The NLP meta-model or neuro-linguistic programming (or meta-model of therapy) is a set of questions designed to specify information, challenge, and expand the limits to a person’s model of the world.
The meta-model draws on transformational grammar and general semantics, the idea that language is a translation of mental states into words.
What Is NLP Meta Model
(Abby Eagle) The NLP Meta Model is a linguistic tool that was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and first published in The Structure of Magic, Volume 1 in 1975. It was later updated by Michael Hall and published in Communication Magic in 1997.
It gives you a set of questions to help you gather high-quality information. Use it to find out what people actually mean by their communication not what you think they are saying.
If you meta-model your own thought processes then you can achieve more in life.
The Meta Model is based upon the notion that we don’t operate on the world directly but take in information through our sense organs and using the three universal modeling processes of distortion, generalization, and deletion form an internal representation (a map) in pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells (VAKOG).
The maps that we make in our minds are not the world itself but an internal representation of it. Alfred Korzybski, founder of General Semantics coined the phrase,
“The map is not the territory”.
The NLP Meta Model has three categories.
1. Distortions
2. Generalizations
3. Deletions
Distortions
Distortion is the process that allows you to construct, manufacture, create and manipulate sensory data. Distortion is the process of bringing in information through your senses and then playing with that information in your mind to create new concepts, ideas, and understandings.
Different ways of thinking about the world, philosophy, spirituality, religion, ideology, fantasizing about a lover, creating new inventions, writing fiction, and producing films all rely upon the ability to distort so-called reality. The ability to play with thoughts in your mind allows you to build goals for the future
a future that causes you pain or pleasure.
Generalizations
Generalization is the process by which you take an element of your model of the world and use it to represent an entire category of experience. For example, a small child learns that things have ‘handles’ that enable them to be held, moved, opened, and manipulated in some way.
For example, a cup has a handle; a door has a handle; a key can be thought of as a handle; a bag has a handle; a knife and fork are handles that give you a tool to cut and hold. A tap is a handle to open and close water flow; an ‘on-off’ switch is a handle; a remote control device for television has some handles called ‘buttons’, and so on.
Generalizations can work for or against you. For example, having one bad experience with a member of one religion does not mean that all the people who share that religion are the same. In one context it may not be okay to use certain types of words but that does not necessarily mean that it is not okay in other contexts.
Having one bad experience with a woman does not mean all women are the same.
when people create these types of generalizations it may limit rather than enhance their lives.
Deletions
Deletion is the process of selective attention. Whether this is a conscious decision or an unconscious process it is clearly impossible to pay attention to the mass of information that impacts your senses. At some level of awareness, you have to choose what to pay attention to.
By choosing to focus on some aspect of your sensory experience you naturally have to delete other information, for example. To hear someone in a crowded room you may have to concentrate on the speaker and not listen to other conversations.
Driving a car in heavy traffic you may need to focus on the road ahead to the detriment of the scenery that passes you by. In a garden, you may choose to enjoy the fragrance of a rose yet ignore other sights, sounds, sensations, and smells.
At times deletion may be useful yet in other contexts, it may result in an impoverished experience. For example, if you delete the nice things that people say to you and do for you, and instead focus on what they did not do or say then you may feel unloved.
Examples Of Meta Model In NLP
This section is to show you some examples of The NLP Meta Model
Let’s start with
Mind-Reading
Somebody says to somebody else, “You don’t like me.” Well, that’s a mind-read, isn’t it?
So what would be the response to that? Well that would be “How do you know I don’t like you?” and what that will do is it recovers the source of the information. If the comeback from that is, “Well you looked at me funny on Tuesday afternoon in 1973.”
1. Lost Performative.
“It’s bad to be inconsistent.”
Well, where’s the performer of that? Who’s saying that?
So the response is, “Who says it’s bad? According to whom? How do you know it’s bad? It’s bad to be inconsistent – well how do you know? Who says? which will gather valuable information, recovers the source of the belief, and hopefully recovers the performer of that particular statement.
2. Cause and Effect.
“You make me sad.”
Now here’s a counter-question to this. Now it’s quite a long one, and
there are two ways you can answer it. One is: “How does what I’m doing cause you to choose to feel sad?” And the other one could be: “Well, how?”
You could say “How, specifically,” but “How” is quite good. And what that does is, it recovers the choice. Remembering they made themselves feel sad – nobody can make anybody feel anything, so they’ve done a cause and effect violation there. So with the Cause and Effect, that will get your client back to their own responsibility and it’s normally going to be an “I” statement, like “Oh, I feel I’m not good enough” or “Oh.
I’m the one who didn’t do the communication,” “Oh I’m the one who’s making me feel sad, it’s nothing to do with you.” They’ll normally come up with that.
that will be more truthful than the blame that they’re putting on somebody else.
3. Complex Equivalence.
Now remembering that Complex Equivalence, This means This. Red Light means Stop. And the pattern we’ve got here is “She’s always yelling at me, she doesn’t like me.” The response you’re going to give is “How does her yelling mean that she doesn’t like you? Have you ever yelled at somebody you liked?” Well of course you have. So how does yelling mean this, how does that mean that? In other words, she’s saying “this means this”.
You’re saying “Does it? Show me. How does it mean that?”
4. Presuppositions.
“If my husband knew how much I suffered, he wouldn’t do that.” Now there are three presuppositions in this sentence. One is that the person suffers – “I suffer”. Two is that my husband acts in some way, and Three, my husband doesn’t know I suffer.
There are three questions you can ask here.
1. How do you choose to suffer?
2. How is he acting, or reacting?
3. How do you know he doesn’t know you suffer?
Now, remember that there may be another NLP Meta Model pattern that comes up after you ask this question.
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