Glossary

Aligning Perceptual Positions– Successful people in many disciplines are able to shift their perceptual position flexibly, supporting their skills and abilities with effective communication. There are three major perceptual positions:

• SELF position is experiencing the world from my own position. I see and hear other people and the world around me from my own point of view, have my own feelings, etc.
• OTHER position is experiencing the world literally from some other person's position. If I remember a conversation with a friend, I recall it as him, seeing and hearing events from his viewpoint.
• OBSERVER position means experiencing the world from the outside, as an observer. If I do this, I literally observe myself and my circumstances with another person or situation from the outside, being able to have a neutral and objective perspective. This can be a very resourceful place to come from.

We want to have the choice to be in different perceptual positions and move freely through them all.

Attempted Solutions – Behaviors we use to try to solve problems that tend to contribute to creating and perpetuating our problems. (Example: Being on a diet to lose weight which keeps us focused on food and obsessing about what we can’t have.) A key to intervening in Brief Strategic Therapy is to interrupt the Attempted Solution, helping people shift the patterns from doing more of the same.

Chunking down – The process of breaking down terms and defining the underlying behaviors, thoughts and feelings that contribute to what is actually going on with a person.

Chunking up – NLP uses this term to refer to putting peoples’ problems into categories.

Core Transformation – A process (developed by Connirae and Tamara Andreas in 1991) that provides ways to facilitate automatic, natural personal change. With roots in NLP, Core Transformation is a ten-step process that accesses our inner resources to transform Parts and patterns to the core, helping us experience more satisfying relationships, a sense of wholeness within, and profound inner states of peace.

Customer – The Customer is a term from the Mental Research Institute, the Brief Strategic Therapy group. They recognized that change is difficult and we need to have motivation to do what is needed to make it happen. They refer to the person in the system who has the most motivation for change as the Customer and that is the person who is the focus for therapy to help create change in the whole system. For example, when parents would bring in an acting out adolescent, I would recognize the youngster was probably not interested in working on change in therapy, so focused on interventions with the parent(s) in order to help the teen become motivated for change.

Going Within – A way to guide ourselves to find our answers within through quieting the conscious mind (internal images and dialogue) and notice responses that emerge from our inner knowing self.

Insanity – Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Wondering why nothing changes when we don’t do anything to change.

Internal Response Affects External Behavior Which Affects Our Internal Response –

When we change a pattern by changing our internal response to a person or situation, the external behavior we experience shifts, which helps our internal response to the situation change. We can attempt to change the external circumstances in order to help ourselves feel better; however, that takes a lot of energy and usually does not work to get us the response we want.

Looking for The Keys in The Wrong Place – Relates to experiences people have when they are seeking answers to their problems from conscious mind understanding when really the answers we are looking for are in the unconscious mind, our inner patterns and programs, the tapes that play in our head. The unconscious is where we need to explore in order to help create changes. I often share with my clients a story about the man who lost his keys in a parking lot at night. He was found looking for his keys on the other side of the parking lot. When asked why, he said, “Because it is dark and the streetlight is overhead, so I have a lighted view to be able to find them.”

Map for Change –

Define Problem State → Desired Outcome (Using Well-Formed Outcome Conditions defining ways to measure progress and results). Identify what you have already been trying to do to solve the problem (Attempted Solution). Interrupt the Attempted Solution and find ways to do something different. Determine if there are other patterns that come up that get in the way of being able to achieve your goal (WP?). Notice if what you are doing is helping you move toward your goals – measure behavioral results that indicate signs of change. If things are working differently and better, keep doing what you are that is contributing to a positive and new direction. If not, do something different. Work with helping unwanted thoughts, feelings, behaviors and beliefs to determine inner needs trying to be met, find and experience other better ways to have the experience of what the Part has wanted.

Miracle Question – Suppose that tonight, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens. The miracle is that your problem is solved. When you wake up tomorrow morning, what will be different that will let you know the miracle has happened and life is better in ways you want? What would be different in your life as a result of this miracle?

Developed by Steve deShazer and Insoo Berg to guide people to reach their goals in Brief Strategic Family Therapy

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) – An approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, in the 1970s. According to Bandler and Grinder, there is a connection between neurological processes (neuro-), language (linguistic), and behavioral patterns learned through experience (programming), and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals. NLP "models excellence" and teaches the strategies of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire those skills. Bandler and Grinder claim that, often in a single session, NLP can treat problems such as anxiety and phobias, depression, psychosomatic illnesses, allergies, and much more.

NLP Presuppositions – Assumptions and basic principles applied to working with NLP.

1. Any behavior was the best choice anyone had at the time.
2. Behind every behavior there is a positive intention.
3. There is no failure, only feedback.
4. The meaning of the message is the response that follows OR Communication is the response you get back.
5. If what you are doing isn’t working, do something different.
6. The one with the most flexibility wins. (Often, children in a parent-child relationship.)
7. The past does not equal the future (no one is broken).
8. The map is not the territory. Perception is often projection.
9. Respect the map and model of the world of others.
10. You cannot not communicate (manipulate).
11. Everyone already has all the tools they need to achieve their desired outcomes (If anyone can do it, you can too!)
12. Healing does not occur in a logical way. It occurs at the unconscious level in working with and transforming underlying patterns and programs.
13. Resistance of a person in a conversation is a sign of lack of rapport and inflexibility of the other.
14. Choice is better than no choice.

Pacing and Leading – A key skill from NLP to gain rapport or join a person where they are in order to gently guide someone in a new direction, through matching representational systems, breathing rate, posture, etc.

Parts – Aspects of ourselves that experience patterns of thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and beliefs. Parts is a term from Core Transformation referring to Limiting Parts of ourselves where we are stuck and want to create different and better choices (in areas such as anger, worry, self-deprecation, or substance abuse).

Positive Intention – Refers to the underlying positive purpose of what a Part is attempting to achieve. It often does not accomplish the desired outcome it has wanted for us, yet it has the intention of trying to be helpful.

Process Level of Change – As humans we operate as a holistic system. We can intervene at any point in the cycle of mind/body/spirit to create change in everything else. Medications focus on change at the physiological level in order to change the emotional response. Effective change work helps to transform things at the emotional response level to help change physiology. When we feel anxious or mad, we have a very different physiological experience than when we are happy and peaceful.

Representational Systems – We re-create information from the world into thoughts using visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, or gustatory re-presentations in our minds.

Structure: Surface – What a circumstance seems to be from the external perspective (Example: “I am depressed”).

Structure: Deeper – What is going on in deeper patterns of thoughts, feelings, behaviors and belief that contribute to experience. (Example: What contributes to being depressed? I tell myself I am never good enough and beat myself for not meeting up to my (unrealistic) expectations.)

2-Point Loop – We do something to try to solve a problem. It doesn’t work to get the response we want. We get caught in doing more of it. It doesn’t work > Do more of it (Repeat).

Well-Formed Outcome Conditions – Conditions that were developed based on modeling successful people who demonstrated consistent effort and action, allowing them to be successful in moving toward their desired outcomes. They were found to use specific means to achieve their goals that are defined as well-formed outcome conditions:

1. Focus on what you want in positive terms (rather than what you don’t want).
2. It must be able to be initiated and maintained by you (rather than trying to change someone else to get what you want).
3. “Chunk down” into something manageable and achievable (rather than global and utopian). What behavioral evidence will indicate you are moving toward your goal?
4. Identify and address the negative and positive consequences of achieving your desired outcome?
5. Be sure to incorporate the positive intention of the unwanted behavior in your goal.

What Prevents? (WP?) – When you have a goal, yet are not finding yourself moving toward it, it is useful to go within and notice what underlying thoughts, feelings, behaviors and beliefs come up that get in the way of doing what you need to achieve your goals? (This is often used as the focus for the Part to work with the Core Transformation process.)