THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF UN-INSULT-ABILITY

When I first discovered the Meta-States Model, there were several patterns that I had been working with using the basic strategy model that I immediately re-modeled. I realized the impact of the discovery of self-reflexive consciousness in our higher, more complex, and systemic states. So this led to creating a dozen patterns very quickly.

In fact, the second book on Meta-States was a book devoted mostly to the dysfunctional states such as self-contempt, victimhood, reactivity, insult, resentfulness, and internal conflict. For each of these “dragon” states (unresourceful states that undermine a person’s self-actualization), I wrote a chapter. That’s why the book, Dragon Slaying (1995/ 2000) has the following chapters— Self-Esteeming (ch. 10), Resilience (ch. 11), Proactivity (ch. 12), Un-insult-Ability (ch. 13), Magnanimity and Forgiveness (ch. 14), and Serenity (ch. 15). Today many of the patterns for these states are the basic patterns we use in the Meta-State trainings, APG (Accessing Personal Genius) and LPG (Living Personal Genius).

What NLP provided about “taking criticism positively,” which was really good stuff, I took to a new level and called it — Un-Insult-Ability. The idea is that if you have the ability to take insult from things that people say and do, then the way you construct those negative meanings and how you integrate it into your neurology so that you feel bad really highlights your meaning-making powers and your neurological embodying powers. Given that, what if we reversed it? What if instead of taking insult, you did not take insult? Or even further, what if you developed your sense of self and your identify so that you become un-insult-able? Now would that be good?

Now being un-insult-able does not mean that you’re not paying attention, or cutting off feedback, or being hard hearted. It means that when you hear words, see gestures, experience some event— you treat that information as information. Then because you do not bring it in and personalize it, you keep it out there as information (stimuli) that you have to deal with as you would with any problem or challenge. And because you do not personalize it, you don’t feel threatened. And because you don’t feel threatened, you fee safe. You can now more calmly deal with that information. This reminds me of a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “Nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

That’s un-insult-able. Now the provocative act, by itself, cannot upset you. It cannot make you angry, frustrated, stressed, etc. Because you are not giving your power away to that stimuli, you can remain centered in your own value and operate from your best. And that’s because you know that it is the view that you take of things (the meanings that you construct) that upset you. Now it is just

a challenge. Just something to deal with.

To take insult from anything, you (and you only) have to interpret the word, the tone, the gesture, etc. as defining you. We call that “personalizing.” For children, this is natural and inevitable. Given their developmental stage, and their lack of ego-strength, and the lack of development of their frontal cortex— they inevitably interpret things in a personalizing way. We call that kind of thinking, ego- centric thinking. They think from “first person” — out of their own eyes, ears, skin, etc. Not until seven or eight will they even begin to be able to step out of first-person perspective and begin to learn to take second-person perceptive.

Well, that’s the situation with children. As an adult, you have the self-reflexivity to think-and-emote about your experiences (create meta-states) and one that you can create (if you want to) is un-insult- ability. It begins as you distinguish your person as a human being from what you do as a person. One is person, the other is behavior. You are more than and different from your behavior. One is your core, the other are your expressions.

From there, you can meta-state the understanding that “the map is not the territory.” Whatever someone says or does is just their “map” about things. As you move beyond the “word magic” of childhood, you can now explore what the person is attempting to communicate to you. You can stay calm and unruffled as you do that.

Today there are lots of adults (maybe most of them) who cannot hear something they disagree with without taking insult. And if someone calls them a name or insults them with some phrase— they are immediately enraged and ready to fight. Look at the protest rallies and how easily it is to get the young men ready to fight, throw stones, set cars on fire, etc. Look at the universities (at least in the US) where some college students are “hurt,” “traumatized” when a conservative speaker is invited to speak on campus. We call them “snowflakes” because they are ready to melt at the least bit of heat.

What they need is the richly complex state called un-insult-ability. Then they can not only stay calm and cool when in disagreement, they can also access empathy, care, seeking first to understand, etc. as they engage in a learning-conversation. This would probably be a good state for all of us. It’s a state that we present at Trainers’ Training every year. May you learn how to be compassionately un- insult-able!