From: lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady)
Subject: Re: NLP
Followup-To: sci.psychology
Summary: Problems with visualization (Part II)
Keywords:  NLP  NeuroLinguistic Programming
Organization: University of Hawaii (Mathematics Dept)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 23:36:06 GMT


An interesting thing is that a few months before I did the training this
summer, a friend of mine did something that made me very upset and in the
midst of my anger I was suddenly aware that I was creating a very
definite picture, and that it was somewhat small and dark.  And I thought
to myself "Gee, that's really interesting, I actually have a picture in
my mind and am aware of the submodalities."  But I didn't do anything
about it then, because I was too caught up in being angry.  

Then during the training this summer it occurred to me that it would
be useful to remember that picture -- a genuine submodalities experience!
And so I recalled the picture I'd had and tried making it larger and
brighter.  And to my amazement, as soon as I made it larger and
brighter all the negative feelings associated with it disappeared.

Well, that was certainly interesting.  Then later on it occurred to me
that there's another picture that flashes through my mind from time to
time when I think about a particular subject that always depresses me.
And I realized that that picture is also somewhat small and dark.  So I
tried making it brighter and larger and all of a sudden it wasn't
depressing any more.  In fact, that picture has been associated for me
with a feeling and a verbal thought something like "I'm never going to be
able to have that."  And when I made the picture large and bright there
wasn't really any explicit internal verbalization, but the feeling was
something like "Actually, I do know what that experience is like and I
have actually had it from time to time and the reality of it is that
it's not such a big deal."

People are very different, so my experience may or may not be useful to
someone else.  I find that I can usually visualize more easily with my
eyes open than closed.  (For people who are good at visualizing it's
usually the opposite.)  And for me, *trying* hard really gets in the way.
If you say to me "Think of a time when you were really happy" my mind
will almost certainly go blank.  It works much better if you ask me
"What's a time when you were really happy?" or "Have you ever been really
happy in your life?"  (And since I'm a natural counter-exampler, what
works best of all with me is to say something like "Maybe you've never
had the experience of being really happy.")  

Another thing that I think frequently has gone wrong with my
visualizations is that I just didn't find the "right" image -- the one
that has real impact.  For instance, in the motivation strategy one is
supposed to visualize what it will look like when the task in question has
been completed.  Eight years ago, when I went through this during my
basic Practitioner Training, I tried to do this for the task of making up
an exam.  But when I tried to visualize the completed exam I got hung up
because I couldn't know what the exam would look like until I actually
had it made up.  Then the people working with me had me imagine myself
in the classroom passing the exam out.  But the exercise really didn't
seem to have much impact on me, as far as I could tell then.

At least a year later, I had just finished typing up an exam and I
laid the typed copy on my desk and looked at it with a feeling of
satisfaction and relief that it was finally done.  And then I
realized:  Bingo!  That was the image I needed for my motivation
strategy: the image of the exam typed up and lying on my desk ready
to be run off.  And I was looking at the exam from just far enough away
that I didn't need to see the individual questions.

In the training last summer we went through an exercise that approached
motivation in a different way.  I imagined myself in a situation in
which I am very unmotivated, namely making phone calls to get
information from people.  Then I imagined myself about to grade a set
of exams, which is something I don't procrastinate about even though I
don't like it.  And what I realized was that in the first case, my gaze
was wandering all around my apartment, whereas in the second case my
focus zeroed right in on the stack of exams and stayed there.  I can't
report yet on whether I can successfully use that idea to stop
procrastinating about things.  

Later on this summer when we learned the Forgiveness Pattern, I had no
sense of any distinction of size or brightness between remembering a
person I had been able to forgive and one I was not able to forgive.
But what struck me was that when I thought of the person I could not
forgive I had an image of her face, whereas the image of the other
person was full body and farther away from me.  Changing this (plus the
other steps in the pattern) seemed to work to enable me to forgive the
person I wanted to.

So if you can't see submodality distinctions, one possibility is that
you're just looking for the wrong ones.  Even if you can't really "see"
your pictures, I think if you start recalling a lot of different
situations that you have contrasting feelings about, you'll eventually
notice some pattern in the quality of those vaguely sensed images.

--

Imagination is greater than knowledge.  -- Einstein 

lady@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu         lady@uhunix.bitnet
Newsgroups: sci.psychology