"Reframing. Neuro–Linguistic Programming™ and the Transformation of Meaning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bandler Richard Wayne, Grinder John)

Content Reframing: Changing Meaning or Context

You have all learned the six–step reframing model. In that model you establish communication with a part, determine its positive intention, and then create three alternative behaviors to satisfy that intention. It's an excellent all–purpose model that will work for a great many things. It's got future–pacing and an ecological check built into it, so you can hardly go wrong if you follow the procedure congruently and with sensory experience.

However, that's only one model of reframing. There are several other models that we don't usually get around to teaching in workshops, mostly due to lack of time. One of them, called «content reframing," is the most common way that reframing is done in therapy. We call it content reframing because, unlike six–step reframing, you need to know specific content in order to make the reframe. There are two kinds of content reframing, and I'm going to give you an example of each. One of my favorite examples is this: one day in a workshop, Leslie Cameron–Bandler was working with a woman who had a compulsive behavior—she was a clean–freak. She was a person who even dusted light bulbs! The rest of her family could function pretty well with everything the mother did except for her attempts to care for the carpet. She spent a lot of her time trying to get people not to walk on it, because they left footprints—not mud and dirt, just dents in the pile of the rug.

When I grew up, I had relatives who bought carpet and then put plastic walkways across it, and people weren't allowed to step off the plastic walkways. They were the ones who bought a piano and then locked it so that no one could play it, because they didn't want to have to clean the keys. They should have just lived in a photograph. They could have stood in the house, taken the photograph, died, and hung the picture where the house should have been. It would have been a lot easier.

When this particular woman looked down at the carpet and saw a footprint in it, her response was an intense negative kinesthetic gut reaction. She would rush off to get the vacuum cleaner and vacuum the carpet immediately. She was a professional housewife. She actually vacuumed the carpet three to seven times a day. She spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get people to come in the back door, and nagging at them if they didn't, or getting them to take their shoes off and walk lightly. Have you ever tried to walk without any weight on your feet? The only person I've ever seen do it is the guy at the beginning of that old TV program, Kung Fu, where they roll out the rice paper, and he walks down it without leaving footprints. When you can do that, you can marry this woman and live in her house.

This family, by the way, didn't have any juvenile delinquents or overt drug addicts. There were three children, all of whom were there rooting for Leslie. The family seemed to get along fine if they were not at home. If they went out to dinner, they had no problems. If they went on vacation, there were no problems. But at home everybody referred to the mother as being a nag, because she nagged them about this, and nagged them about that. Her nagging centered mainly around the carpet.

What Leslie did with this woman is this: she said «I want you to close your eyes and see your carpet, and see that there is not a single footprint on it anywhere. It's clean and fluffy—not a mark anywhere.» This woman closed her eyes, and she was in seventh heaven, just smiling away. Then Leslie said «And realize fully that that means you are totally alone, and that the people you care for and love are nowhere around.» The woman's expression shifted radically, and she felt terrible! Then Leslie said «Now, put a few footprints there and look at those footprints and know that the people you care most about in the world are nearby.» And then, of course, she felt good again.

You can call that intervention «trade feelings» if you like. You can call it a change of strategy. You can call it anchoring. You can call it lots of things, but one useful way to think about it is as reframing. In this particular kind of reframing the stimulus in the world doesn't actually change, but its meaning changes. You can use this kind of reframing any time you decide that the stimulus for a problem behavior doesn't really need to change—that there's nothing inherently bad about it.

The other choice, of course, would have been to attack the rest of the family and get them all to shape up and not leave footprints. This woman's mother tried that; it didn't work very well.

If people have a sensory experience that they don't like, what they don't like is their response to it. One way of changing the response is to understand that the response itself is not based on what's going on in sensory experience. If you change what the experience means to them, their response will change.

What we know about the woman who kept everything clean is that she engages some strategy that allows her to decide when it's time to feel bad. She doesn't feel bad on vacations, or in a restaurant. My guess is that when she walks into somebody else's house and it's messy, she doesn't feel bad, because her response has to do with ownership. Her home is her territory; she only feels bad within certain limits. She may not consider the garage or the backyard to be in her territory. Some people keep their houses spotless, but they don't consider their children's rooms to be part of the house, so they don't feel bad about them when they're dirty.

These are all people, of course, who use negative motivation strategies. As they walk into the kitchen and see dirty dishes everywhere, they go «Ugh!» In order to make the bad feeling go away, they have to wash all the dishes. Then they can stand back and go «Ahhhh!» When they walk into a clean hotel room, they don't go «Ahhh!» because it's not theirs. So there's some kind of a decision strategy at work.

One way to help this family would be to alter this woman's strategy. Her strategy has some other characteristics which are unpleasant for her. But to solve the immediate problem and achieve a very limited therapeutic gain, all you need to do is to get her to have a positive feeling about one thing: the carpet. That is not a pervasive change, but it's something you should be able to do. This is especially true for those of you engaged in the business world, because content reframing is the essence of sales.

Some people call this «redefining» or «relabeling.» Whatever you call it, what you are doing is attaching a new response to some sensory experience. You leave the content the same and put another piece of meaning around it—the same kind of meaning that the person has already made. The clean–freak mother makes a judgement that when she sees this sensory experience, it means something important enough to feel bad about. If you can define the footprints as being something important enough to feel good about, then her response will change.

To get a change, it's very essential that you have congruent supporting nonverbal analogues as you deliver the reframe. You have to do it with a serious facial expression and tone of voice.

Virginia Satir is one of the people to study if you want to learn about content reframing. She is a master at it. One of Virginia's main maneuvers to anchor new responses in the family is to do content reframing. Let me give you an example of one I saw her do. I almost blew it for her, because I cracked up when she did it. That's not appropriate in a family therapy situation, so I began coughing. That's always a good cover: when you laugh, you can go into coughing right away, and no one will notice.

Virginia was working with a family. The father was a banker who was professionally stuffy. He must have had a degree in it. He wasn't a bad guy; he was very well–intentioned. He took good care of his family, and he was concerned enough to go to therapy. But basically he was a stuffy guy. The wife was an extreme placater in Virginia's terminology. For those of you who are not familiar with that, a placater is a person who will agree with anything and apologize for everything. When you say «It's a beautiful day!» the placater says «Yes, I'm sorry!»

The daughter was an interesting combination of the parents. She thought her father was the bad person and her mother was the groovy person, so she always sided with her mother. However, she acted like her father.

The father's repeated complaint in the session was that the mother hadn't done a very good job of raising the daughter, because the daughter was so stubborn. At one time when he made this complaint, Virginia interrupted what was going on. She turned around and looked at the father and said «You're a man who has gotten ahead in your life. Is this true?»

«Yes.»

«Was all that you have, just given to you? Did your father own the bank and just say 'Here, you're president of the bank'?» «No, no. I worked my way up.» «So you have some tenacity, don't you?»

«Yes.»

«Well, there is a part of you that has allowed you to be able to get where you are, and to be a good banker. And sometimes you have to refuse people things that you would like to be able to give them, because you know if you did, something bad would happen later on.»

«Yes.»

«Well, there's a part of you that's been stubborn enough to really protect yourself in very important ways.»

«Well, yes. But, you know, you can't let this kind of thing get out of control.»

«Now I want you to turn and look at your daughter, and to realize beyond a doubt that you've taught her how to be stubborn and how to stand up for herself, and that that is something priceless. This gift that you've given to her is something that can't be bought, and it's something that may save her life. Imagine how valuable that will be when your daughter goes out on a date with a man who has bad intentions.»

I don't know if you begin to hear a pattern in this. Every experience in the world, and every behavior is appropriate, given some context, some frame.

There are two kinds of content reframing. I've given you an example of each. Can you tell the difference between them? Can you hear an essential difference between the two examples I just gave you?

Man: One changed the context, and one changed the meaning.

Yes, exactly. In the last example, Virginia changed the context. Being stubborn is judged to be bad in the context of the family. It becomes good in the context of banking and in the context of a man trying to take advantage of the daughter on a date.

Bill: So you're really changing the context that the father uses to evaluate the daughter's behavior.

Right. Her behavior of being stubborn with him will no longer be seen as her fighting with him. It will be seen as a personal achievement: he has taught her to protect herself from men with bad intentions.

Bill: So you switch contexts in imagination and get a different response «there," and then bring that response back to the present context. You get him to respond to what is not going on.

Well, he's already responding to «what is not going on.» You get him to respond to something different which is not going on. Most of the behavior that puzzles you about your clients is a demonstration that the majority of their context is internal, and you don't have access to it yet. When a husband says to his wife «I love you," and she says «You son of a bitch," that's a pretty good sign that she's operating out of a unique internal context. If you explore, you may find out that the last time a man said that to her, he then turned around, walked out the door, and never came back. A lot of your ability to establish and maintain rapport with your clients is your ability to appreciate that what looks and sounds and feels really weird and inappropriate to you, is simply a statement about your failure to appreciate the context from which that behavior is being generated.

Rather than imposing a new context, you can use the client's own resources to find a new context. Your client says «I want to stop X–ing.» You ask «Is there some place in your life where behavior X is useful and appropriate?» If the client answers «Yes, there are some places, but in other places X is just a disaster," then you know where that behavior belongs. You just contextualize that behavior, and substitute a new pattern of behavior in the contexts where X was a disaster.

If the client says «No, it's not appropriate anywhere," you can assist him in finding appropriate contexts by giving him specific representational system instructions. «See yourself performing that behavior and listen to it. … Now, where did that happen?»

«Oh, it happened in church. I stood up and yelled 'God dammit' and then they came and dragged me out.»

«All right. You know that standing up in the middle of a group of people in church and yelling 'God dammit' didn't work out very well for you, and you don't want that to happen again. Let's find a place where it would be useful for that behavior to happen. You can see and hear yourself doing it in church. Now I want you to change that background—the pews and the altar and the interior of the church—to something else. I want you to keep substituting other backgrounds for that same behavior, until you find one in which if you stood up and said 'God dammit!' every part of you would agree that that is an appropriate response, and you can see, by looking at the faces of the people around you, that others also consider it appropriate. As soon as you find a context like that, then go inside and ask the part of you that makes you stand up and yell 'God dammit' if it would be willing to be your primary resource in just that context.»

That's using a visual lead, of course. You have to tailor the search for a new context to the person's actual internal processes in terms of representational systems. For some people it would be more appropriate to search auditorily or kinesthetically.

Another way of approaching this more formally and more generally would be to do the following: identify a behavior that you want to change. I want all of you to pick a behavior in yourself that you don't like. You don't have to say anything out loud; just pick one… .

Now, rather than contacting the part that generates that behavior directly, just go inside and ask if any part of you whatsoever can figure out any situation in which you want to be capable of generating that exact same behavior… .

Now, go inside and ask the part of you that has you do that behavior if it would be willing to be the most important part of you in that situation, and to generate that behavior exquisitely and congruently only in that context… .

Those are variations on the theme of context reframing. All the reframing models that we use are based on some kind of content reframing. In the stubbornness example we left the meaning of the behavior the same and put it in a new context.

Now, what did we alter in the first example I gave of the woman and the footprints? … We left the context the same and changed the meaning of the behavior in that same context. Everything remained constant except what the behavior implied.

For another example, let's say that someone had a part of themselves that was greedy, and they believed it was bad to have a greedy part. One way to alter that would be to have him conceive of a context or situation in which being greedy would be very important—perhaps after an atomic war, or being greedy about learning new things. You can always come up with some change of context that will change the significance of the behavior.

Another choice is to find out what behavior they generate that they name «being greedy» and give the behavior itself a new name with a new meaning. «Greed» has negative connotations, but if you give the behavior another label with positive connotations, such as «being able to meet your needs," you can change the meaning of the behavior.

A Virginia Satir «parts party» is nothing more than doing this over and over and over again, in lots of different ways. If you have a part of you that is devious and malicious, it later becomes renamed «your ability to be creatively constructive» or something else. It doesn't matter what name you come up with, as long as it has positive connotations. You're saying «Look, every part of you is a valuable part and does positive things for you. If you organize your parts in some way so that they operate cooperatively, and so that what they are trying to do for you becomes more apparent, then they'll function better.»

In the case of the stubborn daughter, «stubbornness» in the father's experience changes from being something that works against him to being something that he feels good about when he sees it occur, because he knows that this behavior is something that she will need to survive in the world. That changes his internal response.

In the other example, when the mother looked at the footprints on the carpet, she took them as a comment about her being a bad housewife—that she hadn't finished doing the things she was supposed to do. If you change the meaning of the footprints to «You're around the people you love» then her experience changes. That change in experience is really the only essential piece of any reframing model. That is what reframing is all about.

Man: When you change the meaning, aren't you installing a complex equivalence?

Yes. Actually, you're not installing a complex equivalence, you are just altering the one that's already there. You're really trading. She already has one complex equivalence. She is saying «Footprints on the carpet mean bad housewife, therefore feel bad.» You are saying «Well, since you are so good at complex equivalence, try this one. This one is a lot groovier: footprints on the carpet mean that the people you love are around, therefore feel good.»

In order to make reframing work, sometimes it's better to begin with the reverse case. Leslie could have just looked at this woman and said «Well, no, no, no. You see, you're all wrong. When you see footprints, it just means that the people you care about are there.» That would not have had an impact; it would not have changed her internal experience or her response. So of course the sequencing of your delivery and your expressiveness are very important.

«You see the carpet there and it's spotless! You've cleaned it perfectly. It's fluffy. You can see the white fibers.» This is pacing: she is responding to the complex equivalence. Then you lead: «And then suddenly you realize that that means you are all alone.» That is something she had never considered before. If you think about it, that is not necessarily true. The whole family might be in the next room. However, it sounds so meaningful in that context that you can use it to influence behavior. Then you switch back: «Now put a few footprints there, and realize that those you love are near.»

Which kind of reframing is more appropriate if somebody says to you «I can't take notes. I'm so stupid!» They'll both work, but which one is more immediate? When you hear a complex equivalence as in this example, it tells you something about meaning. If I say that I don't like something, especially about others, typically it has to do with meaning. If I say «Well, Byron has never been really interested in my groups; he sits in the back corner," that's a statement about the meaning of a behavior.

If you make the statement «It annoys me when X happens," which kind of reframing is going to be most appropriate? … Meaning reframing will be. What kinds of statements will tell you that context reframing is more appropriate?

Woman: «I'm not happy when I'm sitting in this room.»

Which kind of reframing is going to be most immediate for that: context or meaning? She's essentially saying «I don't like what this means," so it's meaning again.

What happens if I say something like «I'm too tyrannical»? … That tells you something about context. Too tyrannical for what? … or for whom?

Now, what's the difference between the two forms? Each of them is a kind of generalization. Can you tell the difference between those kinds of generalizations? If you can identify form, that will tell you which kind of reframing is more immediate to use.

No behavior in and of itself is useful or not useful. Every behavior will be useful somewhere; identifying where is context reframing. And no behavior means anything in and of itself, so you can make it mean anything: that's meaning reframing. Doing it is simply a matter of your ability to describe how that's the case, which is purely a function of your creativity and expressiveness.

Now let's play with this a little. Give me some complaints, and I'll reframe them.

Woman: There's no more coffee in the evening, and I don't like that. Have you been sleeping well?

Man: There are too many sessions scheduled at once. I decide to be in one workshop, and then I want to be in another. I can't switch and go over to another session in the afternoon, because it's already progressed too far.

Yeah, I understand. I really do sympathize. And one of the nice things about arranging the workshop that way is that it gives you extra practice in decision–making processes.

Woman: I don't see the reframing there.

Well, I placed his remark in a frame in which it has a function other than the one he consciously recognized: it gives him practice in decision–making.

Man: My wife takes forever to decide on things. She has to look at every dress in the store and compare them all before she selects one.

So she's very careful about decisions. Isn't it a tremendous compliment that out of all the men in the world, she chose you!

Man: I don't want to tell my wife what I want sexually, because that would force her to limit herself.

But you are willing to limit her ability to please you when she wants to, by not telling her what you like?

Woman: My children yell and run around too much.

When they are playing outdoors or at sporting events, it must give you great satisfaction to see how uninhibited your children are, and how well you and your husband have preserved their natural exuberance.

Now I'll give you some complaints, and you reframe them. «I feel terrible because my boss always criticizes me.»

Man: He must really notice the work that you do, and like you enough to want to help you improve it.

OK. Fine. «I'm too easy–going.»

Woman: Well, I'm thinking of many of my friends who are getting heart attacks because they react so strongly when someone asks them to do something they don't want to do.

Exercise

I want you all to practice meaning and context reframing for twenty minutes. Get together with two other people. One of you will be a client, one of you will be a programmer, and one of you will be an observer. Switch roles periodically.

The client's job is to come up with a complaint. You could role–play a client of yours and state some really powerful complaint that you typically get from clients in your practice. Or you could pretend to role–play a client but come up with a complaint that might be relevant for some part of your own personal evolution. I want you to state your complaints in a particular form to make it easier for your partner. The form of the complaint will tell the other person which kind of refram–ing is most appropriate.

1) Present your complaint as a complex equivalence that links a response to a class of events: «I feel X when Y happens» or,

2) Present the complaint as a comparative generalization about yourself or someone else, with the context deleted: «I'm too Z» or «He's too Q.»

The programmer's job is to find a way of reframing the problem, and then to deliver the reframe in such a way that it has an impact. This is a training seminar, so don't force yourself to respond immediately. Let me give you a strategy to generate reframes. First you identify the form of the complaint that your client has presented so that you know which kind of reframe to go for. With a complex equivalence you do a meaning reframe, and with a comparative generalization you do a context reframe. The next step is to create an internal representation of the complaint that you have received from the other person: either make a picture of it visually, feel what it would be like kinesthetically, or describe it auditorily.

For a context reframe, ask yourself «In what context would this particular behavior that the person is complaining about have value?» Think of different contexts until you find one that changes the evaluation of the behavior.

For a meaning reframe, ask yourself «Is there a larger or different frame in which this behavior would have a positive value?» «What other aspect of this same situation that isn't apparent to this person could provide a different meaning frame?» or simply «What else could this behavior mean?» or «How else could I describe this same situation?»

When you have found a new frame for the behavior, take a moment or two to think of alternative ways of delivering the reframe, and then select the one that you think will get the maximum response. Pacing and leading will be extremely important in doing this. If you have difficulty, take the observer aside for a moment and use her as a resource.

When you have thought of a reframe, ask the client to repeat the complaint, and then deliver your reframe. Carefully observe the nonverbal changes in the client as he considers what you have said.

The observer and the programmer both have the job of getting a sensory–based description of the nonverbal changes that occur in the client as he makes the transition from complaining about a behavior to at least a partial appreciation of how the behavior has value for him within a different frame.

Do you have any questions?

Woman: What is the purpose of pausing before you reframe?

I want you to take the time to employ one of the specific strategies I offered you to come up with a verbal content reframe. If you are practiced in content reframing, and you have an immediate response, fine. Go ahead and make it. But if you have any hesitation, I want you to drop out. Go into internal experience and check all representational systems to figure out visually, auditorily, or kinesthetically how you could verbally reframe the content of the complaint.

If you are practiced in reframing, it will be to your advantage to take a little time to figure out what your own typical strategy for verbal content reframing is, and use any other one, so that you increase your flexibility. If you usually lead visually and search for alternate contexts visually, try doing it kinesthetically or auditorily.

Come back to me with a successful example of each kind of content reframe, and with a specific sensory–based description of the changes that you saw in the client. We'll compare the descriptions to find out how we can generalize about the things that you observed. Any other questions about this exercise? . , . OK. Go ahead.