I Have a Voice Page 7

  Language and your concept of self

  How do negative concepts of self become so ingrained and so powerful that they can literally determine how a person speaks? It is because they seem real to the person. The word or label comes to stand for a whole array of experience which has been ignored or forgotten. For example, the words “flawed” and “broken” take on an aura of truth which seems inevitable. So how does this happen?

  Language

  Lives are dynamic, and experience can be perceived as a story or as a movie, possibly several movies at once. However, our language is far better suited to labeling static things: events, images, snapshots of our reality. Words tend to “fix” the world and our experience. Think about the words you use to describe a process or event which has been going on for some time: “my marriage”, “my job” and so on. Words become a kind of shorthand way of referring to much larger stories or ongoing processes. Many concepts are labeled as if they are things – “relationship”, “job” – when in fact they are ongoing processes – ways of relating, or getting things done. Unless you deliberately talk in terms of continuing change, most of the language you use refers to “what stays the same” in your mind. A similar thing happens in using adjectives to describe the qualities of something or someone. For example, describing them is “young” or “old” is imprecise and relative.

  You use these verbal shortcuts all the time. They are neither good nor bad in themselves. If you didn’t use them you would find it difficult to communicate; every conversation would take forever. However, it is when your communication is not working, when you are stuck with a fixed description of your reality, and you want to change, that is when the language itself needs to be investigated.

  It can be hard putting your experiences into words. Much easier to use ready-made word forms or clichés for getting across what you want to say. But, as with every well-used term or phrase, they soon lose their power to inform, because other people think they know what you mean when in fact they do not. It’s also probable that you think your description of yourself is accurate when in fact you are using imprecise tools. Everyday speech is usually inexact; it is “good enough” to the extent that the other person knows what to do as a result of understanding your communication. But when they are uncertain what you mean, or do not know how to respond, it is then that you need to become clearer in your use of language. You need to fill in the gaps, give examples, talk about movies rather than snapshots. So when another person says, “I am flawed”, this kind of language is just the merest indication there is something they don’t like about themselves. You don’t know how precisely they think they are flawed, or what you are supposed to do about it. The person has somehow reduced a huge amount of information about themselves into one word, “flawed”, and then identified themselves with this one word. If you want to intervene, then you must first recover some of the supporting thinking that led to the abbreviated description – because as it stands, there are no clues about how you could help them change anything.

  Representing an action or process in terms of a single noun or adjective is called nominalizing. Nominalizations leave out a great deal of information: the single word “life” could represent a whole lifetime’s experience; “worthless” or “foolish” (see Figure 2.3) are labels which the person applies to a complex cognitive analysis of behavior. This way of using language suggests how words both gain and lose meaning, and what we can do to change a particular meaning. “Stuttering” and “blocking” both refer to ongoing behaviors. By analysing the strategy the person is using for blocking or stuttering, what the person actually does, it becomes possible to change the strategy they use. They need to recover the “missing” information – the specific details of their strategy – in order to intervene and make adjustments.

  Exercise 2.1: Recovering the evidence

  Choose one of your favorite descriptions that you tend to believe about yourself. (You may identify with some of those in Figures 2.1, 2.3, 2.4 above). Now ask yourself these questions:

  How have I come to identify myself as flawed, worthless, timid, or whatever? What is the story behind that?

  What are the specific things that I do that I am defining in that very abbreviated way?

  What kind of movies am I making that define me as being flawed?

  How am I talking to myself so that I define myself as being flawed?

  Answering these questions will begin to recover the story, the sequence of behaviors you engage in. By finding the meaning behind the words, the strategies and processes you use, you can then reorganize or edit them to produce you what you would rather have – fluency in speaking.

  The words you use become associated with the feelings – they act as triggers for a particular state – and through habitual use get grooved into the muscles of your body. They feel real, and for some people, such feelings are the evidence for knowing something is real. The stronger this link between word/label and bodily feeling, the more challenging it is to alter.

  Now we have another way of working: focusing on the words someone uses to talk about their experience. When a PWS tells you the way things are this provides an opportunity to find out how exactly they have constructed their model of the world. The good news is that it is always possible to undo the “realizing” process by examining the structure of the experience the words refer to. By bringing the strategies and stories into conscious awareness, it is possible to reorganize the strategies, to edit or rewrite the stories the PWS is using for knowing when to block and stutter.

  You can also alter the meaning of – reframe – those contexts which they perceive as fear or anxiety producing. How you change the meaning of a limiting behavior, and how you re-create a model of the world so that it serve you better is covered in the remaining chapters.

  Chapter Three

  Changing Points of View

  The nature of communication

  Given that blocking has a cognitive component, then we can begin to explore ways of changing that blocking behavior by changing the way the PWS communicates.

  Why do you communicate to others? This is not a trick question. The answer is that essentially you communicate to other people because you want them to do something. You establish an outcome or intention which involves them changing in some way, and then do whatever is necessary to try to achieve that. Even in the most friendly, laid-back situations, you want other people to listen to your stories and respond to them. There is a huge difference between communicating to another person, and talking to the furniture; in the former case, you expect some kind of response.

  You communicate because you want to change the world in some way. Therefore it helps to be clear about what exactly it is that you want to happen, what exactly it is you want to be different. That is why this chapter covers creating well-formed outcomes, because every act of communication implies some kind of purpose or outcome.

  An over-riding concern for the PWS is to be fluent. But not always. They may say that they want to be comfortable with themselves even though they stutter. I hear this a lot: “Bob, just get me to where I stop beating myself up because I stutter.” “Just get me to where I am OK with myself and not so overly anxious because I stutter.” These people seem to know that once they get to where they are comfortable with themselves even though they stutter, the main issues are resolved. Their conversational outcome is the same as with “normal” people.

  There is a saying: “You get what you concentrate on.” If you think about the horrible things that could happen to you … well, you know what? They do. Therefore part of the changing of your behavior is changing the content of your thoughts. This means paying attention to what comes to the forefront of your mind, and noticing whether you are counting your blessings or on the look-out for disasters, threats, or someone to blame!

  What is your point of view?

  Most people make movies in their mind when they think about what they do. Recall what you did when you got up this morning.
Most people remember past events as if they are watching movies of what happened – though obviously these mental movies have different qualities from looking at the world in the here and now.

  There are some interesting variations in the way people see their movies. One significant difference is:

  You are actually in the movie, looking out through your eyes at what is happening around you.

  You can see yourself acting in the movie. It is as though you are in a cinema watching everything that is happening at a distance on the screen.

  Of course, you may use both of these points of view at different times, but you probably have a preference. You may be able to switch from one mode to the other easily at will. This distinction is important, because in the first case, the associated version, you are also strongly connected to your emotions. Your mind does not really distinguish between something happening “for real” and your remembered version of it. If you are associated in the memory, it can still have an emotional impact. Experience this for yourself:

  Recall a mildly unpleasant memory. If you see yourself in that memory – dissociated – then deliberately associate into the memory and notice if your feelings increase.

  Most people recall painful memories as associated, but not everyone. Some only associate into those memories that are extremely painful.

  Exercise 3.1: The lemon

  Try this:

  Imagine opening the door of your refrigerator and taking out a lemon. Close the door, take a knife, put the lemon on the cutting board. Slice the lemon into halves, and then into quarters. Pick up one of the quarters and put that slice of lemon into your mouth. Squeeze it and feel the lemon juice squirting into your mouth. Are you salivating yet?

  Most people find an increase in salivation. This simple experiment illustrates how the mind does not differentiate between real and imaginary experiences.

  On the other hand, if you were watching a movie of yourself doing that, it is highly likely that your response would not be as strong. When you are observing what happened from the outside, from a dissociated position, you are usually more objective and not connecting with those feelings in the same way. You can evaluate your experience and have feelings about it, but you are not going to be so caught up in them as when you are associated. This associated/dissociated distinction is important in some of the exercises and processes that follow.

  When you switch from an associated memory to a dissociated one, note how your feelings diminish when you dissociate from the memory and see yourself in it.

  Focus of attention

  Whether or not someone blocks depends on how they perceive the situation they are in. Another distinction looks at what specifically they are paying attention to in the content of the movie. For situations perceived as threatening, PWS have programmed themselves to experience a state of fear or anxiety. In non-threatening situations they are happy to interact with the other person and able to focus on their individual or joint objectives. For example, one of my clients told me, “When I am by myself, I can’t even make myself stutter; but as soon as I walk out that door and speak to anyone, I almost always block and stutter.” Another said, “When I speak to someone that I know and feel safe with, I do not stutter. When I speak to someone whom I do not know I feel unsafe and I always block and stutter.”

  Obviously, during those times of fluency, the object of their attention is quite different from what they are paying attention to when they block and stutter. Therefore it is important to ask the PWS: “Where are your thoughts directed when you are blocking; where are they directed when you are fluent?” You are eliciting what they have in focus, what is in the foreground of their attention.

  People tend to block when they focus exclusively on themselves and their present experience of fear and anxiety. Instead of attending to the other person with whom they are communicating and the content of what they are saying, they focus on their fear of stuttering, and that fear grabs their total attention; they cut off from the other person and the communication ceases. Their emotional states come into the foreground – and no one’s needs are met because these people are unable to communicate effectively.

  A PWS may say, “Now wait a minute Bob. It is not myself that I am focusing on; I am focusing on the other person and how they will judge my speech.” However, that judgment is actually theirs. They are hallucinating what the other person is thinking about them, imagining being judged by that other person. It is as if the PWS is observing what is happening from an observer position (see below): monitoring their own performance rather than holding in mind the purpose of the communication, and this kind of detached awareness interferes with their functioning.

  On the other hand, when speaking fluently, the person is focusing on their outcomes for the conversation, what they want to happen. They are not even bothering to think about any imagined judgments; any fear of blocking and stuttering is irrelevant. Think of a time when you were busily engaged in doing something you love – a hobby or sport, for example. You are so intent on what you are doing, giving it your all, concentrating on achieving perfection, that if someone asks “Are you happy?” you have to detach yourself and think about it. You are happy, but you only realise this after you stop to consider. In the same way, when you are fluent, you are not thinking about fluency, because you are busy getting on with living and communicating. You only have time for the fears when you stop interacting.

  In mind-reading what the other person is thinking, the PWS creates a story which inevitably leads to an unhappy ending: their status is lowered in the eyes of the other person, they think they are inadequate, to be pitied, and so on. This story dominates their thinking. The story then feeds back on itself – no facts or evidence from the outside are required! – and the fears and anxieties multiply to the extent that the only object of attention is the fear itself. That then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the muscles oblige, the blocking occurs, the person stutters. If however the PWS focuses on an external outcome, such as getting the other person to do something, their muscles will adjust to help them achieve that.

  The reason I ask clients to practice going in and out of the states of fluency and blocking is to teach the PWS behavioral flexibility. They are already familiar with each state; what they need is the facility for changing their states. No one lives their entire life blocking. Therefore they need to identify the strategy they already use to do this, streamline it, and practice it so that they can get out of the blocking state into another state whenever they want. It is simple, yet profound. Therefore, you need to help them find out exactly how they do this. Ask, “How do you do that?” “How does your focus change?” “How do you talk to yourself differently?” “How do you give yourself permission to be fluent?” Take note of the answers as they will provide you with information you can use in assisting them to alter their states at will. The more they practice moving from one state to another, the better they will be at reducing the power of the old blocking strategy. They are training their mind to choose which state they want to be in.

  Focus of attention

  Effective communication requires that you pay attention to the other party. Therefore, instead of watching themselves or engaging in mind-reading, they need to concentrate on what they want to achieve.

  Exercise 3.2: Where is the focus?

  This exercise assists the PWS to become aware of the difference between where they focus when blocking and stuttering, and where they focus when fluent.

  It also provides practice in switching the focus of attention from internal to external, from judging their performance to focusing on their outcomes. In my experience this takes time and plenty of practice. Once you know the PWS can switch states successfully, ask them to notice what they bring into the foreground in each state.

  Access a recent state of blocking

  While you are thinking about that state, notice what you are paying attention to. What is in primary focus while you block?

  What is your int
ention or purpose in this context?

  Given what you are focusing on, can you identify what actually triggers the fear of blocking?

  Access a recent state of fluency

  While you are thinking about that state of fluency, notice what you are paying attention to. Where or on what are you focusing?

  What is your intention or objective in this context?

  Developing a Well-formed Outcome for fluency

  When the PWS chooses to move from blocking/stuttering to freedom/fluency, they must clearly know what they want and have the commitment to achieve it. This often requires a tremendous shift in the meanings they give to their speaking. In your clinician role, I encourage you to maintain your outcome focus by holding in your mind the agreed upon outcome that your PWS clients assert.

  The NLP Well-Formed Outcome process is an extremely effective and practical tool for bringing a specified outcome into the foreground of attention. A well-formed outcome is one that the PWS devises and which is framed in a way that makes it more likely to be achieved.