The Meaning of Words and its Importance in Integrative Energy Psychotherapy (IEP)

Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), which is an integral part of IEP and our Model from Guilt to Achievements, gives great importance to language, words and their meaning, and their effects on the neurology of the brain and on behavior.

Neuroscience has identified that our brains are composed of two hemispheres which, although construed to work in coordination, each has its own and distinct way of dealing with experience. One side, usually the right one, takes in the gestalt, the big picture, the feeling of the event. Then, through the corpus callosus, the information is sent to the other side, the side of analysis, logic, reason, and language thus giving it meaning. It is here that words are assigned to the experience as mere subjective labels. These labels describe the event and the meaning it holds only for the person who lived it.

As our experiences are so real for us, we tend to think and believe that the words assigned to them mean the same to all human beings, at least to those that speak our same language. But, in fact, for each individual experience words carry not only the label but the sensations, emotions and overall “feelings” we experienced. When we try to communicate our experience to others, the words fall short and many times they do not hold the same meaning for the person receiving them. Even for us the same word may hold different meanings in different situations. So, many times it becomes very difficult when we try to describe an experience in all its details, because we try to synthesize it in words that are only abstractions of the real experience, but the words we speak are not enough and the result may be confusion.

In our practice of IEP we have integrated the Meta-Model of NLP, through which we may access the deep structure of what is being expressed and “rescue” the information, sensations, emotions and overall “feelings” that were present during the experience but that have been omitted, distorted or generalized. This will allow us to better understand the person that is communicating.

For example, someone might tell us something quite abstract as “I am afraid”. If we stay with that, we would be getting only the superficial structure of this communication and would not be able to really understand the meaning it has for the person who is expressing it. We would not know what or who is he afraid of, when or where is he afraid, how these fright sensations are produced. We would not be able to really understand the person who is talking to us. In fact what we usually would do is interpret his or her fright by our own experience of fear.   
The same thing happens even with words that are common to all of us and that describe a noun or verb. For example, I may ask somebody to “Bring me the cat.” Maybe the person will bring me an animal we commonly call “cat”. But as not all cats are alike, I might have been asking for my black cat, and she brought me her white one. Or maybe, as it is my case, where in Puerto Rico we call the instrument or tool to change the car tires “gato” or “cat”, I might be asking for that tool, instead of the animal. Furthermore, there are some people who are nicknamed “Cat”, and maybe I might be just asking for my friend Cat. So it would not be a bad idea to count with a tool in language which may help us clarify the meaning of the words we use when we are trying to communicate an experience.

This is even more important in psychotherapy where it is of utmost importance to understand the person we are working with. It is important not only to listen to him or her attentively, but to make all efforts to understand. That is why in IEP, when we want to give feedback of what we have understood, first we express what the person has said using the same words we have received, and then try to recover the deep structure of the communication using NLP’s Meta-Model. We do this asking questions that “rescue” what has been left out of the experience. For example, if somebody tells me that he is depressed, instead of saying “What you are telling me is that you have a deep and great sadness for something that happened to you recently; Am I right?” But as her depression is her own experience of depression, we might just say, “What you are telling me is that you are depressed and, if I understand by that, that you have a very deep sadness for something that happened to you recently, would I be correct?” Then I wait for their answer, and whatever they answer will be the correct answer. From there, I then move on to rescue the deep structure of her depression. This takes me to another very important situation that may happen in psychotherapy. If somebody tells me that he is hearing voices, I would not diagnose this as pathology. This person’s reality is that he is hearing voices, therefore the first thing we do in IEP is to use the NLP Meta-Model to go directly to the deep structure of his communication and try to understand this person who is telling us that he is hearing voices.

On the other hand, when we are the ones that are communicating something, we try to define what we are intending to say so as to be sure that the person receives our words with the meaning we are giving them. For example, when talking about the mind, as in my case, I will indicate that I am talking about an energy field, different and apart from the brain, that is part of the electromagnetic bio-field of the human being which is known as the “soul”, and that utilizes the brain as a tool for its expression.  
Later on I will give more details about the NLP Meta-Model, so important for an effective communication between people in general and in psychotherapy in particular.