THE FOURTH DISTINCTION SENSORY VS EVALUATIVE DATA

Bateson (1972) “... therapy is an attempt to change a patient’s meta-communicative habits. Before therapy, the patient thinks and operates in terms of a certain set of rules for the making and understanding of messages. After successful therapy, he operates in terms of a different set of such rules. ... In the process of therapy, there must have been communication at a level meta to these rules. There must have been communication about a change in rules.” (p. 191).

Distinction #4: DISTINGUISHING SENSORY AND EVALUATIVE DATA When I took my first NLP training, the refrain which was repeated over and over urged us to go to sensory-awareness and distinguish it from information that is evaluative: “If you’re going to be a professional communicator, you have to distinguish sensory based information and evaluative based information.”

As my first introduction to the Meta-Model, this taught me to sort out the inner mapping of a meaning-maker and to ask precision questions. It taught me how to meet a person at his or her map of the world—at her bus stop (to use Shelle Rose Charvet’s metaphor). This is where all effective communication begins, that is, with sensory-based data. The first information comes from your “senses” (i.e., seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting). That is the information to representationally track to your mental movie screen. You can now track directly from the sensory level and make an inner movie which re-presents that information. This was the NLP stroke of genius—we think first of all in the sensory languages (images, sounds, sensations, etc.) over which we can become aware of and then manage. (Bateson noted this in his Preface in the first NLP book.)

All of this, however, is very different from evaluative data which comes after sensory representations. From the sensory, you next evaluate that information. You put it into categories, you compare it with other information, you estimate its value using various criteria. In evaluating, you infer (legitimately or illegitimately) as you draw various conclusions. You “abstract” from one level to another level as you draw conclusions, make generalizations, make decisions, invent beliefs, set intentions, etc. And you do all of this in lightning quick speed.

How can you tell when you, or someone else, has jumped from the sensory level to an evaluative level? Easy. If the words you use do not refer to things you can put on a table (e.g., chair, dog, green grass), they are not sensory referents. Because you cannot put the referents on the table (e.g., “good, bad, brilliant, disappointing, rude, nice, mean, beautiful”) these evaluations

(evaluative words) are entities of the mind. They exist solely in the inside-world of mind. Now you are literally thinking hypnotically.

You can reverse the process by creating evaluative language from sensory language. You can turn evaluative language back into sensory-based language. The NLP tool to do this is the Meta- Model by which you can regain specificity, precision, and empirical clarity. Use the linguistic distinctions to bring high level evaluations down so you can put them on your representational screen. Use the precision questions to make the conversation sensory specific.

This can be most challenging. In fact, most people are easily seduced by evaluative language so that they cannot make the sensory/evaluative distinction. Someone says, “He’s mean. He blasted that waiter.” And we’re off hallucinating as we invent meanings about what those non- specific words mean (to us). Actually, there is no “meanness,” no “rudeness,” no “kindness,” no “hurtful,” “healing,” in the sensory world. These words are from the evaluative world. You have to ask, “What do you mean when you use this word?” “How do you know that it is this X?” “If I could see or hear what you are referring to, what would I see and hear?”

The key to running your own brain is recognizing the distinction. “Am I speaking in sensory- based or evaluative language?” If you say that someone is defensive, hypocritical, incongruent, loving, sensitive, intuitive, etc., then be sure to recognize that you are not speaking with precision. You are not in the sensory-world. You are in an abstract evaluative world—your internal “hypnotic” world of your meanings. To return to earth, ask Meta-Model questions. If you don’t, the words will seduce you into a narrative of mis-understandings.

Without making this sensory/evaluative distinction you will never be a professional communicator. Unknowingly, you will be imposing your judgments on others. Even with the best of intentions of trying to understand others, you will not be seeing them at all, but a distortion of them. Your judgments and evaluations can come out in subtle ways making it nearly impossible for effective communications.

Turn this around. The kindest and most compassionate thing you can do with your loved ones is to thoroughly learn this sensory/evaluative distinction. Then you will know when you are evaluating, can take ownership of what you’re doing, and then create space for the other person. You are operating by a set of rules and the only way to discover that and/or change that, as Bateson noted in the opening quotation, is at the meta-level. To your excellence in effective communication!