A job interview and an execution are different events. Yet a person approaching an interview may experience it as though she were walking towards an execution. Explaining that the two situations are different does not necessarily change the dread. She already knows the difference in their factual content. The difficulty lies in the relationship she has formed between them.
In NLP, a complex equivalency is a connection in which one thing is treated as meaning another. An interview means an ordeal. A mistake means incompetence. A bad day means the return of an illness. What starts as a description of an event becomes a statement about its significance, and sometimes a verdict on the person herself.
From The Rainbow Machine: Tales from a Neurolinguist’s Journal by Andrew T. Austin.
Content and the way an experience is represented
NLP distinguishes the content of an experience from the sensory qualities through which it is represented. The content concerns what is happening or being imagined. Submodalities concern such features as distance, size, brightness, movement, volume and location. Two different scenarios can have a similar felt quality when they are imagined in similar ways.
For the person facing the interview, the imagined scene might feel close, unavoidable and overwhelming. A remembered conversation with a friendly colleague may have quite different qualities. Exploring that difference is more useful than assuming every anxious person needs the same image made smaller or the same voice turned down. The relevant comparison belongs to this person, in this situation.
These descriptions are a model for attending to subjective experience. They do not establish that particular experiences are stored in a particular hemisphere, nor that manipulating an image will reliably resolve every problem. Their practical value lies in making distinctions that would otherwise disappear inside a broad label such as anxiety.
Listening beyond visual, auditory and feeling words
Recognising that somebody speaks about seeing, hearing or feeling is only an entry point. Listen also to the qualities of what is described. A problem can loom, an accusation can echo, a future can seem dim, and a memory can remain painfully close. These expressions may provide a starting point for enquiry into how the experience is organised.
The words are clues to check, rather than a code to impose. Someone saying that a deadline is looming may be using an ordinary expression, describing an image, or communicating practical urgency. A practitioner who immediately starts moving imaginary pictures around can miss the actual problem. Asking what the person means keeps the enquiry grounded.
Greater skill should bring greater precision. Repeating a familiar technique is different from recognising a sequence of thoughts, and recognising a sequence is different from noticing the subtle relationship a person has with each element. Training titles do not remove the need to develop that discrimination.
When a bad day seems to mean everything has returned
After a long period of emotional difficulty, improvement can bring a new anxiety: how will I know if the problem returns? Ordinary fluctuations become objects of scrutiny. A stressful afternoon or low morning may be read as evidence that all the progress has disappeared. The person is then dealing with the original discomfort and the fear of what it supposedly proves.
My own experience of depression taught me how difficult that distinction can be. Early on, I understood my experience largely as my life falling apart. Later, I became more familiar with the patterns and better able to notice what was happening. I also experienced feeling better on medication, stopping it, and then becoming unwell again. That history made the meaning of subsequent bad days a charged issue.
A bad day, a sustained recurrence of depression and medication withdrawal should not be collapsed into a single category. Medication decisions belong with the prescriber. NICE advises discussing antidepressant withdrawal with the prescribing professional, reducing medication in stages and recognising that withdrawal symptoms can be mistaken for relapse. A language distinction is useful here, but it cannot replace clinical assessment.
One cigarette after two and a half years
A colleague had not smoked for about two and a half years. After a particularly stressful day he obtained a cigarette from someone else. He did not even finish the whole cigarette, but his interpretation was immediate: he had blown it. He was a smoker again.
That is a large change of category resting on a small amount of behaviour. The event was that he had smoked part of a cigarette. His judgement turned it into the destruction of two and a half years of not smoking. The next choice became obscured by an identity that appeared already settled.
This does not mean the cigarette was irrelevant. It could point to a situation needing attention, a gap in support or a response to stress that deserved another plan. But those are workable observations. Declaring the whole effort ruined makes further smoking seem like consistency with an established identity.
Preparing for possible setbacks means deciding how to respond if one occurs. It does not mean deliberately arranging a relapse or encouraging a person to resume harmful behaviour. A useful plan preserves the significance of progress, identifies warning signs and makes the next constructive action clear.
Behaviour, identity and moral judgement
Compare “I did something unhelpful” with “I am a useless person.” The first identifies an action that can be examined. The second turns the speaker into the problem. This distinction matters in parenting, therapy, addiction work and everyday relationships. Accountability does not require reducing a whole person to a single behaviour.
A diagnosis can be useful for treatment and communication while also acquiring meanings the person finds restrictive. Equally, a recovery identity can provide solidarity and help someone maintain commitments. The question is how that description functions for the individual. Does it support useful action, or make every difficulty proof of a permanent defect? There is no need to demand that people abandon an identity they find helpful.
Moral judgement adds another layer. Once a behaviour is treated as proof that somebody is bad, discussion can shift from understanding what happens to establishing whether the person deserves shame. The consequences of behaviour still matter. What becomes less useful is assuming shame supplies the missing skill, support or change in circumstances.
Questions that reveal the connection
When an event appears to determine identity, ask what connects the two. What exactly happened? What does it mean to you? How does that tell you who you are? What would count as evidence of change? Are you applying the same rule to other people, or only to yourself?
There is also the question of how the person represents the self. Is identity experienced as a judgement spoken by someone else, a collection of remembered examples, an image viewed from outside, or something more difficult to describe? How does the person relate to the problem, and how does the problem seem to relate back? These enquiries take the work beyond merely suppressing an unwanted action.
A useful next step is to separate the event, its interpretation and the next decision. “I smoked part of a cigarette after a difficult day” leaves room to examine that day and renew the decision not to smoke. “I am back where I started” hides both the learning already achieved and the choices still available.