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Are you entangled in difficult
relationships or painful emotions? Do you suffer from old trauma?
Do you suffer from your parents' drama, your partner's demands, your
boss's moods? Soulwork Systemic Solutions can help you untangle
your life ... and you can help other people reclaim their freedom.
Do you KNOW what you want?
Systemic Diagnosis is
part of Soulwork Systemic Coaching. It helps coaches recognize underlying
life patterns. It includes Goal Diagnosis, Relationship Diagnosis,
evaluating history and nonverbal congruence, to provide the
information that a coach needs for effective life or
corporate coaching.
Goal Diagnosis
Goal diagnosis includes recognizing and responding appropriately to:
- Well formed goal statements (outcomes)
- Philosophy
- Goal statements that lack goals
- Goal statements accompanied by non-verbal signals
- Goal statements lacking grammatical structure
- Goal statements with negative grammar and negations
- Goal statements with multiple goals (including double binds)
- Goal statements with abstractions
- Goal statements lacking times for completion (deadlines)
|
Basic Goal Diagnosis Examples |
| Goal |
Examples |
| Well formed outcome |
I want (well defined ) X at (exact)
time Y |
| Philosophy |
I need ... Someone in my position
should have ... |
| No goals |
I don't know what I want ... I can't
decide |
| Non-verbal objection |
I want X right now (shaking head
from side to side) |
| Poor grammar |
I want ... good feelings ... my
partner ... somehow ... |
| Negations |
I don't want to feel bad ... my boss
is never nice to me |
| Multiple goals |
I want A and B and C so that D and E
and then F and G |
| Abstract goals |
I want to always feel good
... all the time ... everywhere |
| No deadline |
I want it now ... sometime soon ...
before I die |
Goal diagnosis researches "What does this person really want?"
One basis is responding to clients who want multiple goals ... conflicts. The
NLP meta model is inadequate for this
task.
Double Binds refer to paradoxical interpersonal communication.
Double Bind statements contain contradictions. If the addressed person
cannot withdraw from the situation, that person cannot decide which message
is real and (if young) may develop pathologies. (Krippendorf)
Double binds
may be verbal (e.g. a teacher says to a student "I will punish you to
improve your education!") or non-verbal (e.g. a manager says to an
employee "I know that even you can complete this task today!" while curling his
upper lip and shaking his head from side to side). If the addressed person
does not dissolve the double bind, relationship chaos can result.
Double wishes refer to paradoxical communication. Double
wish communications are poorly defined outcomes that contain
contradictions. If the addressed person cannot decide which message is accurate,
that person may withdraw from the relationship. Such people may be unable to
fulfill their wishes, and miss opportunities for happiness.
Statements of desire (wishes) may have a similar structure to double-binds,
if a stated goal has two objects and one verb, (e.g. "I want peace and
happiness"). If the wishes are incompatible, attempts at fulfilling a
double-wish must fail.
Simple examples of double wishes include:
| Double Wish |
Possible Communication |
| I want X and Y
(E.g. I want to be married and happy) |
I want two different things simultaneously
I cannot have X and Y simultaneously
I want someone to decide if I should X first or Y first |
| I want X so that Y
(E.g. I want to
be married so that I can be happy) |
I want Y and I believe that X is the only (or best) way
to get Y I want
a resource (X) that makes having Y possible
|
| I want person X to do Y
(E.g.
I want my affair partner to marry me) |
I want person X to do what I want. I also want
Y. |
| Complex goals
(Perhaps the most common.) |
E.g. I don't want A or
B, to avoid C so that I can D and not E |
A client's double wish may be evaluated by whether any verbal or
non-verbal incongruence is simultaneous or sequential. A client may display
conflict when changing wish polarity. Although a client may state
a wish - the underlying goal is often at an existential or identity level,
to discover "What is important to me?" or "What
sort of person am I?".
The client may find two
conflicting possibilities. A well-formed outcome becomes possible
with the definition of a goal that fully incorporates the values of both
sides of the conflict, or following an internal change of reference that
rejects unwanted influences. (We refer to identity level influences as relationship bonds.)
(The "visual squash" as taught in neuro-linguistic programming
(NLP) is often a poor choice for coaching clients to resolve conflict. This technique uses hypnotic
language to "double bind" the issues in conflict. The result of this
includes the re-emergence of the conflict (usually within three months)
or the manifestation of the conflict as unpleasant emotions and
psychosomatic disease).
The symptoms of a client with identity conflict should not be confused with the
symptoms of a client who constantly changes wish contexts, rather than
oscillating back and fore between two polarities. This may indicate Identification,
in which a client "identifies" with another person, usually as a child. Ecology is the Study of Congruence
Some double wishes may be dissolved conversationally. For example, a
simultaneous verbal double wish (e.g. "I want X and Y") can often be
dissolved by asking the client "Which do you want first? Do you want X first
so that you can Y, or do you want Y first so that you can X?"
However - this question will not make sense to a person with an
existential conflict. Such a person may answer "I want X so that I can Y
but I want Y so that I can X", or "It's impossible".
Resolving double wishes can be complex. Sequential incongruence
(e.g. A client says "I want X … no really I want Y …actually X is more
important… well Y…") usually indicates that a client's conscious
alternatives are only a part of, or indications of directions toward, what
the client truly wants. A congruent outcome cannot be found by choosing
amongst incongruent outcomes!
NLP practitioner training provides a set of questions (Meta Model)
for challenging people to specify goals, and SMART goals (from One Minute Manager by Keith Blanchard)
for recognizing a "well-formed outcome" (WFO). Systemic Coach Training
includes a complete analysis
of goal well-formedness.
The NLP presupposition that "Ecology is the study of consequences" implies that ecology can only be
determined AFTER an intervention. A Soulwork axiom is that Ecology is
the study of congruence. --------------------------
NLP & Conflict Resolution
I attended NLP Trainer trainings with
Marilyn Atkinson's Erickson Institute,
with Tad James' Advanced Neurodynamics, with Wyatt Woodsmall's Advanced
Behavioral Modeling and with Steve and Connirae Andreas' NLP Comprehensive.
The techniques taught for Integrating Conflicts were similar ...
Visual Squash
A NLP "visual squash" technique is often used when coaching a client to
resolve an internal behavioral conflict in which two parts (also called
ego-states, complexes, partial personalities or
entities) communicate simultaneously about
proposed behavior (both "parts" want the
same goal and fight about HOW to get it). A "visual squash" can resolve a two part conflict - if the
coach's calibration and diagnosis are accurate.
If a client has more than two parts involved in a conflict, a "visual
squash" may lead to unpleasant emotions and somatic disease. If a client sequentially
oscillates between two goals, this may indicate a conflict of values
or identity. Such conflicts normally seem to have three, five or seven
"parts" with many levels of abstraction. About 20%-25% of
Americans and Europeans (based on my trainings) seem to
present this pattern of sequential incongruence.
[ Transcript -
Resolve Complex Conflict ]
A person identifying with one polarity may be amnesic of
decisions or actions made when identifying with the other polarity. This may
indicate multiple personality syndrome and is commonly called
split personality. In lesser cases, a person identifying with
one polarity may remember but deny decisions or promises that were made
while the person was identifying with the other polarity.
A client's presenting issue may be an inability to make decisions,
in which multiple goals are incompatible with
each other. (An advantage of complex conflict is that the client can multi-track
or manage many projects simultaneously. A disadvantage is that such clients may
create conflicts that reflect the client's chaotic
internal mindscape. Extreme examples might be clients with gorge - starve
(binging) cycles. [See Eating Disorders ]
Many clients want conflicting goals. For example, a client may
want a long-term stable job AND want a series of interesting
challenges with many companies. A NLP visual squash parts integration
might motivate the client to find or create a position as a corporate
troubleshooter, for example, in which both partial personalities are satisfied.
Following NLP "visual squash", many clients will
re-create their conflict, sometimes in a different context, in which the
conflicting desires have been elevated to conflicting obsessions. A client
may also create a physical or emotional disease to sabotage the
fulfillment of an incongruent goal.
Hence my concerns about NLP "visual squash" type techniques (and
other dissociative NLP submodality and timeline techniques).
We teach complete resolutions for complex conflict and identity
loss during Soulwork coach training.
Do you want relationship coaching or systemic coach training? Do you want to coach people to resolve emotional and relationship challenges?
About Martyn Carruthers:
Although I qualified as a NLP trainer many times, I stepped back from NLP in
1994 when I realized that I could not fulfill the claims made by NLP trainers
using the techniques taught during NLP training. Teresa Mocna and I have
since researched and integrated many skills that I lacked then, particularly
concerning goalwork, ecology, systemic changework and relationship management,
and we have abandoned NLP techniques that offer only short-term resolution
(most of them) or that may hurt people.
Teresa and I now offer complete packages for
personal development and systemic coaching of individuals, partners, teams and
families, called
Soulwork Systemic Solutions.
Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2002, 2006 All rights
reserved. |
