Steve Andreas – Building Self Concept

In order to make a quality of your self-concept durable and responsive to feedback, we have been exploring the impact and interaction of both process and content variables. We explored how to transform counterexamples into examples. With what you have learned, you can ask someone about any important quality of their self-concept, ask them questions to find out how they already do it, and teach them a variety of additional skills so that their self-concept functions much better than it already does. Their life will be affected by this kind of change.

It is time to demonstrate how to use all this information to create a new positive quality of self-concept when a person has no representation of this quality.

When someone thinks of themselves as being lovable, that indicates that they have a positive self-concept with regard to that quality. Since they have this basis for knowing, they don’t need others to tell them, and they can fully appreciate the additional confirmation.

When someone says that they think of themselves as not lovable, that is a negative self-concept with regard to that quality, something that we will explore in great detail later. It would be difficult to build a positive self-concept for that quality because it would conflict with the negative self-concept that is already there. If we succeeded in building a new positive quality, that would create ambivalence and uncertainty. Some people are not sure if they want to be in this way. Sometimes they feel lovable, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they are unsure.

We need to know what their inner experience is when someone says, I don’t think of myself as lovable. They might be saying that they have a negative self-concept. They could simply mean that they don’t have a positive self-concept with regard to that quality. They know what a lovable person is, but they don’t know if they are or not. This is a null set, so I will call it 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299

They often ask others for confirmation since they don’t know if they are lovable or not. They don’t have a way to store this information, so it doesn’t last very long. Hearing the external confirmation is like receiving water in a sieve. They are likely to ask again soon, and are often described by others as insecure, needy, or dependency.

It is appropriate to simply assemble experiences into a desired quality of positive self-concept, a method that was first described years ago. See the book. The heart of the mind. , Ch. There are more than one 3). The opportunities for using this pattern are limited since someone already has an ambiguous or negative representation of the quality. We can use what we have learned to build a new quality of self-concept if we start with the simplest case. We will learn how to transform a negative quality of self-concept into a positive one.

There is a DVD of a demonstration from an NLP Master Practitioner Training conducted in 1992. Building self concept Steve. I was still in the process of modeling self-concept, so I didn’t know much at that time. When I asked for a volunteer to demonstrate the process, Peter raised his hand.

There is a demonstration.

What do you want it to be?

Peter said that lovable really hit a nerve.

You don’t think of yourself as lovable.

Peter isn’t particularly.

Come on up, think of you as lovable. Peter is in the front of the room. When I said that, what did you do?

Peter shook his head and said, Nope.

1. Now, if you go “Nope”–give me some more. (to the group) See, I’m testing to make sure it’s not one of these (negatives).

I get a sense that it hits a blank.

A blank. Okay. That sounds good. If it is one of these null sets, there is nothing there. It isn’t that there is a difference. I don’t think that you think of yourself as unlovable.

Peter doesn’t think of himself as lovable and he doesn’t think of himself as unlovable.

Yeah. That is what we want. Does it make sense that I am testing here? I want to make sure it is a null set. If you just build one of these and don’t weaken the other, what happens? Think about it. Now is the time. I am serious. This is an important point. I build a belief in here that he is lovable if he thought he wasn’t lovable. You have a parts problem. Don’t build in more conflict, most people have enough conflict as it is.

Peter thinks he is intelligent.

The person is intelligent. Good. You are pretty sure of that, right?

Peter: Yeah.

We did not say, arrogant, we said, intelligent. I would like to know what your evidence is. How do you represent yourself as intelligent?

Peter: Hmm. I am not sure. I have a voice that tells me that I am smart.

1. So there’s a little voice over here. Now, what is its evidence? See, a voice is just a voice, right? So there’s a voice on your left that says “I’m smart.” OK. And that’s fine; I’m not disagreeing with that. I just want to know what is its evidence? How does it know that that’s the case?

Peter has been told by other people.

I do not trust other people. Do you?

Peter: Yes.

Do you? All I have to do is tell you that you are lovable.

If I hear it enough.

Enough. Okay. And so.

Peter: Yeah. That kind of fit. I always want my wife to tell me how much she loves me. Her experience is that that is excessive.

This is what we want. This is what we want. The two major tests have been completed. He tends to go for confirmation from others, and the other is that if I tell him he is lovable, it doesn’t compute. It is like there is a blank. That is what we want. Do you remember a lot of different people saying that in different contexts? Is that the truth?

Peter has done a lot of things that have been confirmed by external sources.

1. So, as you hear these–let’s just take one–can you think of a particular one, where someone says, “You said something intelligently,” or something like that? Or whatever?

Peter: Nodding.

What kind of thing might it say?

Peter remembers his father saying, I can’t imagine where you got all this intelligence from.

That is nice. Do you hear it? It is assumed. I can’t imagine where you got all this intelligence. It is implied that he is not that smart. Peter said that his father told him he was smarter than him.

Peter: I had always believed he was smarter than me, and that created a lot of strange stuff inside me. Peter looks amazed that that was a real thing.

When he said it. I want to remember it, so I am just going to write it down. It is wonderful for teaching to get a good one like this. I can’t imagine where you got all this intelligence. That is a good one. I wish more parents did that. What would most parents say? Changing a few things and keeping the same form of the sentence? What would most parents say? How did you get to be so stupid? I don’t know where you got that stupidity. Let’s not think about that. Peter, are there others? Can you hear other voices? I hear from you that it is important who the voice is. Is that correct?

Peter: Yeah.

Would it matter if this were a man in the street? Is it as compelling?

It would still compute, but it wouldn’t be as compelling.

1. So it would still be part of it. OK. Good.

The more intelligent the person is, the more impact they have.

Yes. The source is important. Okay. Do you think there are many voices in there? You said you had a lot of them.

I don’t know, but a number came to mind of fifty.

Fifty. Okay. This person is thorough.

Peter thinks so.

1. Good. All right. Now, anything else in terms of the evidence? There’s this voice that gives you the message, and there’s the evidence behind that, of all these different people, saying this kind of thing. Anything else?

Peter: Uhm. I had no pictures when you first asked the question. It was more of a sound. I have certificates hanging on the walls that let me know when I accepted my degrees, and I have pictures of when I went and accepted my degrees.

If you hear your father say, I don’t know where you got all that intelligence from, is there a picture with that?

Peter shook his head and said, Just the picture of him, just him saying, I can remember the situation in which he said that.

Is this a voice crying in the wilderness or is it a picture of him when he said it? I am checking to see if the visual is present, which is usually more prominent for Americans, because it makes sense that his representation is primarily auditory.

The visual is more important than the auditory.

1. Fine. Good. Now I’m going to ask you another question, which may seem a little strange. “Are there any counterexamples in there?” Are there any– ?

Peter shook his head and said no. I know that I do things that are stupid, but that doesn’t change my belief. It doesn’t have an impact.

1. That’s fine. Now I want to do something–kind of an experiment, and you tell me how it goes. What if you have one voice in there–at least–let’s say one, or two, or three that says, “every once in a while you screw up.”

Peter: That is fine.

Is that okay? Okay. A way to avoid pomposity is what I am doing here. It is wonderful to INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals I don’t care who you choose, the most intelligent person in the world is going to say stupid things from time to time. The person may think that everything they say is gold if they only have positive examples in their generalization. Everything I do is perfect.

Peter: Nope.

This is not the case here. Okay. Counterexamples to the generalization are one of the ways you can protect against pomposity. It is wonderful to have a big generalization. Some people have one example. There is a joke about the guy who knows that all Indians walk single-file.

This is a fascinating area to explore in terms of self-concept and generalizations. The self-concept is a generalization. Some people make generalizations based on one example. A person does one thing, and they say, Oh, that’s that kind of a person. It’s just like the single-file, really. They have to get a lot of examples in order to build a generalization.

Did you ever see someone who thought they were smart, but other people didn’t agree with them? They don’t come in to you saying, I’d like you to change that. If a depressed person thinks that nothing will work, he won’t come in and tell you about it. People don’t bring themselves into some of the loops that they can get into. Someone else may bring them in, but the person doesn’t see it as a problem, or that a solution is possible.

A voluntary client is someone who comes in and says, My life is not working in this way; I want some help. It is difficult to deal with things like this because you have to convince someone that a solution is possible.

Now, back to this one. I would like to know if you have any objections to the idea of building the same representation here that you are lovable.

Peter said no objections. A lot of voices are talking.

Your wife will like it as well. You know where you hear the voices and how loud they are. I think it will work better if I do this in the following way. The major generalization is that I am smart. I want to build a summary generalization last. I want to build specific examples in the past before I do that. It doesn’t have to be that you’re lovable. It could be something like, you know, you did a very loving thing with that child, or something like that. I want you to build fifty of them, one at a time. If you build fifty of them, you will give me the major voice that lets you know if you are lovable or caring. Some words will work better for an individual than others. Do you have a question about that?

Peter: No.

1. Go for it. (Peter closes his eyes.) Just search back through memory, . . . and of course your unconscious mind can participate fully in this, . . . to think of different times in your life . . . and just as it was important in the other one that the person was intelligent who said that you were intelligent . . . it would probably be important that the person who says these things . . . be a person who is intelligent, and lovable, or has something else that you respect along the same lines. Does that make sense? (Peter nods) OK. Just take your time. . . . Gradually assemble, one by one . . . voices that sincerely and congruently . . . give you appreciation for being a caring, lovable person. . . . (There is a 26-second pause, while Peter finds and assembles examples.)

I don’t think you have to count to 50.

Peter nodded as he said that he was getting a sense that the process was complete.

You have a sense that it’s complete. It is possible to put in a few more in your spare time when you are waiting for a bus. Have you already built the voice that summarizes all this?

Peter said, I am loved.

I am loved. Good. That is a good one. The tone of voice is something I like.

Peter: Yeah. I also like that one.

Now. Are you a good person?

Peter: Yeah.

What does that feel like?

Peter is very sad.

Yeah. At first, it will. It is a new thing. It’s like a lot of changes that are strange at first, but it’s nice.

Peter: Yeah. It is thinking about myself in a different way. Do I sound different?

Group members agree.

Peter’s voice sounds different to him.

Uhuh. It has more depth. It is a little lower.

Peter: Thank you.

1. How does it feel now? Now that you’ve had all of twenty seconds to get used to it. (laughter)

It feels like a bunch of people are bouncing around inside. It is a little shaky. I think the greatest thing is a feeling of total wonder.

* * * * *

About three minutes later, Peter commented, What I’m having the sense of now, as I was going back through time, was a whole bunch of events immediately sort of came out as, ‘Oh that’s an example of that,’ and ‘That’s another one

As the new generalization becomes a nucleus for collecting other examples that fit the newly-organized quality, that is a typical response. The teaching points with the group took seventeen minutes.

* * * * *

Peter had a follow-up interview. :

A transcript of an interview with Peter was given two weeks later.

I wondered if you had noticed any changes since we did the thing on being lovable or loved, and if you had asked your wife if it had changed.

Peter is unsure if she is aware of what has changed. I feel a lot more independent now. I don’t need that constant feedback. It was interesting to know that February 14 is a great time for this. I got a lot of great gifts yesterday, a lot of them in a row, that showed how much she cares for me. That was a difference that I really noticed. It had an impact. I used to take this stuff and Peter would gesture with his left hand and it would flow over my head.

That is a nice gesture. The person said yes, copying Peter’s gesture.

It is not possible. Whsst. I was really paying attention to all the details now.

You could experience it, rather than just discard it. Peter nodded. Great.

Peter: Yes. That was nice. I did a presentation to a group of people yesterday that I think are not particularly open to the kind of thing that I had to say. I got a positive response from them, and I was amazed at how well it went over. I am not sure how that ties in, but I have a sense that that is involved. There is something different about what I am allowing to come back in and what I am putting out.

Maybe both.

Peter: Yeah. I have been great. I feel it.

* * * * *

Peter had an interview with his wife.

I talked with Peter’s wife, Joan, a week after the follow-up. Peter hadn’t told her anything about the work I had done with him.

I did some work with your husband, Peter, about three weeks ago. I asked him if he had noticed a change in his behavior, but he said he hadn’t asked. He didn’t tell you that I worked with him. Is that correct?

He did not tell me the process. I asked him what had changed in him.

Can you tell me what those changes are?

It was amazing. I am going back to the first time he came through the door three weeks ago. I noticed immediately that there was a change. He had more bounce in his step. There was a smile on his face. His eyes looked better. His face wasn’t as tight, it was a lot more relaxed. His voice was not as strong. I have noticed changes in how we interact.

I would be interested to hear that.

He is a lot more fun. He plays a lot more. He is not goal-oriented.

Is there a specific thing that he wouldn’t have done before or something that happened during the last couple of weeks that he wouldn’t have done before?

Joan: He listens.

He listens?

Joan listens. It was like coming from a more loving and understanding place, instead of being judgmental like before. It was just listening to me.

You like the changes.

Joan loves the changes. They are wonderful. We are interacting in a fun way. He is lighter and happier.

Being around is nice.

Joan loves being around a lot of nicer people.

Great. Is there anything else? I will tell you what we did.

It seems like he loves himself more and everyone else is more able to play.

It has made a big difference.

Joan: It’s an amazing difference. Yes, I really, you know!

* * * * *

Joan mentioned two other changes in Peter in the discussion that followed the videotaped interview. He had played for a long time with a child who was visiting, and he had never done that before. She said that Peter was no longer worried if she wanted to do her own thing. He didn’t need to call to find out when she was coming home if she were going to be away for the afternoon.

Discussion

Do you have any questions?

Fran thinks it’s too easy and undramatic. Identity level change is hard and takes a long time.

If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, anything is hard. Can you imagine using a new piece of equipment for the first time and not knowing how to use it? It was easy as soon as you found out how.

The simplest kind of identity change is what I 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 888-276-5932 There were no conflicting outcomes to satisfy, there were no negative beliefs to get in the way, and it was a change that he wanted.

Most people find it hard to build a more positive sense of themselves because they already have a negative sense of themselves. It is very difficult and dramatic to lift a rock that is firmly attached to the ground.

I will teach you how to deal with those kinds of situations, but they do complicate the process.

Many people equate a large show of emotion with effective change, and I think that is one reason whyNLP has often been criticized for leaving out the emotions. There are many examples of counterexamples to the idea that drama and emotion is a sign of effectiveness. When people are very emotional, they are simply expressing their frustration and lack of resources to deal with a difficult situation.

When you have enough resources to cope with a difficult situation, you may not even think about it. You don’t even think about tying your shoelaces anymore, because they are so routine and unconscious that you don’t even think about them.

Engineers know that any machine that makes a lot of noise is inefficient because noise is a form of energy that is being wasted. All the energy goes into carrying out the function of an efficient machine.

People screaming and yelling at empty chairs and pounding pillows is what I used to do in Gestalt Therapy. The results were not particularly useful. Before antibiotics or immunization, every family experienced life and death dramas as their children battled diseases that are now virtually unknown. Antibiotics and immunization are very effective. Change is easy when we know exactly what to do. Many of the changes you have already experienced are not dramatic, but they will have far-reaching consequences for you.

Dan wondered if someone could not find examples of the quality they wanted.

It’s a matter of how they are looking for them. When they can’t find any examples, their criteria are too high. They may think that a word can only be exemplified by winning a small war single-handed. They could look at all their examples of courage and see that none of them are perfect. You need to broaden their definition so that more of their memories fit that word. Courage can mean a wide range of behaviors in which someone stands by their principles and values. Most people can find plenty of examples once you broaden your criteria a bit.

Let’s say that someone couldn’t find any examples. You could use all of your skills to help them access appropriate resources and revise memories so that they were brave in the past, and then future-pace them into the future, so that the person has future examples as well, and then use both for the database.

Can you give an example of that?

Yes. Ask them to think of a time when they were not brave and wanted to be. You want them to think about what personal resources would have made it easier for them to be brave. It would have been easy to take action if they had just thought about the situation at hand. They can run a movie of what they would have done differently if they wanted to. Put that experience into the future where they are likely to need it, and then put the revised past example into a new database for courage.

Maybe they were too focused on other’s opinions of them. If you asked them for a time when they didn’t give a damn about someone else’s opinion, and when they are fully experiencing that feeling, have them rerun that situation and see how it unfolds differently. They can do this kind of adjustment and testing as many times as they want until it is satisfactory, and then put this experience into the future and into the database.

Bill is wondering if there are different templates for different positive qualities.

I have not investigated that. I have assumed that a person’s templates for different positive qualities are either the same or so similar that they don’t matter, because what I demonstrated with Peter has always worked fine. Gregory Bateson said that a difference that makes no difference is no difference. I’ve been most interested in the question of what people can do to change, but that would be an interesting thing to research, and you might discover something useful.

I was surprised that you didn’t give Peter more detailed instructions. It worked well, but I think he needs more specific directions.

Peter had a lot of advanced skills and understandings about submodalities, so I assumed that he already had a lot of advanced skills. I would have made the instructions more detailed if he had any difficulties.

People need more and less instructions. Some are very fast, and will run ahead of you. Some people will interrupt if you give detailed instructions. You distract me because I am already doing the process. When you describe the next step in a process, they say, Yeah, I already did that. You have to back them up if they run in the wrong direction. To make it as easy for the person as possible, you have to notice what they need and adjust your behavior.

Peter was an example of someone who was competent, but not confident.

I agree. Peter was a pleasant guy to be around and his wife loved him. He didn’t put his experiences into a form in which he could know that as an aspect of himself. It is important to assemble experiences. I said to Peter that I thought of him as lovable. Have you ever tried to convince a friend or client of something by offering a counterexample to their limiting belief, and gotten nowhere? A single counterexample is usually brushed aside. When you put together a group of examples for the person you are working with, they become very compelling. Peter thinks of himself as lovable, just like he thinks of himself as intelligent.

A piece of what has been called internal reference, the ability to know something internally, independent of others’ opinions, is what you did.

That is a useful way of thinking about the way Peter thinks about himself. When people use the term internal reference, they think of it as a single thing, rather than understanding that it is made up of many smaller aspects that are often dependent on content and context. Someone is interna.

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