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-113-Using Counter-Example Mind-Lines
The mind-lines that arise from counter-exampling offer some truly great and powerful ways to run the "Sleight of Mouth" patterns which then redirect a brain (even your own) and swish it in an entirely new direction and to entirely new referents. Using the counter-exampling process we will deframe the old generalizations and beliefs and simultaneously offer a new piece of "reality"
(conceptual reality) for the mind that does not fit.
"Oh this stuff is just too hard to learn, I don't think I'll ever learn this!"
"My, oh my, what a learning! How did you learn that!?"
Using these counter-exampling mind-lines inevitably plays on a paradox and contradiction. Namely, that the very thing that we affirm and absolutely believe we can or can't do—in so asserting we will typically demonstrate the very trait or behavior in our affirmations and denials!
The NLP founders, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, tell a story about one of the early NLP workshops where they met a lady who said that she could not say no. So they asked her to come up to the front of the workshop. There they told her to say "No!" to each and every request that all of the other workshop participants would ask of her. But she refused to allow herself to go up to each one and receive a request.
Now in refusing to learn to say no in that way, she also had to say no to the seminar leaders. In this set up, Bandler and Grinder put her in a double-bind (a benevolent one) wherein she demonstrated the very skill she asserted that she didn't have.
As you listen carefully to find examples of the principle that people generally tend to demonstrate what they say they can't do, you will begin to see it everywhere.
"I have no particular expectations..."
"Wow! How did you develop that expectation about yourself?"
"I want to have more confidence because I don't have any confidence."
"My, you sound pretty confident about that!"
These counter-exampling examples also demonstrate how this pattern tends to make it easy to set up benevolent double-binds.
Why? Because in counter-exampling we bring up undeniable evidence to the contrary. At other times, we ask a person to do the very behavior which will then deny their generalization. In a sense,
in counter-exampling, we track the person backwards to experiences which prevent them from (or make it hard to) maintaining the old generalizations. Counter-exampling questions also provide a standard of comparison.
"I can't learn things like this!"
"Do you mean that you learn language patterns more slowly than others? Could it be that you simply take a more methodical approach to things?"
This reframe dissociates the person from his or her behavior as it simultaneously validates him or herself as a person.
"Do you believe all learning has to occur in a fast way? Can a person learn slowly and yet still learnT
"I believe that there is no change."
"Have you had that belief since birth? No? Then you mean you began life without this understanding and then somewhere along the line something changed so that now you have this understanding?"
When we use these kinds of mind-lines with people, we should always remember that if we attack someone's belief (or if they think that we have attacked their belief!), they will typically fight us tooth and nail. Does that ring a bell about interactions you've experienced?
So we aim here to avoid that push-shove scenario altogether.
Rather, we want to first track with the person back to either the experience out of which the old learning came, or to new experiences that will allow one to expand his or her maps.
"How do you know that?"
"What does believing that do for you?"
We can also use temporal presuppositions to take a problem away (conceptually) from a person. We do that by coding the
"time" element as in the past.
"Now what was it that you thought at that time that created what, at that time, you felt as a problem?"
In that response, we have offered four temporal presuppositions as mind-line phrases and have created (conceptually), layer upon layer of distance from the problem. Simultaneously, we have subtly presupposed that some change has already occurred. If you imagine yourself the listener, you can feel the effect of this kind of response as very powerful, can you not?
"Picking your nose in public means you're inconsiderate."
"I can think of a situation when, if a person didn't pick his
nose, there might occur some consequences that would score as worse than merely being inconsiderate; can't you?"
Or, putting it into metaphor or story form (#20):
"We were out on this camping trip and this mosquito got up my nose..."
"Sniffling your way through life, and never giving it a good robust blowing represents an even greater act of inconsideration."
Hiding the Equation in Identity Statements
Consider the statement, "I am depressed!" What do we have in a statement like this? We obviously have an internal state (IS) of depression. But what serves as the EB?
Here lurking within the passive "is" verb, we have "am" as a state-of-being or identity. This "is of identity" (Korzybski) summarizes everything about the person: my whole being, my essence, my existential being, " I . " The belief now takes the form of an identity complex equivalence. Structurally, in terms of the magical formula, this statement has the form:
Person/Self/1 = Depressed
Now this kind of a statement of identification becomes especially dangerous and insidious as a complex equivalence since identity (as a belief and conceptual way of constructing the world) exists at a higher logical level than other beliefs. It exists as a belief about a concept—the concept of "self."
So first, we need to do a little meta-modeling.
"How do you know this?"
"Do you have these feelings all the time?"
"What specific experiences, actions, circumstances has lead you to conclude that 'you' as a person can be summarized in the emotional term 'depressed?'"
The way the person presents the statement, "I am..." codes and represents themselves as a nominalization. This led Gregory Bateson (1972) to comment about the problem with small words like
" I " and "ego." They represent the biggest nominalization of them all.
And as a nominalization, it creates a frame-of-reference about self as having no movement, but as a static and unmoving thing.
Actually, all of the "to be" verbs Q.e., "is, am, are, be, being, been,
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was, were," etc.), when used as an "is of identity" share in this especially insidious form of linguistic mapping (See Appendix C).
Obviously, we need to de-nominalize this nonsense.
"How do you currently, at this moment in time, experience this emotion of depressing?"
"How and in what ways 'are' you more than this emotion?
What else 'are' you? How else can you define yourself?"
When we start with a global generalization that someone has condensed into "I am..." form, I typically like to first explore for the person's evidence for the belief.
"How do you know that?"
What lets you know that it represents depression and not patience?"
'. If the person gives another vague generalization (which we can generally expect and count on), "It feels that way," I just explore that one as well.
"How do you know that that feeling means you 'are' depressed? It might mean that you feel calm."
And again, we can expect more vague fluff,
"Because I lack energy."
"Energy to do what? At what times? According to what standards?"
Questioning in this way (which we call meta-modeling) looks for evidence, helps the person index his or her thinking and generalizing, and in this way gets them back to the experience out of which it came.
Once we have deframed sufficiently, they can re-map from that experience and create a more enhancing map. This process facilitates a new kind of mental mapping to occur—one where we put the process back into a form that represents "process" and movement, and so frees us from the static and permanent nature of the nominalizations. The word " I " helps us to re-associate to the kinesthetics. And, getting ourselves back to the experience and the evidence lies at the very heart of the NLP method.
"Being in control always gets results."
Meta-modeling that we might ask:
"What behaviors would I see if I saw you 'in control?"1
"What kind of results do you here speak about?"
"Results in business, in personal life, etc.?"
"Does not being-in-control not always get results?"
"How do you control being-in-control?"
-117-"Do you have awareness that being in control, in the way you have described, won't always get you the results you want?"
"Being knowledgeable means you won't be loved."
"Say, since you use very knowledgeable words to tell me this, does that mean people can't love you? Have you ever spent time with someone you thought as knowledgeable and yet also lovable at the same time?"
Conclusion
The essence of reframing informs us that our "sense of 'reality'"
arises as our constructions as we set various frames-of-references to and around the happenings and events of everyday life. This means that in the world out there—things happen... external behaviors, actions, events, interactions, conversations, etc. Then to those things (the EB—the first part of the formula), we attach meaning. And when we do, then human neuro-semantic reality begins.
While we attach meaning in numerous ways, we primarily attribute causation, association, and identification. Just listen to yourself and others talk! We humans forever, inescapably, talk about...
what causes what (causation, C-E, consequences, past—
present— future)
what associates with what (linkages, equations, CEq, X=Y, EB=IS)
what identifies with what (sameness, identity, classifications) This by no means takes in all of the facets of meaning. But for our purposes here, it identifies the central and most crucial meanings that govern our lives. These meanings determine our neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic states, the state out of which we live our everyday lives.
Thus as homo fideo ("man the believer") we all move out into the world with beliefs (or frames, models, paradigms, etc.). Yet because our received or constructed paradigms do not always serve us well—we frequently need to re-frame. In this chapter, we have explored five more ways to reframe a belief. And yet the fun of this semantic magic has only begun ...