Representational System And Hypnotherapy

In the last article I mentioned Preferred communication style or in NLP terms Representational System. So I thought I should go over this in some detail to explain what this is before moving on with other topics of interest.

This is of interest in hypnotherapy because it may indicate where the problem may lie with an issue with a client, for example with quit smoking hypnosis if the client is visual the images the client creates may hold the solution to allowing them to quit smoking easily and quickly.

The way we think or represent the world and our thoughts are a combination of four ways using our representational system this includes. Visual (V), Auditory (A), Kinaesthetic (K) and Auditory Digital (Ad). Visual is the thinking in pictures/images, Auditory is the thinking by talking to one self inside, Kinaesthetic is thinking mostly with emotions and feelings, and Auditory digital is the preference of thinking in your head in concepts that are not real or of the senses and is similar to talking to oneself. We also communicate in these ways as well.

So what do we mean by communicating visually, auditory, kinaesthetically or Auditory digitally well it is very simple people use different predicates in constructing sentences. For example

Visual - see, imagine, clear, bright, view appear. Show.

Auditory - hear, listen, sounds, question, saying, loud.

Kinaesthetic - feel, touch, grasp, get hold of, catch on.

Auditory digital - sense, experience, understand, think, perceive, know.

So for example a person may communicate by saying something like:

Visual - Can you see what I mean and can you imagine how this looks like when your chatting?

Auditory - Can you hear what I mean and does this sound like what happens when you're listening while chatting?

Kinaesthetic - Can you grasp what I mean and does this feel like something you can get a hold of when you are chatting?

Auditory digital - Can you understand what I mean and can you sense how this might work in this process of chatting?

We use all of these different systems to think and communicate and we have a preference for one. For example a Visual person will usually create images to represent the world around them and to think, an auditory person will usually talk to them-self a lot in their head to think about things. Each of these types of people may have a preference to think this way, this doesn't mean they don't use the other ways of thinking in fact we all use them in different contexts and at different times it just means we have a preference for one and where possible we use it. We also tend to learn best in our preferred representational style.

So this is of particular interest in hypnotherapy in connecting with the client and communicating with them, so with a visual person we would then start to communicate using visually predicates mostly and an auditory person mostly we communicate using auditory predicates. This aids in communication and understanding. Problems in communication can come from different peoples preferences communicating to other people with a different preference.

Lets say a wife and a husband complain about each other and this is very familiar and well known story.

She Says - He just cannot see how I feel if he did he would know to buy me flowers.

He says - She just doesn't listen or understand what I am saying I always tell her I love her.

In this example we have a Visual Kinaesthetic women is communicating with a Auditory, Auditory digital man. They are speaking two different languages and they are not connecting properly. You may experience this when your out socialising and you can talk to and connect with some people and not others this can be partly due to you having different representational systems.

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