Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Step three of reframing is the major component of what most people do when they do family therapy. Let's say that you have a father who loses his temper a lot. Virginia Satir waits until he has expressed quite a bit of anger. Then she says "I want to tell you that in my years of doing family therapy I have seen a lot of people who are angry, and a lot of people could express it. I think it's important for every human being to be able to express what they feel in their guts, whether its happiness, or anger like you just felt. I want to compliment you, and I hope all the other members of this family have that choice." Now, that's pacing: "accept, accept, accept." And then she gets in real close to the father and says "And would you be willing to tell me about those feelings of loneliness and hurt underneath that anger?"

Another form of behavioral reframing is to say "Do you yell at everyone like that? You don't yell at the paper boy? You don't yell at your mechanic? Well, are you trying to tell her that you care about what she does? Is that what this anger is about? I mean, I notice you don't do it with people you don't care about. This must be a caring message. Did you know that this was his way of expressing that he cares what you do?"

"Well, how do you feel about knowing that now?" How many of you have heard Virginia Satir say that? That's a weird sentence; it doesn't actually have any meaning. But it works! That's another example of behavioral reframing. It's the same principle, but it involves content. That's the only difference.

Carl Whittaker has one nice reframing pattern that is apparently uniquely his. The husband complains "And for the last ten years nobody has ever taken care of me. I've had to do everything for myself and I've had to develop this ability to take care of myself. Nobody ever is solicitous toward me." Carl Whittaker says "Thank God you learned to stand on your own feet. I really appreciate a man who can do that. Aren't you glad you've done that?" That's a behavioral reframe. If a client says "Well, you know, I guess I'm just not the perfect husband," he says "Thank God! I'm so relieved! I've had three perfect husbands already this week and they are so dull." What he does is to reverse the presupposition of the communication he's receiving.

We originally developed reframing by observing Virginia Satir in the context of family therapy. We have developed several other systematic models of reframing that will appear in a book titled Reframing: NLP and the Transformation of Meaning. In that book we also apply reframing to alcoholism, family therapy, corporate decision-making, and other specific contexts.

One aspect of reframing was introduced years ago in the process called "brainstorming," a situation in which people simply free-associate and explicitly suspend their usual judgemental responses. When brainstorming is conducted in an effective way, people generate a lot more ideas than they do in other modes of working together.

The primary way in which that works is that a really fine distinction is made between outcomes—what we are going to use this material for—and the process of generating ideas with other human beings. Reframing is the same principle applied more generally.

What I've noticed over and over again in corporate work, in arbitration, or in family therapy, is that there will be a goal toward which a number of members in the system want to move. They begin to discuss some of the characteristics or dimensions, or advantages or disadvantages, of this future desired state. As they do this, other members involved in that negotiation behave as if they feel compelled to point out that there are certain constraints that presently exist in the organization which make it impossible to do that.

Now, what is missing is the time quantifier. Indeed they are correct. There are constraints on the organization or the family which make it impossible, concretely speaking, to engage in that proposed behavior now. If you work as a consultant for an organization or a family, you can teach people to distinguish between responses they are making that are congruent with the description of the future state, and responses that are a characterization of the present state. Once that is done, you avoid about ninety-five percent of the bickering that goes on in planning sessions. You convince the people in the organization that it is useful for them to feel free to restrict themselves to discussing the future state, the desired state, propositions entirely distinct from present state constraints. This is an example of sorting out certain dimensions of experience, dealing with them in some useful way, and then later re-integrating them back into the system.