Making sense of my feelings… August 5, 2008
Posted by Vincent in Business coaching, Celebrity coaching, Coaching in general, Executive Coaching, Life Coaching, NLP.Tags: Clean Coaching, coaching, David Groves, morpheus coaching, NLP, Symbolic language
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The late David Groves’ ‘Clean Language’ patterns are helping me to explore broad, or vague, terms used by my coachees. Such terms include ‘frustration’, ‘anger’, ‘resentful’, change, etc. known as “Nominalisations” in the NLP Meta-model.
I have taken the clean language pattern syntax as Groves created it as I am still feeling my way using the technique; it follows this syntax:
“and [XXX], and what [XXX] is that [XXX]?” (where xxx= the coachee’s nominalised term)
A recent example from one of my sessions might help.
Alison (name changed) was confronting her {unwanted} emotional response to feeling ‘guilty’ for something her rational mind knew was outside her control. Attempts at articulating it had been unsuccessful and she felt ’stuck’ trying to explain. I could sense her frustration and asked “and guilty – and what guilty is that guilty?”
I remember feeling really odd as the words left my mouth and expected her to reply along the lines of “what are you on about?”
That she didn’t was one thing, that she looked down, breathed deeply from her abdomen and said quite deliberately, “like I can’t move because my legs are stuck in blocks of concrete” was another – and very surpising response it was.
I ventured on…
“and stuck in concrete, what stuck in concrete is that stuck in concrete that is guilty?”
She kept her gaze down and continued, “like the blocks stop me from being able to move on”
“and not being able to move on, what is that not being able to move on that is set in concrete that is guilty?”
I was really aware of sounding peculiar but her responses seemed to help open up her thoughts
“protection from feeling I have left people I care about behind for my own interests” – followed by an enormous sigh and slight shaking as if about to sob.
“and leaving people, and what leaving people is that leaving people that is not able to move on that is guilty”
Like my father did when I was young – left us because he wanted to further his career!
I am not sure if what I did was pure Grovesian – I do know it was extremely successful then and for all the other times I have used it.
Comments please -
how do YOU use clean language? how do YOU use clean coaching?
What was YOUR experience of having clean language used with YOU?
Brilliant – I really enjoyed reading this. I’m always on the lookout for quality material and opinions on the web.
May I pass this URL to my students? I’m sure they’d enjoy reading it too.
Thank you for the feedback Jonathan and encouraging to know you found it interesting and useful. By all means pass on the URL – encouraging them to comment would be a bonus for me too. I feel more inside the blogging experience when surrounded by comments and feedback – solitary posting seems a bit like the electronic version of “Vanity Publishing”.
I am experimenting with Clean Coaching and will blog my rresults!
Hope to hear from you again.
V