Mind Adventures 8 (NLP): Me, You and the Other – Perceptual Positions
Day 8 of Neurolinguistic Programming GradDip Part 2, Thoughts and insights on Perceptual Positions
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“Perceptual positions” is one of the NLP patterns that I am very familiar with, and had the chance to further enhance my skills on today.
There are three general types of perceptual positions (meta positions aside):
1st position – is the position of being totally in yourself. Imagine being totally excited, feeling every sense, you smell your favourite food, your stomach growls, you start salivating…
2nd position – is the position from which you experience an “other”. This is where you experience empathy, and “be in the other person’s shoes”. Some people naturally do this, in some cases it is useful, but there are situations when it is highly inappropriate and could even be damaging to yourself. (Note, this is not about mind reading though, that’s different altogether). The very high suicide rate amongst psychotherapists could be due to 2nd positioning their clients, without getting out of it “cleanly”.
3rd position – is a neutral position, you are outside yourself and the other. I’m not talking about Astral travel here — that’s a different subject matter. Imagine being on the operating table, doing surgery — it is useful to detach yourself. You cannot afford to be fully embodied in the experience, smelling the blood, feeling the guts, hearing every noise or chatter — get the picture? Worst, you can’t afford to be in the second position, feeling your patient’s pain. A psychotherapist could save himself from getting sucked into the world of his client, by making sure he has a lifeline: a 3rd position. (Better yet, do a content-free session instead, like Clean Language).
Today we revisited our perceptual positions. Chris Collingwood facilitated for us perceptual alignment, to make sure we have a robust 3rd position. In the role play, I found 3rd position very, very useful in negotiating. While you want to be very clear with your own outcomes, and it would certainly help to know the other parties’ outcomes, you would be able to integrate those two with higher level outcomes that create a win-win solution when you have a robust 3rd position — the position that is able to view all sides: your side, the other side.
In day to day life, women are susceptible to second positioning their significant other. How often have we come across women saying after getting married that they “have lost their sense of self”, and then get divorced to rediscover themselves? By having robust perceptual positions, women can save themselves the hassle — you can “surrender” to the intimacies of a relationship, fully be with your partner from a 2nd position, detach from your partner’s issues and not take it personally from a 3rd position and still maintain a healthy sense of identity in 1st position.
Give back what isn’t yours and take back what is yours. As you choose…
(Blog reposted from original defunct site www.rainbofire.blogspirit.com)
