Neuro Linguistic Programming

254 Part IV: Using Words to Entrance

Table 16-2 (continued)

Patterns Examples of the Vague Language

You Can Use to Challenge Deletions,

Generalisations, and Distortions and

Take a Person into a Receptive State

Unspecified referential index (doesn’t

say who is being referred to)

Some people will have been important

to you

Comparisons (misses out what is being

compared)

You’re feeling more and more curious

Nominalisations (an abstract noun that

is turned into a verb; see Chapter 15)

You’re gaining new insights, building

new friendships

Generalisation

Modal operators of possibility (shows

what you can and are able to do)

You can become more successful...

you’re able to discover new ways

Modal operators of necessity (states

what you must, you have to do)

You must take this forward to where it

has to go

Universal quantifiers (all, everything) Every time you feel like this...

All the skills you need are easy for you

to learn

Distortion

Complex equivalence (one situation

means the same as another)

This means that you’re getting all the

help you need

Mind reading (interpreting another’s

thoughts)

I know that you’re becoming more

interested

Cause and effect On each breath, you can relax even

more

As the comparison of the two models in Table 16-1 shows, the Milton Model

makes statements that are deliberately very general; the effect of this

approach is to relax the person you’re speaking to. In contrast, the Meta

Model essentially invites the other person to retrieve specific details that are

missing.

Meeting other aspects of the Milton Model

As well as the language patterns described in the preceding section, Erickson

also used a number of other linguistic devices to assist in communication

with his clients. We discuss three such devices in the following three sections.