Conversational Reframing

Acknowledgements

Conversational Reframing

Introduction

... You and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other’s brains with

exquisite precision. Simply by making noises with our mouths, we

can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in

each other’s minds.

Steven Pinker [1994]

Mind-Body Competence

Cognitive-Behavior ManagementNeuro-Linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistics holistically summarizes the body-mind

connection between language [words, symbols, etc.] and

neurology. It specifies how our neurology [i.e., nervous system and brain] process language and

thereby respond to language.

Words, while totally powerless to effect and change external

reality, have almost complete power to create, alter, change,

destroy and invent internal reality.

...“neuroscientists have learned that thoughts are electrical impulses that trigger electrical and chemical switches in the brain. Thoughts are not

just psychological in nature, they are physiological - electrochemical triggers that

direct and affect the chemical activity.

When given an electrical command - a thought - the brain immediately does several things: It

responds to the thought by releasing appropriate control chemicals into the body, and it alerts the central nervous system to any required response

or action.” Shad Helmstetter

Perception differs qualitatively from the physical properties of

the stimulus.

The Soul Illusion

"I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound - nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent." Sounds, colors, patterns, etc., appear to have an independent reality, yet are, in fact, constructed by the mind. All our experience of

the natural world is our mind’s interpretation of the input it

receives. Sir John Eccles

Eccles continued

NLP talks about various modes of awareness

VAK CodingVisual [pictures, sights, images]A [sounds, noise, music, tones]

Kinesthetic [sensations, physical feelings of the body]Olfactory [smells]Gustatory [tastes]

We experience the phenomenon of sight, sounds and sensations.

Above and beyond the sensory level representation we have

sensory-based words.

Non-sensory based language refers to all language that

becomes more abstract as we delete more of the specific

sensory words and generalize to a higher level.

When we go ‘meta’ to a higher logical level of symbolization

and use more abstract words, we use a different kind of

representational system, a non-sensory based modality.

In any social environment, we have to use language which then influences and effects the ‘life’ of

the system: enhancing and/or limiting, creating and/or

destroying.

Our language both reflects and describes our model of the world.

Words influence because they evoke us to create

representations within our minds at multiple levels.

The magic is in the code.

Swish

Cross Mapping Submodalities

Swish continued

Modeling

Modeling consists of using tools that have their origins in

Artificial Intelligence [AI], linguistics and cognitive science research with the goal of making a model of excellent behavior, for

transfer to other persons.

Structures:

Reference,Deep

& Surface

Language & Change

Language so fills our world that we move through it as a fish

swims through water.

Some Universals of the Human Linguistic ProcessI. Well-formedness

II. Constiuent StructureIII. Logical Semantic Relations

A. CompletenessB. AmbiguityC. Synonymy

A transformation is an explicit statement of one kind of pattern that native speakers recognize among the sentences of their

language.

Transformations [continued]

Presuppositions

When a person’s model has pieces missing, it is

impoverished.

Impoverished models imply limited options.

Biological Constraints

Physical constraints that are atypical of the species.

Neurological Constraints

Species specific biological constraints common to all typical

species representatives.

Social Constraints

Social Constraints [continued]

Social Constraints [continued]

Social Constraints [continued]

Individual constraints

Individual constraints [continued]

Generalization is the process by which elements or pieces of a person’s model become detached from their original experience and come to represent this entire category of which the experience is an example. Our ability to generalize is essential to coping with the world.

Deletion is a process by which we selectively pay attention to certain dimensions of our experiences and exclude others. An example would be the ability that people have to filter out or exclude all other sound in a room full of people talking in order to listen to one particular person’s voice.

Distortion is a process that allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. Fantasy, for example, allows us to prepare for experiences that we may have before they occur. All the great novels, all the revolutionary discoveries of the sciences involve the ability to distort and misrepresent reality.

Every Belief is a limit to be examined.

John C. Lily

Reframing

The most fundamental goal of applying verbal patterns is to help

people shift their perspective:1) from a problem to an outcome, 2) from a failure to feedback, and3) from an impossibility to an ‘as

if’.

The Language of Specificity

For precision and clarity or to deframe.

The Language of Evaluation

To construct new realities & frames

Meaning [‘semantics’] exists only, and exclusively, in the

‘mind’.

This doesn’t mean this ---> It means this!

Not X --------> but Y

The language of evaluation-of-evaluation

Allows you to outframe all meanings and frames

Outframe continued

‘Language’ describes how we code, in various symbol formats,

information.

Information is the difference that makes a difference.

Gregory Bateson

Creation of Meaning

Giving or attributing meaning to something [to anything] involves

and associative process.

To identify meaning we have to find the associations.

Fire means what the frame of reference tells us it means.

External Behavior --> Internal State [EB] = [IS]

S/he who controls the frame, controls the meaning.

The directions of influence.

Directions continued

The Meaning of “Magic”

But, but, that’s manipulation!

Don’t believe everything you think!

Ron Farkas

Prevention, development & remediation

Nothing in and of itself means anything.

It takes a Meaning Maker to construct an association, set a frame, link events and marry

concepts.

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. "Such bad luck," they said sympathetically. "May be," the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. "How wonderful," the neighbors exclaimed. "May be," replied the old man. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. "May be," answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. " May be," said the farmer.

This external behavior ‘is’/ ‘equals’(leads to or causes) -->

this internal state.

• causation statements: how we model the way the world works, functions, relates to itself, etc.

• equations statements: how we decide and model regarding meaning, what abstractions equate with behaviors, our paradigms of significance

• value words & ideas: the ideas, events, experiences, etc.,

that we deem important and significant

• identifications: what things equal other things, that we

identify as the same

• presuppositions: unquestioned assumptions that we simply

operationalize as true

Make a distinction between the behavior and the intention.

Intervention

Deframing

#1. Chunking Down

To elicit this conversational reframing pattern, use the elicitation questions that move a person down the scale of abstraction/specificity.

‘How specifically?’‘What specifically?’‘When specifically?’

‘With whom specifically?’‘At what place specifically?’

Deframing

#2 Detailing the sequence of the Strategy

#2 strategy continued

To elicit this reframing pattern, use the strategy elicitation questions:

‘How do you represent that belief?’‘How will you know if and when it does

not hold true?’‘What comes first? What comes next?’‘How do you have each piece coded?’‘And you’re absolutely sure you don’t

have that in this other format?’

Deframe Summary

Content Reframing

#3 Reframe the EB

#3 Summary

#4 Reframe the IS

#4 Summary

#5 Reflexively Apply EB to Self or Listener

#6 Reflexively Apply IS to Self or Listener

#5/#6 continued

#7 Counter Examples

Content Reframe Summary

content reframe summary continued 1

Content Reframe Summary continued 2

Counter Framing

Reverse Presuppositions

Reverse Presuppositions continued

#7 Counter Example Framing

#7 Counter Example Framing continued 1

#7 Counter Example Framing continued 2

Temporal Presuppositions

Identity Statements

Identity Statements continued 1

Identity Statements continued 2

Identity Statements continued 3

Questions from Cartesian Logic:

• What will happen if you do? [Theorem]• What won’t happen if you do? [Inverse]

• What will happen if you don’t? [Converse]• What won’t happen if you don’t? [Non-

Mirror Image Reverse]

Counter Framing Summary

The ‘Time’ Frames

Before: #8 Positive Prior Intention Framing#9 Positive Prior Causation Framing

After:#10 First Outcome

#11 Outcomes of Outcomes#12 Eternity Framing

Before: #8 Positive Prior Intention

Framing

Before: #8 Positive Prior Intention Framing

[continued]

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe[1749-1832]

#9 Positive Prior Causation Framing

#9 Positive Prior Causation Framing [Continued]

#10 First Outcome Framing

#11 Outcome of the Outcome Framing

#12 Eternity Framing

#12 Eternity Framing [continued]

Designing Alternative Futures

The ‘Time Frames’ Summary

Outframing

#13 Model of the World

‘Who made this map anyway?’

#13 Model of the World [continued]

#14 Criteria and Value Framing

#14 Criteria and Value Framing [continued]

#14 Criteria and Value Framing [continued]

#15 Allness Framing

#15 Allness Framing [continued]

#16 Necessity Framing

#16 Necessity Framing [continued]

#17 Identity Framing

#17 Identity Framing [continued]

#18 All Other Abstractions

Unreality

Self/Other

Tonal Emphasis

#18 All Other Abstractions

Summary

#19 Ecology Framing

#19 Ecology Framing [continued]

Outframing Summary

A man wanted to know about mind, not in nature, but in his computer. He asked ‘Do you compute that you will ever think like a human

being?The machine then set to work to analyze its

own computation habits. Finally, the machine printed its answer on a piece of paper, as such machines do. The man ran to get the answer

and found neatly typed, the words: “That reminds me of a story”.

Gregory Bateson

Analogous Framing

#20 Storytelling

#20 Storytelling

Shifting Referential Indices

#21 Both/And Framing

#22 Pseudo-Word Framing

#23 Negation Framing

#24 Possibility and ‘As If’ Framing

#25 Systemic & Probability Framing

#26 Decision Framing

Conclusions

Formal Dialogue

We are the sum total of what we think!

Glossary