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Articles by Bob Bodenhamer & L. Michael Hall

Eight “Keys” to Personal Change

January 5, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D.Min.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)

For the past thirteen years I have poured my life into learning Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and applying it in the therapeutic, teaching and writing world.  For the past seven years, I have worked with L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. in developing the model Neuro-Semantics which is an advancement of the NLP model.

Over these years I have had the honor of working with approximately 750 therapy clients involving approximately 3000 hours of therapy. I have also had the unique privilege of teaching NLP at Gaston College for the past eleven years. In addition I have taught numerous Practitioner Certification Courses and Master Practitioner Courses. The numbers of one-session seminars I have led are too numerous to count.

Needless to say, the past thirteen years have been quite eventful. What a joy and privilege life has afforded me with all the above experiences.  Well, so what?  That is a question I have been asking myself. So what?  If I were to take all the above and summarize it down to its essence (according to Bob of course), how would I summarize what I have learned into one article?

Now, since the major thrust of the work I do involves assisting therapy clients and class participants toward positive change, I will direct the following remarks to what I believe is the essence of personal change from the structural viewpoint of NLP and Meta-States as developed my L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. We call the merged fields of NLP and Meta States, Neuro-Semantics. What were the key elements in the lives of those countless hundreds whom it has been my privilege to work with that brought about positive changes in their lives?

Eight Key Structural Elements Involved in Personal Change:

In this article I will provide the groundwork by defining some basic beliefs we have in Neuro-Semantics about just “how” your brain works.  Note the word “how.”  That word is important. In Neuro-Semantics we place prime importance on the mental processes that determine behavior.  What do you do inside your head in order to have a problem and what do you have to do inside your head in order to “fix” your problem?  What kind of pictures, feelings, sounds and word meanings do you need inside your head in order to do the problem?  What kind of pictures, feelings, sounds and word meanings do you need to activate in your head in order to not to have the problem?  By the way, we believe that brains aren’t broken; they just run sick thought patterns really well. Indeed, the brain doesn’t care whether or not you think yourself sick or whether you think yourself well. Your brain just does what you tell it to do. This is what this article is about. Those who change their thinking understand and accept these beliefs:

1. The brain primarily processes information from the outside world through the five senses. You experience your world through what you see, hear, feel, smell and taste. Now, importantly to Neuro-Semantics, we believe that when you re-present your world on the screen of your consciousness, you utilize the same programs involved in the event of recall. When you recall something you have seen before, you will recall it with a picture (Visual). When you recall something you have heard before, you will recall it with remembered sounds (Auditory). The same is true for feelings (Kinesthetic), smells (Olfactory) and tastes (Gustatory). We call these the Representational Systems or VAK for short and they are the first component of the movies of our mind.

Figure 1


 

Your brain not only does this with remembered experiences, it does the same with constructed experiences. I can ask you to imagine seeing yourself where you want to be one year from now.  Your brain knows how to construct a picture of the desired you one year from now.

Now, these experiences we re-present on the screen of our minds (images) often contain more than just one system.  We can recall a picture and also have sounds with it as well as feelings.  Furthermore, these images have finer qualities.  Usually images that we hold as very important to us will be very close to our eyes visually.  They will often be very bright and colorful to let us know this image is important.

Exercise: Step back and take notice of the movie that you have created inside your head that depicts your problem state. Note the picture of your problem. Is it a still picture or a movie picture?  Is it in color or is it black and white?  Is the picture up and close or is it far off?  What about any sounds associated with your problem?  Are they loud or soft?  What directions do the sounds come to you from?  What about feelings? What kind of feelings do you have in your body about the problem?  Where these feelings are located in your body? Are the feelings heavy or light? Experiment with your movie by moving the picture further away. Change the tone and location of the sounds. Move the feelings from inside your body to outside your body.  Etc.

2. The brain gives meaning to these images with words. So, I have pictures, feelings, sounds, smells and tastes in my mind, so what?  Your brain doesn’t stop there, as a thinking class of life; the human brain has the marvelous ability of giving meaning to these images with words. These words are “about” the images composed of pictures, sounds, feelings, smells and/or taste.

Figure 2


3.      The brain doesn’t stop at just the first level of word meaning you gave to the image. Your brain keeps having thoughts (primarily with words) about thoughts (See Figure 1:2). The brain does not stop at one thought, it continues having thoughts about thoughts and there is where the “magic” lies. In Neuro-Semantics we realize that as important as Representation is, there is yet something more powerful and more magical¾  reference.  That’s how the brain works. It starts with a referent experience, the event.  Something happens.  Then we re-present it on the screen of our mind with the Representational System (VAKOG). But by reflexive awareness, we develop a thought and a feeling ABOUT it, now we have our first frame of reference.

4.       Repeating thoughts will create unconscious frames-of-mind that will direct our consciousness to the five to nine items that we can do while multi-tasking. These frames of mind operate inside our head totally outside of consciousness. Our brains do not stop at just one thought. It will keep on thinking thoughts about thoughts. These thoughts about thoughts when habituated (drop into the unconscious) become our Frames of Mind – our perceptual filters through which we view our world. These frames become like eyeglasses through which we view and experience our world.  And that doesn’t end it.  We develop frames-within-frames, each frame embedded in another frame.

These higher frames determine our neuro-semantic states that governs the way we think, feel, our health, skills, everything. All the while we are having thoughts about thoughts, these thoughts are interaction with our physiology through our central nervous system and out of that interaction comes what we call “states” of being.  And, out of our “states” of being comes our behavior. Thus, “as a man thinketh, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).
These “repeated” unconscious frames of mind become our blessing or our curse. In problem framing, we can have frames of mind that say, “I am worthless.” “I can’t ever do anything right.”  “In order for me to have personal worth, I have to do for other people; I am not an OK person in myself.”  Etc.  Such frames inevitably come from our earlier years and for that reason become quite unconscious and difficult to change on our own. However, they are changeable and they do change for they are just thoughts no matter how much they operate outside of consciousness.  In “fixing” ourselves, metaphorically we delete those old frames of mind and install new frames of mind that serve us.  This is what Neuro-Semantics is all about.
The individuals who make personal changes accept that they have constructed these frames themselves with their internal representations and with the numerous layering of meanings. This layering of meaning is done mostly with words.  In therapy, I constantly discover old memories of the person hearing dad or mom tell them that they are worthless or that dad or mom was absent in their lives and from that they developed a word meaning frame that “I must be worthless because dad and/or mom was not here for me.” Etc.  Important to personal change is to accept the reality that these frames are constructed and therefore can be de-constructed.


Exercise:
What meanings have you given the image inside your head that made that experience a problem for you?  What does the problem mean to you?  What kind of beliefs have you developed about it?  How is it now a problem for you? How would you like to change these meanings? What kind of meanings could you give that situation that would now serve you?  What have you learned from it that will assist you in letting that problem state go?

5.        People that change believe and are aware that “The Map Is Not The Territory” or “The Menu Is Not The Meal” and they believe it is their map and their map alone that they operate out of. This is another way of saying that our perception is not reality. It is only our perception of it. However, because it is our perception (our Internal Representation and conceptual meanings) it is what we operate from.

Figure 3


 

It doesn’t matter how accurately it maps (perceive) our present reality. We will operate from our perceptions as governed by our higher-level frames of mind. This means:

a. Those that change recognize the value of creating a map (perception) that accurately, as far as symbolically possible, maps the present moment. We are a “symbolic class of life.” We do that with the VAKOG and Word meanings acting as “symbols” from our experience of our world through our five senses. But, these are just symbols about our world. They are not the world. We get into trouble when we confuse the two and label our “symbols” as being “real” in the sense that they accurately map out our world. When we consciously or unconsciously operate from frames of mind that we learned in childhood, we certainly are not operating from a map that even comes close to accurately mapping out the adult world we now live in. This is the root of most problems if not all of them.

b. Those that change their thinking by recognizing that their map is not the territory will eliminate the problem of cause-effect in their lives. What do I mean? I mean that the individual who understands and accepts that our internal map/ perception is not and cannot be the territory (the external world) will stop the foolishness of believing other people control his or her mind without his or her permission.  No one can make you believe or feel anything you choose not to believe or feel.

Just because we may have grown up in a dysfunctional family does not mean that we are or have to remain a dysfunctional person even if we learned some poor ways to think and behave. We can “own” our own brain, take control of it and learn new ways of thinking. Brains are very flexible.  As an example, think of something unpleasant. Now think of something pleasant. Note how rapidly you can change your thinking.  Old unwanted patterns of thinking are just habituated thought patterns that “seem real” because they have become unconscious and “feel” real. But, guess what?  They can change.
Now, many have an “invested” interest in getting you to believe that these thought patterns are “real” and that you can do nothing about them. Don’t buy that limiting frame. You can change these thought patterns. You can “renew your mind.” You can think on things that are pure, just, right, lovely, etc. Indeed, you can think on anything you choose to think on. Just give yourself permission.

c. They recognize that the words and images inside our heads are not “real” in the sense that they are set in concrete – they are changeable. They are just “symbols” of the external world.  We have instruments that will detect the nerve cells and the neuro-transmitters that allow one nerve cell to communicate with another nerve cell. However, can neuro-scientist go inside the brain and find/ measure a picture, a sound, a feeling or a word?  No, they are “abstractions” of the mind hence our conceptual states that are generated at the moment of thought and then they disappear until we think the thought again.  Because the images and word meanings inside our head are not “real” in the sense that they are set in concrete, they only have the reality we give them.
Consider this; think of a mildly unpleasant memory and note what pops into your mind and how you feel. Now, think of a pleasant memory and notice what pops into your mind and how you feel.  Which type thinking best serves you? Why would you want to “create” an image and a thought inside your head that makes you feel bad?  Have you ever thought about just not doing that anymore?  After all, these thoughts aren’t real unless you generate them.

How can we use this knowledge?  Simple. Since the thoughts including the decisions inside our heads are just thoughts, we can change them as we will. In other words, if you don’t like a decision you have made, say “no” to it. Apply “no” to the unwanted decision. When you do this you are meta-stating (applying one thought to another. (See #7 below.) the unwanted decision with a higher level “no.”  What happens when you say “no” to that unwanted decision?  Now, create a decision that will serve you and say “yes” to it. Again, you are meta-stating your desired decision with a “yes.”
Have you ever thought of this¾  the only difference between a thought and a belief is that a belief is a thought to which you have said, “yes.” A belief is a thought that you have affirmed by saying, “I believe this. This thought is for me.” Now, utilize the same processes of the mind in changing original thoughts by thinking other thoughts about them by saying “no” to the decision/thought you don’t want and “yes” to the decision or thought you do want.
How many times do I need to do this? Good question. The brain learns through repetition. Remember how you learned to ride a bicycle or to drive a car?  You rehearsed until the knowledge dropped into your unconscious and it became habitual. Do the same thing with saying “no” to what you don’t want and “yes” to what you do want. Every time the decision/thought pops up you don’t want, say “no” to it and then immediately say, “yes” to the one you do want.  By doing this you are “breaking” the old unwanted habitual pattern and installing a new direction for your mind to go towards¾ a direction that will best serve you. After all, they are just thoughts so think thoughts that serve you.

6.      The awesome power of knowing the difference between associating and dissociating. Before I explain this difference, consider this simple exercise.  Imagine yourself walking up to your refrigerator. You open the refrigerator door. Once inside the refrigerator you open the vegetable drawer. Inside the vegetable drawer you see a lemon. You take out the lemon, close the vegetable drawer and then the refrigerator door. Lemon in hand, you walk over to your kitchen cabinet; take out a cutting board and a knife. You proceed to slice the lemon in half then you take one of the halves and slice the half in half and you have two-quarter slices of lemon. You then pick up one of the quarter slices of lemon and put it in your mouth and squeeze the lemon as you feel the lemon juice pouring into your mouth. Is your mouth watering “as if” you actually had a slice of lemon in your mouth?  Most people’s mouth will water.  This little exercise illustrates that the brain doesn’t know the difference between what you imagine and what you are actually experiencing in the present.

Similarly, suppose we consciously or unconsciously imagine ourselves as a little boy or little girl back in our dysfunctional family. Suppose we recall hearing and seeing a parent screaming at us. We hear them telling us how stupid they believe we are. How do you think you would feel even though you are now a grown adult and not a child?  You would feel bad, wouldn’t you? That is what I mean by associating.  Almost universally, I discover clients are having problems in adulthood due to their imagining themselves still children. They continue using their childhood experiences as their present frame of reference.

We call this “associating.” You know if you are associating into a memory if when you recall it you do not see yourself in the picture.  Let’s experiment.  Recall a mildly painful memory.  Get a picture of it.  Now, in the picture note whether or not you see yourself or you just see the other people and environment in that picture.  If you do not see yourself, mentally, you have associated back into that memory and you will tend to experience the same negative feelings you had when you experienced it.

Now, because the brain does not know the difference between what you represent by imagination or by current input (unless you inform it), when you mentally place yourself back into some painful memory, you will have negative feelings very similar to what you experienced during that event.  If you see yourself in that picture as the younger you, we call that dissociating. When people say something like, “That doesn’t bother me anymore; I have distanced myself from it.” They have in fact dissociated from the memory by seeing themselves in the picture and by pushing the picture away from their eyes so it is at a distance. This diminishes the feelings whereas associating into a memory tends to increase the feelings (for most people).

When we consciously or unconsciously associate back into our past hurtful memories and operate from the mental frames (conceptual meanings) that we gave them, we are confusing the map with the territory. When we do this we are living our adult lives inside the painful experiences of childhood.  The thinking we developed then served us then but it doesn’t serve us in adulthood. If you find yourself:

  • (Jumping to Conclusions) generalization
  • (Being Narrow Minded) centration
  • (Playing the “blame game”) transductive reasoning
  • (Personalizing) egocentrism
  • (Making mountains out of molehills.) inductive logic or castraphizing
  • (Black and white thinking) thinking in absolutes and
  • (Blocking out past positive examples.) irreversability

then you are operating from childhood frames. John Burton, Ed.D. has an article on the Neuro-Semantics’ web site that defines the thinking styles of children. The title of the article is “Hypnotic Language: Solutions in a Word.” You may find the article at:

www.neurosemantics.com/Articles/hypnotic-language.htm

If I were to list one common element of the problems that I have confronted during these thirteen years as a therapist, I would list associating into past painful memories.  The problem of unconsciously associating into childhood problem states and bringing that forward into the adult world lies at the root of many problems that I see therapeutically.

Note: You may have tried through years of reading and/ or attending trainings to “fix” your thinking without it working.  Experience has taught me that often times a person will need assistance in activating these associated frames in order to bring them to conscious level. From there it becomes fairly easy to meta-state (apply a resource state to the problem state) and reframe them. But know this, you can change your thinking no matter how unconscious the problem state.  If you do not know whether or not you are associating into some past memory, you can bet you are doing just that unconsciously if you are having problems with unwanted behaviors and thoughts.

Exercise: For many people to dissociate (pop out of that memory and see themselves in the event) can make a profound change. So, recall the event that triggered your problem state. Recall the event by getting a picture of it. Now, as you look at the picture, do you see yourself in the picture or do you just see the other person(s) and the surrounding people if others were there take note of the physical place where you were at that time.
If you do not see yourself that means that you are recalling the painful memory associated. This means that your brain is telling your body that you are still there experiencing that painful experience now in the present. So, pop out of that painful memory and see yourself in the memory.
you pop out and see yourself there, note that you are viewing it from another perspective. You are viewing it from the “now” which means that you can bring the resources of your present life with all the subsequent learnings to bear on that event. And, by bringing the resources of the present to bear on that event you can place new and more useful meanings to it. And, as you have now popped out of that experience you can just notice how that picture just moves further and further away as you distance yourself from it. And, as you do that you can preserve and keep all the learnings both good and bad from that experience. And, once you have preserved those learnings you no longer need to hold on to that old pain, do you?

If by chance you were not associated into that old memory, you can still bring the learnings and resources you now have onto that old memory. All the while distancing yourself from it.

7.      People who change know how to apply higher meta-level states to lower level problems. As we have learned, our brains do not stop at just one thought. It will keep on thinking thoughts about thoughts.

When we have a “thought about a thought” the second thought will change the first thought and that is where the magic lies. In thinking and behaving the ability of the brain to have thoughts about thoughts is crucial.  Here is the secret. When you have one thought (thoughts are composed of images and conceptual meanings) and then entertain another thought “about” the original thought the original thought will change (See Figure 4).

Figure 4


What in the world does that mean?  It is simple.  If you have an experience that scares you and from that experience you become afraid of your fear, what will happen? In this case the fear will intensify. Indeed, applying fear to fear leads to paranoia.   What if instead of becoming fearful of your fear, you welcomed your fear?  You applied the thought that this fear has value to me and I will welcome it?  What will happen to the fear? It will modulate the fear where you can step outside of it and learn from it. Then, once you learn what you need to learn from the fear, you apply the thought of faith/ courage to your fear, what would happen?  What happens to fear when faith and courage are applied to it?  Fear disappears in the face of strong faith and courage (See Figure 5).

Figure 5


Play with your brain. Get a thought of anger. Now, apply to your anger the thought of forgiveness.  Take the same anger and apply the thought of love.  What about taking your anger and applying the thought of calmness to it, what happens?  Would you have ever guessed how easy you could change your states of mind by applying one thought to another thought?
Every time we take a thought and apply another thought to it, the original thought will modulate or change in some way.  We call this Meta-Stating¾ applying one thought to another thought. And, herein lies the magic.  Herein lies your ability to re-format and re-program your thinking.  Those whom I have seen who have changed their thinking, inevitably have meta-stated their problem state with higher-level resource states.  Instead of meta-stating themselves sick, they learned to meta-state themselves well. They left re-building a new set of higher-level mental frames that served them.


Exercise:
So, how does one bring to bear or apply a resource state to a problem state?  Follow these three simple steps:

 

1.  Get the problem thought in your mind that you would like to change. Note the movie of the problem and the meanings (thought-feelings) that you have given this problem.

2.  Now, access a resource state – a thought-feeling that once you apply to the problem state will change and maybe even eliminate it. In our example above we applied faith and courage to fear. What thought-feeling state of mind can you access now that once it is applied to the problem state, will positively change and maybe even eliminate the problem thought-state?

3.  Step into the resource state (#2). Be totally in it experiencing it. Then, apply the resource state to the problem state.

How to do it –

 

What happens when you bring the resource state to bear or apply it to the problem state?  Having trouble?  If so, think of your problem state. Hold it in mind. Now, put that thought aside. Access a resource state and step into it and experiencing it by having the movie of it and the word meanings activated. Once you do that, apply the resource state to the problem state.

Some people apply one thought to another with just the words. They just apply the resource thought to the problem thought with their “sense” of both as they process primarily with just language. Some take a visual image of both and do it visually by moving the resource image of resource state to the image of the problem state. Others do it with feelings as they move the resource state from where it is located in their body to the location of the problem state wherever it is in their body. All these work great and will be dependent upon how the person primarily operates: with pictures, with sounds, with feelings or with the language of words.

When I apply “faith” to “fear” I have a picture of the word “fear,” and from there I access “faith” by getting a picture of the word “faith” and above the word “faith” I have a picture of Jesus. I am a Christian and that picture of Him represents a powerful state for me. So, Jesus empowers the word “faith” and as I visually move the word “faith” on top of the word “fear” the word “fear” shatters into many pieces and disappears. Fear cannot operate in the presence of an empowered faith for me because my belief system will not let it. So, Jesus empowers faith and when I apply that to “fear,” fear disappears.

Note: In NLP we do not judge people’s resources, we use them. You access your own resources for we believe that they are adequate for your own healing.

Others do it kinesthetically as they will move the feeling of resource state into the location of the problem state. For example, when courage and fear are applied to fear you will end up with “courageous” fear or “faithful” fear.  How does that change the fear?  (See Figure 5).

8.        People Who Change Know How to Take On Different Perspectives to the Problem. By being able to take on different perspective, they have much more flexibility in dealing with the painful experience. The more flexible is the person, the more resourceful is that person. The realization that we humans operate from five basic ways of looking at experience offers tremendous potential in state control and in the enhancing of our communication. NLP first offered three positions. We have expanded them to five positions. We refer to these ways as being the first, second, third, fourth and fifth perceptual positions and explain them in The User’s Manual for the Brain.

First Position

When you associate into your own body, you live in first position. This permits you to look at the world from your own viewpoint. In the first position, you do not take into account anyone else’s position. You simply think, “How does this conversation or communication affect me?”

First position is the normal and healthy position of seeing, hearing, and feeling from out of self. It is the position needed in order to speak with authenticity, to present yourself, your thoughts, feelings, and responses congruently, to disclose, listen, inquire, and be present with another. When you visually recall a memory and do not see yourself in the picture, you are associated into that memory – you are “inside” that memory looking through your eyes, hearing the sounds and feeling the feelings as if there.

Second Position

When you are in second position, you are “walking in the other person’s shoes.” You take into consideration how a communication or event would look, feel and sound from another person’s point of view. In the second position, you imagine yourself entering the other person’s body. In this position you imagine looking at yourself through their eyes. Second position is to understand, feel with, experience empathy for and see things from another’s point of view. Here you’ll feel in accord with the other and have a strong sense of his or her perceptive.

What do you look like, sound like and what feelings do you get from the other person’s viewpoint of you? In the second position you develop the ability in experiencing empathy. This position gives much flexibility when involved in conflict with someone. From the second position you can appreciate how they feel about your conversation and behavior. Build rapport before going second position. And, by going second position, notice how the rapport deepens. Second position offers an extremely valuable model in deepening rapport.

Third Position

When you distance yourself from an event, you more than likely do it by going to the third position. Third position offers a way of dissociating from the entire event or conversation. In the third position you become an independent observer. Third position allows us to operate from the position of objectivity. Ask yourself, “How would this conversation or event look to someone totally uninvolved?” Imagine yourself being out of your body and off to the side of the conversation between you and the other person. You can see both yourself and the other person. The third position allows you to step back, to gain a sense of distance, to observe, to witness, to feel neutral and to appreciate both positions fully. You know you are in third position when you recall a memory and see yourself in the memory. If you see yourself in the memory, you are “outside” yourself and this allows you to give yourself distance from that memory if you so choose. Whereas first position intensifies the feelings (for most people), third positions diminishes the feelings as you can distance yourself from the memory.

Fourth Position

Robert Dilts (1990) specified the Fourth Perceptual Position in his book Changing Belief Systems with NLP. He defined the Fourth Position as “We” – from the perspective of the system. Many refer to it as the “Systems” Position. In this position, we have “associated in the perspective of the whole system.” To take fourth position, step aside and adopt the perspective of the whole system so that you can there consider what would contribute to the best interest of the system. In the fourth position, everyone in the system is taken account of. A question to ask is, “What are my place, responsibility and position in this system? A linguistic format for this position goes: “If we consider our common goals…” The fourth position (Systems Position) allows us to understand the contexts (cultural, linguistic, business, family, etc.) that influence all of the larger systems and contexts of our world.

In using this for myself, I have modified it somewhat.  Dilt’s model calls for associating into the system. I first associate into the system and then go to the third position to view objectively my position in relation to others in the team.  Then I go second position to each person in the team and then back to the associated systems position. I rotate back and forth through these positions as I deem necessary. I have found this most useful as have other clients that I have coached.

Fifth Position

Marilyn Atkinson (1997) in an unpublished manuscript entitled “Five Central Ideas” suggests another perceptual position – “a universal perceptual position.” This results from applying the generalizations like all, always, everyone, etc to our perspective. Doing so “springboards us to the valuable idea of a universal perceptual position..” This provides the widest and largest level perspective of all.

Figure 6


Perceptual Positions

By taking this meta-position to everything, we can then learn to take on multiple perceptual positions and even change rapidly between them. Doing so increases our flexibility of consciousness so that we don’t get stuck in any one position.

I love the fifth position for therapeutic purposes.  For people who hold spiritual beliefs, their fifth position is ultimately in their spiritual place. As a Christian, when I go to fifth position, I view myself as being with Jesus. I am way “up there” with Him looking down on myself way down here.  If you hold spiritual beliefs, imagine yourself leaving your body and going up and being with God. Once you get up there and see yourself down here, how does that affect your speech?  Going “up there” is most relaxing and calming to many people.

None of these positions offer a superior position to the other. Each position has equal importance. The wise communicator knows how to move at will from one position to the other.

 

Getting “Stuck” in one Perceptual Position

Just think what would happen if you got stuck in either position – it does matter where you live. A person stuck in first position would find himself or herself an egotist. Do you know anyone who lives in first position? A person stuck in second position would live constantly over-influenced by other people’s views. In my NLP classes, after I explain the second position, and how those who live in second position tend to let the state of others determine their state, I say, “Second position functions as the position of co-dependency.” Just about every time I do this, sighs come from students as they realize what and how they have caused themselves to allow others to control their states.

A person stuck in third position would become detached and unfeeling. Others perceive these people as “cold hearted.” Indeed, I have found that those who live in third position find themselves as the loners of the world. Many, but not all, also will have the characteristics of the person who lives in a world of words. These people provide society its thinkers and philosophers. Living life detached permits a person to analyze objectively.

Everyone moves from one position to the other. For most, moving from one position to another flows with everyday life. The ability to move from one to the other, either consciously or unconsciously, permits one to act with wisdom and respond appropriately. By moving among the three perceptual positions, you will add richness and choice to your conversations.

Exercise: Exercise: Perceptual Positions

1) Recall the problem state and be in it for just a moment. We will soon “leave” there.

2)  First Position – Associate into your body (first position) by seeing what you saw, hearing what you heard, and feeling what you felt. Do you still feel the same negative emotions you felt then?  You probably will. Be there in that painful memory (associated) if you have memory of it.

3)  Second Position – Now, imagine yourself floating out of your body and floating into the person associated with that painful memory. You may need to do this with more than one person if there were more than one involved in the painful experience. Look through their eyes at yourself. Notice how you looked during that event. How do you appear to the other person?

How do you feel as you look at yourself from their perspective?  Would that person want you to hold on to those negative emotions? What would that person say to you now about the event? You are now walking in the other person’s shoes.

4)  Third Position – Now, imagine yourself dissociated from the total event. Move yourself off to the side where you can see both yourself and the person(s) in that painful experience. How do you view the situation from this dissociated position? As you look at both yourself and the other person, did you really have a justifiable reason to be in such a problem state?  Was your tension justifiable?  Was the person really a threat to you? Or, did you just imagine that the person was a threat?

5)  Fourth Position – If the content of problem involved other people, view the experience from the perspective of your position within the context of the total team, family, etc.  What do you learn from the systems position (Systems Position)? How would other team members, family members, etc. want you to view that experience now?  What would each of them say to you?  What can you learn from each of them?  How can you best serve the team, family, etc. now from what you have learned from this experience?

6)  Fifth Position – Now move to the fifth position way out in the universe, all the way out with God if you have that belief. Go way out in the universe (with God) viewing the experience of your problem from this position, how does the situation change from that position? How do you feel? Do you feel more relaxed and calm being way out there?

If you believe in God or some Universal Being, how do you feel being in the presence of God?  What happens to the tension, fear, anxiety, etc associated with the problem state being in the presence of deity?

Note: Many who have overcome their problems have found the 5th Position extremely helpful. They learn how to go there at will through consistent practice. In the 5th Position most people are very relaxed and calm which provides the proper state for resolving their problems. Since learning that state of mind, I have found it most useful not only in solving my personal problems but in decision making as well. To my knowledge, I have never made a bad decision when I leave my body with its problem state (dissociate – 2nd Position) and go out and be with Jesus and from there look back and see myself from His perspective (5th Position).  This position will serve you well. Why?   When you are inside (associated) into your higher values, beliefs, etc. represented by your 5th position, you make great choices and you will find it easy to let go of hurt, anger, guilt, bitterness, etc.

I encourage the reader to “process” the materials found in this article. Access some personal problem and take that problem through all eight of the steps explained in this article.  You may experience utter amazement at how that “problem” becomes a lesser problem.

References:

Atkinson, Marilyn. (1997). “The grammar of God.” Vancouver, BC: Unpublished Manuscript.

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to An Ecology of Mind. (1972). New York: Ballantine.

Bodenhamer, Bobby G., and Hall, L. Michael. (1999). The User’s Manual for the Brain: The Complete Manual for Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner Certification. Wales, UK: Crown House Publishing.

Burton, John, Ed.D. and Bodenhamer, Bobby G., D. Min. (2000) Hypnotic Language: Its Structure and Use. Wales, UK: Crown House Publishing.

Dilts, Robert. (1990). Changing Belief Systems with NLP. Cupertino, CA: Meta-Publications.

Hall, L. Michael. Secrets of Personal Mastery: Advanced Techniques for Accessing Your Higher Levels of Consciousness. (2000). Wales, UK: Crown House Publishing.

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics (1933/1994).  (5th. Ed.), Lakeville, CN: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.

Note: Permission to Reprint – Permission is granted to reprint and distribute this article as long as it is distributed in total including the information about the author.

Author

 

Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D.Min.
The Institute of Neuro-Semantics
1516 Cecelia Dr
Gastonia, NC  28054
Phone 704-864-3585
Fax 704-864-1545

bobbybodenhamer @ yahoo.com
http://www.neurosemantics.com

Dr. Bodenhamer first trained for the ministry, earned a doctorate in Ministry, and served five churches as pastor. He is presently serving as pastor of a small church in Gastonia, NC. He began NLP training in 1989, studying with Dr. Gene Rooney of L.E.A.D’s. Consultants for his Practitioner training and Dr. Tad James for His Master Practitioner Certification and with Tad and Dr. Wyatt Woodsmall for his Trainer’s Certification. Since then, he has taught and certified NLP trainings at Gaston College, Dallas, NC.  He has also taught internationally.

Beginning in 1996, Dr. Bodenhamer began studying the Meta-States model and then teamed up with Michael to begin co-authoring several books. Since that he, he has turned out many works as he and Michael have applied the NLP and Meta-States Models to various facets of human experience.

In 1996 also, Dr. Bodenhamer with Michael co-founded the Society of Neuro-Semantics. This has taken his work to a new level, taken him into International Trainings, and set in motion many Institutes of Neuro-Semantics around the world.

Books:

Mastering Blocking & Stuttering: A Cognitive Approach to Achieving Fluency (2005)

Patterns For “Renewing the Mind” (w. Hall, 1997)

Time-Lining: Advance Time-Line Processes (w. Hall, 1997)

Figuring Out People: Design Engineering With Meta-Programs (w. Hall, 1997)

Mind Lines: Lines For Changing Minds (w. Hall, 1997, 2000 3rd edition)

The Structure of Excellence: Unmasking the Meta-Levels of Submodalities (w. Hall, 1999)

The User’s Manual of the Brain Volume I (1999, w. Hall)

The User’s Manual of the Brain Volume II (2003, w. Hall)

Hypnotic Language(2000, w. Burton)

The Structure of Personality: Modeling “Personality” Using NLP and Neuro-Semantics. (Hall , Bodenhamer, Bolstad, Harmblett, 2001)

Games for Mastering Fears (2001, with Hall)

Filed Under: Read First

Brain 101: How to Play the Brain Game for Fun and Profit

January 5, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

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

The Brain Game
How Do We Run Our Own Brain?

So you want to run your own brain? Good for you. What a wonderful objective! And so rare. Many people talk about running their own brain and taking charge of their own mind, but just watch them when criticized or insulted. They go to pieces. Let one of their closely held beliefs be questioned, and watch out. Sudden it becomes semantic reaction time. They explode with rage, anger, stress, fear, shock, etc. If they truly “run their own brains,” how is it that they lack state management skills in the moments when managing one’s reactions really counts?

Running our own brain, and thinking freely in independent ways apart from rehashing worn-out or spoon fed thoughts necessitates several things. It necessitates that we develop mindfulness about our brains (or more accurately, our minds) so that we actually develop state management skills. It means we learn to play a new Game, The “Running My Own Brain” Game. So, with that in mind:

  • What do you need to understand about brains to be able to run yours?
  • Would you like to play the Brain Game?

SEVEN BRAIN FACTS

Here are seven things about your brain. They provide a description about how brains work. They also establish an understanding of the Game of Running Your Own Brain and so lead to the Rules of the Game.

#1: Brains Follow Directions

Brains follow directions. They take the directions that you give them and they follow them.

“John, did you see that red, white and blue cat yesterday? Yes, red, white and blue― in fact, the American Flag colors were bright red, white, and blue. Someone in the neighborhood must have thought it would be a patriotic thing to do. Where did I see it? On Linda’s yellow car. It was being chased by a pair of French Poodles across the greenbelt by the swimming pool. That was just before King Kong climbed to the top of the school and beat his chest at the circling plane.”

Provide a little description and the brain goes to work representing the information on our internal mental screen. Like a movie director, brains use the information as instructions for our mental Cinema. This explains why the following are very important questions for our states:

What directions are you giving your brain?
What are the default instructions that you’ve learned to give your brain?
What instructions did your parents or teachers provide you about yourself, life, others, etc.?
How useful, ecological, healthy, balanced, valuable, true, etc. are those instructions?
Do those instructions create empowering states for you?
Would you want to give those instructions to your children?
Do they map out an exciting and loving life?

Why are these questions so important? Because the quality of our lives is a function of the quality of the information processed by our brain. The quality of that information flows from the quality of its instructions. The most important thing you do in life then are the instructions that you give your brain. Are the instructions those that you would use to create a world-class movie?

Recently a young man wrote to me.

“I’m an extremely shy person. When I see a social situation, I avoid it because I say to myself that I’ll have nothing to say and that I’ll be a complete idiot because they will find me boring, then I’ll feel depressed. So I just don’t go. Every time I make a mistake, I feel stupid, then depressed. And that’s what causes me to procrastinate. It’s really stupid, and I know better, and I see it causing me to produce sub-optimally. I feel like these are insurmountable problems….”

I copied the words from the email, cut and pasted them back into my reply. I then asked him to step back from the words and view them as brain instructions.

“Just pretend for a moment that these are instructions for your brain. Are these ideas healthy or sick ones? Would you recommend this way of thinking? Suppose the most popular kid at the university thought this way. How much of a party would these instructions make his or her life?”

There’s a principle in this. Namely, feed your brain toxic ideas and you enter into a toxic world. Your brain will go there because that’s what brains do. Brains go places. Just this week I caught a Brain (thank God it wasn’t mine) going to “Worst Case Scenario!” The person was talking about terrorism in the world. He then entertained unimaginable scenarios. Then he freaked out. Then he said, “This shouldn’t happen!”

And I can tell you, these instructions did not put him in a very resourceful state.

Brains use words, pictures, sounds, tones, volumes, smells, tastes, all kinds of things as the basis for swishing us places. Mention a word and off your brain goes. But where? It depends on your learning history, experiences, memories, imaginations, hopes, etc. Brains are phenomenal at linking things. They do so very, very quickly. Actually, this is one of the chief problems we have with our brains. The problem is not that they don’t learn, but that they learn too quickly. It’s just what they learn that often times is just not true or useful.

Brains are also incredible instruments that never shut down. Even in sleep, we dream as brain wave activity continues. This becomes a problem if we don’t give the brain lots of interesting things to process. The stimulus hunger of brains will trigger them to play the old B-rated movies or hallucinate freely.

#2: Brains Externalize Instructions

We can see a person’s internal world of ideas and frames by noticing the person’s external Games. External life reflects internal frames. The behavioral, speech, and action Games that we play on the outside are expressions of our internal frames of mind. They go together. Games and Rules of the Games.

The old proverb put it this way: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” The Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius put this yet another way:

“As thy thoughts are so will thy mind be also; for the soul takes its coloring from thought.”
“If you are pained by an external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you―but your judgment about it.” (The Meditations, 160 AD).

Brains manifest internal representation into the external world so that we externalize our internal frames and representations. What does this mean? Namely, that our external world will only be as exciting, vibrant, dramatic, and powerful as our internal frames of mind. So, as you decorate your internal world of mind, imagination, and memory with hopes, desires, wonders, delights, etc., you alter the quality and content of the instructions that you give to your brain.

This brings up several excellent questions for those of us who want to run our own brain to create a quality life:

What kind of images, sounds, words, sensations, etc. do you have running on the inside of your brain?
What kind of internal movies are you showing in the Cinema of your Mind?
Who does your interior decorating?
Does your internal world of frames need some better interior decorating?

#3: Brains Run on Representations

The cognitive and neuro-sciences have discovered that brains represent our external sensed experiences. It is not that we literally have an internal movie screen in our mind, yet it seems that we do. This phenomena of consciousness is how we experience thoughts and awareness’s. It seems that we internally recall what our home, car, work, friends, parents, dogs, etc. look like, sound like, smell like, feel like, taste like. This sensory awareness on the inside of our brain has led neuro-scientists to designate parts of the brain the visual cortex, auditory cortex, the cortex where we process smells, tastes, sensations, balance, etc.

Korzybski and others noted that we operate upon the world, not directly, but via a map of the world. In NLP, Bandler and Grinder revolutionized psychology by putting the foundation of thought in terms of the sensory representations systems and using these modalities of awareness as the first “languages” of the mind. This facet of running our own brain seems so simple, yet it is so profound.

If we picture a beautiful day with blue sky and billowy white clouds and a green grass lawn facing the white sands of a gorgeous ocean view and imagine feeling the warm ocean breeze blowing through our hair and the smell of the salt water and the sounds of children playing and enjoy our favorite drink while getting a neck and back massage from our special loved one …

Well, it doesn’t take long before our body and neurology responds to those representations as if they were instructions about how to feel. Because brains run on representations, the more expressive, vivid, dramatic, and sensory-specific, the easier it is for us to tell our brains where to go and what to feel. Then the screen play is clearer and easier to follow.

Our brains represent things as it were on a mental screen of the mind. It’s like there’s an internal movie playing and we fill in the sensory details of that movie. Of course, we do not play out everything in that Cinema. We can’t. We can’t even input all that comes in. Our eyes only scan a very narrow part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our ears only receive a very narrow band of sound wave frequencies. So we have to be pretty selective, as a movie director, about what we play on our internal Cinema. Choose well. It’s your brain.

#4: Brains Transition In and Out of the Present Moment

With that last induction (three paragraphs above), did you leave where you are now and go somewhere else? If you didn’t, perhaps you could use the words to do that. Try it out. Because we represent things, we can represent realities that are not immediately present and go there. This is the foundation of all day-dreaming, night-dreaming, fantasizing, learning, creativity, invention, thinking, conceptualizing, mathematizing, theorizing, etc. This is what we humans do best. We can leave our current situation and travel to distance places, times, and worlds.

We call this thinking. It’s also hypnosis. It’s also trance. It’s many things: imagination, fantasy, creativity, and hallucination. This means that we are not stuck or limited to his present moment. We can represent things not present, never present, and even impossible things. What freedom of mind we have! It’s a freedom of consciousness that’s unique to our species. We have a consciousness that can transition from our current state to other states, hence the word “trance.” Anytime we shift our awareness to something that is not part of our current awareness, we enter a trance state.

This means that most of our states of mind are trances. We mostly live in hypnotic states not sensory aware states in this present moment. Hypnosis is the norm, our default situation, not present time sensory acuity. We call hypnosis or trance “downtime” in NLP because we are down inside ourselves thinking, feeling, and experiencing other times, places, people, and ideas. We call present time sensory acuity “uptime” because we are “up” and noticing what our eyes see, ears hear, skin feels, etc.

“Hey, Tom! Tom, Earth to Tom!”

“What?”

Our brains love to zone out. Doesn’t yours? It happens when you drive on long trips, it happens even when you drive to the grocery store. It happens when you wait in line, in an elevator, and when you’re listening to a speech. Brains do that. It’s no big deal. Well, it’s not unless you have no guidance or control over it. Then it is a big deal. If you lack awareness of when you are present and when you’re off on some mind-trip, then you are doing out-of-control hallucinating.

We all hallucinate. Those who do so mindfully and by choice are our greatest scholars, inventors, creators, designers, teachers, CEOs, etc. Those who don’t do it by choice suffer from under-achieving and the ineffectiveness of not being able to manage their own mind. They don’t run their own brains.

#5: Brains Induce States

Brains put us into neurological states. They affect our physiology, breathing, movement, and internal chemistry. To work up a good mad, we only have to think angry thoughts of injustice and violation. We only have to think about a dangerous threat and off we go into a fear state. And some representations of sexuality can induce our body to experience desire and lust.

Brains do this because they are part of the body. They sit at the top of the spinal cord and nervous system and bring in all of the nervous impulses processed by the end receptors. Out of the structure of our multi-layered brains emerge our sense of awareness we call “mind.” Mind is an emergent property in the neurology of our brain. So it is always mind-body or body-mind, and never one without the other.

This explains why we mostly think or represent ourselves into our states but why we also can act our way into states. This gives us two royal roads into a mind-body state of consciousness whether it is confidence and joy and love or fear, anger, and sadness. We can use mind and all of our internal representations and we can use body (breathing, posture, movement, activity, etc.).

What state are you in? What state do you go into when any given stimulus or trigger occurs? You need look no further than the instructions you give yourself at the mental dimension or what you do in terms of your posture, muscle tension, breathing, etc. at the physiological dimension.

#6: Brains Go in Circles

Not only do our brains represent the world, go places, and put us into states, but brains also do flips, they roll over, they flip back on themselves, they go in circles. As there are feed forward and feedback loops in the physical structure of the brain so that nervous impulses are sent to the thalamus and the amygdala they are simultaneously passed on to the escorted and after processing there back to the lower brain structures. It’s all inter-connected. We even have an associative cortex that keeps everything connected with everything else so that we have more cortical connections in the three trillion brain cells than atoms in the universe.

No wonder we loop around. No wonder we can worry about our humor and wonder if we are caring too much and then become afraid of our worry and then think something must be wrong with us that we are worry about something so silly as that. We get caught up in down spirals of negative thoughts and can become obsessive compulsive. We can get caught up in positive spiral of thoughts and suffer from insomnia due to our excitement.

Our brains are not strictly logical. To think in a straightforward way and to stay on that path for more than a few seconds is very difficult for our brains. That’s why mathematics and formal logic seem so foreign to us. It’s not the natural habit of our mind. We think in circles. Our brains go around in loops and spirals. We keep reprocessing the same tired old thoughts.

This reflexivity is what allows us to layer thought upon thought, feeling upon feeling, thought upon feeling, memory upon imagination, fear upon anger, dread upon worry, joy upon learning, etc. This creates the whole domain of our meta-states―our states of thoughts and feelings about other thoughts and feelings. And that’s what creates the layering effect of our awareness so that we can create great complexity in our experiences.

We begin with a reference experience, bring it in and represent it, then develop thoughts and feelings about that, and so on until what was “out there” becomes a frame of reference, a frame of mind and then the very frameworks of four personality and orientation. This creates the Rules of the Game, or our highest frames of mind.

#7: Brains Frame Things

This is one of the greatest powers of our brain for health and sanity and for insanity and destructiveness. Our brains frame. They do so to create contextual meaning. Things, events, people, even words do not mean anything in and of themselves. It takes a brain to create meaning, a “thing” that does not exist out there but is a production of the brain.

Actually, the brain creates two levels of meaning. Associative meaning arises when we link up one thing with another thing. What does a cookie mean? It depends on what you have associated with a cookie. It could mean a sweet or junk food. It could mean reward or lack of nutrition. It could mean delight and fun, it could mean threat to my diet. It could mean survival, it could mean fat.

Because brains link ideas, images, feelings, etc., things easily become associated. This creates triggers or anchors. One thing (a sight, sound, sensation, word, etc.) triggers another thing. Stimulus― Response. In this way we create structures of the mind that we call understandings or knowledge. These are not “things,” but organizations of associations―how we have sequenced or ordered the frames in our movies.

What does an “authority figure” mean? Where does your brain go when you think about an “authority figure?” What state does it evoke? Pleasant or unpleasant? Resourceful or unresourceful? Just thoughts … connected in your brain to memories, awareness’s, meanings.

Then there is contextual or frame meaning. Once we have linked up and associated things and bring that association into our mind as our frame of reference, we develop higher level thoughts about it. We call these ideas “concepts.” In this way we now look at things through a conceptual frame of mind. It becomes a filter. We call them meta-states and meta-programs. This establishes a mental context for thinking and feeling. This is how we turn associations into higher level maps. Doing so establishes the mental Rules of the Games that we then play.

We first associate a harsh tone of voice with being spanked. Later we develop ideas and concepts that people who strain their vocal chords are mean, hurtful, and nasty. Then we develop higher frames that “criticism is bad,” “confrontation always ruins things,” “I’m sensitive to criticism,” “I cannot handle that tone of voice,” etc. These thoughts create the higher frames of mind about an event and semantically load that event. So when someone strains the vocal chords, the meanings I experience in relation to that event puts me into very unresourceful states. All of this happens so quickly that on the inside it seems like and feels like “the criticism” (or harsh tonality) makes me upset, angry, or frustrated. This is how we set up and play the Games that we do.

Brains deal with data overload by making generalizations. They create categories for items; they organize things into groups. This allows us to develop contextual meanings from our frames, giving us an even higher way to interpret things.

“Oh, that’s just information. Good. For a minute I thought that was criticism.”

How we categorize a thing determines what it “is” to us― in our neurology. Yet as we frame, so we become. What we organize on the inside, in-forms us. We are all psychologically organized by our belief frame, value frames, identity frames, decision frames, etc. And the thing about the brain framing is that as we frame, so we play the frame games that we do.

HOW TO PLAY THE BRAIN GAME

Now that you know about brains (minds), what they do and how they work, you’re ready to play the Brain Game. This is the Running Your Own Brain Game, one of the original visions of NLP. With Neuro-Semantics we take this even further to run our own brain at the highest levels of the mind (The Secrets of Personal Mastery, 2000).

Rule #1: Quality Control Your Brain’s Instructions.

Consider anything that isn’t Top-Notch Quality for your Brain as Absurd.

Did I mention that brains are stupid? At least in one sense they are very stupid, in the aspect of quality. In that area, they are less intelligent than stomachs. Really. After all, if we feed our stomach garbage, it at least knows how to vomit. Not so the brain. Feed it garbage and it doesn’t think twice, it just processes the garbage. Feed it toxic ideas, poisonous thoughts, limiting beliefs, irrational conclusions, and inaccurate mapping and it doesn’t know any better than to represent it, assume it is real, and then believe it. Brains themselves are not discriminating about quality, at least not near as much as the stomach. Whether the information is accurate, useful, true, productive, hurtful, stupid, etc., it doesn’t seem to matter.

So, given this stupidity of brains, we have to take charge of the Quality Control of the information we feed it. We call this “running an ecology check.” Reality test the value, health, and balance of an idea in the whole system of your body, relationships, energy, etc. This is the first Rule of the Game.

If you don’t do this, prepare yourself for trouble because trouble, problems, ill-health, incongruent, sabotage, conflict, etc. you will get. This Brain Game Rule says,

“Anything that does not create personal power, health, balance, joy, compassion, wealth, love, etc. is absurd.”

Do you play the Game of Life by that rule?

I highly recommend it.

Consider anything that your brain produces in your body, emotions, speech, behavior, relationships that puts you in constant conflict, that keeps repeating patterns that don’t work, that creates incongruity, ineffectiveness, unresourcefulness, etc. as absurd. Then stop it! If you follow this first rule, your life will probably radically change and transform in a matter of weeks. This is an extremely powerful and pervasive Rule.

If what you are doing, whether in communication to yourself or others, whether in relationship to your work, career, relationships, health, etc. is not working as an ongoing pattern, STOP. To keep repeating long term patterns that don’t work while hoping for different results is a practical definition of “insanity.” It is absolutely ludicrous to keep replaying the old movies of hurt and pain in the theater of your mind. Wasn’t once enough? It’s ludicrous because while the first time it happen to you, after that first time you have been doing it to yourself! It’s your brain doing it. It’s not happening “out there” anymore. If you’re still watching that B-rated movie, and you are the director of the movie.

Quality control your thinking, higher frames of mind, beliefs, states, etc.

Does this enhance my life over the long-run?
Does this empower me as a person?
Does this make life a party?

This Rule will radically challenge everybody still whining over childhood aches and pains, feeling like a victim to a failed marriage or business, or blaming others for their lack of success. This Rule enables you to live in a different way and to play a different Game― a more passionate and ferocious Game, one where you move out into life looking for opportunities and taking risks and playing to your strengths.

Rule #2: Rise Up in your Mind to Become Aware of the Games

You Only Get to Run Your Own Brain if You have Meta-Awareness

Everybody does not get to run his or her own brain. There is one primary condition for getting to run your own brain, you have to know that you have a brain to run and awareness of how you are currently running it. The brain creates first level “awareness,” awareness of the world. This is the consciousness of animals and small children. Awareness of that awareness, meta-awareness, moves us to a higher level of mind. If you don’t know that you are running your own brain or how you are running it, then your unawareness will be unconscious. Then you won’t get to run your own brain. Your Brain will run you!

This Rule ought to scare the hell out of out you! Does it? Unconsciousness means that you are not mindful of what’s going on. Use that as a cue. Do you ever scratch your head wondering that? Do you have ask:

Hey, what’s going on here? Why do I feel this way?
Why can’t I seem to get ahead?
Why am I always running around in circles and never getting on with things?
I don’t know what came over me; I just flipped out?
I don’t seem to have control of my emotions.

When Rule #2 says that you only get to run your own brain when you develop meta-awareness of what you’re doing, it posits awareness as the key condition. This is a big challenge for many. Over the years many have asked, “Would you just hypnotize me and make this problem go away?” I played that Game for awhile. Then I realized the toxicity in that attitude. It’s the wrong attitude if you really want to have control over your own life. That attitude will not lead you on to personal mastery. That attitude indicates the failure to actively participate in your own life. And that’s why it has to be refused.

In NLP and NS we know that the magic is in the structure. The structure of an experience itself is the magic. That’s why we model. We model experts to learn how they do it. Do what? Run their own brain with regard to a specific area (selling, parenting, relating, communicating, wealth building, health and fitness, leadership, etc.). Once we know that, we know how to find the magic in any field or expertise.

This explains why we do the kind of trainings that we do. We seek to teach to the conscious mind. We want consciousness involved. So while we utilize processes for working with facets of mind outside of conscious awareness, we focus on empowering people to run their own brains without becoming dependent upon us. So we facilitate their self-awareness and ego-strength to look reality in the face, and laugh, and feel ferocious.

This rule leads to various questions and orientations.

What is the basic attitude that drives this experience?
What frame of mind do I need in order to experience this orientation?
How does he do that?
How can I adopt her frame of mind about that?

Rule #3: Beware of Your Frame Referencing

Just Because Your Brain Framed it Does Not Make it Useful

If your brain frames, and if the frames that you set create the Games that you play, take care what you reference and how. We all know people (perhaps we have been such) who experience one or more negative events in life and then (to make things worse), build their lives around that event. Talk about a program that sucks. This is the structure of sick magic: Center your life around a Tragedy, Misfortune, or Injustice! This violates Rule #1 for the Brain Game. It is failing to consider this way of representing and framing things as totally absurd.

Decided to build your life around great events. Find (or invent) wonderful references that you can center you life around.

What wonderful event could I build my life around?
What inspiring referent experience (real or imagined) would I like to commission at the center of my attention
and focus?
If I did, what else would have to change?
And what other supporting ideas or beliefs would enable me to frame things this way?

What you reference, how you reference in terms of the representation richness you encode it in and what you set as your governing frames makes all the difference in the world. It controls and governs the Games that you play. Are you playing the Games that you want to play? If not, then take a look at the entire referencing and framing sequence and design a more empowering one.

As everything habituates so do the neuro-pathways and the internal processing of the brain. When we habituate a way of thinking, an information processing style, or a direction for sending our brain, it eventually becomes our meta-programs or sorting styles. This defines our current trance that organizes our mind-body states. Frames become our software programs or default maps for how to operate in any given arena of life.

Rule #4: Lighten Up and Have Lots of Fun with your Brain

If you don’t enjoy the process, you will get stupid.

Here’s another rule in the Brain Frame Game. If you get serious about things, you will get stupid. Stupidity is the occupational hazard of getting serious about things. Getting serious typically undermines such graces as humor, laughter, enjoyment, playfulness, silliness, and ludicrousness. And yet these are the saving graces that keep us human. These are the saving graces for being real, being spiritual, and being authentic. Lose these and you will not be able to run your own brain with any dignity or grace.

Lose humor and laughter and you loose perspective. You’ll even begin to be seduced into playing the God Game, thinking you are perfect (or should be), know it all (or should), and be everywhere and do everything (hence, indispensable). If any of that seems legitimate, you are in danger of getting stupid very rapidly.

Now the stupidity of seriousness causes people to become stiff and rigid. They get “right” (or so they think), then proud of being right. That leads to stuffiness, arrogance, and the closing of the mind. It’s a pitiful thing to see. Yet it happens all too often. Many people pursue an advanced degree and then think the degree bestows upon them an All-Knowingness. They actually think that their every opinion is somehow sacred and should never be question. Doctors, educators, and bureaucrats often fall into this fallacy. All of this increases their stupidity because not only do they not know it all, but they cannot know it all, no one can, and if they did, it would make life less worth living. The fun is in the pursuit.

Rigid serious arrogance makes these people clowns when it comes to making a mistake. Talk about watching a fallible human being make an ass of himself. Watch one of these people do something wrong. The problem is that they can’t be wrong. It’s not allowed. Yet their pomposity won’t allow them to simply say, “Oops. Missed that one.”

This Rule in the Game of Running Your Own Brain says you have to enjoy and delight yourself in your complete fallibility. Your brain is fallible and that makes all you think fallible, all of your emotions, speech, behavior, and actions. It is all “liable to error.” Don’t just accept this, enjoy it. How easy is it for you to have fun with it? To poke fun at your own silliness? To be ridiculous, make a fool of yourself, blow it, and still maintain all of your dignity?

Serious people not only believe, they believe in their beliefs. This is what makes them dangerous. That leads them to being fanatical “true believers” who have closed their minds to the possibility of being wrong. Such serious people never see the high comedy of their ridiculous position. It’s their lack of humor that leaves them with no perspective. So it is humor that’s our saving grace, that frees us up, that allows us to lighten up and to know that all of our mental mapping is just that―fallible human mapping, at the best, the highest thinking we can do at the moment.

Lighten up and enjoy the ride especially when you get into a loop. Just flow with it. If you fight it, if you resist it, you add negative energy to the loop. The quickest and easiest way out is paradoxical― welcome it and enjoy the ride. It’s just a loop of the mind. Play with it.

#5: Keep Teaching Your Brain New Tricks

Yes, your brain can (and will) learn new tricks. Count on it. Brains are always learning, that’s the good news. The bad news is that if you don’t take charge of what they are learning, they will learn trash. So in playing the Brain Game, aim to constantly be teaching your brain more productive things. Feed it the best data available: inspiring ideas, awesome thoughts, empowering beliefs, and supporting understandings. Keep coding and recoding the Cinema in your mind so that your internal world is dramatic, exciting, bigger than life, full of grace and love, power and energy, make it alive and vital. Create one new empowering frame of mind every week―in a year’s time you’ll have 52 enhancing frames for the Matrix of your Mind.

Set out on the exciting adventure of discovering, unpacking and replicating the strategies of the experts. Forget “why” things go wrong and people are stupid, focus on those who are producing excellence and search out their strategy. Find out what movies are playing in the Cinema of their Minds. Find out all of the cinematic features that make that movie so entertaining and the states and higher level states it creates. After you do that for a year or two, you’ll have habituated the Movies of the Experts in your mind … and body and emotions and life.

Summary

There’s a new Game in town. It’s the Game of Running Your Own Brain. Nor does it take a rocket scientist to understand the Game. Mostly it takes self-awareness, meta-awareness, and the willingness to have fun exploring how the brain creates the Matrix of Frames that then governs the Games of our lives.


THE BRAIN GAME

BRAIN FACTS BRAIN GAME RULES
#1: Brains Follow Directions#2: Brains Externalize their Instructions

#3: Brains run on Representations

#4: Brains Transition in and out of the present moment

#5: Brains Induce States

#6: Brains Go in Circles

#7: Brains Frame Things

#1: Quality Control your Brain Instructions#2: Rise Up in your Mind to become aware of the Games

#3: Beware of your Frame Referencing

#4: Lighten Up and Have Lots of Fun with Your

#5: Keep Teaching Your Brain New Tricks

References

Bodenhamer, Bob; Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Users manual of the brain. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

Hall. L. Michael (2000). Meta-States: Managing the higher levels of your mind. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.

Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Secrets of personal mastery: Advanced techniques for accessing your higher levels of consciousness. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

Author:

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., cognitive psychologist, international NLP trainer, entrepreneur; prolific author and international training; developer of Meta-States and co-developer of Neuro-Semantics. (P.O. Box 8, Clifton CO 81520), (970) 523-7877. www.neurosemantics.com.

Filed Under: Read First

Can Hypnotherapy Assist People Who Stammer?

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

By Bobby G Bodenhamer, D. Min.

Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici (PDF)

First Published: “European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis”

Abstract

 

  • Can hypnotherapy assist people who block and stammer (PWS)?
  • Why is it that most PWS speak consistently fluent in some situations such as when alone, when speaking to a pet or when speaking to people with whom they experience comfort and safety in their presence; but, in other contexts they block and stammer regularly?
  • Is a speech problem that is context dependent a physical problem or a cognitive problem?
  • Why is it that when the PWS blocks and stammers there is always fear and/ or anxiety present but when they are fluent, fear and anxiety are absent?
  • Is hypnotherapy effective with people suffering from fear and anxiety disorders?

Stammering is not primarily a physiological problem. Many speech pathologists have been taught that stammering is physical both in nature and causation. My work in applying the modeling tools of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Neuro-Semantics with people who stammer quite clearly demonstrates something different. Although stammering may have started with some neuro-motor dysfunction in early childhood, the fact that most people who stammer can speak fluently consistently in some contexts but not others indicate clearly that cognition plays a major role in the ongoing stammer. Indeed, I propose that blocking and stammering are just a form of a panic attack expressed in the muscles controlling breathing and speaking. And, as such, proper treatment for stammering should address cognition much more than physiology.

 

Therefore, if you are a hypnotherapy clinician and are very good at assisting people who suffer from deep seated (very well learned) fear and anxiety disorders, then you more than likely will be effective in assisting PWS in overcoming their stammering and in gaining more normal fluency.

My Story

I did not plan to work with people who block and stammer. Indeed, it happened quite by accident. I have been working in Neuro-Linguistic Programmer (NLP) since 1990. In 1996 my colleague, L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., and I started developing a model called Neuro-Semantics (NS).  Our work in this model came out of our experience in NLP and is an advancement of that model. As an NLP/NS practitioner, I have worked with hundreds of clients covering approximately three thousand hours of therapy. Working with fears, anxiety and phobias have been a major component of my work.

Some years ago, a sales seminar participant asked me if I could help people who stammer.  I told him that I didn’t know but I sure would be glad to give it a try. His son, a 25 or 26 year old came in for a two hour session. After one hour’s work we discovered that behind his blocking and stammering were some fears of speaking that rooted in childhood. Once he realized that he was mentally causing the stammer , he thanked me, paid me and left.  Though we had two hours scheduled, we finished in one hour.  As far as I know, he gained complete fluency. The key for him was his understanding that he was mentally causing the stammering and it wasn’t something physical and out of his control.

Excited about the results, I wrote up a case study of the therapy and sent it to Michael. He utilized his expertise and expanded the case study into an article entitled “Meta-Stating Stuttering” that I posted on the web site:

http://www.neurosemantics.com/Articles/Stuttering.htm

After posting the article, a friend of mind that I had worked with early in my practice contacted me. He had a stutter that we worked on years earlier but it hadn’t helped. After reading the article he called me and asked me if I had learned some new things. I told him that I sure had and for him to come on in. He came for a one hour session.  I saw him six months later and asked him how he was doing with the stuttering. He paused briefly and replied, “I guess I have forgotten to stutter.”  “Well,” I said, “That sure is a great thing to forget to do.

Needless to say, I was quite elated with the outcome. Then, in the spring of 2002, the breakthrough came. Linda Rounds of Indiana e-mailed me. In her search to overcome her stammering, she had read a work by Anthony Robbins at the recommendation of John Harrison. From Anthony Robbins she learned about NLP. She searched www.amazon.com for NLP books and found mind and Michael’s book, The User’s Manual for the Brain.  From that work she obtained my email address and emailed me asking me if I could assist her.  In just a few therapy sessions on the phone and some emails, Linda gained complete fluency. Wow, was I ever excited. It has been 2.5 years now and Linda is still fluent.

Linda and I wrote an article entitled “From Stuttering to Stability: A Case Study.”  John Harrison published the article in the National Stuttering Association newsletter, Letting Go and I posted it on our web site at:

http://www.neurosemantics.com/Articles/Stuttering-to-Stability.htm

Read that article as it will give you an idea of how I use hypnotic language in walking a person through NLP and Neuro-Semantic patterns.  This article really got a lot of attention. Since then I have worked with several people who block and stammer. One of the people that I assisted to fluency was Tim Mackesey, SLP.  Can you imagine the excitement I had in being able to assist a speech pathologist who had blocked and stuttered most of his life to fluency?  I was elated. Tim integrates NLP heavily into his therapy with all clients needing to change cognitive and affective issues related to their stuttering. Tim’s office is near Atlanta Georgia. His web site is:

http://www.stuttering-specialist.com.

Let me say up front, all have not attained fluency but many have. Importantly, out of all the people I have worked with, I have total confidence that ultimately all of them have the capacity to eventually attain fluency. This will necessitate their continuing working on their thinking.

Traditional Beliefs/Treatments for PWS

In the US especially, the common mode of treatment for PWS has been directed at the physiological aspects of stammering. Indeed, the Speech Language Pathologists (SLP) have been taught to assist the PWS in the formation of words, in breathing techniques, in avoiding certain words the PWS blocks on and in using substitute words for those words blocked on.

The belief among speech pathologists is that stammering is a physical and not a psychological problem.  In 2003 I spoke at an annual meeting of the National Stuttering Association (US) in Nashville, Tennessee. After I delivered my presentation that primarily asked why it is that PWS are fluent sometimes but not other times and as such; their problem was psychological in nature and therefore required psychological intervention for resolution, I received several angry responses from audience members. One speech pathologist stood up during the questioning time and with great intensity stated, “Everyone knows that the psychological theory for stammering was proven incorrect twenty years ago.”  Fortunately not all speech pathologists are taking that viewpoint and are asking themselves some serious questions about the origin of stammering.

Now, if you believe that stammering is a physiological problem, then that is exactly how you will treat it.  The sad part about this is that thousands of people who have grown up with this debilitating problem are confined to spend their lives with no hope of ever speaking normally. As you listen to their stories, you heart will break and traditional therapy provides them with little hope of being “normal.”

To me, normal speech is when you converse with someone but the “how” of your talking is not even in your mind. You are totally focused on the content of what you are saying and the person with whom you are speaking. Indeed, this is the goal of the hypnotherapist – to lead the PWS to the point that they are never concerned about “how” they are talking.  When they get to that point, they are fluent.

How Blocking Begins – Marking Out Dis-fluent Speech as Stammering

In working with people who block, I have discovered that usually the first thing the person does is to mentally mark out some childhood dis-fluency as “blocking” and/or “stammering.” This, in itself, is no problem. It is when the person comes to believe that blocking is something “bad” and to be feared that the problem begins to be perpetuated.

At the onset of the blocking, the person experiencing difficulty will punctuate dis-fluency as something bad.  Subsequent repetitions of punctuating difficulties as bad, makes the learning deeper until it gets grooved “into the muscles.”

When I say “grooved” into one’s muscles, or it is “in the muscles,” I am referring to the ability of our mind-body system to learn something unconsciously. Our nervous system is located throughout our body.  We have nerves “everywhere.” We believe that learnings literally become embodied into our muscle tissue. This is often referred to as “muscle memory.”  Do you type?  Then, if I were to ask you where the “R” key is, how will you find it?  Did you go to your left index finger and move it up to the left?  If so, that is an example of what we call “in the muscle” learning.

In every case that I have worked with, the roots of the individual’s blocking came from childhood.  However, sometimes the actual blocking does not appear until adolescence or even adulthood. Usually (but not always), when actual blocking begins in childhood, there will be a parent and/or an influential person or someone that “matters” who points out that the dis-fluency is not good and to be avoided.

Embodying Negative Emotions

I began noticing quite early in working with people who block and stammer that they tend to feel the fears, anxieties, etc. that are behind their blocking in the muscles that control breathing and/or speaking.  From this I concluded that blocking is very similar in structure to panic attacks and anxiety attacks. The treatment for blocking is exactly the same as the treatment for panic and anxiety attacks.

Quite often, from the experience with the adults, peers, or from the conclusions they make themselves, children who block define non-fluency or disfluency as something that they wish to avoid and/or control. The blocking does not only have the negative feedback from significant adults or from within themselves, but it also has connected to it the negative emotions from what the person perceived as the painful traumatic experiences that created the non-fluency to start with.

It is also connected with feelings of helplessness in not being able to speak when required to.  This leads to feelings that one is different or strange – something that children wish to avoid at all cost.

Important, when I say “trauma,” I am not necessarily meaning something terrible or tragic happened to the child. I am simply saying that the child interpreted the divorce of the parents, the lack of affection from dad, the lack of emotional support from mom, the emotional and physical abuse, etc as being most painful and threatening. The child did what all children tend to do – they personalize the external problems, then out of these experiences with the hurt installed in the muscles of breathing speaking, the child began to block. For fluency to become real in all contexts, these painful memories must be healed.

That mind can embody emotions is obvious in the most primitive and basic of all our mind-body functions, the Fight/Flight arousal syndrome.  And, you don’t have to be in actual danger to set it off.  All you have to do is think, remember, or imagine something fearful.  Then your body will oblige.  It is wired to respond.

Is it any surprise then that all of our emotions can and do become embodied in certain areas of our body?  Today, we even know that the patterning or habituation of response can become so incorporated that it becomes what we call “muscle memory.”  That is, the muscles “remember” how to run the pattern.  The neuro-pathways have “worn a groove” so to speak so that they have a readiness for certain responses.

For people who block, we find that the negative emotions are typically contained within the chest, neck and/or jaw.  Check this out for yourself.  Ask a person who blocks and stammers the following questions during your information gathering time:

  1. What emotions are behind and within you blocking?
  2. Where in your body do you feel these emotions?
  3. Where in your body do you feel the fear and anxiety as you anticipate the possibility of blocking?
  4. What do you feel about these feelings? (This last question will begin the process of eliciting the meaning frames that the PWS has placed around blocking and stammering and that “lock in the block” by holding it in place.)

That is what we’re talking about.

In my thirteen years of work in therapy with clients, I have literally asked these questions of hundreds of people who were suffering from some unwanted thought-feeling-emotional problem.  “Where in your body do you feel that emotion?” is a question that enables a person to begin to recognize the embodiment of emotions.

And out of those hundreds of times of asking the question, there have been very few times when I did not get an immediate and direct reply.  The individuals simply told me where they felt the emotion.  Often they pointed to the body parts where the emotion seems located.  This is a general rule of thumb for therapists.  If a person “feels” the negative emotion, they will point to the area of the body where they feel that emotion.  It is in the body (the soma) and so it is psycho-somatic in nature and form.

Consider a panic attack.  When a person has a panic attack, part of the diagnosis involves physical symptoms.  I certainly do not believe this diagnosis is the result of some accident. It is the result of what people experience, as is the case with blocking.  The DSM IV offers this description on diagnosing a panic attack:

A Panic Attack is a discrete period in which there is the sudden onset of intense apprehension, fearfulness, or terror often associated with feelings of impending doom.  During these attacks, symptoms such as shortness of breath, palpitations, chest pain or discomfort, choking or smothering sensations and fear of going “crazy” or losing control are present.

Note the physical manifestations of a panic attack.  Indeed, I have heard many PWS use the same type language in describing what they are feeling during a block. The feelings find expression in the body. Put those feelings in the muscles controlling breathing and speaking and you have a block. Most skilled hypnotherapists are effective in assisting clients with panic disorders and anxiety disorders.  If you are good at doing that, you will be able to assist most PWS towards fluency because the key is to assisting them in overcoming the fear and anxiety behind the blocking and stammering. The structure of panic attacks and blocking is the same; the expressions are different. Reframe or heal the emotions and the physical expression disappears.

The Neuro-Semantic Structure of Stammering

In the field of Neuro-Semantics we recognize the cognitive-behavioral principle that every experience has a structure. The facets of our mind-body-emotion system come together as variables in a system. This has many ramifications.

For one thing, it says that we can model the structure of experience. After all, if we can identify the component elements, arrange those variables in a sequence, identify the feedback and feed forward loops of the system, we can replicate that experience. Modeling in this way lies at the heart of NLP/Neuro-Semantics.

This explains why we can replicate excellence in communication, relating, managing, leading, inventing, creativity, and thousands of other experiences. This focus on modeling also means that every behavior and experience is a skill. Though it may be painful, harmful, and destructive (like manic-depression, schizophrenia, etc.) it has a structure and by exploring such experiences of pain has a structure and strategy that makes it work.

Figure 1.1 The Matrix of Meanings

Does it suggest anything else? Yes. It also suggests that by curiously wondering how something works we are able to thereby enter into that experience and be inside that matrix of frames. And it is in this way that we can develop many more choices about changing and transforming an experience.

Therefore to work with the mind-body-emotion system of human beings which we call the Neuro-Semantic System, we begin with that system and watch how it works

Figure 1.2 The Meaning Table for Creating Stammering

#1 Meaning/Value – Meaning Determines the Matrices 1. Classification of non-fluent speech as blocking/stammering
2. Associating blocking/stammering with fear and shame
3. Evaluating blocking/stammering as bad and unacceptable
4. Framing blocking/stammering has having the following meanings in the other matrices:
#2
Intention/Self
#2
Intention/Power
#2
Intention/Time
#2
Intention/Others
#2
Intention/World
(Attempted solutions that make the problem worse)
I don’t want to look like a fool?
I will not show my vulnerabilities or weaknesses.
I can’t handle criticism well.
I’ve got to stop this.
This shows me to be inadequate and flawed.
I will “block” myself from stammering!
I am going to try to control this?
I am going to try to control every word that comes out of my mouth.
I have to catch this. I will do that by becoming very self aware of my speech.
I have to try really hard not to block and stammer or I will look foolish.
I am going to not repeat the past.
I am not going to make a fool of myself with my speech anymore.
If I block any emotion in this moment, it will give me more control.
I am not going to attract attention.
I am not going to let others see my vulnerabilities.
I will not give others to chance to laugh at me.
I will not let them see me struggle.
I will not do anything that will draw attention to me in my work, career, etc.
I will avoid speaking situations that will attract attention to me.
I will try to be successful by avoiding all opportunities to speak.
#3 Self #4 Power #5 Time #6 Others #7 World
I am flawed. There is something wrong with me.
I am broken.
I am not enough.
I am inadequate.
I am flawed.
I am foolish.
I am worthless.
I am insecure.
I am timid.
I am shy.
I am anxious.
I am tense.
I am “shamed.”
I am “possessed.”
I can’t be enough.
I am ashamed.
I am angry.
I am abnormal.
I can’t be enough.
My value is in my performance.
I have lost control.
I am frustration
I am vulnerable.
I need to change.
I can’t be enough.
I am terrified of speaking to ____________.
I need to be respected and loved in order to speak fluently. (Other)
I should be doing better.
I got to do something.
I got to get it done.
“It” (becoming fluent) works for everybody but me.
I cannot order in a restaurant.
I cannot introduce myself.
This is permanent.I am doomed.

It has always been this way.

I am not making progress.

I got to do something.

I got to get it done.

I can’t take my time to say what I want to say (sense of being rushed).

It is not OK to stammer.
I am fearful of being rejected.
Other’s expectation from me must be met.
I can’t measure up to their expectations. I am always fearful of being hurt and not being validated
I feel isolated.
I isolate myself so I won’t get involved in a relationship.
I am less than.
I look foolish.
You are always judged by how you talk.
People validate or determine my worth.
What people say about me becomes my truth.
I should be doing better.I got to do something.

I got to get it done.

“The whole issue revolves around ‘caring how I talk.’”

I won’t succeed.

I am out of control

(See Figure 1.1). What follows here begins with state and then adds state upon state to create the experience that we call “stammering.”

This means that there is a non-stammering mentality (fluency) just as there is a stammering mentality. In what follows I will be using the 7 Matrices of the Mind Model – a Neuro-Semantic model developed in 2002 that structures the NLP and NS patterns (Hall, 2002). We use this model for coaching, counseling, modeling, and neuro-semantic profiling. Accordingly, we here use it to make explicit the stammering system to provide systemic understanding of the semantics (meanings) that get into the body and nervous system (neuro-) to embody “stammering” so that it becomes part of physiology and a style of moving through the world.

How the Matrix Work to Create Stammering

In Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2 I illustrate how after the PWS punctuates/classifies non-fluency as stammering (Figure 1.2), the individual will associate fear and shame as to what stammering might mean. The PWS evaluates blocking/stammering as bad and unacceptable thus that which had no meaning now has meaning. Nothing has meaning to anyone until a person gives it meaning.

In blocking and stammering some very unuseful but necessary meanings must come into play for the person to block for they don’t block in all places all the time – it must be a cognitive process and not just a physical process. Obviously, the person does not want to block/stammer so an outcome (#2 Intention; Figures 1.1 and 1.2)) of not stammering becomes priority and drives (frames) the other meanings given to the matrices. The person fears what stammering may mean and thus creates a driving urge to not stammer.  Thus the PWS attempts to “block” stammering because they have defined stammering as being bad and unacceptable.

The person doesn’t want to block (#2 Intention Matrix) and stammer because in their view to do so means that they are deficient in person (#3 Self Matrix), powerless to stop doing it (#4 Power Matrix), believe the problem is permanent (#5Time Matrix), define themselves by how they fear other people are judging them (#6 Other Matrix) and hence they tend to view their world as a hostile place (#7 World Matrix). Their purpose of not wanting to stammer creates a frame of fear and anxiety which determines the other matrices.  So, all of this fear and anxiety is empowered further by the PWS’ meanings in the remaining matrices. They act as a higher level lever that “locks in the block”.

Importantly, as I try to show in both Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2 the “Intention/Purpose” meaning serves as a filter or driver for all the other meanings in the matrix.  That is why in Figure 1.1 “Meaning” is at the top for the meaning given to any experience determines everything else in the matrix. But, as illustrated, “Intention” is just under “Meaning” and the remaining matrices are under “Intention”. This is due to our belief that the meanings given to what we want, to our purpose, our purpose/ outcome/ desire frames acts as a filter for determining the meaning of the other matrices. In Figure 1.2 as you look in the first row below #1 Meaning/Value you will see that “#2 Intentions” is placed above each of the other matrices.

I shall illustrate. In the “Other Matrix” the PWS has a belief (and a fear) that they will not let other people see their vulnerabilities as a PWS. Indeed, with the PWS, this is an overriding fear that most of them carry. Because they have already given the meaning (#1 Meaning) that their dis-fluent speech is rightly called stammering; they have associated stammering with fear and shame; it is a bad and unacceptable behavior; this results in a strong fear of actually stammering which other people will view as unacceptable. (PWS, like most people, are good at Mind-Reading.)  Indeed, in their fear of being judged by others they in turn “judge” others.

So, having this fear of stammering (#2 Intention Matrix), and looking through those eyes, they see that other people (#6 Other Matrix) will reject them; they will judge them as being less than “normal” people all because they hold the belief that what other people think of them determines their sense of worth and value (#3 Self Matrix).  The meanings given to their relationship with most people basis itself on their belief that stammering is not OK (#1 Meaning Matrix) and that they want to avoid it at all cost and if they do stammer, other people will reject them and so on. In Figure 1.2, you will find numerous meanings that I have elicited from at least 40 PWS.

The “Layering” of Meanings
Creating Anticipatory Anxiety About Stammering
Which Almost Guarantees Stammering!

The PWS will layer the fear of blocking and stammering with all these meanings. These meanings came from one of my clients:

  1. People judge the content of what I am saying so I must always be
    right. When I am uncertain of my rightness, I block.
  2. I have the ability to be 100% block free (I just don’t know how to
    do it).
  3. The audience overwhelms me, like I am being attacked. This causes
    me to block.
  4. I will stutter when I speak.
  5. I need to be respected and loved in order to be fluent.
  6. I need to be perfect.
  7. I am unwilling to feel comfortable with my emotions.
  8. I need to try hard to impress.
  9. I need to have control. My life is totally out of control.
  10. I expect others to judge me harshly for I judge myself harshly.
  11. People judge the content of what I am saying so I must always be
    right. When I am uncertain of my rightness, I block.
  12. I have the ability to be 100% block free. I just don’t know how to
    do it.
  13. The audience overwhelms me, like I am being attacked. This causes
    me to block.
  14. I will stutter when I speak.
  15. I need to be respected and loved in order to be fluent.

You may wish to go through the above list and identify which matrix each belongs.  This client was layering her mind one on top of the other with these limiting beliefs and all of it was about one thing – how she thinks about the possibility of blocking and stammering. Gregory Bateson (1972) shares in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, that higher mental levels modulate and change lower mental levels. Michael Hall (1995, 2000) has taken the theoretical teachings of Bateson and “brought them down to earth” in a usable fashion. Hall explains that the “higher levels” that Bateson was talking about included the mind’s ability to have one thought about another thought and the second thought that is about the first thought serves as a higher level to the first thought and will indeed modulate or change the first thought.  Do what?

I shall illustrate. Suppose you are in a state of fear. Your thinking is about fearing something.  From that thought you start layering your mind with the thought “I can’t handle this?”  And, then, you layer that thought with, “I am a worthless idiot.”  What will happen to the original thought of fear by layering that thought with all these negative thoughts?  The fear will increase. Indeed, that kind of thinking leads to paranoia.

However, if instead, you layered that first thought of fear with, “I am a courageous person.” “I can handle this situation. I have done it before.” What happens to “fear” when “courage” is layered on top of it?  The “fear” will change. It will begin to ease and if the courageous state is strong enough, it will blow that fear away. Bang!!! That’s right! When one thought is applied to another thought, Hall (1995, 2000) refers to this as Meta-Stating as the previous thought-feeling state is modulated by the second thought-feeling state.

Our minds tend to not stop with one thought; our minds tend to keep on having thoughts about thoughts. In looking at the computer monitor as I type this, my first thought about the computer monitor was the text that I am typing on the monitor. But my mind didn’t stop there; my mind instantaneously went to the next thought about that: “This is useful information for the hypnotherapists.” Neither did my mind stop there for my next thought about the previous thought was, “The skilled hypnotherapists as abilities help a lot of suffering people who live daily with the horrors of stammering.”  The next thought was really a “feeling of excitement and passion” about this material and how it can provide realistic hope for a lot of people and bring the hypnotherapists into areas of work that they may have never previously known.

Meta-Stating the Fear

The mind creates our internal states through this process of layering one thought-feeling on top of another thought-feeling – layering one state of mind on top of another state of mind.  This is true for bad states as well as good states.  In bringing healing to the negative states, I follow the following simple model:

1.   Associate the person into the problem state.

2.   Dissociate the person from the problem state.

3.   Lead the person to discover internal resources while mentally “outside” or dissociated from the problem state.

4.  Associate the person into the resource state and then lead them to apply (Meta-State) the resource state to the problem state – i.e. bring the resource state to bear onto the problem state.  This can be done visually, auditorily or kinesthetically. Most PWS have a strong feeling of fear and anxiety. Lead them to access a resource state like courage or faith until they “feel it” and then lead them to move the resource state into the same location as the problem state of fear. “What happens to fear when it is embedded with courage and faith?”

The Hidden Purposes for PWS – More about the Intention Matrix

During the last two years of doing a lot of work with PWS, I have come to appreciate just how the stammering seeks to serve a positive purpose for the PWS. In NLP, we believe that every behavior has a positive intent. Now, by positive intent, I am not talking about every behavior having a correct intent or a morally acceptable positive intent; I am referring to our belief that when the person learned the behavior that that behavior at that time was that person’s way of trying to get something that the person felt like they needed. Such thinking is usually in the unconscious and oft times “deep” in the unconscious.

I often hear the objection, “Well, if every behavior has a positive intent, how can you explain an adult molesting a child?”  Good question. Even in that gross and deplorable situation, you will find a positive intent in the person’s behavior. I know for I have worked therapeutically with several and in every case there was a positive intent behind the behavior. Most child abusers have been abused themselves. The dysfunction of molesting a child is oft a perverted attempt to receive and even give love. The roots of this go back to the person’s childhood where they learned this from what was happening to them.

Well, what could be the positive intent behind blocking and stammering?  I have thus far discovered four that are prevalent:

Protection – By far, the one that I hear the most is that the stammering serves as a protector from being hurt. The PWS learned in childhood that to talk meant pain. Sometimes this is just from normal conversation. The child would not be permitted to speak. “Children are to be seen and not heard.” Have you ever heard that one?  Well, when that is taken to the extremes and there is much pain associated with self-expression, the child may just decide to “block” speaking. And, the world gains another stammerer.

Also, blocking and stammering serves as a protector for some PWS because they grew up in an environment that somehow was painful for the child. This is more common.  I have found that the degree of pain varies from something as simple as pain from a one time event at a critical time in speech development to pain from a childhood filled with all kinds of emotional and physical abuse.  I have worked with PWS clients who’s blocking and stammering were encased in a sea of mental frames of hurt, pain, abuse, sorrow, rejection, fear and so on. Many sessions over many months were required to bring the person to a state of equilibrium with the pain of the past. Skilled hypnotherapists will know exactly what I am talking about as you have encountered such mental frames of mind many times.  The treatment for stammering is the same as with other clients overwhelmed with such pain. Even with such treatment, not all PWS have overcome their stammering because the problem is so well learned and “in the muscles”. But, fortunately a significant number have become more fluent.

Stammering serves for some PWS as a protector from the fear of failure.  The PWS will hold the belief that as long as they have the stammer, it provides them a convenient excuse to not to take responsibility for their lives. Stammering becomes a handy “whipping boy” for the PWS. On the other side of that, I have found that stammering served as a protector from the fear of success.  Due to unconscious beliefs learned in childhood, the PWS was fearful that they may become a success. Well, what is wrong with that?  Success meant more responsibility and then the fear of failure would come in, “I may not be good enough. Look at me. I stammer. No one will let me continue to be a success.” Thus the person gets into a vicious loop – “If I succeed, I might fail.” “If I succeed, it will not be good enough.”  So, stammering serves as a protector against fearing both failure and success – if you don’t do anything you want fail at it nor will you succeed in it.

In working with PWS, there are an amazing number of similar beliefs held by them. And, one that jumps out constantly is the “need for perfection”. This perfectionism mentality is always present in the fear of failure and fear of success looping.  Look for the roots of perfectionism in childhood. Usually there will be a parent or both parents that the person could never please.  In other cases, the PWS will develop a sense of guilt that if they were “good enough” then this awful affliction of stammering would not be a problem. Having such a dis-fluent problem in childhood leads a lot of children to do what children do well – they personalize it.  “It must be my fault. There is something wrong with me. If I were perfect, I wouldn’t have this stammer.”

Control – Second to protection, I hear the need for control as a higher positive intent/ purpose for stammering.  Have you ever known a control freak?  Well, anytime you find a control freak, you can bet that that person’s childhood was to some degree out of control. Now, to the adult mind, it may not seem to have been out of control but to the mind of that child it was. So, the reasoning goes like this, “This family is out of control. Because this family is out of control, I don’t feel secure. Security is an absolute must for a child to feel loved, comfortable, happy, etc.  Since this family is out of control and there is nothing that I can do with it, I will control my speech. I can stammer. Just watch me stammer. See, I can bring some control into my life!”

 

Attention – Another unconscious purpose for stammering is that it gets attention. I was the middle child in our family. And, I didn’t believe that I was getting enough attention. So, I learned if I rebelled, I got attention. Now, it was negative attention but it was still attention – negative attention is better than no attention for some of us.  Well, the PWS learns as a child  that this behavior called blocking and stammering sure can get attention. It not only gets attention at home; it also gets attention at school. So, such thinking can serve as another reason to “lock in the block.”

Revenge – Using stammering as a means of revenge is not common but it does happen. Again, this problem roots in childhood.  The few times that I have found this purpose, it was a way for the child to “get back” at the parents for the way the child perceived himself as being treated. One PWS said, “They (the parents) made life uncomfortable for me; I am going to make their life uncomfortable by blocking and stammering.”

 

How do you find the unconscious purposes of blocking and stammering (or any other behavior)? Usually you can do this quite simply by using what we call “chunk up” language – language that will send the person’s mind to higher and higher thinking. The simple question to ask the PWS is: “If your stammering had a purpose, what purpose would that be?”  The question contains the presupposition that the person’s behavior of stammering may have a purpose. By the way, it is rare for the person to not give you a purpose. The fact is that all behaviors have a purpose. If they didn’t have a purpose or function, they would quit behaving. Now, this question may have to be repeated several times for their unconscious mind to hear the question as the conscious mind gets over the shock of even considering that stammering has a purpose.

In going for their purpose, have the PWS associate fully into the fear of stammering before questioning them. The more they feel the part, the easier for the unconscious mind to provide answers. It is simple to do. Just ask the person:

  • “What is the purpose or intention of stammering?”
  • “What is stammering trying to do for you?”
  • “What does stammering want for you that is important?”
  • “What would stammering have to give up which is important to you in order for you to stop stammering?”

One of the major keys to doing therapy, I believe, is to find out the purpose of the problem behaviors, heal the hurt behind the problem behavior and then find healthier ways for them to meet the needs of the original purpose the stammering.  If the purpose is for protection, the part responsible for that needs to come to understand that the person has survived childhood and now has adult resources to protect them. If the PWS that you are working with is still a child, find ways in the child’s life to re-assure the child that they are protected. This may require family therapy.

Summary

There is hope for the PWS. There is hope because their experience has structure as do all experiences. That they have gotten certain ideas incorporated or embodied into their very neurology and physiology does not mean it is not psychological. It only says that it has a lot of habit strength and that it now operates apart from their conscious awareness. Structure means that we can intervene at numerous places in the system, sometimes reversing the structure and sometimes messing it up.

References:

American psychiatric association diagnostic criteria, from DSM-IV (1994). Washington DC, American Psychiatric Association.

Bateson, Gregory. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballatine.

Bodenhamer, Bobby G. (2004) Mastering blocking and stuttering: A guide to gaining fluency. Carmarthen: Crown House Publishing. (due Oct, 2004)

Greenfield, Susan A. (1995).  Journey to the centers of the mind: toward
a science of consciousness.
New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

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:

Hall, L. Michael. (1995/2000). Dragon slaying: From dragons to princes. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.

Hall, L. Michael; Bodenhamer, Bob. (2001). Games for mastering fear. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications

Hall, L. Michael (2002).  The matrix model: The 7 matrices of neuro-semantics. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications.

Hall, L. Michael (1995, 2000). Meta states: Mastering the higher states of your mind. Grand Jct. CO: Neuro-Semantics Publications

Filed Under: The Dilemma Solved

Straight Talk About Stuttering

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

Psycho-Social Stress and Speech Dysfluency

Bernard-thomas Hartman, Ph.D., FAAMD

Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici

I have stuttered, while speaking, and to varying degrees, most of my adult life. Largely due to this fact, I’ve spent the bulk of my career studying speech pathology and psychology. I’m now a retired university professor, and would like to take this opportunity to pass on to you something that I’ve learned about stuttering, and articulate a particular approach to this problem which I believe addresses the root cause of the problem for most, (if not all), people who stutter.

I mentioned, previously, that I stutter when I speak. Early in my life, what used to really nag me was that I spoke fluently – when I was alone. When I started my university studies, I attended speech therapy for my problem. I experienced, first hand, the main therapy techniques and found them, as a ‘stutterer’, inadequate in that they didn’t consistently aid me in my out-of-clinic experiences. I read, extensively, about stuttering and through my own clinical experiences, found that the methods that were applied would fail to consistently improve the client’s fluency outside the clinic. Or that the effectiveness of the method would be eroded, over time, by the client’s loss of sensitivity to the application as they became too accustomed to it.

The successes achieved in the clinic were decidedly inconsistent with the experiences of the client outside of the clinic. This was due to the fact that the adversities of the psycho-social stresses of everyday life were not present in the clinic and could not be readily, or at least convincingly, simulated.

As a young man, I used to memorize phrases, tracts of Shakespeare, anything, and recite them in the mirror, thus, proving to myself that I possessed this gift of fluent speech. But I learned that it takes two to stutter. My fluency is wholly dependant on who I perceive to be listening, and the gravity of the message that I want to express.

It wasn’t until I was taking my master’s degree, and had gained enough experience with other people who stutter that I became convinced that the problem is psycho-social, and that this problem may manifest itself as any of the ‘classic’ stuttering behaviors (tonic, clonic, etc.).

I’m an unrepentant fan of masking devices and have seen them to be a considerable aid in eliciting fluent speech in my clients. But this fluency is generally short-lived. This is, perhaps, as it should be. Masking devices and other external stimuli should only be applied as one would a crutch. Get the person back on their feet and experiencing positive episodes of fluent speech.

Under varying levels of stress, everyone is predisposed to exhibit stuttering speech behaviors. In other words, very stressful situations will exceed anyone’s threshold for maintaining fluent speech. It’s simply a matter of the level of stress versus the individual’s threshold for maintaining fluent speech.

People, whom we term to be ‘stutterers’, have a lower stress threshold than most people with regards to maintaining fluent speech. The severity of a person’s stuttering behaviors is determined by the level of psycho-social stress that it takes to disrupt the person’s innate ability to speak fluently. And with each episode of disfluency that the stutter experiences, this threshold for maintaining fluent speech dips a little lower.

The reason for this, is that the stutterer begins to anticipate failure and tweaks up the psycho-social stress related to the encounter. In addition, the more time that the stutterer is allowed to prepare for the encounter, (and anticipate failure), the more this tension tends to grow. The constant conditioning of anticipation of failure, and then the fruition of these anxieties creates the basis for habitual stuttering behaviors.

So how do we break this cycle of anticipation of failure/realization of failure…?

For me, that has always been the big question. How to reduce the amount of psycho-social stress that a stutterer experiences when he or she needs to say something to somebody? How can we diffuse the tension of the moment for the stutterer?

As I mentioned previously, there are two parties involved in every stuttering episode – the stutterer and the listener. In the event that a stutterer needs to say something to someone they aren’t familiar with, (a waitress, prospective employer, policeman…) the stutterer generally doesn’t know how this listener is going to respond to the realization that stuttering behavior is occurring in the conversation, but will be anticipating any or all of the negative responses that they have experienced previously.

As for the listener, most people have a streak of goodness/understanding and are happy to do their ‘good deed for the day’ (for lack of a better term) when dealing with a handicapped person. They generally respond to handicapped people with an extra degree of patience and understanding. But what most people find awkward or uncomfortable is to be thrust into the position where they are made aware of a handicap as it manifests itself and they are not prepared for the situation.  And a stutterer, engaged in speaking, is acutely aware of the listener’s discomfort which only adds to the problem.

The first thing, I believe, is to understand that a stutterer is a person whose communication skills are handicapped. Like a mute or person who is hard of hearing their communication skills are impeded, but unlike the former examples, the handicap of stuttering speech may be transitory if the psycho-stresses which cause the condition can be relieved.

When I was a young therapist, I attempted to take on this problem by ‘padding’ my clients’ social environment. I did this by taking the time to meet with spouses, employers, teachers, etc. and counsel them on how they might help relieve some of the tension that may occur in their discourses with my client as well as ways that they can encourage and empower them to communicate more frequently. The important thing is to allow a potential listener the time to prepare mentally for the role that they must assume in a conversation with a person who has a communication handicap. I found this to be a considerable aid to my therapy, but it eventually became impracticable due to my client load.

I propose that the same effect may be achieved by openly establishing with the listener, at the point of contact, that the speaker suffers from a handicap that affects their speech. This can be accomplished the same way that many people with other communication difficulties inform a listener that they have a problem – with a little card that is presented to the listener before communication begins.

What this will do is de-fuse a great deal of the psycho-social stress both for the stutterer and the listener. The stutterer can relax considerably knowing that his/her ‘cover’ is blown and that the listener knows that the stutterer may experience difficulty in communicating what they have to say. The listener has time to prepare themselves for such an event and accept assuming the role of a person attending to someone who is challenged in this way. To the stutterer’s advantage, most people are perfectly willing to display their sense of humanity if forewarned. I believe that this is the closest we can come to re-creating the dynamic available in a clinical setting and reinforce the positive experiences that the client receives from their therapist’s clinical programs and applications.

About the author:

Dr. Hartman, now retired, has served as the director of Speech and Hearing pathology for several institutions during his career and finally as professor and director of the Speech and Hearing department (23 years) at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He is the author of ‘The Neuropsychology of Developmental Stuttering’ as well as other works. He now lives with his family in Norway.

Filed Under: The Dilemma Solved

Confusing the ‘Map’ with the ‘Territory’ Part II

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

By Bobby Bodenhamer, D.Min.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici 

In Part I we learned:

  • Most PWS can speak freely in some contexts and block consistently in other contexts. A model about blocking and stuttering must take this into account and seek to explain it.  NLP/NS presents one model for this purpose.
  • Our perceptual maps are a product of our creating movies inside our head. The movie will be made up of pictures, sounds and/or feelings (Smells and taste play a lesser part.)
  • In themselves, our mental movies have no meaning. We supply meaning by defining the movie with “words”. Thus our mental maps are made up of our movies and our language meanings.
  • Alfred Korzybski’s statement that “The Map is not the Territory” at least partially explains how the same person can block consistently in some contexts, yet consistently speak freely in other contexts.
  • Unconsciously the PWS confuses their perceptual mapping with what is going on in the territory of their world.
  • Think about it. All the pictures, sounds and feelings in our head are not what they represent in the world or in the territory.  They are just symbols of what we have experienced from the world/ territory. Our words whereby we create meaning are just symbols of our experience of the territory. Our maps are created metaphors about our world and our experiences of the world. They are “not real” but only as real as we make them.
  • When the PWS blocks, he most often operates from a perceptual map that he developed in childhood. Instead of operating from a perceptual map of an adult ‘who knows how to talk’, the meaning he places on the context in the territory that he finds himself triggers him back to negative childhood experiences such as being made fun of due to his blocking.

Part II

People who make mental changes believe that “the map is not the territory” or “the menu is not the meal;” and they believe it is their map and their map alone that they operate from.  This is another way of saying that our perception is not reality. It is only our perception of it. However, because it is our perception (our internal representation and conceptual meanings) it is what we operate from.  It doesn’t matter how accurately it maps (perceive) our present reality. We will operate from our perceptions as governed by our higher-level frames of mind.

Michael Hall in article entitled “Seven Key Distinctions of Masterful Communication” at

http://www.neurosemantics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=445&Itemid=48

states:

“The map is not the territory” summarizes the common-sense wisdom that a map never is the territory it is designed to represent.  The menu is not the meal; the sex manual is not love making; the photo is not the person.  These are different phenomenon.  They operate at different levels and in different dimensions.

“So simple, yet so profound.  So simple and yet so easy to forget.  How and when do we forget it?  When we think (and feel) that what we think (our mapping), what we perceive, what we believe in, what we value, what we identify with, etc. is what is real.  That’s the delusion.  Yet it never is; it cannot be.  At best it can be a good, useful, and fairly accurate map about it.

(Note: I [Bob] believe that the reality that Michael here speaks about explains where many in the world of the PWS find themselves. Holding to such beliefs as ‘stuttering is not a psychological phenomenon’, exemplifies what Korzybski so warned against – the identifying of a person with a behavior. Holding to such beliefs foregoes the possibility of making new discoveries in the realm of cognition around blocking.)

“But when we forget, we identify. We identify map and territory.  What I think about something is real, is the final word, is absolute, is beyond question, is unquestionable, etc.  And this describes the concrete thinker, the absolutist, the pulpit pounding pundit who has “the answers,” the guru who demands blind and unquestioning obedience, the fundamentalist in any and every system (Christian, Moslem, Liberal, Conservative, Political, etc.).

“Map is all of the stuff inside, from the way the outside world impacts upon your senses and sense receptors (eyes, ears, skin, etc.).  Map is all of the ideas, beliefs, understandings, feelings, memories, etc. that you create inside about the outside world.  We do not deal with the world directly, but indirectly.  We interface with the electromagnetic spectrum as mediated through our sense receptors, neuro-pathways, brain cortexes, beliefs, belief systems, etc.  Territory is the outside world, all of the experiences, words, events, and happenings “out there.”

“The masterful communicator knows that all of our mapping is fallible and is, at its highest development, still our best guess.  He or she also knows that the value of a map lies in its usefulness, lies in it being able to provide us some navigational guidance as we move through the world and experiences.  Does the map correspond well enough so that we can use it to direct our thoughts and actions?  Does it facilitate me having the experiences I want to have?  To achieve the things I want to accomplish?

“How well do you recognize that all of your mental mapping about things is just that, a map?  How much is this your frame of mind?  How quick are you to explore and ask questions rather than go into “deity mode” of telling, demanding, or giving advice?  How grounded is your recognition that your feelings are functions of your maps, not of the world?  How intuitive have you driven in this distinction so that you recognize that any and every emotion is the difference between your map of the world and your experience in the world?

“These are questions that help us benchmark where we are in our own development of making the map/territory distinction and meta-stating ourselves with this as a premise for moving through the world so that it becomes our in-knowing (intuition) as we communicate.”

What does this mean to the PWS? This means that:

  • Those PWS who grow in the freedom of verbally sharing themselves recognize the value of re-creating their map (perception) that accurately, as far as symbolically possible, maps the present moment. We are a “symbolic class of life.” We do that with our mental movies and words acting as “symbols” from our experience of our world through our five senses. But, these are just symbols about our world. They are not the world. We get into trouble when we confuse the two and label our “symbols” as being “real.” We also create trouble for ourselves when we think that they are a totally accurate map of our world.When we consciously or unconsciously operate from frames of mind that we learned in childhood, we certainly are not operating from a map that even comes close to accurately mapping out the adult world we now live in. This is the root of most problems, if not all of them. It is most certainly the root cause of many PWS operating in their adult world from their blocking strategy rather than their adult fluency strategy. Unconsciously the PWS is living in their past which is usually their childhood.

Understandably some PWS find such statements quite irritating and many reject such diagnosis as non-credible.  Therefore, to understand my point recall the last time you blocked. How did it feel? Did you feel powerful or powerless?  How old did you feel while you were in that block?  Did you feel your present age or younger maybe even much younger?

  • Those who change their thinking by recognizing that their map is not the territory will eliminate the problem of cause-effect in their lives. What does this mean?  It means that the individual who understands and accepts that their internal map/perception is not, and cannot be, the territory (the external world) will stop the foolishness of believing other people control her mind without her permission.  No one can make you believe or feel anything you choose not to believe or feel. That “other” person whom you fear will judge you should you block has absolutely no power over you without your permission.

In a recent correspondence with Christine on the PWS E-Mail list, Christine stated:

“Although the ‘map is not the territory’ in the semantic sense, I’m inclined to think that the map indeed affects the territory as well, most certainly if the territory is our brain processes. Different thoughts will create patterns that eventually affect brain chemistry, hence, will affect the territory. It’s kind of like how the observer will affect the object according to quantum theory…

“In a way, it makes no sense to stutter regardless of the situation, unless stuttering is all we can do – which it is, of course, not. Also, the situation is never exactly the same twice, but yet we stutter if there’s a resemblance. Resemblance is the most illusory element here (much more so than the initial map of the territory), thus, it’s in many ways the creation of resemblance we must alter. Resemblance is a map about a map, and by definition, over that we should have the most power to change.”

In part of my response to her insightful post, I shared:

Korzybski’s point was that the map and the territory are two distinct entities and cannot be the same.

And, yes, the one affects the other. However, we have much control about how the one affects the other.

The sub-title of Korzybski’s book Science and Sanity is “An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”. Korzybski aimed to defuse the Cause-Efffect ideology so prevalent in Western Cultures. Aristotelian thinking is “Cause-Effect” thinking.  Non-Aristotelian thinking is the living with an awareness that much of our perceptual mapping is by “choice” and is not “caused” by the territory or the world.

Children do cause-effect thinking:  “Mom and dad divorced. I caused it for there is something wrong with me.” As we mature, we take responsibility for our own thinking and understand the fallacy of cause-effect thinking.

We get into trouble when we hold onto beliefs that just because something has happened in our territory, we “have to” respond a certain way.

In the world of mental health there is a Diagnostic Book called the DSM IV: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  This book provides all the present diagnosis for mental disorders.  When a person is diagnosed as suffering from a Social Anxiety Disorder (which much of blocking is in my opinion) and then that person “identifies” with that diagnosis, then that is cause effect.  “I have a Social Anxiety Disorder. I am ill.”  That person has taken a diagnosis of a “process” and then jumped to identifying with it and thus the person “becomes” the disorder.  It is that kind of childish thinking that Korzybski attempted to bring a halt to.  He called such identifying as “unsanity”.

Another example would be, “I grew up in a dysfunctional family therefore I am dysfunctional.” Another one, “I have my father’s temper.”

Such thinking is cause-effect thinking.  It ends up nominalizing (or making a process real by labeling it) behaviors and identifying with it. This tends to lock the person into the behavior.

All behaviors are a result of the mental processing of our minds through our movies and our languaging. It is all a process. It isn’t set in concrete. It can be changed.  Because you learned how to block as a child does not mean you must block the rest of your life.

Just think how much “not blocking” would affect your view of the world that you live in.  Korzybski would say that the world or the territory doesn’t cause your blocking; you trigger your blocking with unconscious learning. It is unconscious. It can be quite a task to learn how not to do it but you can do it. You are in charge of your thinking. Nobody else is driving your bus. You are driving your own bus.

  • They recognize that the words and images inside their heads are not “real” in the sense that they are absolute or unchangeable. They are changeable. They are just “symbols” of the external world.  We have instruments that will detect the nerve cells and the neuro-transmitters that allow one nerve cell to communicate with another nerve cell. However, can neuro-science go inside the brain and find/ measure a picture, a sound, a feeling or a word?  No, they are “abstractions” of the mind. Our conceptual states are generated at the moment of thought and then they disappear until we think the thought again.  Because the images and word meanings inside our head are not “real” in the sense that they are set in concrete, they only have the reality we give them. In understanding that the “map” is not the “territory”, the PWS will know that those fearful mental movies cannot harm them without their permission.

When to Block and when not to Block

This clarifies what is taking place when the brain knows not to block and when the brain blocks.  For, when the PWS is in a context that is not threatening to their verbally sharing themselves, the mental-movies and the language structures are not there for they haven’t triggered the neural networks that create the movies and the language structures. Now,  the neural networks are there but are not activated thus the movies and the language of stuttering are not present – the PWS now speaks fluently without those old movies of the past creating so much fear and anxiety that triggers blocking.

On-the-other-hand, when the PWS is in a context that threatens their personal sharing of themselves the neural networks of blocking fire and bingo, there are the movies and the language structures that serve to hold the blocking in place. In most cases when this happens, the PWS mentally ceases being a resourceful adult and they associate into childhood memories operating from the mental movies and language structure of when they were a child. Unconsciously the PWS becomes a child with the mental mapping of a child. Those old images of being made fun of by peers; those old images of blocking in front of the class; those old images of hearing dad say “spit it out son, spit it out” suddenly become real and the person “blocks” their personal sharing for it is threatening to share oneself.

It is really true, “The ‘map’ is not the ‘territory’.

Back to Part I

Filed Under: The Dilemma Solved

Confusing the ‘Map’ with the ‘Territory’ Part I

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

By Bobby Bodenhamer, D.Min.
Pour la traduction française, cliquez ici 

Why is it that I can speak fluently when I am by myself but as soon as I go out into public, I start blocking? Obviously, you know how to speak fluent for there are times you do it. Indeed, for most PWS, there are times that they do it consistently.  Then again, there are times that you block and you usually do that consistently in certain contexts.  What is going on?

Could we not summarily state that your mind-body system has basically two different strategies when it comes to speaking? You have a strategy for speaking fluently and you have a strategy for blocking.  Well, what determines whether I speak from the fluency strategy or when I speak from the blocking strategy?  I sure don’t want to block but I can’t help it. What is going on?

To find the answer, let’s not study the behavior – the blocking. I will leave that to those more knowledgeable of the physiology involved in blocking. Let’s look at what is behind the blocking. How does your brain know when to tell you mouth to speak fluently and how does it know when to tell your mouth to block?  How does your brain know which strategy to fire? I mean, after all, you already know how to speak fluently. Let’s seek to understand why you can’t speak fluently all the time.

To do this, let’s look at what we basically know about how the brain creates meaning for I am convinced that it is the meaning given to a particular context that determines whether you speak from your fluency strategy or your blocking strategy. Ask yourself: “What kind of meaning(s) do I place on those times when I am fluent that permit me to be relaxed and calm that allows me to speak without fear and anxiety about speaking?”  And, “What meaning(s) do I place on those contexts where I block all the time? How do I mentally frame these contexts so that I experience fear and anxiety about speaking that leads me right into blocking?” “What are the differences in meaning between these two contexts?”

A Little History

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Behaviorist explained behavior from a stimulus-response perspective. Something happens that triggers the person to respond a certain way. Later Cognitive Psychology began to look beyond just the basic stimulus-response model and they started talking about other variables specifically cognitions – language. The Cognitive Scientist wanted to know more about what was going on with a person’s thinking that led to a certain response from a particular trigger. This model was later advanced by Bandler and Grinder who specified cognitions or thoughts as a product of our five senses (see, hear, feel, smell and taste) plus the ability to create meaning with words.  These co-founders of Neuro-Linguistics (NLP) determined that we create thinking via the movies (pictures, sounds, feelings, smells and/or taste) that we create inside our heads and, importantly, the meanings we give the movie via language. This comprised the “language of the mind”.

It is this “language of the mind” that allows the NLP Practitioner to understand just what a person is doing inside their head in order to create a certain response to a certain signal. The movies and the language are the basis of all thinking – all perception. In NLP we refer to this phenomenon as mental mapping or just “mapping”.  All behavior has behind it a mental map comprised of movies and/or language. Of these, the meaning created by “words” is where the difference that makes the difference is at.

You have a set of meanings that drive fluency and you have a set of meanings that drive blocking. You have a “mental map” for each behavior and it is this mapping that determines whether you block or whether you speak with a naturally free expression called fluency. No matter the original cause of your blocking, for sure, whether you block or whether you speak fluently is a product of how you map out the situation that you find yourself in.

When our mental map of the world is fearful, limiting, impoverished, childish, anxious, weak and unresourceful, etc., the world becomes a fearful and dangerous place. We do not believe that we have the resources to live in the world as a complete and happy person who verbally expresses himself with great freedom of expression. Such impoverished thinking will trigger fear and anxiety that will trigger the blocking strategy.

On the other hand, if our mental map of the world is one of excitement, opportunity, and enrichment we can face this world with great resourcefulness and strength. When we operate off such mapping, we not only do not experience childish fear and anxiety, we experience great anticipation, joy and excitement over just sharing out of the riches of our lives to all who will listen. Words flow naturally and freely from the well within. For, after all, most anxiety is repressed excitement.

The “Map is not the Territory”; The “Menu” is not the “Meal”.

What does all this have to say about whether I block or whether I speak freely and fluently?  It has everything to do with it. The foundation of NLP is based on General Semantics as developed by Alfred Korzybski in his classic 1933 and still in print book Science and Sanity.  As a scientist, Korzybski brought the mind of a scientist to the world of thoughts and communication.  One of his great insights is summed up in the phrase, “The Map is Not the Territory”.  What does he mean by that?  Korzybski is just saying that our perception; our mental mapping, is not, nor can it be the “Territory” or the world that we represent with the movies and language of the mind.

Think about it. All the pictures, sounds and feelings in our head are not what they represent in the world or in the territory.  They are just symbols of what we have experienced from the world/ territory. Our words whereby we create meaning are just symbols of our experience of the territory. All of our mapping is metaphorical.  Indeed, our perceptions are all abstractions as Korzybski called them. Is there a scientific instrument that can go into the brain and find a picture? A sound?  A word?  No, of course not.  A great mystery of Neuro-Science and Neurology is just how does the brain create these abstractions from the energy manifestations of our neural networks. We don’t know but we do know that we operate off of them as if they are real. Indeed, because they are not real in that sense, they only have the reality we give them.

For instance, when you go to a job interview and fear overwhelms you that you may block, how old do you feel?  For most PWS, they will feel very young. And, there is a reason for that. You cease being an adult because the event triggered you back to when you were a child and you became fearful of speaking to an authority figure. Maybe your father was very harsh and kept on you to “Spit it out, son. Spit it out!” Or, maybe a school teacher would stand you up before the class to read and you would block. The class laughed at you and the teacher made fun of you. On and on I could go with examples that I have discovered from PWS.

What is happening?  You have confused the “map” with the “territory”. You have ceased operating off the map of an adult who has adult resources and you have regressed back to a child and you are operating off of the map you created as a child in those difficult situations. Now, this happens fast – in about 1/3000th of a second. That is one of the reasons that it is so hard to control. But, that is what happens in the vast majority of blocking situations. You cease operating off a map of a resourceful adult and you operate off of a map of a child full of fear, anxiety and embarrassment. This in turns triggers your blocking strategy and you block.

But, when you are by yourself or maybe when you are with trusted friends, you place the meaning on those situations that do not trigger you back to a childhood map but you, instead, operate off your map as a mature resourceful adult.

Indeed, in my opinion, mental health has a whole lot to do with our creating a mental map that accurately as symbolically possible maps out the world or the territory that we are living in right “now”; not, when we were a child. There is no wonder that we experience so much fear and anxiety when we operate off of a child’s map. We are trying to perform in an adult world with the thinking of a child. That is scary.

Click her for Part II

Filed Under: The Dilemma Solved

Mastering Blocking & Stuttering Workshop – My Experience Both Before & After

January 4, 2011 by 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

Filed Under: How to Create Blocking & Stuttering

A Model for Resolving Stuttering

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

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.

Filed Under: How to Create Blocking & Stuttering

Battling with Symptoms Or Changing the Frameworks?

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

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.

Filed Under: How to Create Blocking & Stuttering

The Art of Enjoying Non-Fluency

January 4, 2011 by Bobby G. Bodenhamer

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.

Filed Under: How to Create Blocking & Stuttering

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About Dr. Bodenhamer

As an International Master NLP Trainer, he offers both certified training for Practitioners and Master Practitioners of NLP. He has a private NLP Therapy practice. Dr. Bodenhamer has served four Southern Baptist churches as pastor. He is now retired from the ministry.

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  • A conversation between Moses and God
  • Audio interview with Chazzler DiCyprian
  • How We Developed An Incorrect Picture of Stuttering
  • How to Use Your Highest Belief to Overcome the Anxiety of Stuttering
  • How Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Presuppositions Can Help You to Deal with Stuttering

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