NLP Interventions - NLP for Changework - NLP Chat

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published by Jonathan on Thu, 2011-12-29 12:08

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NLP Interventions
IRC Chat Log, December 21, 1997

NLP Interventions
Jonathan NLP Interventions! OK. What do we use them for, and how do we define the terminology? When you use your intuition, with someone, towards a certain end... Is it an intervention? (NLP or otherwise)? Y/N/? are good quickie group answers.
Shaidan Root word is to intervene,....
Jonathan Yes. To step in and do something.
grounded No.
Shaidan Intuition or scheduled procedure could both be intervention.
Jonathan I'd say Yes, and; No, to all of your answers. It could be. It always depends on what your outcome is, doesn't it?
grounded Well, stepping in and doing something doesn't always intervene.
Jonathan Ahhh Grounded is right... that's a sophisticated answer, though, would you like to clarify your point?
grounded I see it as if it stops what is happening and causes something different, then it's an intervention.
Jonathan Do you presuppose in an intervention that it was successful?
grounded It helps.
Jonathan To me. An intervention is an attempt to change/stop/start something. It isn't always successful. Though IN THE MOMENT, I do/would start from that same pre-sup!
Shaidan I can agree with that.
Jonathan But academically, I might say it may or may not work. Kewl. So. Since we have a varied audience here in terms of NLP skill, I might suggest that we aim our discussion of NLP interventions towards examples of what people can do with their friends and families in real-world ways to improve communication amongst people that are important to them/us!
Shaidan This'll be fun,...
grounded Ok.
Jonathan Hi Kay! Ok cool. Alrighty then!
kayp Hi, Jonathan, Hi everybody else Moooo.
Jonathan We've defined intervention... as something we might do to step in and make a difference towards a certain outcome.
Shaidan How many people anchor profound states of pleasure in their co-workers?
Jonathan I like to, but I don't have co-workers anymore. Now everyone I meet is a co-player! ;) OK, Moving along then. ;)
Shaidan I treat pretty serious drug addictions every couple of months or so...
Shaidan Last one was a heroin user, 19.
Jonathan If we tack on NLP in front of interventions, then it means using the tools which have arisen through NLP towards a better solution with someone. Does it mean we need to explicitly use NLP with the clients/family/friend?
grounded I had an easy-going silly drug addiction once.
Jonathan Is using NLP on ourselves to adjust our own beliefs and emotional states before using our intuition enough to call it an NLP intervention? ;) I would say probably not, personally.
Shaidan Yes, I say it would.
grounded Hmmmnn, not really.
Jonathan For me to call what I'm doing an NLP intervention, I'd want to be explicitly drawing from my NLP toolset with the client/subject.
grounded Only if you did the changes on yourself to get an intervention elsewhere.
Jonathan (It's ok every opinion is right folks -- lets keep that in mind).
Shaidan You intervened inside your own loop of behavior and altered the entire communication system.
grounded That's what I said.
Jonathan Yes -- with that caveat I'd say I agree with Shaidan as well.
Shaidan That would be intervention wouldn't it?
Jonathan ;) -- I think so. Well...
Shaidan I think the real topic is when and where do you place said intervention, at what time?
Jonathan If you were already in that communication system when you used the NLP intervention on yourself, which changed the situation, then yes. Agreed!
grounded Ok.
Jonathan If you use NLP on yourself before entering the communication process, then just use intuition, then probably not applying NLP with the client directly. Alrighty. Lets move on -- if that's OK... Let's say someone presents you with a problem they'd like to solve...
grounded K.
Jonathan And they don't ask for help.
Shaidan K.
PhilAlex Sure.
Jonathan Do you help covertly? Or do you wait to be asked?
Shaidan I do almost everything covertly.
Jonathan ;) Loaded questions.
grounded Good question.
Shaidan If I start looping and they don't walk away I have permission.
grounded Sometimes people ask you out of consciousness. What do you mean shaidan?
Jonathan That's very invasive, Shaidan. I might agree with you ;) Sometimes...
Shaidan Sorry sentence fragment,..won't happen again.
Cloud_ Quite often when you come to you, in their mind, they ARE asking you for help to solve said problem.
Jonathan If you'll permit me a cringing reference to John Grey, sometimes when they come to you, they just want an ear, and they don't want it solved. Women especially are content with some of their problems, as long as other people accept that they're problems that are OK to bear. Sometimes that's the best intervention I can do is to just shut up and listen. ;) Because the moment I challenge and covertly help to reframe/eliminate, is the moment they could interpret that I think they're broken. And that they need fixing. Now I don't want to stress that, because I do a lot of intervening. I'm just trying to provide a balance point for the conversation... ;) I've raised a lot -- now I'll back off and let the ideas fly for a bit ;) Are there any ideas to fly? ;)
Shaidan Agreed Cloud! And there is education! As opposed to therapy.
Cloud_ But isn't education a form of therapy?
Shaidan Does everyone understand what I mean by that?
Cloud_ In many cases, I'd say yes..
Shaidan Yes,...I prefer to educate,...better results, plus you need less permission to educate.
grounded I don't understand.
PhilAlex Can be a good idea...
Cloud_ Better future results...Personally, I like to do both..
Jonathan OK.
grounded So how do you know if you should help, other than what you just said? and what do you mean by looping, shaidan?
Jonathan Basically a single question can be asked. The question being... "Listen, I'm not sure if I can help, but if I could, would you want me to?"
Shaidan Opening loops,...
Jonathan Opening loops within loops within loops.
grounded Not familiar with that.
Jonathan Each story is a metaphor for a certain state., By delivering metaphors within metaphors, it's like providing software for the mind... and you can test how well each metaphor fits... as you deliver them...
Shaidan See Jon then some of them start to play, "my psychosis is smarter than you."
grounded If they stay to see and end to the looping? Then they want help?
Jonathan Yes, if they ask you to provide assistance or help, its an explicit acknowledgement, you have license to help. As a friend, you might have more flexibility to assist a little more covertly.
grounded Do people respond "yes" unconsciously?
Jonathan In a professional arrangement, I wait for a request to help before I admit to doing anything.
Shaidan Always grounded, always. If you're in the therapy biz that's a very good idea.
Jonathan Yes, I'd agree, though it's often incongruent, even unconsciously, with the desire for the status quo. Now I may DO something first, but usually it's along the lines of making models in my head of their representations, etc. Or, setting some anchors for future use. But the cohesive change work waits for the go-ahead in my case.
grounded Hmmnnn, so if they reject your looping, they don't want help? If they don't stay for the end of the story?
Jonathan That's a good question... [let's ask] Shaidan? The thing is, any story you tell may get them to react negatively due to some anchor in their past that you're not aware of. So they may walk away for an unintended reason! Lol. I'd want to inoculate against it, before going forward.
Shaidan What? Grounded q? Grounded,..let me put it to you like this: When I communicate with someone I induce a state of playful honesty.
Jonathan That's useful!
Shaidan (Or some other useful state).
grounded Get a positive anchor?
Shaidan More than that,...set a frame for the relationship.
Jonathan Well, it diffuses the seriousness of the issue amongst other things, induces greater trust in the conversational flow and even better, it makes light of the problem before talking about it or other things.
grounded So what good is looping if they will walk away, unless you get a state before that?
Shaidan That's the base loop so to speak,...have you ever heard the phrase you never get a second chance to make a first impression?
grounded So after that, if they leave, then they don't want help?
Jonathan Done correctly, there is no defense for the unconscious messages provided through looping.
Shaidan It could be tons of things.
grounded Yes, good point Shaidan.
Jonathan (Nice diffusion of the argument, Shaidan).
Shaidan The trick is to keep them there,.. if you want to make the change.
Jonathan RIGHT! By being engaging and outlandish and fun while you do it. ;)
grounded BTW, you're not looping now, are ya?
Jonathan No, but I am. ;) LOL -- I'll come back to center when we're done.
Shaidan No...
Jonathan Hi, Zyte welcome to the event.
Zyte Hello, and thank you.
Shaidan Think of loops this way grounded -- how do you keep grounded busy?
Jonathan Shaidan and; grounded can I ask you to take the loops issue private? I'd like to move on to another point, if I could. There are two other areas I'd like to cover at a minimum. (1) Use of the Meta-Model. (2) Use of Rep system 4-Tuples as a methodology for determining good NLP interventions.
grounded I think I know what loops are now -- I just don't know what they have to do with deciding to intervene in someone else's problem.
Shaidan Someone and Patterns,...that should be a little light chat-log reading -- ggg.
Jonathan Hehhhe, Actually we'll keep it higher level than that.
Zyte What, specifically, are you interested in using the Meta-model for? Lol.
Jonathan The Meta-Model explicitly relies on Intuition.
Shaidan Specific for whom?
Jonathan So I'm coming back to that point. If you use your intuition, are you using an NLP Intervention?
kayp IMHO, not necessarily.
Jonathan If you use your intuition to choose what the next question to ask is, then YES...
kayp Ok.
Jonathan In that case I'd say your intuition was based on whichever Meta-Model violations you're used to listening for in conversation. So if there are areas of the meta-model which you're not as versed in, your intuition's going to steer you away from questions designed to validate those particular meta-model violations, are they not? Thanks a lot, intuition. ;) Anyone have any relevant points or stories on this point?
Zyte Is it intuition or the best logical plan based on an individual's knowledge (or lack of ignorance, should I say)?
Jonathan Thaaaaat's right Zyte. ;)
Zyte Or is that the definition of intuition? :)
Shaidan No, but I have a gut feeling about what it is.
Jonathan I think the definition can be expanded. (thanks Shaidan) ;) (to include... hmmm... lemme feel my way thru this...) Kinesthetic.
Zyte Came in late, so I'm not sure how it's been defined up until this point.
Jonathan Alright. The Meta-Model gives me a way of determining semantic and strategic wellformedness in the client. And it may be that their strategy or process isn't well formed, in which case I'll try to find a way to make it so. If I can, according to well-formedness principles, then most of my work is done for me. But let's go to the challenging ones...
kayp Most of the people I know don't have any idea how to set goals or outcomes... much less find a strategy to make it happen...
Jonathan The ones where I posit that the use of redesigning and programming new 4-tuples can be useful to the process of changing the client's process. That's true Kay, consciously so. But by asking questions, we can determine if the wellformedness conditions are present in the unconscious process even.
kayp Can you give us an example?
Jonathan Just because they can't talk about it without prompting doesn't mean they're not thinking about it well. ;) OK.
kayp If they *do* have the resources to handle it...
Jonathan Let's say my neighbor Billy comes up to you and says, I can't seem to solve this problem; Every time I think about my sister I get angry at my cat. What would you do/ask to get me past that? I've constructed something well formed. It's still a problem, but if you use the metamodel, you'd determine that it was a natural representation with a test followed by a cycle-back through the strategy again. (recursively so). So the metamodel would only be useful for you there, to determine that in fact, my problem meets NLP's well-formedness conditions for problems.
kayp So he gets angry at the cat *first*?
Jonathan No, I don't have a cat ;) No, anger at sister apparently happens first.
Jonathan That a simple reframe wouldn't get Billy to change his behavior.
kayp Then he thinks about the sister?
Zyte I would try. . . how do you think about your sister? and explore that process.
Jonathan OK good, so you'd elicit my strategy using questions, and then apply what you learned against well-formedness principles. QUESTION: Do you all want to go through the metamodel process here or do you want to take my word for it and go on to 4-tuple representations? You CHOOSE!
kayp Jonathan, I take your word for *everything*!
Jonathan (Not a great idea Kay but thanks for the vote of confidence ;) Keep you're MINE ;) LOL.
kayp So I'd ask you for submodalities... what happens?
kayp Is it something you see, or... like that?
Jonathan Mm hmmm. "Describe your experience."
kayp Oh, "tell me about it..."
Jonathan "It may be something you saw, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled. Whatever was most important." Tell me the most important element.
kayp Gotcha.
Jonathan (Then when you've heard it, repeat it back to them using different words but same rep system). Validate it and make sure they agree, then get the 2nd most important one, then the third. Its not always quite that simple. You often have to validate that they're not running off on tangents. Etc.
kayp So we got the strategy for thinking (anger) about sister... and the cat, too?
Jonathan But you can use the MM to arrive at a cohesive understanding of their internal strategies. Well, let's say you did, and let's say you looked up in one of the books what the well-formedness principles are for strategies, etc.
kayp Ok.
Jonathan And let's say I met them all. That whatever was going on was not an example of well-formedness. Though most uses of the meta-model will uncover ALL sorts of violations... and if you systematically go through and help the subject adjust those meta-model violations... You might find them opening up to new possibilities... Thus, behavioral change can come about simply by applying insightful questions, phrased in leading ways, towards pointing out their meta-model violations... It's quite profound. You get to watch the TDS's inside going around and; around as old beliefs topple and new opportunities for different behaviors become suddenly available...
kayp So theoretically making someone *aware* can do change...
Jonathan EASILY! Shaidan would no doubt agree, would you not? Now... assuming you'd used the meta-model on Billy, and found no violations (yeah RIGHT ;) Lol. Then essentially, you're stuck with a guy who has one strategy that keeps repeating, and it's formed well enough for him to keep repeating the behavior easily and to feel bad about it only outside of that circumstance.
kayp A rut.
Jonathan (Consciously feel bad about the behavior anyway). During the reaction, its probably quite unconscious. Alright. Group opinion time. What avenues for change are open at that point? How can we use NLP to move forward with helping Billy to change?
kayp Change the submods of the thinking about sister?
Jonathan In a swish- sure. That's one way.
Zyte Becoming aware of a process can be the first step in altering that process.
Jonathan Remember. He's got a firm pattern. YES, Zyte. We might just point out what he's doing and see what conscious knowledge does to the pattern. That's another way. Others? I'm thinking, back to basics! Pattern Interrupt! Build in a changed process for him to add to his library of normal reactions. Could that be useful?
kayp I wonder if you could anchor a different response...
Jonathan So I might want him to go back thru the process so that I could actually experience what he was doing, and find a good interrupt point, interrupt him, anchor the interrupt point (covertly) and then, ask him to think about it again, firing the anchor off as he does so.
kayp He he.
Zyte Definitely, I'm just trying to hallucinate a practical one that could be used, but since i don't know the details of Billy's experience, I'm having to hallucinate that also. :)
Shaidan We're talking about putting in a new pattern of behavior right? How to and what might be fun?
Jonathan Yes! Fun is a great goal, but first is getting rid of the discomfort. Preferably using fun, but it ain't a pre-requisite.
Shaidan I'm a big fan of building anchor chains.
Jonathan My primary goal would be neutral, with Fun as an excellent toward-outcome.
Zyte Yes, he wants to stop getting mad at his cat when he thinks of his sister.
Jonathan Your loop processes attest to your anchor chain work. Yes.
Shaidan Screw neutral,..if you can achieve neutral you can achieve fun.
kayp Yeah, so now he can just get mad at his sister.
Shaidan Ggg.
Jonathan Well, things come out in different ways, yes Kay, so... we'd want to test for all that... good point!
Zyte He could just give away his cat I suppose . . . :)
kayp His wife would *kill* him if he did anything to that cat!!!
Jonathan Shaidan -- yes, I agree about going for WHAT'S AMAZING, and WHAT'S BEYOND. I find I do MUCH better by incrementally moving away from the origin state. ;)
Shaidan Collapse the cat anchor.
Jonathan So Neutral is a central step towards AMAZING. ;) You could replace the cat in the thinking with an inanimate object that has fun attached to it.
Shaidan Could be,...I rarely start from the beginning, I start from where I want to end up and work backwards from there.
Zyte So recap, we have the process of imagining his sister, concious manipulation of the process, and interrupting the process. . . anything else?
Jonathan Which might neutralize the fun or, if anchored in well, cause thinking of his sister to cause a fun reaction...
kayp How about an *animate* object with fun attached to it...?
Jonathan (Let's keep the slaps out of this channel please). LOL. Kay now you're talkin' !
kayp So like every time he thinks of his sister, he boffs, (can I say boff?)
Jonathan You did, therefore, you probably can. ;)
kayp His (wife/sig other/ you choose).
Shaidan Well look,...he's got an internal/external split right?
Shaidan Internal sister/external cat.
Jonathan Sure, only, maybe it's not useful to attach all his sexual responses to thinking about his sister.
Shaidan Split the two amplify them and put them in the right place.
kayp Well, not *all*.
Jonathan EXCELLENT outcome, Shaidan. OK OK, this has all gone in a useful direction.
Shaidan Does that make sense?
kayp Shaidan: explain, please... how do you do that?
Zyte Where is the right place Shaidan?
Shaidan Okay,..if he's internally thinking about his sister, have him fully express that internally, have him smell/taste feel/hear/see his sister.
Jonathan (The right place for Billy). But. There's one thing Shaidan may have overlooked. Which we left out.
Shaidan What?
Jonathan There was a semantic link between the two thoughts which by virtue of my statements up front, were NOT a meta-model violation. So there was no complex equivalency, which was invalid. The link was determined to be valid.
Zyte Ahh.
Jonathan Now.
Shaidan So there is no split?
Zyte Please complete that line of thought Shaidan, I'm interested to hear your approach.
Shaidan Okay, I missed that, sorry.
Jonathan I might still want to split the items up... but I'd want to ask him, preferably in trance (its a good thought Shaidan) if there were any part of him which would object to having those two thoughts separated. It might be a perfectly harmless connection break.
Shaidan Well, let's realize he learned this somewhere, and at the time it may have even made sense.
Jonathan If it is, and we can utilize that better than other things... (yes) Maybe in this new context it isn't appropriate, right? Now we're dealing with change over time.
Shaidan But he's got better thought to think by now.
Jonathan ;) Yeaaahh. But before we get into change over time.
Shaidan How about teaching his brain that "cat means cat?"
Jonathan I'm just curious if people here have used the detailed processes of identifying 4-tuples (LOL Shaidan) and then utilizing them to redesign altered responses? If not we can move on to other high level topics.
Shaidan I thought that was what I was talking about when I said we split the pattern into its parts?
Jonathan The examples shown in the books might "look like" someone's strategy e.g. {V,Ai,K,Ae} causes a certain not useful behavior and; perhaps a change that works is to cause {V,Ae,K,Ai} Swap the internal vs external in the sequence; there are a variety of formulas that can be applied. Intuition based, no doubt, but when you can extract it to a formula, you can apply it at the meta-level, and have it be effective on a more consistent basis!
kayp I understand... I don't know if I can do it yet, but I understand.
Jonathan What amazes me is how few people who've been trained in NLP have no idea about this stuff. I know the principles, I keep them as far away from my clients as I can, and I apply this in conversation. WHILE I GO FOR THE GUSTO STATES (Shaidan!) Using DHE we get to ignore the details and just go into AWESOME states leading them in which often has a profound effect by itself. So I'm always looking for new ways of understanding the process, so that it can be applied with more rapid, more effective, and more generative results. I know my goal isn't that lofty, but I take baby steps. Thoughts? Or should we talk about some Slight of Mouth patterns?
Tosha1 Yes!
Shaidan I could dig sleight of mouth,... what would you do if we did cover sleight of mouth?
Jonathan I'd listen attentively... What if you did cover it? ;) That's what I'd do.
Shaidan Me?
Jonathan I'd use language to turn anything around. It would be cool if I demonstrated how we can do that, can't we? And if we can do that, we must, must we not?
kayp Must we?
Shaidan What would your response be if you realized that someone were already doing it? Ggg.
Jonathan Because if we don't we might not learn as much, and then we'd be going to sleep, later, feeling deprived. Ewwww.
kayp What if we think we can't... isn't that an even more reason to do it?
Jonathan I might be surprised, Shaidan. But how surprised would you be, if you thought about what it would be like to go along with all these things, remembering how much fun it will have been to think it over, to find that you already have, haven't you... And if you did, then would you come up with a counter-example now?
Shaidan Kay, what would you do if someone were teaching you sleight of mouth patterns?
Jonathan Or would you change the logical level of our thinking to the point where it became more or less important to who you are as a person. With me, now, those are all wonderful possible sets of behavior.
Shaidan Giggle X 3.
kayp Shaidan: I haven't the foggiest idea.
Jonathan "It was better than Cats."
Shaidan But you did consider it didn't you?
Jonathan One eaaaasy way of changing people's perceptions of a problem thru NLP interventions is to change the logical level at which it is perceived to apply. The Sleight of Mouth patterns you would want to use depend on the Meta-Model violation you hear. Like if they use a Model operator like "always" as in, "He ALWAYS says that and it makes me so mad." Then you would simply ask for, or provide, a single counter-example. It topples the always. They'll then move it to "almost always" or "usually." Which is often enough to cause a change in behavior. But not ALWAYS. ;)
Shaidan I have read your stuff though, you used to write Kevin Hogan a lot.
Jonathan Then a bunch of different servers.
kayp I'm a total newbie. Started reading this stuff, maybe Feb. of last year. Well, not a lot... Feb. of 1997... and already I know what S.O.M. is!!
Jonathan Kay is a total newbie having been on NLPTALK for HOW LONG? I don't think that qualifies as a newbie, Kay. ;)
kayp Darn. No more excuses?
Jonathan You've heard of the book, "Time For a Chan... {scratch that} For a Training."
kayp Yes, I know. My eyes are getting tired. Must... must go to training... He he now.
Jonathan ;) LOL.
glen_sterHellooo.
Jonathan Structure of Magic, Sleight of Mouth, Some Olive Margarine?
kayp Science of Mind, slippery orgasmic meetings.... oopps.
Jonathan OOOOOH Kay you said a GOOOD word.
Reaching Closure
Shaidan Anyone here want to learn about nesting loops?
kayp Yas.
Jonathan Shaidan if you're going to continue on with that I think I'm going to bow out -- 2 hrs is about my patience with nonstop typing ;)
Shaidan Well,...if you want another topic shout it out?
kayp You've been doing wonderful, Jonathan.
Jonathan I'll monitor the channel, but please continue! Thanks for the kudos. Time for me to start doing some stuff in the background. ;)
kayp I got to go. I have to get enough rest to practice NLP on my boss...
Jonathan Shaidan you've got the floor my friend.
Shaidan Well,...let me start with my model of a "loop". A loop is a completed thought.
kayp Hey, everybody, it's been fun! See ya next time... bye.
Shaidan Be well.
Jonathan Listen in case things break up I want to thank everyone for showing up, I had a good time and I hope the topics were useful for/to everyone.
Shaidan Thanks for starting it - is there another?
Jonathan Keep this in mind next week -- if I can I'll make it a weekly thing! Always more where this came from... ;) Styg -- I know it wasn't exactly what you had in mind, but we got to a little of it!
Shaidan True Styg,...what were you looking for?
Stygian I thought it was about changing people's minds with NLP, but this was kewl too.
Shaidan Changing minds,... lots of ways to do it,...do you know how to anchor?
Stygian Yup.
Shaidan Do you know the Milton Model?
grounded Is everyone done?
Jonathan Probably off on BIO breaks.
Stygian Hmm not sure what the meta and Milton Model are. Or maybe I just forgot what the words meant.
Zyte Glad I could watch and participate a little. ;)
Jonathan Zyte -- you did GREAT.
Zyte I'm gonna hang out until everyone leaves or it gets really really late. :)
Shaidan Styg,..the meta model is for getting precise information,...that'll give you an indication of where exactly to put the change in someones' mind. The Milton Model is for vague communication,...so the listener has to do more thinking about the topic at hand to understand all the possible meanings.
Stygian Are there any web sites where they show the meta or Milton Models?
Zyte Not sure styg, learned them from the original Bandler/Grinder NLP texts.
Shaidan Styg check out Trance-formations. Oh, it's a book, by Bandler and; Grinder,..probably about $8.
Zyte Stygian, try a search on any web search engine (I use yahoo). Well said Shaidan.
Jonathan The Meta and; Milton models are not well represented online because they are well documented in the major books on the subjects. It's the real-world experience kind of stuff you'll find on the web sites. New definitions, examples of their use, etc. Zyte, have you been to my web site?
Zyte Don't think I have, what's the address?
Jonathan www.altfeld.com/mastery. I can't wait until Jan 2-4! Personal Trance-formation weekend seminar. Gonna be Too KEWL!
IRC CHAT OVER!

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