If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
You just proved my point. Those visions are all real, despite the fact that they are limited visions, it doesn't make them any less real.
Hon, we all have theories and theoretical frameworks to approach reality, even if we aren't counscious of them. Its inevitable, its part of being human. You can argue that it gives you a limited vision of reality, which is completely true, but no one can help it, as no one is above the limitations we have as human beings. The theoretical frameworks are attempts to understand reality, and limited attempts as they are, its the best we've got, so we try and make it the best of them. I agree that you have to be careful to not put the theory in a more important place than the person, but the theory is still your guideline. If you say that not having a framework is the best way to approach your patients, then thats your framework. And by the way, NLP and hypnotherapy are frameworks as well.
No, there aren't. Your wrong. There's just one, the physical one. The fact that you mistake your thoughts for reality is part and parcel of being human, from imagining fears when there is no danger to imagining buildings where there are none. You can build those buildings, but fear stays inside.
For the person in question, of course they treat the visions they have as reality. That doesn't make it reality, or all schizophrenics would be able to produce real physical entities when they hallucinate. So, change the vision, change the reality. How do you change the vision? Easy, when you know the way of it. what are those internal worlds made up of? Pictures, sounds, movies, smells, tastes, internal feelings. Are they under conscious control? Of course they are (or can be.)
The map is not the territory.
I know both my conscious and unconscious reality strategies, thanks. Luckily for me, they are really, really simple. You mean something entirely different, but then, you haven't a clue what you are talking about.
As human beings we have no limitations. inside our heads we can do anything we want. We can fly, change colours, make ourselves depressed. Outside in the real world, behaviour isn't anything like as complicated. It's frankly, a bit boing, which is why so few of us stay there.
No, the person is what you look at to form your theory. that theory is only appicable to that person. That's the difference, darling.
No, having choice about which approach to take is not the same as having an approach and sticking with it come what may. Some clients like to go digging around in their pasts. Fine. lets go find all those good memories you have been ignoring because you have been an idiot. The main tenet is to drop what doesn't work the moment it's obvious it's wrong. How many psyho-analists say, "you know, this isn't working for you, Freud was full of shit, let's do something else instead?"
I've no idea, I only know two.
Yes, I know. The main difference is they are explicitly taught as being false, as being lies. Everything else I have seen holds itself as being true. There are several models used, and all of them are taught as just that. The general analogy is that of a method.
All I know is that I do it, and that it works. The second it stops working, i do something else. I don't care why, (although i know) and I know for a fact it would carry on working even if i didn't know why, just like you can use a light switch without knowing how electricity vibrates through atomic structures.
i know i'm going to get a fair amount of bleating about this, but i think this response is because, depressed people quite often want to stay depressed.
sometimes it's simply a case of better the devil you know, and 'health' makes them startled and light-headed and unsure of themselves, so they sink back to the familiar.
sometimes they may be so down that they don't think they deserve any different.
sometimes it's about attention. sometimes it's about fear, sometimes it's about self-obsession, sometimes it's about not knowing any different.
sometimes it's about wanting to be noticed. where's the drama in feeling fine? who will ask you how you are? who will notice you? who will care?
Sometimes the case, but then those people aren't genuinely depressed, no more than the depressed-but-acting-happy person is actually happy.
I went to see my doctor because I had a bad back. I woke up after a hard evening's training to a cramped piriformis muscle pinching my sciatic nerve rendering me bed riden for three days, followed by awful sciatica and muscle deterioration. When the doctor told me he suspected a 'slipped disk' (and there's another thread on misdiagnosis) I burst into tears.
I've also visited my docotr for many other things such as pregnancy chek-ups, migraine treatments etc. none of which require a prescription for anti-depressants, even if my mood that day was melancholy or tearful.
Well, I know at least one person who's paid for therapy/treatment/help via weight watchers and not lost weight so I don't think the above is true, although my weight watchers example may not be strictly a 'therapy'.
Again, I beg to differ. We are limited by our biology and thus, by our subjectivity.
As an NLPer I'm surprised at the resistance you're showing to radical constructivism, since many of your colleagues adhere to it:
"Another difficulty is that NLP is eclectic and – through its modelling of experts and development of explanatory frameworks – freely draws upon disparate disciplines such as Gestalt psychology, Ericksonian hypnosis, linguistics, cybernetics, behavioural psychology, psychosynthesis, and neuroscience (Harris, 1998; Bostic St. Clair and Grinder, 2001; Tosey and Mathison, 2003a, 2003b). However, NLP is arguably unique among psychotherapeutic disciplines in its pivotal use of modelling and in being overtly radical constructivist – its starting point is that as individuals we construct our own models of the world from sensory experience. And "though I may find reasons to believe that my experience may not be unlike yours, I have no way of knowing that it is the same." (von Glasersfeld, 1995, p.1). Tosey and Mathison (2003a) regard NLP as "transdisciplinary (Gibbons et al, 1994), in the sense that it draws on sources from academe and from elsewhere, and has been generated through application more than being deduced from axioms." I agree. NLP is both radical constructivist and transdisciplinary."
From: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/143418.htm
Of course it isn't, I never said you had to stick to the same approach come what may, of course as a therapist you can change it if it's not helping the client, what I said is that you cannot go without an approach at all, even if you try to.
Excellent, but you're not the only one who does this, see. Systemic psychotherapists know perfectly well that if an intervention isn't working, it's the family or person signaling him/her that that's not the way to go, and so they change it. Any constructivist therapist would agree to this. Unlike psychoanalists, who would assume its resistance.
But that's only in theoretical level. On a more abstract logical level, I believe changing or not changing the approach ultimately depends on the therapist, not on the theory. Even the theories that hold themselves to be true, you don't have to become a slave of them, you can use them while they are helping the client, then you can change your approach. It depends on the attitude of the therapist towards the theory.
Never said it didn't. What I'm saying is that it's not the only thing that works. My whole point from the beginning of this discussion was that there are many therapeutic approaches, and that guess what?, most of them work. That means no one can hold themselves as the sole owners of the solution for depression (or other kinds of sufferings), and that there is no one way to deal with it.
If you aren't ready to acknowledge this klintock, then you are as narrow-minded as you claim psychoanalitics to be.
Excuse me, I happen to know a bit more than you think. Please don't go about making assumptions like that of me in the future.
No. I don't. And yes, I still do. It's called physics. If we all have a relative experience the obvious question is relative to what? Does light move for a different speed for me than it does for you? Does gravity work differently on you than me? No. that'll be the real world then.
No, you aren't. In your head you can give yourself more eyes, on your kneecaps if you want to. You can even change your biology if you want to, in your mind. The dead can speak, the blind can see and the lame can walk. There's a definite limit to what you might concieve of, certainly, due to the structure inherent in you. To all intents and purposes this realisation is meaningless, because if theres a point which we can't get to, we can't get to it, and will never know it and it's therefore downright irrelevent.
I have never heard that nominalisation before. I don't have any colleagues.
Yeah, you can. We are all born without a map, you just turn all your attention outwards and stop using the conscious mind.
Never said I was the only one doing this. Satir is one of the inspirations for a model I use.
Good for them, whoever they are. If they really think and believe in that nominalisation that's there business.
Yup, it's the interaction between me and whoever that makes the effect. They have to play or theres no game. Unless the game becomes whether to play or not, of course. I love that double bind.
Agreed. I'd say it depends on the competence of the therapist. A plumber who hates pipes can still mend them.
Right...and?
Except you don't use theories, you use actions, voice tone, movement, motion etc. the theories are worthless without someone who does the right thing at the right time. Theory then, isn't useful very much, save to appease the conscious minds wacky need to know why.
I never said that was the case either. Drugs work. Want to be dependent on chemicals for the rest of your life? Digging around in your past can work. Want to be miserable as sin til it's all sorted itself out?
Just seems funny to me that theres a 118 page thread about depression for people who should by rights be in the prime of their lives given the plethora of workable models for getting people to do something else.
Sole owners? Where the hell did you get this from? My hostile attitude to drugging up people (and pocketing wads of cash in the process) and spending years helping them (and pocketing wads of cash doing so) isn't so hard to understand, surely to fuck?
I am narrow minded. I like stuff that works quickly and have fuck all time for stuff that takes ages and does nowt. I call it "having standards".
Okay, something simple for you then.what's the difference between food you like and food you don't like? A simple strategy elicitation isn't that hard to do, and it's not something I could misuse either.
*FYI constructivism has revolutionised the academic world in a variety of disciplines: biology, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychotherapy, cognitive psychology and education to name a few. And from there, professionals' practice has changed as well. Of course it has its critics, but guess what? no one has been able to prove it wrong. It just continues to grow. So, I repeat, unless you have a new unknown finding that can prove it wrong, you don't have the grounds to say it is with such certainty (i.e: "you're wrong, period"), least of all if you have no idea what it is.
Putting it in Maturana's own words (of the link you didn't even bother to read):"certainty blinds, the more certainty the less you see".
And what I find most paradoxical of all is how strongly you have opposed to the ideas of radical constructivism when the epistemology of your practice lies within it! But then again, I find it quite shocking that you're an NLPer and have never even heard of constructivism. I would complain about my training if I were you.
But people who have become depressed do often limit themselves, and wall themselves into the depression. They cannot get out simply because they dare not get out, they don't know any different, they don't know how to take the world except through the depressive haze. As I've said, therapy is mostly about dealing with the world, and learning how to move in it.
I don't think depressed people seek attention any more than anorexics seek attention, but while anorexics deal with their life by starving themselves, and give themselves acceptance by controlling their food intake, many depressives base their life on social interaction- no attention equals no love equals no worth.
I don't think depressed people, like those with eating disorders, actively want to stay in the hole, killing themselves. But they don't know how to be any different, and are too scared to be any different, as they have based their life on depressive thought patterns.
but anorexics DO choose to starve themselves. you have your reasons, of course, it's not just that you feel like it, but at the end of the day, you actively say 'today i will not eat'. everything that you do, you do to yourself. maybe it's because you feel fat, maybe it's because you want attention, maybe it's simply because you want to hurt yourself. but it is a choice. and it's a choice that you make absolutely on your own.
of course, it is a little different, cause eating (or starving) is an action, and depression is an emotion. but like you said, fundamentally they're the same kind of thing.
no one chooses to have the feelings, but everyone chooses the way to react to them.
sometimes this is true, yes.
however i disagree with this. in my experience they know exactly what they're doing, and the kind of damage they are causing. this is why they go to such lengths to disguise it. it's pretty similar to self-harm, in that respect.
I don't see that strategy I asked you for as proof that you know what they fuck you are talking about. You also then post further about the thing you say you won't post about. Are you feeling alright?
1) Academics are fuckwits. Theory is always made by people who can't do things, because they are trying to find a way to be able to. If you can do what you are aiming for, coming up with a theory isn't high on the list.*
2) You come out with many, many nominalisations. If you knew what the word meant you'd know why you are talking shite.
3) All those people make this simple mistake - they treat process as though it was a thing.
4) You've also dodge all the points I raised, asking me (again) to disprove a negative. You even say yourself this isn't possible.
5) You think there's such a thing as "Nlp" which means you don't know what you are talking about. Again.
I never said I was opposed to it. I just said I didn't know what you meant by it. I'd have to know what it was first. Too many nominalisations mean no communication. I'm opposed to stuff that doesn't work very well..like drugging people up and wandering around their pasts for bad experiences to talk about, wanking on about theory or thinking that because you use big words your saying something useful.
I don't waste my time with such things, sorry. I told you I don't bother with theory. You seem not to believe me.
I am sure Richard Bandler would appreciate your criticism of his training methods. Maybe, just maybe, and this is a hunch I have, he'd rip the piss out of you and then make you feel really good about it.
The whole point of communication is..well..to communicate. I don't know what the fuck you are on about half the time..which is entirely your fault.
*That's also a theory. I love this stuff...I really do. Remember, every generalisation will fail at some point and this is a generalisation.
It's not usually a conscious decision. Very few people consciously choose the strategies they use to get through life. One of the laws of the unconscious is that the harder you try to use willpower to override urges the more power you give those urges. Hence yo-yo dieting.
It can become a horrible cycle. One of the benefits of hypnosis is that you can solve a lot of that by having the client/patient live out their normal life with their new behaviour before you let them back out into the world to see if it fits. Finding triggers helps. I mean, what if your trigger for feeling really down was feeling really good? Hello, bi-polar people!
Yep, that's more or less it. Everyone has that other hemisphere though and it has some strong ideas about what you'll do. As the unconscious mind has about 80-90% or the brain working for it it usually has the casting vote. If you do find the willpower to do anything, it can only be with it's permission. It's also just human, and makes some bad decisions.
Anorexics "in the open" are usually horrible, manipulative bastards that have to be dealt with absolutely ruthlessly. They are a good challenge because they fight the whole way through.
Psychiatry is bunk!
It's more of a social label than a medical one!
I have no idea. If the person was globally, 100% of the time depressed then there would be little to no chance. If there were occassional "patches" of normality then something could be done to extend them. If the person could feel good at some points., then I'd set up a fight between good feelings and bad ones. The good feelings always win, which is why people take drugs, even when they know it will do harm, neh?
One of the things with drugs is that you take a little of this or that, and the effect diminshes. The dosage must go up and the effect diminishes. And the dosage goes up. And the effect diminishes. Until you get to that point known as threshold, where your system gives up and breaks down a little. And the effect diminshes.
. . . .
ETA
You can do a lot with a little. It's impossibly hard to run a marathon if you've never run to the shops. I mean, it's not brain surgery, this, but it's so simple that it's forgotten. But you can walk to the shops today, and walk there faster tomorrow, then you could run between the street lights, walking between one set, running the next. Then you could run all the way to the shops. Soon, you'll be running back too, fitter each time.
Then you just have to find another shop, a little further away than the first shop, and run there and back. Sounds simple, and it is. People are. Things always seem complicated when you have lots of simple things all at once to do. Once you remember that, it's not so hard anymore.