Meta-beliefs by Steve Stubbs
A couple of days ago I posted the essentials of Albert Ellis' ABC theory, which you can use with clients who present with situations of the "somebody did A and that made me feel C" variety. If you read it, you know that beliefs which tend to be out of awareness are the reason clients present with these kinds of situations, and the key is therefore to persuade the client to reconsider the troubling belief. Today I will explain a technique for doing this which, like the ABC theory itself, is simple but not obvious. I know it is not obvious because nobody is doing it.
I wanted to break this discussion into two parts to keep it from becoming confusing. I have not been able to find doing a google search that anyone in the NLP community is writing about or teaching this system for inducing belief change, so if they are not, you will be the first to read about it, and if they are, you will get my take on it for what it is worth. I have found it useful enough that it seems worthwhile to share it.
This requires learning to think a bit differently than most people do think about beliefs, so let yourself chew on it if need be. Bear in mind also, this is just a high level overview of a very complex and interesting subject. I will cover the most important points.
Let me start with an anecdote. I used to be married to a woman who manifested paranoid schizophrenia. She went to see a social worker and they engaged in a dialogue which had the following general form:
CLIENT: "There is a conspiracy out there and it is directed against me."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
This went on every week, for a fifty minute hour each week, and paid the therapist's rent for fourteen years beginning when she was a teenager. It did not go on very long after I entered the scene, let it be said, which of course made me a very unpopular person (VUP for short) with the therapist in question. When I was learning to do counseling I listened to a lecture by another therapist, also a social worker, who described having a very similar conversation with another paranoid. They argued until the social worker was exhausted and the paranoid reigned triumphant, but with his dysfunctional belief system in the same state as it was in at the beginning. It goes on every day in every major city in the country, and the result is always the same. The result is that there is no result, except that the therapists pay for their mansions and sports cars sucking session fees out of their hapless clients.
If you want to actually help people, it is apparent spending your life in this mode does not work. So what is wrong with this picture?
The client's input to this transaction can be re-stated in the form:
"But it's TRUE."
This is the actual language most clients use. If we re-state this we get:
"I believe that my belief that [fill in the blanks] is TRUE."
Which makes it clear that it is not a belief about reality but a belief about a belief about reality. "There is a conspiracy against me" is a belief about reality, albeit a possibly delusional one. But "It's TRUE" is a belief about the belief that there is a conspiracy. In other words, it is a meta-belief. The term meta- belief and the concept it represents are both well known to philosophers, but I have been unable to determine that anyone in NLP is teaching or using this.
Given that any statement of the form "It is TRUE" is a meta-belief, we see that the client-therapist interaction of the form "Yeah, it is/No, it's not/Yeah, it is/No, it's not" consists of two people stating meta-beliefs and mismatching each other. It does not work partly because there is no information being exchanged. The interaction is just a power struggle that each side intends to win for different reasons. Moreover, THE THERAPIST AND CLIENT ARE BOTH INTERACTING ON THE SAME META-LEVEL. They are both in the same boat, in other words, which is what NLP people mean when we say the blind are leading the blind. Leslie Cameron-Bandler made that general point in a completely different context in one of her books. One of the key ideas of NLP is you have to get out of the client's boat or you will both wash downstream together. Part of the trick to escaping this dilemma is to operate on a different meta-level from the client. But there are other and more important reasons why this exchange does not work.
Consider this: the client believes that the meta-belief "It's TRUE" is the result of some process of scientific investigation, which would make it an epistemological statement. That is itself a meta-belief. But the energy in the belief system comes from yet another meta-belief of the form:
"This belief system is very important to me and I must not give it up."
That is of course the reason the client refuses to reconsider his or her beliefs. And there is another meta-belief in the hierarchy which takes the form:
"This belief system makes it possible for me to negotiate with reality in a way that is beneficial to me."
This is the meta-level on which, if the client is challenged, he or she will easily reconsider lower order beliefs and meta-beliefs, and, if necessary, do something with them. Meta-beliefs at that level are out of awareness, whereas meta-beliefs at the "this is true" level are very much in awareness.
So, I have found it useful to explain to clients that we form beliefs because they make it possible for us to negotiate successfully with the world of external reality. The process of getting educated and growing wiser is after all just a process of accumulating belief systems. And that being the case, the way I see it, it does not matter whether a belief is right or wrong, or true or false in the scientific sense, or "rational" or "irrational" in the Albert Ellis sense. The only thing that matters is whether or not the belief does what it is supposed to do by making it possible for us to deal with the world as effectively as possible.
After saying that, I invite the client to consider whether the belief that seems to be causing distress serves the client's highest and best interest. Of course the answer is "no," or the client and I would not be talking. Once the client recognizes this, I invite that client to consider whether he or she wants to keep that belief as is or do something with it. People do not like to change, so I never suggest that anyone change anything. Richard Bandler has all these books entitled Use Your Brain for a Change, and Time for a Change, and change this and change that. "Change" is a big word in the NLP community, but that strikes me as strange because if you want to get the client into a resistant state and make sure nothing worthwhile happens, just start talking about change. I prefer to tell people without being too obvious about it not to change anything, just get the results they want. That is known as a paradoxical intervention. They can work out at the unconscious level how to resolve the paradox. I always structure my language so that the "C" word never comes out. I don't even like using it in an e-mail.
Once the client recognizes that the belief is the problem, and that it is not serving its intended purpose, and that he or she is invited to consider "doing something with it," the whole belief system starts to shift. The root of the challenge is really not the dysfunctional belief itself, but the meta-belief that the dysfunctional belief works.
One other thing I tell people is that people (other than themselves) believe every cockamamie thing you can think of. Everybody knows this is true, and when they agree, I tell them that is proof that they have the power to believe whatever they wish. So they might as well believe something which is beneficial to them. It is desirable to use ambiguous language here, because if you say you think specifically the Jim Jones suicide cult was a cockamamie pile of crap, the client will proclaim that she is a charter member, or something such as that. By using ambiguous language you knock that weapon out of the client's hand.
Does it work? The first time I used this was with the lady referred to earlier who argued with a therapist for fourteen years that she was the victim of a conspiracy. We had three conversations on the subject, each of which lasted less than five minutes, and during the third conversation she told me she had concluded that the conspiracy was just a delusion after all, and that she had decided to give it up.
So, yes, it does work.
Incidentally, this is a product of the modeling technique that led to the development of NLP in the first place. NLP teachers refer to modeling very briefly in their master practitioner trainings, but since they are not taught how modeling is done, they tend to skip over it rather quickly. As a result, almost all the innovation in the field is done by Richard Bandler, who is by all accounts an extraordinary genius, and by his erstwhile acolyte, Robert Dilts. It is easy to see that a seminar on modeling would have no commercial value, but it is also easy to see that modeling could be taught as an integral part of a master practitioner course. I am not an NLP teacher, so this is a suggestion to those who are. Bandler will not be with us forever. You teachers need to start training modelers or NLP will wither and die.
A couple of days ago I posted the essentials of Albert Ellis' ABC theory, which you can use with clients who present with situations of the "somebody did A and that made me feel C" variety. If you read it, you know that beliefs which tend to be out of awareness are the reason clients present with these kinds of situations, and the key is therefore to persuade the client to reconsider the troubling belief. Today I will explain a technique for doing this which, like the ABC theory itself, is simple but not obvious. I know it is not obvious because nobody is doing it.
I wanted to break this discussion into two parts to keep it from becoming confusing. I have not been able to find doing a google search that anyone in the NLP community is writing about or teaching this system for inducing belief change, so if they are not, you will be the first to read about it, and if they are, you will get my take on it for what it is worth. I have found it useful enough that it seems worthwhile to share it.
This requires learning to think a bit differently than most people do think about beliefs, so let yourself chew on it if need be. Bear in mind also, this is just a high level overview of a very complex and interesting subject. I will cover the most important points.
Let me start with an anecdote. I used to be married to a woman who manifested paranoid schizophrenia. She went to see a social worker and they engaged in a dialogue which had the following general form:
CLIENT: "There is a conspiracy out there and it is directed against me."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
THERAPIST: "No, there's not."
CLIENT: "Yeah, there is."
This went on every week, for a fifty minute hour each week, and paid the therapist's rent for fourteen years beginning when she was a teenager. It did not go on very long after I entered the scene, let it be said, which of course made me a very unpopular person (VUP for short) with the therapist in question. When I was learning to do counseling I listened to a lecture by another therapist, also a social worker, who described having a very similar conversation with another paranoid. They argued until the social worker was exhausted and the paranoid reigned triumphant, but with his dysfunctional belief system in the same state as it was in at the beginning. It goes on every day in every major city in the country, and the result is always the same. The result is that there is no result, except that the therapists pay for their mansions and sports cars sucking session fees out of their hapless clients.
If you want to actually help people, it is apparent spending your life in this mode does not work. So what is wrong with this picture?
The client's input to this transaction can be re-stated in the form:
"But it's TRUE."
This is the actual language most clients use. If we re-state this we get:
"I believe that my belief that [fill in the blanks] is TRUE."
Which makes it clear that it is not a belief about reality but a belief about a belief about reality. "There is a conspiracy against me" is a belief about reality, albeit a possibly delusional one. But "It's TRUE" is a belief about the belief that there is a conspiracy. In other words, it is a meta-belief. The term meta- belief and the concept it represents are both well known to philosophers, but I have been unable to determine that anyone in NLP is teaching or using this.
Given that any statement of the form "It is TRUE" is a meta-belief, we see that the client-therapist interaction of the form "Yeah, it is/No, it's not/Yeah, it is/No, it's not" consists of two people stating meta-beliefs and mismatching each other. It does not work partly because there is no information being exchanged. The interaction is just a power struggle that each side intends to win for different reasons. Moreover, THE THERAPIST AND CLIENT ARE BOTH INTERACTING ON THE SAME META-LEVEL. They are both in the same boat, in other words, which is what NLP people mean when we say the blind are leading the blind. Leslie Cameron-Bandler made that general point in a completely different context in one of her books. One of the key ideas of NLP is you have to get out of the client's boat or you will both wash downstream together. Part of the trick to escaping this dilemma is to operate on a different meta-level from the client. But there are other and more important reasons why this exchange does not work.
Consider this: the client believes that the meta-belief "It's TRUE" is the result of some process of scientific investigation, which would make it an epistemological statement. That is itself a meta-belief. But the energy in the belief system comes from yet another meta-belief of the form:
"This belief system is very important to me and I must not give it up."
That is of course the reason the client refuses to reconsider his or her beliefs. And there is another meta-belief in the hierarchy which takes the form:
"This belief system makes it possible for me to negotiate with reality in a way that is beneficial to me."
This is the meta-level on which, if the client is challenged, he or she will easily reconsider lower order beliefs and meta-beliefs, and, if necessary, do something with them. Meta-beliefs at that level are out of awareness, whereas meta-beliefs at the "this is true" level are very much in awareness.
So, I have found it useful to explain to clients that we form beliefs because they make it possible for us to negotiate successfully with the world of external reality. The process of getting educated and growing wiser is after all just a process of accumulating belief systems. And that being the case, the way I see it, it does not matter whether a belief is right or wrong, or true or false in the scientific sense, or "rational" or "irrational" in the Albert Ellis sense. The only thing that matters is whether or not the belief does what it is supposed to do by making it possible for us to deal with the world as effectively as possible.
After saying that, I invite the client to consider whether the belief that seems to be causing distress serves the client's highest and best interest. Of course the answer is "no," or the client and I would not be talking. Once the client recognizes this, I invite that client to consider whether he or she wants to keep that belief as is or do something with it. People do not like to change, so I never suggest that anyone change anything. Richard Bandler has all these books entitled Use Your Brain for a Change, and Time for a Change, and change this and change that. "Change" is a big word in the NLP community, but that strikes me as strange because if you want to get the client into a resistant state and make sure nothing worthwhile happens, just start talking about change. I prefer to tell people without being too obvious about it not to change anything, just get the results they want. That is known as a paradoxical intervention. They can work out at the unconscious level how to resolve the paradox. I always structure my language so that the "C" word never comes out. I don't even like using it in an e-mail.
Once the client recognizes that the belief is the problem, and that it is not serving its intended purpose, and that he or she is invited to consider "doing something with it," the whole belief system starts to shift. The root of the challenge is really not the dysfunctional belief itself, but the meta-belief that the dysfunctional belief works.
One other thing I tell people is that people (other than themselves) believe every cockamamie thing you can think of. Everybody knows this is true, and when they agree, I tell them that is proof that they have the power to believe whatever they wish. So they might as well believe something which is beneficial to them. It is desirable to use ambiguous language here, because if you say you think specifically the Jim Jones suicide cult was a cockamamie pile of crap, the client will proclaim that she is a charter member, or something such as that. By using ambiguous language you knock that weapon out of the client's hand.
Does it work? The first time I used this was with the lady referred to earlier who argued with a therapist for fourteen years that she was the victim of a conspiracy. We had three conversations on the subject, each of which lasted less than five minutes, and during the third conversation she told me she had concluded that the conspiracy was just a delusion after all, and that she had decided to give it up.
So, yes, it does work.
Incidentally, this is a product of the modeling technique that led to the development of NLP in the first place. NLP teachers refer to modeling very briefly in their master practitioner trainings, but since they are not taught how modeling is done, they tend to skip over it rather quickly. As a result, almost all the innovation in the field is done by Richard Bandler, who is by all accounts an extraordinary genius, and by his erstwhile acolyte, Robert Dilts. It is easy to see that a seminar on modeling would have no commercial value, but it is also easy to see that modeling could be taught as an integral part of a master practitioner course. I am not an NLP teacher, so this is a suggestion to those who are. Bandler will not be with us forever. You teachers need to start training modelers or NLP will wither and die.