USING META-STATES FOR COPING WITH EMOTIONS

Robert Dilts recently wrote an excellent article, Holding Difficult Feelings, and offered it to the NLP Leadership Summit for how to deal with the difficult emotions that many people are experiencing now with the coronavirus. The pattern corresponds very closely with the Meta- Stating Troubling Emotions that we do in APG. Because of that and because he used Meta- States in his article (although not acknowledged as such), and because many people are struggling with difficult and troubling emotions, I am presenting this long piece.

What follows is what I would consider a Meta-State Pattern even though Robert has not studied Meta-States (as far as I know) and never mentions meta-states in this article. Congratulations Robert! He talks about “first feeling,” “feelings about feelings,” applies a lot of feelings to other feelings, and utilizes a lot of meta-linguistics.

Structurally, to see the Meta-States Model within this pattern I have added my comments in bold print and I have italicized the words that refer to states and meta-states. I conclude with a brief description of the basic Meta-Stating process,

Extra: Because I suspect that some will want to see the original article by Robert Dilts, I have put that after the structural analysis. Then you would like to compare it to the Meta-Stating Troubling Emotions pattern, it is here also.

Structural Analysis of “Holding Difficult Emotions” Robert writes (second paragraph): Family therapist Virginia Satir used to frequently ask her clients two questions. The first was, “How do you feel?” (A primary question, primary state) A client might respond to this question by answering that he or she felt angry, sad, afraid, guilty, or some other type of difficult feeling (primary state— states about something in the world). Then Virginia would ask a second question: “How do you feel about feeling that way?” (A meta-question, a meta-state about the first state).

The answer to this second question is quite significant and determines a lot about the impact and meaning the answer to the first question will have. It is quite a difference if someone feels calm or curious (meta-state) about feeling angry (primary state) than if that person feels guilty or frustrated (meta-state) about feeling angry. It is these second feelings (meta-state) that determine the ease and quality with which we are able to stay present and hold the first set of feelings. Here we have positive +meta-states versus - negative meta-states.

This same dynamic occurs with respect to our relationship with our own feelings. When we are fearful of them and refuse or fight them, (negative meta-states structure), we actually increase our degree of contraction, reaction, disconnection and discomfort. As it has been pointed out, “What you resist persists.” When we can acknowledge and hold those feelings (meta-state) with centeredness, openness, awareness and connection, (meta-state resources to apply to primary state) they are no longer a “problem” and their energy can either be released or transformed into a more resourceful expression. The following qualities are helpful for holding difficult feelings:

List of meta-level resource states

• non-reactivity • unconditional acceptance of the feeling exactly as it is • no agenda to change anything about the feeling • patience, taking time • unwavering attention to the feeling • trust that all is well as it is, that the feeling has a positive intention and purpose • a sense of being held in a field greater than oneself • kindness toward the feeling • a non-intrusive curiosity about the feeling

As Virginia Satir demonstrated, it is also useful to identify and acknowledge (+ meta-state) unresourceful feelings or attitudes (primary states) about the difficult feelings. In this way, these feelings about the difficult feelings can also be included, transcended and held (meta-state structures) from a larger and more resourceful field of awareness. Such responses to the difficult feeling can include:

List of negative meta-stating:

• wanting it to go away • wanting it to be different, to change • analyzing or explaining it

• identifying with it (getting lost in it)

The next paragraph: It is important to realize that the second feeling (meta-state) is as much a part of the problem state as the first feeling (primary state). If we are not aware of this, we may find ourselves aligning with the second feeling (meta-state) to try to get rid of the first feeling.

Pattern: Gathering the Resources Necessary to Hold Difficult Patterns The purpose of this exercise is to help you discover and apply the resources you need to stay present and hold difficult feelings that may arise and take you out of the present.

1) Identify primary state of difficult feeling— a troubling emotion.

1. Identify a challenging situation in which you experience a difficult feeling that you are not able to hold and, consequently, brings you into an unresourceful state. Experience that feeling and the associated sensations and allow your body to express it as gesture or movement. Bring acknowledgment and awareness (meta-states) to the feelings and sensations without any attempt to change, analyze or explain them.

2) Meta-state by stepping back for reflection. Access observation state.

2. Step back from the location in which you were experiencing this difficult feeling and reflect upon the you who is experiencing the difficult feelings (meta-state of reflection about self). How do you feel about those difficult feelings? How do you feel about yourself for feeling them? (Meta-Questions) What is your relationship with those feelings and with yourself when you are feeling them? There may be a number of feelings about the first feeling (shame, guilt, despair, anger, helplessness, etc.) (primary states). Allow your body to express these feelings as a gesture or movement as well. As in the previous step, bring acknowledgment and awareness (meta-states) to these feelings and sensations without judgment or any attempt to change them.

3) Meta-state second time to interrupt, access, and set frame.

3. Now step back to a third location, shift your state by turning around, moving your body (interrupt), shaking your arms and legs, etc. Take the time necessary to put yourself into a resourceful state in which you are centered, open, awake and connected to a field of resources that is bigger than you (access a +meta-state). What resources (e.g., trust, acceptance, curiosity, strength, love, etc.) could help you to more lovingly, respectfully and resourcefully hold the second set of feelings? (Set frame with these meta-states.) Open to the larger field (meta-state of perspective) and allow yourself to receive the resources without thinking about it. Notice what emerges from the field. It may come in the form of images, symbols, feelings, etc.

4) Appropriate the meta-state and apply to primary state.

5. Bring the resources that have emerged from the field fully into your body and being (apply meta-states). (If you need to, you can facilitate this by finding reference experiences for these resources and reliving them as fully as you can.) Find a symbol and a gesture or movement (somatic model) that expresses these resources and brings them present in your body (meta-states of a metaphor) . Allow the energy of these resources to flow fully through you both from the field and into the field around you.

5) Apply the meta-state to the primary state.

6. With these resources fully present in your body, return to the second location (the feelings about the feelings) (meta-states). Don’t attempt to change anything. Just hold the feelings and responses associated with the second location within the larger field of the resources. Make the gesture and movement associated with the resources you have received in the previous step (a meta-state anchor). Notice what shifts in your perception and attitude toward the second set of feelings (meta-state of observation).

6) Hold the meta-states as the new frame of reference.

7. Now step into the location in which you placed the original difficult feelings and bring with you the resources you have identified (apply meta-state) . Again, don’t attempt to change anything. Just hold the difficult feelings and responses within the larger field of the resources. Make the gesture and movement associated with the resources you have received. How do you feel now about those difficult feelings? What changes in your ability to be with those difficult feelings.

THE BASIC META-STATING PATTERN The process of meta-stating is actually simple— accessing a thought or emotion and apply it to another state (i.e., thought, emotion, or physiology). Short and quick: Access and apply. With accessing you may need to amplify to get enough energy in the state. Within applying is appropriating to life contexts and analyzing to quality control the end result and effects.

1) Access a resource state.

What resource state do you want to bring to bear on or apply to the primary state? A “resource” can be a thought, feeling, idea, belief, value, memory, imagination.

2) Amplify fully and anchor.

Juice up the resource state and establish an anchor for it by touch, sight, sound, word, etc. Do you have a sufficiently strong enough state with which to work?

3) Apply to the primary state.

Bring the resource to bear on the primary state (this creates meta-level anchoring), or embed the primary state inside a resource state.

4) Appropriate to your life, to specific contexts, or to the future (future pacing).

Where do you want to experience this meta-state? Imagine having this layered consciousness in your mind as your frame as you move out into your future.

5) Analyze the quality, health, balance (ecology) of the system.

Would it enhance your life to set this resource as your frame-of-reference for the primary state experience? Would every facet of your mind-and-body align with this?

Original Article Holding Difficult Feelings By Robert Dilts

This being human is a guest house Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. – Rumi

Transformational teacher Richard Moss points out that the distance between ourselves and others is precisely the distance between ourselves and ourselves. This implies that the way we relate to others and to the world around us is a mirror for how we relate to ourselves. It is from this fundamental relationship with ourselves that our relationships with others and the external world emerge. This self-to-self relationship is frequently limited by those feelings that we don't know how to meet, accept, hold and love in ourselves.

Family therapist Virginia Satir used to frequently ask her clients two questions. The first was, “How do you feel?” A client might respond to this question by answering that he or she felt angry, sad, afraid, guilty, or some other type of difficult feeling. Then Virginia would ask a second question: “How do you feel about feeling that way?” The answer to this second question is quite significant and determines a lot about the impact and meaning the answer to the first question will have. It is quite a difference if someone feels calm or curious about feeling angry than if that person feels guilty or frustrated about feeling angry. It is these second feelings that determine the ease and quality with which we are able to stay present and hold the first set of feelings.

Most of us learn to hold ourselves and each other depending on how we ourselves were held. Psychologist Donald Winnicott developed the notion of “holding environments.” This refers to the way a child is held physically, emotionally and psychologically by its primary caretakers. The child in response and reaction to this holding environment then learns to hold itself in ways that unconsciously reproduce the deeply familiar holding environment of infancy and early childhood. Research also indicates that the way a baby is held in the womb influences the way it learns to relate with itself and the world later in life. It can be useful to learn to hold ourselves and our own feelings in a way that may be more resourceful than the way we originally learned.

“Holding” implies a relationship between two things: the thing holding and the thing being held. The metaphorical image of a mother holding a baby can help us to envision this relationship. The baby represents the primary somatic feeling, sensation or reaction that we are experiencing. The mother represents the response of the rest of our nervous system to this primary response.

If a baby is crying and the mother becomes tense, angry or nervous, the baby is likely to experience even more distress. If the mother is able to hold the baby from a state of nurturing support, the baby is more likely to be calmed by that presence (via mirror neurons) and move through the discomfort in a flowing way. This same dynamic occurs with respect to our relationship with our own feelings. When we are fearful of them and refuse or fight them, we actually increase our degree of contraction, reaction, disconnection and discomfort. As it has been pointed out, “What you resist persists.” When we can acknowledge and hold those feelings with centeredness, openness, awareness and connection, they are no longer a “problem” and their energy can either be released or transformed into a more resourceful expression.

The following qualities are helpful for holding difficult feelings:

• non-reactivity

• unconditional acceptance of the feeling exactly as it is

• no agenda to change anything about the feeling

• patience, taking time

• unwavering attention to the feeling

• trust that all is well as it is, that the feeling has a positive intention and purpose

• a sense of being held in a field greater than oneself

• kindness toward the feeling

• a non-intrusive curiosity about the feeling

As Virginia Satir demonstrated, it is also useful to identify and acknowledge unresourceful feelings or attitudes about the difficult feelings. In this way, these feelings about the difficult feelings can also be included, transcended and held from a larger and more resourceful field of awareness. Such responses to the difficult feeling can include:

• wanting it to go away

• wanting it to be different, to change

• analyzing or explaining it

• identifying with it (getting lost in it)

It is important to realize that the second feeling is as much a part of the problem state as the first feeling. If we are not aware of this, we may find ourselves aligning with the second feeling to try to get rid of the first feeling. When we don’t know how to be with a feeling, we want it to go away.

In summary, our difficult feelings, like a baby in distress, need more than anything else to be held. Through this holding, the feelings, like the baby, transform from a state of contraction and a sense of separation to relaxation and a sense of connection. Thus it is not a question of getting rid of difficult feelings, but rather of relating to them in a way that allows them to transform. The energy of the difficult feeling is then released back into the flow of our lives. We recuperate the energy that was previously spent in avoiding meeting the difficult feeling, allowing us to be more fully present with even more of ourselves available to engage in the present moment.

Gathering the Resources Necessary to Hold Difficult Feelings The purpose of this exercise is to help you discover and apply the resources you need to stay present and hold difficult feelings that may arise and take you out of the present.

1. Identify a challenging situation in which you experience a difficult feeling that you are not able to hold and, consequently, brings you into an unresourceful state. Experience that feeling and the associated sensations and allow your body to express it as gesture or movement. Bring acknowledgment and awareness to the feelings and sensations without any attempt to change, analyze or explain them.

2. Step back from the location in which you were experiencing this difficult feeling and reflect upon the you who is experiencing the difficult feelings. How do you feel about those difficult feelings? How do you feel about yourself for feeling them? What is your relationship with those feelings and with yourself when you are feeling them? There may be a number of feelings about the first feeling (shame, guilt, despair, anger, helplessness, etc.). Allow your body to express these feelings as a gesture or movement as well. As in the previous step, bring acknowledgment and awareness to these feelings and sensations without judgment or any attempt to change them.

3. Now step back to a third location, shift your state by turning around, moving your body, shaking your arms and legs, etc. Take the time necessary to put yourself into a resourceful state in which you are centered, open, awake and connected to a field of resources that is bigger than you. What resources (e.g., trust, acceptance, curiosity, strength, love, etc.) could help you to more lovingly, respectfully and resourcefully hold the second set of feelings? Open to the larger field and allow yourself to receive the resources without thinking about it. Notice what emerges from the field. It may come in the form of images, symbols, feelings, etc.

5. Bring the resources that have emerged from the field fully into your body and being. (If you need to, you can facilitate this by finding reference experiences for these resources and reliving them as fully as you can.) Find a symbol and a gesture or movement (somatic model)

Diagram

First Feeling How Do You Feel?

Second Feeling(s) – How Do You Feel About Feeling That Way?

What Resource Do You Need To Hold The Second Feeling(s)?

Inner Zone of Excellence

that expresses these resources and brings them present in your body. Allow the energy of these resources to flow fully through you both from the field and into the field around you.

6. With these resources fully present in your body, return to the second location (the feelings about the feelings). Don’t attempt to change anything. Just hold the feelings and responses associated with the second location within the larger field of the resources. Make the gesture and movement associated with the resources you have received in the previous step. Notice what shifts in your perception and attitude toward the second set of feelings.

7. Now step into the location in which you placed the original difficult feelings and bring with you the resources you have identified. Again, don’t attempt to change anything. Just hold the difficult feelings and responses within the larger field of the resources. Make the gesture and movement associated with the resources you have received. How do you feel now about those difficult feelings? What changes in your ability to be with those difficult feelings?

META-STATING TROUBLING EMOTIONS When you bring negative emotional energy against yourself, you put yourself at odds with yourself. You have put yourself in self-attack! This turns your psychological energies against yourself in destructive ways and it will diminish you. This generally creates “dragon states.” Use this pattern for handling emotions that trouble you, positive or negative. This gives us an art of handling emotions effectively and intelligently.

Distinctions: An emotion is the difference between your mapping of the world and how you experience the territory of the world. Emotions give signals and messages about that difference between map and territory. Yet emotions are just emotions and not commands, and not infallible orders. You manage your emotions well when you accept them and use them for information about whether to adjust your map or improve your coping skills. This pattern is about primary emotions. If someone gives you a meta-emotion, question it to identify the primary emotions within it.

Elicitation Questions: What emotion occurs, appropriate to the context, but you don’t like? You don’t have a very good relationship with? What emotion or emotions do you try to banish from your life?

The Pattern:

1) Identify an emotional state that troubles you.

What emotional state do you not like? Which one can you not stand? What state do you hate and wish you didn’t experience? What states do you feel as “taboo?” Is it appropriate to the trigger? Realistic? How realistic? If the emotion is not appropriate, what emotion would be? Menu list: anger, fear, disgust, sexual feelings, sensitivity, embarrassment, sadness, etc. [Make sure the emotion is a primary emotion, and not a meta-feeling which is actually a judgment. Use the Concept pattern for those.] Describe this state. How is this a problem? What do you think-and-feel about this?

2) Check your permission level with that emotion.

Quiet yourself and go inside. Now say the words: "I give myself permission to feel ...."

Notice your internal responses as you say these words. What are you aware of? What happens? How well does that settle inside? How many more times do you have to give yourself this permission before it will settle very well and be okay within you? Are there any objections to this permission? If there are, what are the objections? [Repeat the permission incorporating the objection into the permission.]

3) Keep framing and reframing the permission so it becomes well-designed.

As you give yourself permission congruently with a resourceful voice, set frames and reframes to the objections that set new meanings. How does that settle? Examples: “I give myself permission to feel anger because it allows me to recognize things that violate my values and to take appropriate action early.” “I give myself permission to feel the tender emotions because it makes me more fully human.”

4) Add resources to qualify and texture the emotional experience.

What resources would you need to access in order to more fully accept this? Menu List: Acceptance, appreciation, calmness, patience, resilience, curiosity, etc. Access each and apply to the permission for a new meta-strategy.

5) Quality control the permission.

Imagine moving into tomorrow and the day after and next week and next month with these new frames in your permission for welcoming the emotion that did trouble you ... are you fully aligned with this? Do you have any objection to letting this operate as your way of being in the world?

6) Future Pace to install.

As you imagine this, do you like this? Are you ready to make this yours? Will you keep this? How will you remember it?

From: Secrets of Personal Mastery (1997) also from the APG Manual (Accessing Personal Genius).