Mental Processing of do’s and don’ts
The mental processing of words is a
very interesting and sensitive subject especially the construction of negatives
from positives. We know that the unconscious mind is a store house of all our
experiences. It process all sensory inputs (images, sounds, feelings, tastes
and smells) based on the meanings given by the conscious thinking process
(remember that thinking is a conscious activity). Unconscious doesn’t give any
meaning to the perceptual inputs. And
once your conscious mind have given a meaning, it will remain true for the
unconscious until you will make a conscious change on it.
Unconscious never give any meaning to
a sensory input by joining words, sentences or images. Unconscious can’t
process negative sentences by joining negative adverbs! Say for example ‘don’t
worry’ is a common sentence we usually use to empower or strengthen our children,
beloved ones, friends and students. The unconscious mind gives independent meanings
to ‘do’, ‘not’ and ‘worry’. In the above sentence only ‘do’ and ‘worry’ have independent
meanings. ‘Not’ have meaning only when it stays with a verb and the unconscious
do not care about it. It gives priority to ‘do’ and ‘worry’ and will ignore
‘not’. Hence if you tell a child ‘don’t worry’ child’s unconscious read the meanings
of ‘do’ and ‘worry’ and in effect you are trying to dig out ‘worries’ from the child’s
memory! If you repeat ‘don’t worry’ many times the child become ‘panic’
assuming that there is something to be worried about!
In fact don’t worry makes people worry
more! So if you want to empower a person from a state of sadness or depression,
never say ‘don’t worry’, instead say ‘be happy’. What will happen if you say
‘be happy’ instead of’ don’t worry’? Unconscious processes ‘be’ and ‘happy’. There
is nothing to recall worry. Unconscious take ‘happy’ in its true meaning and the
person will be in a state of happiness shortly on repeating it along with motivating
talks. Most of us trying to cool down and encourage children who fail (!) in
exams, games, sport etc with the common statement ‘don’t worry’ and I hope that
now you understand what the actual result is. Their worry increases! It is like pouring oil in the fire.
Some kind people says “don’t worry I’m
with you.” In fact they want to help the victim but the person in fact think
that ‘I am a victim’, ‘I am incapable’ and ‘I will be failed’ and ‘I need help’.
The person starts now worrying and it will affect his upcoming endeavors and its
results and it also affects the person’s health.
Now just analyze another kind of
empathy ‘nothing will happen, take it easy’. In fact this is very encouraging
and empowering sentence however if one yells it repeatedly, the victim’s
unconscious process it as ‘will happen’! Instead you must say ‘everything will be
fine, take it easy’.
Do you like to recall any unpleasant or
very bad images or other sensory representations of an experience again and again?
Nobody likes to remember haunting memories. Why? because such memories will produce
the same emotions again and again and your mental state will change. It will affect
your physiology. This is the reason for phobias and traumas. The 'don’t' prefixes with
worry, afraid, panic, shy, shame etc will put you into negative emotions instead
of positive.
Suppose a person is bitten by a
poisonous snake. What will happen? People will say “don’t worry”. Some people
say “go to hospital immediately, it may be very poisonous”. Some other persons say “take deviation to
avoid traffic block”. Yet another
express his empathy by saying “don’t worry, God is great”. In all these
statements there are something to be worried like the hospital, the poison, the
traffic block, will happen etc which are piloted or escorted by the word
‘worry’ and thus the heart beats of the victim increases and blood pressure
boosts up. The venom pumps up through his blood circulation system very
fast.
While bringing up children we put a
number of restrictions on them as part of teaching the moral values. And these
are mostly don’t do, don’t touch, don’t play, don’t talk, don’t see, don’t
tell, don’t eat, don’t repeat and so on. We try to impose hundreds of ‘don’ts’
on our children. They are unable to hold these series of don’ts and their unconscious
processes only the do and probably all your don’ts become do’s.
What are the significances of the usages
like do and don’t in NLP. In Neuro Lingustic Programming communication is very important
and all the therapies are done through communicating with the conscious mind through
the unconscious mind of the client and hence the knowledge of language processing
is very important. Otherwise the therapy will be unsuccessful. To understand the
problem of client the counsellor or therapist may needs to ask as many questions
and at the same time to keep rapport with the client. The client should not be emotionally
broken down while sharing his experiences with the therapist. We will discuss these
things in detail in another session.
