[Neurons] 2010 Meta Reflections #11

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections – 2010 – #11

March 15,  2010

 

 

 

DON’T LISTEN TO JOHN GRINDER!

 

 

To keep up with the field of NLP I read a 2008 book this past week on a
flight home.  The title?  Provocative Hypnosis.   Sounds like it would be a
book about hypnosis, but it wasn’t really.  The subtitle actually reveals
more about the content, The No Holds Barred Interventions of a Contrarian
Change Artist.  So what is the book about?  Therapeutic interventions in the
style of Bandler with the theoretical assumptions of Grinder!  I have to
give it to Norway NLP trainer, JØrgen Rasmussen, for how he imitates the
“in-your-face,” “I’m not here to be your friend” Bandler-like style,
although I wouldn’t recommend that style.

 

Anyway, the book is mostly a tribute to John Grinder and so constantly
quotes him and presents the old 1985 “new code” as if it was cutting-edge
technology.  And Grinder’s Preface sings the praises of the book without any
reservation (which given his mismatching is a major miracle) calling
Rasmussen a genius.

 

But in reading the book, my first and last thoughts was one and the same:
Do not listen to John Grinder, his advice and ideas will not help you, but
will in fact, make you less effective and less able to actualize your
highest and best.  Severe?  Over-stated?  Too strong?  Perhaps.  You make up
your mind from the evidence of the following facts.

 

1) Fact 1.

In the Preface, John Grinder writes the following:

“We especially, rail against the type of professionalism that locks agents
of change into tightly constrained boxes of conventional interventions like
understanding, empathy, support for the client— all of these are choices but
choices from a very large set.  Yet, of course, there are clients that
require precisely these transactions but they typically need one hell of lot
more and what they need is not contained in the conventional descriptions
typically available.”

 

Hard to read?   Well, welcome to Grinder’s typical way of writing.  So read
it again.  Conventional interventions lock agents of change into tightly
constrained boxes!  Oh, that must be terrible!  And what are these
“conventional interventions” that do such terrible things?  Why,
understanding, empathy, support for the client.  Yes, that’s right.  Reread
the paragraph if you need to!

 

So go ahead and scream in horror!  Get it out of your system.  And shake
your head as you consider just how bad understanding, empathy, support for
the client is.  “How and why would an agent of change do such a thing to a
client!?  Tisk, tisk.” 

Of course, we in Neuro-Semantics not only disagree with that, but we have
this terrible idea— everything should start with understanding, empathy, and
support for the client.   That’s just how bad we are.  But then again,
somehow I got that idea from the foundations of NLP itself.  Wasn’t
“rapport” one of the first things modeled from Virginia?

 

And if you think I’m exaggerating, here’s what Rasmussen writes in the book
when speaking about some of his difficult clients:

“The only problem is that I did feel contempt, disgust, and wanted to beat
the snot out of some of these clients as if they were a red-headed
stepchild.  Yes, I admit it!  Sometimes I have felt these ‘bad’ emotions
when working with clients.  At times I projected my own unresolved stuff
onto them, and at other times I think that my so-called negative emotions
were highly justified and very useful in help them change.  If I pretended
to be a machine with no emotion, then I wouldn’t be doing justice to what
happened in these sessions. Guess what, all that crap psychologists have
told you about the client liking the therapist being the most important part
of getting results ... sorry, but ‘No’!” (p. 18)

 

I guess he doesn’t think much of understanding, empathy, and support for the
client if he wants to beat the snot out of them and thinks that projecting
his own negative emotions might be very useful in helping them change!
Well, JØrgen if you come to Meta-Coaching with that attitude you won’t get
you past Day 1.  We start with the Releasing all Judgment Pattern and end
Day1 with The De-Contamination Pattern to get the ego out of the way.  A
very different approach, wouldn’t you say?

 

For the author, the choice is either-or.  Either “a compassionate and touchy
feeling approach” that is “grandma-style compassion” or it is getting
results (p. 19).  Could this either-or frame itself be the problem?  He then
speaks about ethics:

“I think ethics is simple.  Understand that your job is to get results and
if you can get results, then do it.  If you don’t get results, then don’t
charge money.” (58)

 

Hmmm.   So the end of the intervention— the results is the only ethical
issue?  And so does this mean that the means justifies the end?  All that I
read there leads me to this reflection: My recommendation is that you do not
listen to John Grinder or Rasmussen!

 

2) Fact 2.

Grinder is quoted as saying that the “NLP modeling has absolutely nothing to
do with eliciting strategies or finding someone’s beliefs.” (p. 79).  It has
nothing with asking questions about an expert’s ideas, beliefs,
understandings, decisions, etc.  It only has to do with watching the expert
in action and doing an “unconscious uptake” of his or her actions, repeating
the micro-movements in your own body.

 

Hmmmm.  So that makes sense when you are modeling an athlete or someone
engaged in a physical activity, but what about someone who over a period of
a decade creates abundant wealth?  What about a person engaging in
leadership that takes several years?  What then?  And what about modeling
when the expertise in the area of the conceptual?

When I modeled wealth creators, first-generation rich millionaires, the
object of the modeling was long-term processes that involved multiple stages
occurring over many years.  If I could only look for micro-muscle movements,
that would have been useless.  It would have provided nothing.  So again, I
say, Don’t listen to John Grinder if you want to model complex states beyond
drumming or rock climbing.

 

Fact 3.

Throughout the book the fuzzy wooly booly “the unconscious” is constantly
referred to.  The author says that John Grinder often states this:

“The conscious mind is superb at organization, framing, and categorization,
but lacks the power to do any significant change.  The unconscious on the
other hand has enormous capabilities for change, but little capacity for
organization.” (p. 194)

“Grinder points out that the client’s conscious mind is the part of the
client least qualified to decide what the end state should be.”   “Grinder’s
perspective is that which end state and resources to be used are decisions
best left to the unconscious.” (p. 255)

 

So let’s see: Don’t be aware or conscious of what you are doing because your
conscious mind “lacks the power to do any significant change.”  It can’t
choose a valid objective, it can’t decide on what to do, it can’t help with
motivation or creation or integration (to mention the four change mechanisms
in the Axes of Change).  So the best choice then is to trust what you don’t
know and aren’t aware of.  So does that mean “the unconscious mind” doesn’t
make mistakes?  Doesn’t create migraines, allergies, auto-immune system
diseases?  Later (see Fact 4) in the New Code Change format, step one
recommends that the “client consciously select the context.”  Hmmmm.  My
recommendation, Don’t listen to John or JØrgen—they are just too fuzzy and
confused about all of this.  I think they need to learn “The Newest Code” of
Neuro-Semantics (see my article on this at  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com).

 

Fact 4.

Then quoting “Grinder’s New Code Change Format,” Rasmussen does a
meta-stating process, although he doesn’t seem to realize this.  In the
following pattern he explains that he changes Grinder’s term “high
performance state” to “flow state.”  I have shorten the process so you can
quickly see the basic steps that he presented.  The things in [brackets] are
my comments.

 

Step 1:  From third position (observer) select some context where you find
yourself stuck.  See yourself over there in the context where you experience
X the most.  Have client consciously select the context (255-256). [So you
start by taking a meta-state like the observer state to “select” or choose a
stuck state.] 

 

Step 2: Have the client physically walk over to the hallucinated context on
the floor.

 

Step 3:  Have the client step out of the context.  Then have the client play
a New Code Game (Alphabet or NASA game).  Play the game until the client
goes into a flow state (256-258). [Next, you use the meta-state process of
stepping back from a primary state and then bring the meta-state of “flow”
to the stuck state, a meta-stating process.]

Step 4:  When client is in a flow state, have the client reenter the context
that they stepped into (Step 2).  Lead the client there (259). [Meta-state
stuckness with flow.]  Calibrate signals from the unconscious.  Change
should be obvious from step 2.  Troubleshooting: If the change isn’t there,
you might want to re-do the game.  Is client in the feeling stated connect
to the context?  Does client have a strong flow state?   Do you have a
strong bridge between state and context?

 

Step 5: Future pace.  Challenge the client a bit.

 

Now if you know the meta-stating process, about bringing one state to
another and putting one state in a higher position to the second so that the
first state frames the second, then you will immediately see the invisible
structure to this “New Code Format.”  Actually it is a meta-stating process—
meta-stating stuckness with a high performance, flow, or genius state.

 

This same process occurred earlier in the book about emotions. 

“The whole idea is to have the person feel the emotion and just observe it
with precision.  This is a great way of releasing old pent-up emotions.”
(p. 248) 

 

Observing with precision (one state) how you feel an emotion (a primary
state) is what we do in Meta-States when we use the Meta-Stating Emotions
pattern.  For this one — Do what John Grinder is doing unconsciously, but
doesn’t understand.  So follow what he does; but don’t listen to what he
says about it.  That will only mess you up.  To understand the process— find
an APG course and let a Neuro-Semantic trainer show you the meta-state
structure that governs the richest of human experiences!  

 

 

 

 

Are you ready for Trainers’ Training in NLP and Neuro-Semantics? 

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June 19—July 3.  Contact Dr. Hall: meta at acsol.net 

                        For more information write for the Brochure and
Application.

                        For the early bird savings, get your reservation in
soon.

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

(ISNS) International Society of Neuro-Semantics

The International Meta-Coach System

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

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www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

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       www.meta-coachfoundation.org 

       <http://www.ns-video.com/> www.ns-video.com 

 

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