WHY ALL OF THE TEASING?

A Neuro-Semantic wrote to me a few months ago and told me that one of the participants in his trainings had bought some of the CDs and DVDs of Neuro-Semantic NLP Trainings from Tom Welch (www.nlp-video.com or www.ns-video.com) and had watched me train various programs. Afterwards she came to a training and asked the trainer, “I don’t understand why Michael Hall teases so much in the trainings? Can you explain that?” The trained told me what she said, but then asked, “Is that right? And, by the way, why do you?”

Ah, yes, the neuro-semantics of teasing. What’s that all about? Why do that? What’s the purpose?

Teasing is an interesting relational interaction and state. It is playful, light, questioning, explorative, and curious. Healthy teasing requires that you respectfully tease, and let the person that you are teasing have the sense that you are teasing. So you wink, or lift up your eye-brow, or put a lilt in your voice or something to let them know, “Hey, I’m just jesting with you. I’m playing around; will you play with me about this?” That’s the feel of teasing—playfulness, respectful playing around with an idea, experience, understanding, and so on.

And yet, with teasing, we are able to get to the heart of some “touchy” things, sensitive things, and address them. We can do it with teasing whereas a serious or direct approach might offend and make the exchange far too serious. That explains some of my teasing. With teasing, I generally tease about a number of experiences:

• Capacity — “Can you do that?” “Are you man enough to do this?” “You?!”

• Decision/Choice — “Will you do that? No, forget it.” “Do you really want this?!”

• Determination — “Nay, you can’t do that! You’ll forget.”

• Identity — “You’d be too powerful. The world’s not ready for you this resourceful.”

• Resilience — “You’ll make excuses and quit!”

I do this in order to provoke, tease, challenge, urge, and test a person so that the person begins to fight for what he or she wants from the inside to the outside. I do that because I know that to integrate and solidify a change, a new way of operating, a new choice for transformation, the person has to fully own the choice. It must not be mine, or even facilitated by me to them, but truly and uniquely theirs. So to enable that, I tease. I play with them in order to invite them to Choice Point.

“So with this new belief (or decision, understanding, principle, definition of self, direction, meaning, etc.), you are going to keep this? You like this?”

“Yes!” [the validation frame that accepts and welcomes it in.]

“Really? You’re going to do this? You?” [Teasing frame, pushing, challenging.] “Yes, I am!” (The “yes” validation frame again.]

“Nah, not you. You won’t do it. You’ll quit.” [Teasing, challenging frame.] “I will not quit. I’ll show you!” [Determination frame, competitive frame.]

“Well, I’m going to take it away from you!! You’re not ready for this!” [Teasingly pushing even more to see how much determination the person has.] “No you can’t. It’s mine!” [ownership frame]

“No, I led you to this, it is mine. And I don’t think I’ll let you have it. It’s mine and the world is not ready for you!” [Testing the ownership frame] “Try it! You can’t take it away from me!”

And so it goes. Tease, tease, push, challenge, provoke—all in the spirit of playfulness and respect and all designed to enable the person to choose, to take ownership, to integrate, and to map out the pathway from this point out in the world and into the future when I won’t be there. Has the new meanings that the person has mapped out—will those meaning frames last, sustain, persevere? Will the person persist and bounce back resiliently when he or she encounters the challenges of others, of life, of reality?

Playful teasing also does something else. It lightens things up and transforms an overly-serious attitude into a lighter one. And that’s important. “Why?” you ask. Because typically when we humans get serious, we get stupid. Isn’t that true of you? It’s certainly been true of me. And all you have to do is take a close look at any fundamentalist of any brand —religious, political, psychological, etc. Anyone who thinks that their map of the world is the real one, the true one, the one and only one is on their way to thinking that their thoughts and beliefs are infallible. And when that happens, they are one step away from think that they know God’s inner plans and so they are ready to play God with the lives of others. And the step after that is that they become an inquisitor of those who disagree.

Humor, playfulness, and teasing saves us from the god delusion and from fun-dam-mentalism (as Dr. Bob likes to pronounce it!). So that’s why I like to tease. It’s transformative. It’s creative. It’s human and humane. Oh, yes, there’s another reason, it’s fun!

To the unleashing of your Fun with Clients!