When you learned NLP, this was one of the things you learned. You learned that “feelings,” or kinesthetic sensations, are one of the most basic ways to describe sensory information and that they are different from emotions. You need to know something and feel something in order to have a mood. Now, you may have learned this in your NLP classes, but in daily language, these terms are used interchangeably, which can be confusing. This is one example of how daily language isn’t good enough for coaching and therapy, and why we need to come up with better words.
The Stumbling Block in Well-Formed Outcome Questions
Still, even Meta-Coaches fall for this one. When they start with the Well-Formed Outcome questions, this is what they do. They get stuck on question #2: “What does your outcome look like, sound like, and feel like?” The stumble here is that the word “feeling” is confused with the idea of an emotion. The question wants to know how a physical result would feel to the senses. It doesn’t ask the person how they feel about the result.
If the person’s outcome is real, or empirical, it will have visual, auditory, and tactile properties. If you can’t remember these qualities, pull out your NLP practitioner manual and look at the list of qualities and factors under each of these groups. When you do, you’ll see a list with groups like the ones below, and each category will have its own set of rules:
Pressure — Location and Extent — Shape — Texture — Temperature — Movement — Rhythm — Duration — Foreground/Background — Associated/Unassociated” — Intensity — Frequency — Weight
That’s what question #2 in the WFO questions is going after—kinesthetic distinctions, not emotions. In the NLP presentation, “emotions” are the same thing as “state.” A state is an emotional state, but not only so, it is also a mental state and a body state. That makes state a very dynamic term, a system term. A state is a combination of your mind, body, and emotions.
Avoiding Emotion Terms in Coaching
If you ask for or get an emotion term in response to Question #2, your coaching will go astray. For example, you ask what the person wants and he says “the ability to effectively handle his job” and you ask “What will that look like, sound like, or feel like?” and he gives you an emotion. “I want to feel relaxation.” Now if you are on top of things, you know relaxation is a nominalization and probably an emotion, not a kinesthetic feeling. So you denominalize it. But if you just run with relaxation, then your coaching will become side-tracked. You will start to help him find a way to experience relaxation. You might think that’s the goal. It is not. Relaxation is a symptom of something else. What he may actually want and actually feel is “breathing calmly” and keeping my mind focused on what I’m doing when under the pressure of performing (i.e., public speaking, coaching on stage, negotiating the release of a hostage, etc.).
The Importance of States in Well-Formed Outcome Questions
Where in the Well-Formed Outcome questions do you ask about a person’s state? Good question. You want to know about two states—the person’s present state and the person’s desired state. State is the “place” where a person lives and is the result of their entire matrix of frames (meanings, intentions, person, powers, relationships, time experience, and roles). State is the current experience of your client and the place where the client does not want to be. The desired state is where the client wants to be.
Emotions as Symptoms, Not the Problem or Solution
Now in both current and desired states, there are emotions. Using the SCORE model, in the current state, these are the symptoms, and in the desired state, they are effects. And while the symptoms may be problematic, they are not the problem. They are symptoms of the problem. And the effects, while they are highly desired emotions which your client wants, they are not the coaching outcome.
Going Beyond Surface-Level Feelings
Now for some coaches, this distinction seems like one that takes some people a long while to get their heads around. Emotions in the current state are not the real problem, and emotions in the desired state are not the real solution. Write that down. Put it in your notes when you are coaching. In both states, emotions are symptoms. They are symptoms of the person’s meanings.
Once you know that, you can become a real Meta-Coach and do meta-coaching as you take your client inside to find his meanings—beliefs, understandings, decisions, memories, imaginations, plans, things he doesn’t want to happen, things he wants to happen, things he doesn’t want to happen, and so on. Your client’s mind or meta-place has made a picture of the world that is making him or her feel that way. There, go. That will make your teaching real and meaningful. If you only deal with feelings at the surface level, your coaching will be shallow and won’t lead to long-term changes. Ask yourself, “What is this person doing to make me feel this way?” Then look at what the person says, thinks, does, wants, etc.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2023 Morpheus #20 DISTINGUISHING FEELINGS & EMOTIONS by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
