The third key element to the meta model are ‘distortions’, which are responsible for some of the most major limitations and the creation of some very limited internal maps of the world. Anything we make up, or that we have no sensory evidence for is a distortion.
Maybe you’re thinking, ‘I don’t make things up, I am a very down-to-earth person’. But think about this… often we have to make something up – in fact, in order to understand and make sense of anything that has not yet happened, we have to make up how we think it will be. Everything from a holiday to wanting to get married or have a family or planning for retirement has to be constructed in order to make sense of them. And to construct them, you have to make them up of the bits and pieces you have lying around in your personal experience of how you have experienced things so far and how you have experienced them through other people. In other words, you simply have to create a map of how you think the world will be one day and then plan for that.
Richard Bandler and John Grinder defined meta model distortions thus: ‘Distortion is the process which allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. Fantasy, for example, allows us to prepare for experiences which we may have, before they occur… It is the process which has made possible all the artistic creations which we as humans have produced… Similarly, all the great novels, all the revolutionary discoveries of the sciences involve the ability to distort and misrepresent present reality.’10
Distortions are responsible for some of the most major limitations and the creation of some very poor maps. Anything we make up, or that we have no real sensory evidence for, is a distortion. For example, have you ever speculated about what might be causing the traffic jam or the fault with the TV or why that person hasn’t emailed back or called? I bet you have and unless you know for sure, you are making it up; we call that a ‘distortion’.
The two best illustrative examples of distortions are future planning and our creation of concepts.
Consider what happens when you make choices about your future, or even just plan a holiday. You are thinking about a future that does not exist, yet. You literally cannot see yourself retired or on holiday unless you already are. We cannot possibly see a picture of something that hasn’t happened yet, unless we make it up.
But, of course we can do that very easily when we can visualize future consequences, experiences and benefits in our imagination.
But remember, just because you think it does not make it true; we just sometimes think it does.
A concept is something we humans make up. Have you ever left the house and just tripped over a relationship? A relationship is a concept and consists of a number of on going interactions and shared experiences over time (another concept). Can you put a relationship in a wheelbarrow? Of course not!
We use labels for concepts, but there is no sensory-based evidence for them. There are certainly examples of them, but we make up the label for the concept. It’s like a shorthand marker to guide us, but it really only works if we are all working to the same version of the concept. Otherwise, even with the same terms, we can end up in a very different place. How many different types of relationships can you think of? Do they all adhere to the same rules and conventions? No…
Take the idea of your favourite party. Is that a birthday party, political party or a third party? It’s whatever you mean it to be, but it might not mean that same thing to me. Here are some of the key meta model patterns for distortions.
Linguistically speaking, nominalizations are processes (verbs) we turn into nouns. But doing this sends deceptive messages to our brains. For example, a ‘decision’ is actually the process of deciding; a relationship is the process of relating to someone. In both, there has to be some ‘doing’ in order for them to exist, but by changing the process into a fixed static ‘thing’, we can feel it as a tangible entity when, in effect, it is something you have to do. You might remember we spoke earlier about depression being a thing someone does, rather than a ‘thing’ that you might catch. This is exactly what I am talking about here.
Nominalizations give the sense that something is real when, in fact, it is not and creates lots of scope for misunderstanding. Some popular concepts are:
What do you think the recovery questions might be? Well, how about these?
This pattern is one of the most important problem-solving strategies in the whole meta model. Nominalizing and therefore making things into a static unchanging thing causes many difficulties, but as you might be beginning to see, they are not real… well, not unless we act on them and make them real, of course. But while they only exist in the world of the mind, you are only ever one thought away from being well again.
The next pattern is one of my absolute pet hates. Have you ever spent time with someone who is certain that they know best when you actually do know best? This is similar to the above, but here we really just making s**t up, jumping to conclusions or mind-reading. We’ll stick to this title for the sake of the book but know that I really mean making s**t up.
Mind-reading is assuming you know what the other person is thinking or feeling without checking for any real evidence. This pattern causes a great number of interpersonal problems, the awareness of which is another of the important meta model problem-solving strategies.
Most of us, at some time, attribute intention to other people’s behaviour or absence of behaviour. We think we know that someone is interested in us, doesn’t like us or is trying to hurt us, without their ever saying so.
We are masterful at taking a small cue such as a raised eyebrow, a lack of eye contact or a failure to do something we expected and believing we know what it means. We all jump to conclusions about other people’s behaviours at some time. We usually judge others’ behaviour by the effect on us, and judge our own behaviour by our intentions.
We also expect other people to be able to read our minds. We think someone should know we are pleased or annoyed with him or her. We expect others to realize we are overwhelmed, open to suggestion or distracted.
The meta model questions aim to uncover how you know what you think you know about what is happening in someone else’s brain.
Some examples are:
When someone uses a cause-and-effect statement, they are identifying how they believe something works, that X causes Y, or that doing X makes Y happen.
The next pattern is one that you will notice all the time as soon as I point it out and is probably one of the areas that, even after just reading through it once, you can easily start to use to make changes in the people around you.
How often have you heard someone say some version of this/that/they made me do it?
These are all cause-and-effect dynamics and, of course, completely constructed, even though they make perfect sense to the people at the time.
Cause and effects are statements that show how someone believes something works. Like all beliefs, just because we believe something, it doesn’t make it true. Often looking at our statements can open us up to solutions we hadn’t considered because we start questioning our model of the world.
Let’s look at a few more ‘if–then’ statements:
You’ll notice that they usually have words such as ‘forces’, ‘makes’, ‘creates’, ‘leads to’, ‘compels’, ‘requires’, ‘instils’ and ‘causes’. For instance,
A cause-and-effect-type distortion that is often made is assuming that someone can make us feel a certain way.
This assumption acts in reverse too. Feeling responsible for the state or happiness of others is a common and debilitating belief. For example,
You can’t, only he can make himself happy; you can help but you cannot make him happy.
This next pattern is the one that took me the longest to get my head around, so let me try to make it as simple as I had to for myself. If I got it, then you will straight away.
Lost performatives are when someone is talking about a personal belief, but presents it as though it were a universal truth. We then accept it as true without questioning it, as we would if we heard it as someone’s personal opinion. Lost performatives equals not my ‘beliefs’ – it’s a fact!
These might be clichés that everyone knows are true. Even though some of these truisms are useful, the origin is lost, so they are disconnected. For example,
The danger of these lost performatives is that they bypass our reasoning filters. We can take on these ideas as beliefs and delete perfectly good solutions to our problems. We don’t think which circumstances they apply to or consider whether they apply to all people
The origin is important too. Politicians, marketers and salespeople all use these techniques. But how many of these studies are promoted by people with a vested interest? Of course, the company is going to say their product is good for you. What else are they going to say? ‘Humans can’t actually digest our stuff; we only used to feed it to pigs, but if we tell you it’s healthy then the sales skyrocket.’ It would be refreshing, but unlikely.
Here are your lost performative recovery questions.
We want to find out where the belief came from and whether the strategy is based on something solid.
Presuppositions are the most powerful of the meta models and the Milton Erikson model language patterns are some of my favourites – perhaps because they are heavily and widely used in hypnotic patterns, but mostly due to the fact that they are one of the most simple and elegant ways to guide someone in the direction that you want to take them. And as a communicator wouldn’t it be great if people sometimes accepted what you said without question?
For example, a couple of favourites with parents are,
There is an illusion of choice, but both choices get your outcome. Of course, as we get older and smarter, we see through some of the illusions (or do we?)
Unfortunately, this power can be used for bad as well as good. We probably have no idea of the kinds of things we take for granted in order to make sense of someone’s communication or to create a well-formed sentence.
They can also take away our sense of choice when we use them on ourselves, or when others use them. We can feel painted into a corner.
This next one is the simplest kind of presupposition, for example:
This presupposes that someone named ‘Bob’ and that indeed a number of pancakes exist. We accept these things and our focus is on the action of eating. Bob and the pancakes are in the background but very much there and very much taken as read.
Here we are not questioning the second part of the sentence. This is a useful pattern:
These include the use of time or change of time words like ‘begin’, ‘end’, ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘during’, ‘future’, ‘when’, ‘again’, ‘still’ and ‘soon’. While particular tenses – such as ‘was’, ‘had’, ‘been’, ‘went’ (past); ‘am’, ‘have’, ‘are’, ‘stop’, ‘start’, ‘continue’ (present); and ‘will’, ‘going’ and ‘getting’ (future) – can all create very powerful assumptions.
When we use words such ‘first’, ‘once’, ‘second’, ‘twice’, ‘last’, ‘another’, ‘again’ and ‘next’, we are presupposing a series of things.
When we really listen to language carefully words can be insightful like this – often the person is using them unconsciously. (For example, in the second example, she may not consciously have considered remarrying.)
Here we exclude one thing or the other.
‘Do you want to pay for this now or when we deliver it?’ – There is no question of payment, only when.
‘Do you want to go to the gym at the end of this chapter or once you’ve done the whole book?’ – I am going to the gym; it’s just a matter of when.
These are really just words with the suffix ‘ly’ on the end, such as ‘unfortunately’. I have to admit I didn’t pay much attention to those ‘parts of a sentence’ things in English class. In fact, I didn’t pay much attention too much at all in school, but this is the simplest explanation I can give you.
The ‘ly’ adverbs are sneaky things, because they modify or change the standard verb and so are just assumed and accepted to be true, and they slip under our radar. We tend to accept the sentence without questioning whether it is true. For example:
These ‘ly’ adverbs and other descriptive words presupposing certain qualities, such as ‘just’, ‘only’, ‘even’, can be particularly misleading and dangerous.
How specifically do you do that?
The meta model very simply but brilliantly provides a framework to recover deleted but very useful unspoken information and, in doing so, uncovers our subconscious rules while untangling misunderstandings in our own and others’ communication.
Specifically, it helps to fill in the missing pieces of our map to add more detail and distinctions, a bit like turning up the resolution on the map and, in doing so, turning our map into HD. Imagine your TV picture and then imagine it in HD. The subject is still the same; if you’re looking at a garden then you’re still looking at a garden in HD, only now you can see much more detail and therefore, when it comes to making changes, you have much more choice.
The more distinctions you are aware of then the richer your map of the world; and the richer your map of the world the more choices you have in your life, and so the richer your life will be… Simple.
By listening for how someone has created his or her map, we can ask an appropriate question to recover what has been deleted, generalized or distorted. This then expands and enriches the person’s choices for solving the problem. You with me?
As a simple guide, you will find that the cleaner you are in yourself, the easier you will find working with the meta model. In other words, the fewer assumptions you make yourself and the fewer preconceptions you bring to the interaction, the easier it will be to spot the part of the map that is missing. I cannot emphasize this enough; the cleanness of your own ability not to make things up makes it much, much easier to spot it in others. But if you are filling in the blanks yourself, then it is very difficult to know that there is a blank there in the first place.
First rule of meta modelling – assume nothing, and then specifically ask the right question to uncover ‘their’ missing part.
Here’s a quick guide to help you get going and to get to grips with using the meta model effectively.
As we learned earlier, information is deleted in six main ways.
Any word that stands in for a noun and so has many meanings and interpretations.
Don’t assume. ASK: ‘Who says that what specifically is easy?’
Verbs that delete the specifics of the process.
Don’t assume you know. ASK: ‘How, specifically?’
Verbs that are made into nouns, and thus delete the process or action and so very often create a sense of stuckness, but can often be recovered just by adding ‘ing’ and turning it back to a verb.
ASK: ‘What specifically about the way you’re relating causes you to think that?’ Turn the nominalization back into a verb again.
The pronoun is not specified, and so deletes who or what it refers to.
ASK: ‘Who specifically loves chocolate?’ And even, ‘Says who?’
Information is simply missed out.
ASK: ‘With whom? About what are you so upset?’
The standard of comparison is deleted.
ASK: ‘Compared to what?’
We have also learned that information is generalized in three main ways:
Generalizations that preclude any exceptions.
ASK: ‘Do you really mean all of the time; no one ever listens to you? Surely there might be some exceptions when someone somewhere has listened to you?’
Words that require particular action; the ‘driver’ word in the sentence if you like.
ASK: What would happen if you did or didn’t?
These are just the opposite, words that imply no choice at all.
ASK: ‘Just like before, what would happen if you did/didn’t? Or, what’s stopping you?’
Finally, we learned that information is distorted in five main ways.
This is where two experiences are perceived as synonymous and often show up as two statements back to back.
ASK: ‘How does doing X definitely mean Y?’
These are value judgements, rules and general opinions stated as fact, but the source of the assertion is missing.
ASK: ‘Says who, or how do you know that, what happens if you don’t?’
This assumes that you know another person’s internal state.
ASK: ‘How do you know that?’
This is the belief, or implication, that one person’s actions or set of circumstances can cause another’s emotional reaction.
ASK: ‘How does his/her/that doing/being X cause you to Y?’
These are the basic assumptions that something must be true; it is presupposed that it will or has happened.
ASK: ‘How do we know they were grumpy in the first place?’ Or questions that uncover what may be taken for granted.
The very term ‘distortions’ strongly implies that we are making it up, or distorting something from the truth. Remember that there can be more than one truth. Often there’s your truth, their truth and the truth. Avoid being seduced by your truth; don’t just believe their truth, and instead get to ‘the’ truth. This means being as clean as possible in yourself and your own language first, and asking all the ‘meta’ questions when something doesn’t make sense… Unless you are trying to persuade, in which case the reserve is true and you are trying to get someone to accept your truth. Use these skills with care and conscience though, as they are very powerful. Success comes from practise, and the best place to begin is with yourself.