up remarkably well over the years. Basically, the model suggested that we each use our five senses slightly differently from each other to process incoming information. The models we make depend on which senses we favor, what information we take in and how much we leave out, and how we interpret whatever does get through. To summarize briefly:
Neurological constraints. We receive information about the world through five sensory input channels—visual, auditory, kinesthetic (feelings), smell (olfactory), and taste (gustatory). Rather than each sense being given equal weight with every other sense, each of us favors one or two over the others. Of course, we know there’s considerable overlap in the parts of the brain responsible for processing our senses, but one or the other usually dominates in experience. This is known as your sensory preference or preferred sensory system.
Social restraints. As members of a particular society, we are subject to a number of mutually agreed-upon filters, the most significant of which is the language we are born to speak.
The more specific our language is, and the more distinctions we can make, the richer our experience will be. This concept is central to the practice of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and hypnosis. Words are power, and the language patterns you will learn from this book will help harness this power for yourself and for others.
Individual constraints. As its name suggests, the third category of constraints develops out of our personal experience. We are each born into a particular set of circumstances, and as we grow up we encounter an increasing number of experiences, which in turn give rise to unique likes and dislikes, habits, rules, beliefs, and values. The maps we create from these can become rich and useful, or limited and destructive, and unless we understand how we create our subjective world, we will continue to live in confusion and pain.
People don’t make themselves miserable out of choice, even though it sometimes looks that way. NLP doesn’t see people as bad, crazy, or sick. Our viewpoint is that they are operating out of an impoverished map, limited in the number of choices they have. To put it another way, they mistake the model for reality. This is what we mean when we say: The map is not the territory.
The richness and poverty of our maps are created by three filtering mechanisms: deletion, distortion, and generalization. These are all processes we need to carry out to manage the information that is coming at us so we are not overwhelmed. Problems occur when the wrong information is deleted, distorted, or generalized, creating patterns that either don’t support our well-being or actively diminish it.
Deletion. Deletion occurs when we pay attention to certain parts of our experience at the expense of others, which we do naturally. Think about being in a crowded room, talking to a friend. You automatically screen out the buzz of other people’s conversation…until you hear your name spoken by someone on the other side of the room.
Deletion is a necessary and useful mechanism for making sure your world is manageable in size, but in certain circumstances it can create pain and suffering. For example, I’ve never met a depressed person who can remember a time when he was really happy. As far as depressives are concerned, they’ve always been unhappy. Equally, sufferers of chronic pain often don’t notice those times when their pain is reduced or nonexistent. Certain people believe the world is a hostile place and simply fail to notice how many people act in a caring or supportive way.
Distortion. Distortion is a quality that all creative people have in abundance. We need to be able to shift the meaning of—to distort—present reality to be able to create something new. (Great writers and artists are experts in distortion.) However, as pattern-making beings, we are equally inclined to distort reality in ways that cause us pain and distress.
Some years ago I was in a restaurant, listening to a couple at the next table having a fight. The man said something really nice—obviously wanting to make peace with his partner—and she snapped back: “Oh, you’re just saying that to make me feel better!”
Of course he was trying to make her feel better—nothing wrong with that, as far as I could see. But she distorted into a hostile act his attempt to make peace. So I leaned over and said: “Yeah, he’s really bad that way. Imagine wanting to make the woman he loves feel good.” For a moment, they were both stunned. Then they laughed and started to talk to each other in a much nicer way.
Generalization. The third mechanism is generalization—the process by which a person takes one or two experiences and decides that this is the way all things are meant to be, all the time.
Generalization is useful as a tool in learning. If we cut ourselves when we are careless with a sharp implement, we generalize to the extent that we believe “all” sharp instruments are capable of injuring us, so we treat them with respect. We have learned over many hundreds of thousands of years to stay alive by applying generalization.
Generalization, as has already been mentioned, is the mechanism by which people all over the planet know how to open doors, simply because they’ve generalized information out of one or two formative experiences, but generalization is also at the root of many problems. When I was still at school, teachers believed we left-handers should be forced to write with our right hands. Their method of instruction was to patrol our desks and whack us with rulers when they found us writing with the “wrong” hand.
Later, I got to do more things my way. As a person who was still left-handed, I reversed all the doors in my house to make things easier for myself. Everywhere else, the front door opened inward. Mine opened outward; it just felt better that way.
However, friends of mine would come along, try to get in, then say, “Hey, your door’s jammed.” I’d come along, open it the other way, and then next time they came along, the same thing would happen. Their motor programs just couldn’t cope with an exception to their generalization about the way doors “should” be.
Generalization can have serious consequences on people’s lives when they fail to undo generalizations that no longer work. Someone who was mistreated as a child may decide that all men (or women) or all authority figures are to be feared and disliked. A person who experiences several failed relationships may decide that love is for losers and withdraw into a lonely existence. Sexual dysfunction among some men persists because they believe a single incident will necessarily apply to all physical encounters.
Basically, generalization occurs when someone applies a single rule to all situations that resemble the one in which the original rule was formulated. The context has been altered from “one” to “all,” from “sometimes” to “always.”
Understanding this mechanism gives us insight into much behavior that otherwise seems strange or even bizarre. If we recognize that the rule makes sense in the appropriate context, we can start to help people restore the behavior to the situation or situations in which it originated, or help to create new and more appropriate behaviors. Based on this NLP approach, we can say, at some level, that all behavior has positive intent.
Freedom can only start to come when we restore information to an impoverished map. Once we begin to explore how each individual reality is constructed, we open ourselves and others to a whole range of options and opportunities. Rather than trying to take away people’s discomfort or unwanted responses—to make people “not have” depression or anxiety or an eating disorder— we create new choices for them in the belief that, when they have more and better choices than before, they will make them on a more consistent basis.
Exercise: Identifying Your Sensory Preferences
You can do this exercise with a partner or by yourself. If you are alone, it helps greatly to speak out loud, possibly into a voice recorder so you can review your experiences later.
1 Imagine
