to evaluate our very Self in terms of any particular thing we do─ we semantically load up an environment or context. This increases our sense of pressure and stress. This changes speech from just being talk, it over-loads talk so that neuro-semantically it becomes all kinds of things:

Demonstration of my effectiveness.

Demonstration of my worth as a person.

Expression of who I really am.

Expression that will determine what others will think about me.

Caring too much about Fluency and Non-Fluency

 

Bob has been asking the a powerful neuro-semantic question of many people who stutter,

“If you didn’t care about whether you stuttered or not, whether you blocked or not, whether you speak fluently or not, would you stutter? What would happen to your stuttering?”

Time and again, people respond to him by saying that they would not stutter. This is insightful. And it was for that reason that Bob and I put together The It’s Doesn’t Matter Pattern. It’s a simple pattern. Think of something small and simple that you have a “It doesn’t matter” response. Set an anchor¹ on that state and then apply it to the state of mind that you experience when you speak non-fluently. We do this to unload the semantic (or meaning) load on the experience. The same thing happens through The Drop-Down Through to Rise Up Pattern.

This awareness of de-emphasizing fluency and non-fluency and treating these experiences as just experiences of talking has been around in General Semantics for a long time. Again, notice what Wendell Johnson wrote about such in 1946. He begins with making a clear distinction between non-fluency and stuttering.

“The fact of the matter is that the stutter cannot talk non-fluently. He can speak fluently all right; so long as his speech is fluent, as it is 80 percent or more of the time in the majority of cases, his speech cannot very well be distinguished from that of a normal speaker. To say that stutterers cannot talk fluently is to commit a fantastic misrepresentation of the facts. If they talked non-fluently as well as they talk fluently the could only be regarded as normal speakers. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that whenever they do hesitate or repeat they make a great show of fear and effort, instead of proceeding to stumble along calmly as normal speakers do.” (452)

Do people who stutter already speak fluently? Yes. For this reason, Bob always begins when he works with a new client if there are times and places where the person already speaks fluently. Are there people with whom you speak fluently most of the time? Yes. And, of course, that’s a state to anchor and use as a resource.

“In a fundamental sense, stuttering is not a speech defeat at all, although excessive non-fluency might sometimes be so regarded. Stuttering is an evaluation disorder. It is what results when normal non-fluency is evaluated as something to be feared and avoided; it is, outwardly, what the stuttered does in an attempt to avoid non-fluency. On such a basis his reluctance to speak at all, his shyness, his excessive caution in speaking, his great effort to speak perfectly shows up in his facial grimaces, bodily contortions, and strained vocalizations–all this, which is what we call stuttering.” (452, italics added, MH)

“An evaluation disorder” is the General Semantics terminology for having created a negative meta-state─a dragon state. The speaker has attacked him or her self with negative thoughts-and-emotions, with fear and dread, with shame and anxiety, with the fear of what it will mean. This creates the semantic damage.

“In the normal speaker non-fluency is simply a response occasioned by some external stimulus or, perhaps, by a lack of vocabulary or preparation. As a response, in this sense, non-fluency is normal. For the stutterer, on the other hand, non-fluency has become a stimulus to which he reacts with anxiety and with an effort to avoid it and its supposed social consequences. Non-fluency as a response is hardly a problem; non-fluency as a stimulus is something else again. … [It is the attitude] … that constitute stuttering. Simple hesitancy in speech is normal and harmless. But to hesitate to hesitate is relatively serious in its consequences. It is these attitudes of fear and embarrassment, and this second-order hesitating to hesitate, these anxious exertions of effort to speak perfectly and without non-fluency─ these are the symptoms of stuttering that stand out in the adult.” (453)

Stuttering consists of a special attitude? What if stuttering is created and results through refusing to tolerate non-fluency? What if it is the meta-state of dread, anxiety, fear, worry, etc. that itself sets the frame against “talk” and which also demands fluency? What if it is these frames of mind (i.e., “attitudes”) that makes up stuttering and blocking?

If this is so, then reversing these frames and undoing this attitude becomes fairly easy. Then, all we would have to do is access states of acceptance and even appreciation of non-fluent talk and meta-state it with such. Then, it would be a matter of welcoming and enjoying non-fluency as just that, non-fluent talk.

This is what most speakers do. It’s what I do. I really don’t care all that much about fluency or non-fluency. I hardly ever think about it. When I search for words, repeat letters or phrases several times, I never think of it as “stuttering,” much less as myself as a “stutterer.” I frame it as just talk. Nothing more. It means nothing more than just talk.

There’s a particularly pernicious frame that can tempt us, especially those who stutter. That frame is the idea that we should speak fluently. Subtle, isn’t it? “I should speak fluently.” Says who? Why? What will it mean if I don’t? It’s the should in that statement that can do semantic damage to us. Should?

The should implies that “I should not speak non-fluently.” Oh really? It is this taboo or prohibition that prevents us from accepting and appreciating and using our non-fluency for searching for words and for being human beings who use speak in this way to develop new and different ideas. That’s why we should be very, very careful when praising a person who stutters for fluency, that can strength the idea that the person should not speak non-fluently.

Again, Johnson writes:

“Most people are inclined to praise a stutterer when he speaks fluently. The practical effect of this is to strengthen the stutter’s conviction that he should never speak non-fluently; as a consequence, he tends to become a bit more anxious and to exhibit more tension in his attempts to avoid non-fluency… It is better to praise the stutterer whenever he handles his non-fluency calmly and without undue strain. … What there is to do is to adopt the attitude that the stutterer is under no obligation whatever to speak fluently.” (455)

“Most stutterers will benefit from speaking in those situations in which no premium is placed on fluency. As the stutterer loses his dread of non-fluency, he speaks with less anxiety, and with less hesitation and strain─ with less stuttering. (456)

Practicing Non-Fluency

 

How do we train our mind-body-emotion system to stop over-loading fluency and non-fluency with too much meaning? Paradoxically, by practicing non-fluency.

“When they do speak with such deliberate non-fluency, wholeheartedly, they loosen up very considerably, speak more smoothly, stutter much less.” (461)

“For a stutterer to speak with repetitions, hesitations, etc. on purpose, is to reverse drastically long-established habits.” (461)

This is what we suggested in our original (1998) article on stuttering (Meta-Stating Stuttering: Approach Stuttering using NLP and Neuro-Semantics). We suggested that a person actually practice the stuttering and blocking. Play with it. John Harrison recommends the same thing and goes further. He suggests to play with it and do it on purpose while public speaking!

What will that accomplish?

Mostly, a change in our orientation to non-fluency. It attaches positive emotions like fun, playfulness, outrageousness, and humor to non-fluency. This works as an antidote to the fear and shame of non-fluency, to the taboo against it, and counter-acts it as we assume permission. Then, we can begin to enjoy our human non-fluency and quit making such a big deal over it.

Summary

 

• Talk is talk. It’s one of our basic human powers for communicating, expressing ourselves, connecting with others, healing, hurting, bonding, disbonding, discovering new ideas, etc.
• We are so much more than our talk. Talk is just something we do, just an expression and a very fallible expression at that. It therefore is an act of wisdom to not over-load it semantically. That only empowers it to control us and to define us.
• We all speak non-fluently and if we super-charge our brain with great frames that make non-fluency normal, acceptable, fun, and then learn to appreciate it as a way of discovery and exploration, then we can speak non-fluently in a calm and playful way. This I would recommend.

Created by diagnosis:

Diagnosogenic: stuttering is a diagnosogenic disorder in the sense that the diagnosis of stuttering is one of the causes of the disorder. The evaluations made by the parents (usually) which they express, overtly or implicitly, by diagnosing their child’s speech as ‘stuttering,’ or ‘defective,’ or ‘abnormal,’ are a very important part of the child’s semantic environment. Insofar as the child interiorizes this aspect of his semantic environment, he too evaluates his speech as ‘defective,’ ‘difficult,’ ‘not acceptable,’ etc., and his manner of speaking is consequently made more hesitant, cautious, labored, and the like.” (446)

End Notes:

 

¹ An anchor is any stimulus that’s attached or linked to an experience or state. It can be a touch, word, look, sound, etc. See User’s Manual of the Brain for a complete description of how to set an anchor.

References:

 

Hall, L. Michael; Bodenhamer, Bob G. (1997). Figuring Out People: Design Engineering with Meta-Programs. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

Hall, L. Michael (1999). The Secrets of Personal Mastery. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

Harrison, John C. (1989/ 2002). How to Conquer Your Fears of Speaking Before People: A complete public speaking program plus a new way to look at stuttering. Anaheim Hills, CA:

Johnson, Wendell. (1946/1989). People in quandaries: The semantics of personal adjustment. San Francisco, CA: International Society for General Semantics.

Korzybski, Alfred. (1933/ 1994). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics, (5th. ed.). Lakeville, CN: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.

Author:

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. is a psychologist turned Neuro-Semantist trainer, researcher, and modeler. He lives in the Rocky Mountains of beautiful Colorado and is author of over 30 books.

Bob Bodenhamer, D.Min.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)

Once you discover the fantastic realization that we can put mind-body states on top of each other to create a meta-relationship between one thought, feeling, or physiology to another and that doing such creates our frames of mind, then the questions about the art of meta-stating arise.

• How do we apply or bring one state to bear upon another state?
• How can we engage in the cognitive process of meta-stating?
• How do we practically meta-state so that we create embedded frames of mind that give us new and expanded perspectives?
• How can we create the most fabulous states to improve the very quality of our lives?

 

How to Apply One State to Another State

In the field of Neuro-Semantics people express the layering of states in the following ways:

“Now apply this resource state to this other state.”

“How does this resource state transform and enrich this problem state as you bring this state to bear on this other state?”

What are we actually doing when we make these statements? These terms and questions are all seeking to establish a meta-relationship between states. When we first elicit a state of mind, feeling, and body and apply it to another, we are seeking to put it at a meta or higher level to the other. The X resource now sets a frame for the Y target state. X could be joy and delight and fun and Y could be earnest commitment. When we apply one to the other, we create joyful commitment or fun engagement. The X and Y in the following statements give clue to the meta-structures that we’re working with.

 

Bring it (X) to bear upon the other (Y).

 

What happens when you bring “joy” to bear upon “earnest commitment?”

Relate this one (X) to the other one (Y).

 

What happens when you relate “joy” to “earnest commitment?”

When you perceive or feel in terms of courage (X, or another other resourceful state), how does that transform your perceptions and feelings (Y)?

 

When you perceive or feel “joyful,” how does that transform and enrich “earnest commitment?”

With this X resource in mind, now notice Y state or situation.

 

With “joy” in mind, now notice “earnest commitment.” How does joy change your experience of “earnest commitment?”

As you adopt this higher perceptive (X) about Y, notice how you feel.

 

As you adopt the higher perspective of “joy,” notice how you feel about “earnest commitment?”

Now in your mind, rise up to X and let it transform Y.

 

Now, in your mind, just rise up to “joy” and let it transform “earnest commitment.”

Frame that thought or state (Y) with this higher or more powerful resource (X).

 

Frame your thought of “earnest commitment” with this higher and more powerful resource of “joy.” When you do that, what happens to “earnest commitment?”

Embed this problematic feeling (Y) inside of this feeling (X).

 

Why don’t you just embed “earnest commitment” with the higher level feeling of “joy.” Wouldn’t that be much better?

Applying Courage and Faith to Stuttering

 

In speaking with Jim (a client who stutters), he said that before he called me he was anxious about the call. He was worried that I would be thinking that he should be further along with the fluency then he was. This is typical. People who stutter typically worry about what others think about their speech. Of course, it’s not only people who stutter who think this way. We all do. Stutterers do not have a monopoly on such thinking. We are all in plenteous company with that worry.

When we care too much about what others think, and fail to draw the line between what we are responsible for and who we are responsible to (a foundational Neuro-Semantic pattern), we slide into co-dependent thinking. That’s when we begin to assume responsibility for another. Because the Responsibility To/For distinction is a more advanced thinking pattern, we all miss this distinction at times and so suffer from confusing the two. It is a part of being human. We learn it in childhood in normal cognitive development.

My client told me that in some areas of life he was experiencing much more fluency. When he did stutter, it wasn’t as important of a problem to him as it had been previously. He was coming to the place where he was truly giving himself permission to stutter without feeling bad about himself. “It is really not blocking; it is more stumbling.” For me this is an example of how a person’s speech improves once we stop identifying ourselves with how we talk.

He said that in some contexts he would work up a lot of anxiety over an upcoming conversation as he did with me. I considered what I could expect from him as a result of the therapy given his fear that he could not (or was not) improving in some contexts where he was still blocking and stuttering.

He explained that in some contexts he was able to reframe this problem, yet in others he was not able to reframe things to adopt a better perspective. I asked him how he was doing it in the successful situations. He said that he would reframe the old fears with the thoughts:

“I give myself permission to be vulnerable.”

“I give myself permission to feel who I am and not to think about other people’s feelings. I can do this without being selfish.”

“I am not going to judge other people by guessing what they may be thinking about me and deprive them of knowing who I am.”

The last one was a powerful reframe for him. Having uncovered these resource states in previous sessions, Jim was now finding them most helpful in the present situation. Desiring to build on these resource states and to apply them to the problem at hand about his fear regarding my expectations, I asked him a key question in Neuro-Semantics, a modeling question, “How were you able to apply the above frames of mind to the old fears?” We don’t only identify what to do, but even more importantly, how to do it.

He explained how he would create a picture representing the resource state and put it right out in front of him. Then, he would place a visual picture that represented the problem state behind the picture of the resource state. With that setup, he would then bring the picture of the problem state into (and sometimes through) the resource state. From this procedure he could:

1) See or reframe the problem state “through” the eyes of the resource state.

2) “Mesh” the two together resulting to create a new layered reframe.

3) Reduce or nullify the problem state in creating a more positive perceptive.

I thought this strategy was eloquent and effective. If you are familiar with NLP, this describes one form of the Swish Pattern.¹ So what happened with the situation between Jim and myself? The picture he had of his anticipatory anxiety that he would not meet my expectations was of the two of us together and he heard himself saying to himself,

“Bob will think I should be further along than I am. Bob has helped others quicker than he has helped me. I am not progressing fast enough.”

This was his sound track. Does this sound familiar? Use that and you can work up a good state of anticipatory anxiety. Then once it is embodied in your gut, torso, throat and jaws, you can create a full fledged blocking of speech. When he brought that image forward and meshed it with his resource image, the meaning totally changed. He said, “It is just two guys talking.”

What about his speech? He became fluent … perfectly fluent. At the beginning our session he was having difficulty speaking, stuttering quite a bit but not blocking. At the end of the session, he was speaking in a very fluent way. He will be taking today’s learning and he will be practicing it to “install” it much deeper. Because it is one thing to speak fluently with your therapist; it is another to speak fluently with your peers. Now is the time for practicing which he does very well with fantastic results.

In the Training Manual entitled Mastering Blocking and Stuttering: A Handbook for Gaining Fluency, I described the process of how to apply the resource states of courage or faith to the fear of blocking in speech.

1) Identify and access target state for change.

 

What happens when you apply courage or faith to the fear of blocking and stuttering? If you’re having trouble, then first fully entertain the state of fearing blocking and stuttering. Good. Now, put that thought-emotional state aside for a moment.

2) Identify and access a resourceful state.

 

Now access a state of courage or of faith and apply the courage or faith to the fear of blocking and stuttering.

3) Identify the structure of the “application.”

 

How do you apply one state to another? Some people apply one thought to another by simply using the words and language. Others prefer to take a visual image of both states and do it visually by moving the resource image of faith or courage to the image of blocking or stuttering. Yet others prefer to do it kinesthetically as they will move the feeling of courage or faith into the location of the feeling of fear. In every one of these instances, we create the meta-state structure of courageous fear or faithful fear.

4) Quality Control the end result.

 

How does this fit for you? How does it fit for the ecology of your health, relationships, projects, values, identity, etc.?
Does it empower you as a person? Does it enhance your life?
Is it realistic, useful, practical, desirable, etc.?

Summary

 

• Applying or bringing one state to bear upon state is something we all naturally and easily do. That’s how we create our frames of mind and attitudes. Yet we usually do so without conscious awareness or direction. It just happens.

 

• Now, however, we can take charge of this mental-emotional process and create the frames and attitudes that we want. Now we can meta-state for ourselves super-charged attitudes that will empower our performances and desired outcomes.

 

End Notes:

^1. The Swish Pattern directionalizes your brain and teaches it to how to go to a more resourceful awareness. In the Mastering Blocking and Stuttering training manual it is on page 158. You can read about that manual at:

http://www.neurosemantics.com/Books/Mastering_Stuttering.htm

 

 

Authors:

 

Bob G. Bodenhamer, D.Min. and L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. are the co-developers of Neuro-Semantics. Dr. Bodenhamer has been working and modeling in fluency of speech with and for people who stutter during the last 18 months. Out of that has come several success stories as he has used the Meta-States model to invite them to bring highly resourceful states to their primary state of anxiety or fear. For more about the application of meta-stating to stuttering, see the web site and the  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/neurosemanticsofstuttering/ e-group.

 

Neuro-Semantics is about how the meanings in our mind become embodied in our very neurology and so our unconscious default programs for how to think, feel, act, and speak. Neuro-Semantics is also about transforming such meanings to those that are much more life enhancing and empowering for people. See www.neurosemantics.com

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The subjective experience of stuttering occurs as a speech pattern when we begin to say something, but then feels “tied up” and unable to express ourselves in an easy and spontaneous way. Sometimes it feels as if we have two or more competing ideas or feelings fighting for dominance, each interrupting the other. At other times, it feels as if we’re fighting against a state of stress and anxiety. We all experience this from time to time. And yet we do not identify ourselves as “stutterers,” or think of stuttering as a particular problem. Yet others do.

Stuttering, for some people, involves a long established speech habit. For whatever reason, the experience of speaking in a non-fluent way has become one’s very style of speaking. To create this phenomenon, a person has to give lots of attention and mental-and-emotional energy to the non-fluency.

Of course this reveals a meta-level (or meta-state) structure: awareness of non-fluency, dislike and negative evaluation of the non-fluency, defining “self” in terms of this experience (“I am a stutterer”), and trying hard to not speak with non-fluency, in other words, hesitating in the hesitating.

• How can NLP effectively respond to stuttering?
• What patterns, insights, and processes in NLP can we apply to the experience of stuttering that will access the magic of transformation for those who suffer from stuttering?

Exploring the Structure of the Non-Fluency

 

Typically, the linguistic experience of stuttering involves a person accessing a state of stress and feeling that stress about speaking. This becomes especially true with regard to being put on the spot, pressured to speak, pronouncing a difficult term, presenting an idea that might not be well-accepted, feeling unprepared, etc. This implicates the role that stress plays in the experience of stuttering. This seems especially true when it involves the self-imposed stress of judging that we should not stutter or that stuttering is “bad.” In this, the more stress, the more pronounced the stuttering. In this we recognize a meta-level structure, the more we dislike and negatively judge the stuttering, the more likely the stuttering.

“Stress” here refers to a psychological state wherein we think-and-feel that a situation is threatening, dangerous, or overwhelming. In the representing of these ideas, the automatic nervous system gets cued into the Fight/Flight or General Arousal Syndrome which then activates our whole organism for survival. When we do this, it obviously affects muscle tension, breathing, and other facets of physiology affecting how we use our body, throat, vocal chords, etc. for speaking. This sets the foundation for problems with stuttering.

Yet to become truly proficient at stuttering, something more is needed. Speaking with tension in one’s voice and non-fluently alone does not lock in stuttering as a habit. To do that, we have to go meta and set a frame of judgment that we really “should not” do this. We have to taboo and prohibit non-fluency.

As we outframe our non-fluent talk with judgment, negative evaluation, dislike, self-contempt, embarrassment, etc., we give more and more psychic energy to it. This kind of negating (Command Negation) has a paradoxical effect. It makes things worst. It brings the non-fluency more and more into our mind. We mark it out even more. We punctuate it as an experience and an experience which we do not tolerate. We highlight and solidify the experience. Here we send a demanding order to ourselves:

“Do not stutter… do not hesitate in speaking. … Do not make a fool of yourself by stumbling over your words.”

Now this kind of negating will almost always amplify the very thing we’re trying to make go away. Of course, not all negations work this way. But Command Negations do. In The Structure of Excellence (1999), we have described seven other kinds of negations, some which provide us very effective ways to actually negate things so that they truly go away.

For stuttering, we begin with a state of stress as we define our speaking as dangerous if we do not speak “correctly.” We access a primary state of stress. After that, we layer yet another state of stress about the first state. We stress ourselves that we should not stutter, that it is “bad,” that it shows ourselves as inadequate, etc. In this way, we meta-state ourselves into self-judgment about non-fluency. We make a big deal over the non-fluent talk and punctuate it as something to become very conscious about. Yet, paradoxically, the more we punctuate it, the more self-conscious we become of it. We call “stuttering” into existence in this way.

Stuttering as a Skill and Accomplishment

 

In working with numerous clients with “stuttering,” Bob says that without exception, in every single person, he has found the anticipatory fear of stuttering precedes the physical act of stuttering in speech.

When I (BB) met Clint, he had problems pronouncing words that started with consonants. With words that started with vowels, he had no problem. With great mental exertion, Clint would plan what he was going to say in order to avoid words that may cause him to stutter. So he constantly, with great mental anguish, thought ahead and planned carefully what he was going to say to avoid the experience of self-conscious stuttering. Talk about a state of painful self-consciousness. Of course, this became a vicious loop. As a result, it created the anxiety and in him, first at the primary level, then at meta-levels as he brought stressful thoughts back onto himself. It all began with a fear the fear of an idea. He feared the idea of standing and reading in front of a class or a group. He feared that he would not be fluent. Therefore he became hyper-vigilant about choosing his words carefully.

He said, “I have to pronounce all of the words ahead of time in my mind as I speak.”

“Clint,” I said, “you really work hard at this!”

“Yes, I do.”

“Can you imagine what it would be like if you used all these energies to focus on the persons you’re speaking to rather than on your own self-consciousness regarding how you are saying it? What would happen if you devoted this much work and energy to that?”

From our experience in working with people who stutter, the anticipatory anxiety itself (a meta-state structure) significantly contributes to causing an actual constriction of the muscles around the larynx. This constriction prohibits the free flow of air through the larynx. The literature on stuttering confirms this.

Because Clint had real problems saying words that began with the letter m, I asked him to say multiple motors motivate us. Each time he repeated this phrase, he would stutter on the first “m” in multiple, yet once he got started, he would flow through the other two “m” words without any problem.

In NLP and Neuro-Semantics we readily recognize this mind-body or neuro-linguistic relationship. As the mind accesses states, attributes meanings, and layers thought upon thought, it evokes various muscular responses the mind-muscle connection.

Knowing this, I (Bob) directed Clint to begin forcing air through his larynx before saying “multiple,” This made a big difference. As air flowed through his throat, he begin speaking the word “multiple.” This time he did so without stuttering. When this happened, I explained that this procedure relaxed the larynx muscles and allowed him to speak without stuttering. I also informed him that before we would finish the session, I had high hopes that we could eliminate the cause of the anxiety and stress so he wouldn’t even have to worry with doing this.

The General Semantics of Stuttering

 

Wendell Johnson (1946/1989) has an extensive presentation of stuttering from the General Semantics model. In his classic book, People in Quandaries, he speaks about the social construction of stuttering. He spoke about this as our semantic environment in his seventeenth chapter, “The Indians Have No Word for It.”

As a linguist and psychologist who worked with speaking disorders, Johnson described stuttering as having the structure of “hesitating to hesitate,” or “hesitating to speak in a non-fluent” way. This negative meta-state describes a frame of prohibition and rejection over the non-fluent talk. In all of the Native American cultures that Johnson studied, he never found a single case of stuttering.

The only Native Americans that he found who did stutter had been raised in a white culture. There the parents followed their cultural programming and punctuated the experience of not speaking with perfect fluency (the natural state of children learning to speak and adults for that matter!). They marked it out. They anchored it. They set a frame to not speak hesitatingly.

This made the children aware of the non-fluency and invited them to dislike it, try to stop it, condemn it, forbid it, taboo it, etc. This did not occur in the Indian cultures. They never noticed the non-fluency. They attached no significance to its presence and so it did not “exist” for them, it was not “real” in that culture.

This describes the seeming paradoxical nature of installing a meta-frame of negation. To install “Don’t hesitate” over the normal process of talking highlights hesitancy and gets us into a self-consciousness of it. If we then attach pain to this (the psychic pain of embarrassment, inadequacy, mockery, etc.), then we have an energy system that amplifies the effect.

The Structure of Speaking with Ease and Fluency

 

If we do not stutter and hesitate when we speak, how do we speak? What is the opposite of stuttering?

The opposite is to calmly speak which usually enables us to speak smoothly and gracefully and when we are searching for words, nervous about the impression we’re making, unsure of the content or language of what we want to say we calmly speak in a non-fluent way without making much of a deal about it. The opposite of the behavior of hesitating, blocking, and stuttering is to just speak, to do as in as relaxed manner as possible and to breathe fully as we do so.

What does all of this presuppose? It presupposes that we will be operate from the frames of mind that empower and enable these kinds of states, namely feeling relaxed, calm, at ease with self, un-self-consciousness, etc.

To set these kinds of frames we have to take away the prohibitions, taboos, and inhibitions. We have to take away the dangers and threats that set off the psychological stress. As we set such frames, this gives the diaphragm and the larynx muscles permission just to relax and allow for the free flow of air and speech.

Even earlier, Viktor Frankl addressed this by using “paradoxical injunction.” He would provide instructions for clients to “speak with lots of hesitations,” and to purposefully stutter. This presupposes that we have “the stuttering” rather than the stuttering having us.

The Drop Down Meta-Stating Technique for Stuttering

 

In the following case study, Bob illustrates how to use the meta-stating process of moving outside of all negative frames and to invite a client to drop down through emotion after emotion until he drops into a Void of Nothingness, and then to drop through that. This depth metaphor essentially lets us drop down through the old frames that created the problem and then to drop into higher level resources. We can then use these meta-frames to apply (or bring to bear upon) to the experience.

Clint, a single young man of 30, had stuttered for years. With a college degree in English, he plans to teach at the college level. He will soon enter graduate school.

I (BB) began the therapeutic process by first meta-modeling the trigger that set off the stuttering. This involved “difficult” words, especially those that began with a consonant. When Clint thought about speaking difficult words, he would say to himself, “Oh, gosh, I’ve got to say this next word,” and then would come the “block.” When he then experienced this “block,” his neck muscles constricted.

As it turned out, the “block” involved a negative kinesthetic in his stomach. He called this feeling “dread.” Interestingly, Clint had already devised a kinesthetic strategy to overcome this. Once he got the feeling of dread, he would do something physical, like flip a pen in his hand. Or, if the block was especially strong, he would slap his knee very hard. By doing something physical, he could then “get the word out.” The physical act relaxed the muscles.

Given this, I had him access a relaxed state. From there I meta-stated him with that resourceful state of calm relaxation. In the process I drew a diagram illustrating the concept of Meta-States, and how they work. With his sharp mind, Clint grasped it immediately.

As he accessed a calm and relaxed state, he said, “With this feeling, the block of that dread feeling has no power to make me stutter.”

I asked about the visual images of his relaxed meta-state. He said it was just above his head in a panoramic fashion. So I next asked Clint, “What happens when you bring that relaxed state to bear on your state of dread?”

“Well, Bob, it would invalidate it.”

We repeated this process a few times and it did make some differences. Yet the resulting testing of Clint’s speaking did not satisfy me. I asked him to repeat the phrase, “Multiple motors motive me.” He stumbled again on the first word. He was pleased about how much it had diminished, but I wanted it to vanish entirely.

So I had him access his kinesthetic of “feeling of dread” which operated as his cue for stuttering. He located the “feeling of dread” in his stomach. Since a negative kinesthetic like this usually responds well to The Drop Down Through Technique (see Time-Lining, 1997), I asked him to drop down through the feeling of dread to the emotion below it.

He went immediately into the Void.

I then asked him to drop down through the Nothingness. “And what is out the other side?”

“I can see a pool of water.”

I suggested that he drop into the pool of water. “And now that you have dropped into the pool of water, describe what you feel being present in the pool of water.”

In describe the meaning of that meta-state, he used the words, “free and cool.”

That did it. That was the meta-state resource that he needed. So I kept accessing the state of feeling totally free and cool in him, and as I did, suggesting that he bring those feelings to bear on the feeling of dread that he had about speaking.

“Where is the dread now in the cool pool?”

“It is disappearing, I can see it far off. It is going. I see it above me and it is going away.”

So I prompted, “Let it go away.”

And he did.

I broke state and we began talking about something else. We did, Clint went on for tem or fifteen minutes talking in a very relaxed way. He did not stuttered one time. In our small talk, I spoke to him about NLP and described what the model offers. He kept right on talking without ever stuttering. So I anchored the cool pool and then had him anchor it in so he could recall it at will.

When he left, he knew that he had gained control over the stuttering. For years, he had exerted lots of mental and emotional energy continuously to control it. He now realized that he was free to use his mind for creativity rather than worrying about stuttering.

Summary

 

• Behaviors come out of states. The speech behavior of stuttering similarly arises from certain states and meta-states. As an expression of state dependency, stuttering makes perfect sense and functions as a highly developed skill. But it is not a very useful one. Nor does it enhance life. By transforming the state and by accessing more empowering states and meta-level structures, the experience can change for good.
• Here we have applied neuro-linguistic states and meta-states to stuttering. Additionally, a person could look for limiting beliefs that support the stuttering and transform them into empowering beliefs. A person could use the Swish Pattern to enable the one stuttering to step into “the Me for Whom that is no longer a problem.” Time-lining, collapsing of anchors, and reframing providing some other useful processes.

 

Did you like this article? Then read From Stuttering to Stability: A Case Study by Linda Rounds with Bob Bodenhamer, D. Min. for another case study of Linda’s overcoming a long term stuttering disability.

 

Also, Rising Up to Drop-Down Through: The Art of Dropping-Down Through Experiences; Even Stuttering While Rising Higher by Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D. Min. and L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

References:

 

Hall, Michael; Bodenhamer, Bobby (1999). The structure of excellence: Unmasking the meta-levels of submodalities. Grand Jct. CO: E.T. Publications.

Johnson, Wendell. (1946/ 1989). People in quandaries: The semantics of personal adjustment. San Francisco, CA: International Society for General Semantics.

Lederer, Debra; Hall, Michael. (1999). Instant relaxation: Stress reduction for work, home, and life. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.