Now often we forget the facts, and in relationships we allow the fog – stuff that someone says (someone, could be ourselves, partner, the media, TV soap characters, our family, convention …..need I go on?), past experiences (remember the baggage and what to do with that?), laziness and complacency and more to get in the way.
As I was talking about this book and the ideas behind it to someone else, we’ll call her Jane (that isn’t her name) – I noticed she was making some comments and whilst I watched her thinking (I know her pretty well and how she processes thoughts and experiences) – I asked myself – mm what nerve am I touching here? So I asked her “Jane, you know I wonder just how many people who have been in relationships for a long time – meaning 20, 25 years or more (nowadays I sometimes think 10 years is a long time for many people, but that’s another subject and maybe this book will help some people to revisit their relationship and think again and strengthen the relationship with their once loved one?), well I wonder how many people grow apart because they hide behind the fog?”
“Fog” – now there’s a word – what do I mean by that? Well I’ve used that as a generalisation for times or words or actions that we hide behind. In any relationship we grow, and we change, over time we can then become complacent and often we are complacent in the way that we lull ourselves into thinking we are right, the other person is wrong, we have done everything we needed to, we should do and we don’t actually sit down and talk, or ask questions, or think we might be the one who is doing something wrong. We have our own interests and sometimes we think they should come first and really it’s just a way of hiding from confrontation.
Talking is good, arguing can sometimes be good, and making up is a really good idea. So finding a good and resourceful state and saying calmly what you want out of life, and from your partner is a really good idea and perhaps if they’re not willing to listen, or talk and compromise then perhaps they’re not the right person?
The problem with words is they do not have fixed meaning; they have the meaning we attribute to them. Ask 3 or 4 or more people in the same room to describe each of these things separately - Elephant, Alarm, Velvet, Lemon and Smoke – I guarantee you that you will come up with different interpretations and even if some of them sound the same, then ask a few more questions about their description as people’s understanding will give different pictures, sounds and feelings. Simply ask them to describe in more detail. What implications does this have for everyday conversation?
Tonight my partner on the phone to one of his daughter’s asked me “do you like pork” – I answered “we had pork for lunch” – which meant in my head “yes dear, of course I like pork, don’t you remember?” – he relayed “we had pork for lunch” – daughter said “we can have something else” – err no, that wasn’t what I meant – argh!
When we use language, we set frames of reference - these frames establish our reality or models of the world. Language is a symbolic system and for that reason never becomes reality. To deal with the world we choose the information that suits us and we use this choice to move through life - in doing this we use what NLP calls Distortions, Deletions and Generalisations. We need to do this, we couldn’t survive otherwise – information overload.
So we delete – we chose to remember bits of what we experience and leave parts out. We either don’t register them or write them off as unimportant. Have you ever looked for your keys then found them in a place in which you already looked (or wondered who ate the other half of your biscuit)? That’s how deletion works.
So in a bad mood, or on a day when something has thrown us, we only hear the negative in what others say and delete the positive, even when they are both in the same sentence.
We distort – we change our experience, exaggerate it or reduce it and see it in different ways, like those funny mirrors at the fair.
If we weren’t able to distort we wouldn’t be able to be creative. It is useful to be able to imagine what something will look like when it is finished, redecorating a room, decorating a cake for example. Those are positive aspects of distortion. If you make the decision that the way someone says, or writes something, or looks at you, means that they don’t like you, you run the risk of creating a distortion of reality and distorting your response. “I know you don’t like me, you’re looking at me the way my mother does when she’s angry (and it might be the sun’s in their eyes). Fantasy builds on fantasy.
We generalise, we take aspects of an experience we have had as representing a whole class of experiences and ignore any exceptions. This can be useful to help us respond to new situations on the basis of similar ones in the past. It causes problems if we generalise wrongly or do not stay open to a new experience. Beliefs are examples of generalisations. I used to believe all men were useless. My son told me, I hadn’t met ones who were useful yet, and of course I was concentrating on the wrong thing.
When we generalise we do it in order to make sense of the world and to help us to know what to expect. This means we know that things shaped like chairs will be something to sit on and give us support. It is part of how we learn. But the same process can be disastrous, if we have had a difficult relationship and decide on that basis that all men and women are the same – untrustworthy for example, then this generalisation could stop you from forming any relationship with anyone who is an exception to your rule that you have created.
People who distort their experience can be a constant surprise with their interpretations of your actions and words. They make unusual connections and tend to “read your mind” or “know what you are thinking” and assume they know your thoughts and feelings from what you say. Artists and writers often use distortion to create fantasy worlds; of course we can use distortion to get things so wrong in life!
People who generalise a great deal can either be very sure or very unsure or insecure. The world can seem very simple to them - black and white, shades of grey are not so easy for them to work with, an experience for them has to be one thing or the other
