The Solution Is Often In The Least Represented Repersentational System
Author
Damon Cart
Date
Oct 12, 2015
Tags
General tips
Content
Author
By Damon Cart
I heard Tim Hallbom speak the words of the title of this article once during one of his trainings. I don't know if he was the first to say it or if he heard it from someone else and was just repeating it, but it was something I already knew deep down and had experienced. I just hadn't put words to it so concisely.
How I had first come to this understanding was during Master Practitioner training at NLP University when we were working on Reimprinting. If you're not familiar with Reimprinting its an advanced NLP process that deals with limiting beliefs and is one of the most powerful processes used in NLP if not the most powerful. After watching Robert Dilts demonstrate it with a student we broke into groups of three students per group. One person would be the subject while one guided and the other helped the guide using his or her manual to hit all of the steps. I volunteered to be the subject and we began.
Having no experience with reimprinting prior to this we sort of felt our way through it. I got in touch with a belief that I couldn't get ahead in my business. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder as if it was literally holding me back and preventing me from moving forward. I followed the hand stepping backward toward the origin of the sensation. The guide walked me through the steps in the manual all the way to the final step. I became very emotional at the end as subjects often do during this process. Though I had gained insight that I hadn't had before doing the process it still felt unresolved.
I took this to Robert Dilts to learn what was missing. What follows is not an exact transcription of our conversation. This is what I remember:
Robert: What was the resource you discovered that's needed?
Me: To be myself. Authenticity.
Robert: Go back into the situation when you were three or four years old. See what you saw and feel your father's hand on your shoulder and hear what you heard.
Me: I don't hear anything.
Robert: Bring in the audio. If you could hear something what would it be?
Me: "You're not going anywhere!" My father is saying I'm not going anywhere.
Robert: Now bring in the resource and when you do what do you hear now?
Me: You can go anywhere!
And as soon as I spoke the words 'You can go anywhere!' instead of feeling my father's hand pulling me back I felt his hand nudge me forward in an encouraging way. Needless to say I got very emotional again and I felt a tremendous burden fall away. I truly felt like I could go anywhere and do anything and that feeling has remained with me ever since. My limiting belief of not being able to get ahead in my business changed into not only getting ahead in that business but starting another business and not allowing myself to be limited to one source of income.
Often times when we feel like we have limited options in a situation it's not that we actually have limited choices it has to do with the information we're deleting from the situation. In many cases this comes in the form of the representational system (visual, kinesthetic, auditory) that either isn't represented in how you internally represent the experience of it or it's the representational system that has the least representation in your internal experience. In my case above I had deleted the audio and bringing it back in along with the resource resolved the issue.
A guide or a coach who either hasn't had this experience or isn't trained to understand such a phenomena could easily interpret someone's inability to bring in a resource or inability to see, hear and feel the outcome they desire as just resistance when actually it's the clue that can lead to resolving the problem and achieving the outcome.
When I encounter what appears to be resistance in clients I'm coaching I use the resistance as a clue to identifying the problem rather than trying to have them muscle through it or pretend like they can see, hear or feel something they really aren't accessing.
Recently I worked with a client who, after working on her meta outcome and realizing she was going to need trust as a resource in order to overcome her obstacles and achieve her outcome, discovered she had no visual sense of trust. She could feel it as a grounding and warm energy in her body. She could hear a soothing voice say "No matter what everything will be fine" and yet all she could see was a black screen. I had her return to the auditory and kinesthetic senses in order to increase the feeling of trust to see if we could break open the visual channel. Suddenly the voice changed and told her it wasn't going to be okay. She began to cry as she told me this and suddenly she saw someone dangling her outcome above her and moving it every time she jumped to reach it.
While some might think that a this point the coaching wasn't working or even worse that the coaching was causing the problem to flare up I knew this was clearly the key to her issue and that we were making progress. Without identifying this clue and working directly with the resistance she could have easily pulled away and made up the information I was eliciting just so she could get through the session and distract herself from resolving the impasse because it was too painful. However, after working with her she eventually was able to pull in the visual channel of trust and she was able to experience trust on a deep level. When she brought it in to her present state, her desired outcome and the long term effects of having that outcome became clearer and more real for her and felt more achievable than when we started the session.
Recognizing which representational channel is missing or which is underrepresented can be used in many cases to help people overcome obstacles. However, it's not limited to dealing with problems. Think of a memorable experience. If you like to write, write out the experience. If you prefer to describe it, video yourself or record it on a sound recorder (I prefer videoing off my laptop). Go back over what you've written (or the video or the sound recording) and make note of all the sensory predicates you used. If you video yourself take note of your physiology. What are you describing nonverbally? Are you using lots of hand gestures like people who lean on their kinesthetic sense often do? Do you look up a lot watching a movie or pictures to describe your story? Do you tend to tilt your head to the side and look at either or both of your ears while you tell the story?
Once you've done that notice the one or two representational channels you used most. Often there is a primary and a secondary and one that is hardly used or not used at all. Sometimes you'll find that you start with one to get the story going and switch to another as you get more involved in telling the story. Notice which system you lead with and which system you lean on the most.
Take the channel you used the least and focus on it as you retell the story. For instance, if you mostly used visual as the primary and then kinesthetic as your secondary and very little audio remember what you heard during your experience and retell the story focusing on everything you heard. You will still see pictures and access feelings which is fine. However, put your focus on the audio and describe the sounds (and possibly voices) as you remember them. You may be surprised to discover parts of the story you had forgotten and you will likely gain insights you hadn't thought of prior to this exercise. At the very least you will now have access to a fuller, richer experience and a more detailed memory.
This exercise works great with memories you ruminate over; those annoying loops that keep you up at night. The type of experiences you have that you can't seem to let go of and that you beat yourself up about and that you wish you could do over again to make right often have missing information. It's almost as if your unconscious is pleading with you to go back and find the missing information and make it right. Recall the memory and describe it. Find the least represented sensory channel and retell the story focusing on that channel. This can be quite profound. You will likely gain insights, understandings and access to resources as a result. Once you're aware of these new understandings and resources replay and describe the memory as if you already had these understandings and resources from the beginning and re-experience the memory making all the changes you would make knowing what you know now. It's important to not just describe what you would do differently (disassociated), but to fully associate into the experience with the new resources and understandings and re-experience it. Act it out even if it helps. Once you're done notice if the story has any bite left in it. In most cases you will have broken the loop and you'll never be bothered by the memory again.
This application has endless possibilities. It's great if you have someone else to do it with and you can even do it with groups of four or five people. Experiment with it and let me know what you find.
Imagine experiencing life through the three channels; visual, auditory and kinesthetic evenly all the time. How rich and full might your life become just by allowing more information in!
Damon Cart
Author
Damon Cart is considered to be a natural talent by some of the best NLP trainers in the world. His approach to guiding and teaching students brings to their awareness that they've been doing NLP all of their lives without realizing it and he empowers them with skills and resources to thrive and reach their full potential. With the understanding of how Neuro Linguistic Programs create oneβs experience a person can then take charge of those programs and create the experience and the life they want. By taking this approach into his own rigorous, daily NLP practice Damon has been able to rapidly accelerate his progress in learning, coaching clients and teaching workshops.
