andreas shame

7/28/2019 Andreas Shame

1/13

March, 2002 17 - Anchor Point

A N C H O R P O I N T

Resolving Shameby Steve and Connirae Andreas

We first wrote about shame over 12 years ago .1 Shame is often called the secret emotion, because most peoplewho are ashamed are also ashamed of feeling ashamed, so they seldom talk about it, or bring it up as a problem to besolved. The videotaped session below2 occurred in a Master Practitioner training in 1990. The transcript is presentedverbatim, except for deleting repetitions, some OKs, and a few other very small changes in order to make it morereadable.

Shame Pattern Demonstration

Steve: First, I presume you already have in your mindsomething that causes you to feel shame.

Woman: Yes, its ah

Steve: And dont tell them any content. They will getnosy and their brains will get derailed, and they wontnotice were doing anything. OK, you got one? (Uhhuh.)Is this a specific time or is it a period of time?

Woman: Period of time.

Steve: OK. How about just taking abecause we willapply it to the whole period of time, I guarantee you,before we are done. But for right now, how about think-ing about a specific incident. It will make it easier for usto explore what the situation is, OK? (Uhhuh.) Good.Now, put that one on a shelf for a minute, and think ofsome other situation in which you violated someone elsesstandards, or you didnt meet someone elses standards,but for whatever reasons, you didnt feel shame. (OK.)

You got one? (Umhm.)

Steve: How come you didnt feel shame there?

Woman: Um, because I was . . . I was doing what Iwanted to do.

Steve: OK. Well, how come you didfeel shame in theother one?

Woman: Because it seemed like it had more to dowith my personage, with myself.

Steve: OK. This is an important distinction, the dis-tinction between whether a certain situation reflects onyour self,your selfconcept, your being, or whether it re-flects only on your behavior. And this is something thatLeslie Cameron-Bandler was doingit seems like a mil-

lion years ago!Making the distinction between self andbehavior. And its a very nice first step in general, whenyou are doing a lot of work, to make the distinction thatif someone insults you, or they say you did wrong orsomething like that, that they are only commenting onyour behavior. It makes it a lot easier to deal with. How-ever, when you are young and you are in a family of per-haps less than total resources, it is hard to know thatbut we can go back and fix it. (Good.) Now, if you com-pare those two experiences, the one of shame, and theone ofwell just say not shame, where again you knewyou were not meeting someones standards in some way,

but you didnt experience shame. What are the differ-encessubmodality differences in particular?

Woman: OK. Well, the shame ones over here. (Shegestures a little to her left, hands about two feet apart.)And its round, oval. Itsthe brightness is a little lessthan normal brightness.


2/13

18 - Anchor Point March, 2002


Steve: OK, its a little dim.

Woman: Umhm. Its 3-D.

Steve: Which way is it oval, by theway? You said it was

Woman: Like this.

Steve: And then youre tilting a littlebit. (Her right hand is about six incheshigher than her left.)

Woman: Umhm.

Steve: Kind of like that?

Woman: Yeah, except the peoplein it are standing up, but the part of itthat I see is like this.

Steve: OK. So its kind of like that.OK. And so there are people inthere?

Woman: Umhm. Im one of thepeople.

Steve: Youre one of the people,so you see yourself in this. (Umhm.)So its dissociated. Thats a wise move,by the way. Just for a moment, justfor their edification, what would hap-pen if you stepped in?

Woman: (shaking her head em-phatically) I couldnt!

Steve: No way! OK, thats fine,thats enough. You understand the

difference? Now, lets think about theother one for a moment. So its onthe other side?

Woman: OK, itsyes. Um--

Steve: Tell me about that one.

Woman: Its more to the right,over here. I guess its square (she ges-tures in a rectangular shape, about 2wide and 8 high), although its threedimensional, and the brightness isnormal. Its further back, and Im inand out. I mean, I

Steve: OK, so you step in or not.

Woman: Right. Theres also . . . theauditory part is . . . the tones are realpleasant over here. And on theshame one its more of awhat Iwould call a cackling.

Steve: Cackling. Oooh, Good.

Woman: Theres words, but theresa kind of a cackling to the tonetonality.

Steve: OK. So, lets see, now youspoke of thisthe not shame as be-ing 3-D. Is the other flat? Or is it 3-D, too?

Woman: No, they are both 3-D.

Steve: OK, they are both 3-D, sowe wont pay attention to that, sincethey are both the same. Any otherdifferences between Oh, this one(not shame) is farther away, right?

Woman: Yes, it is.

Steve: How far away is this?

Woman: Its about like out where

Keith is. Thats my normal

Steve: OK, twentythirty feet?

Woman: Yeah.

Steve: Say twentyfive feet.

Woman: Yeah. And this one is likemore, like about eight feet.

Steve: OK. Any other differencesyou notice between those?

Woman: In this one (not shame) Ihaveits interesting. I have a sensa-tion but its not midline, its just tothe right of midline, a pleasant sensa-tion is the way I would describe it.

Steve: OK. Ill just code this byright, here, so positive feeling, right.

(Umhm, yeah.) Which emergencyresponders would call right lower

quadrant. (she laughs) Any otherdifferences between the two?

Woman: This one (shame) wouldbe really unpleasant if I were to stepinto it (nervous laughter)

Steve: Yes, I understand.

Woman: But Im not going to,theres an off balance, a spinning sen-

sation.

Steve: If you were to step into thisfor a moment, you would get off bal-ance and spinning. (Umhm.) OK. Butyou dont getover here, if you stepinto it, you get the nice warm sensa-tion. (Right.) OK. Now, I want toask you something else. Well, first,any other submodality differencesyou notice between them? (No.)Well, OK, thats plenty. Um, there

are people in both of these? (Umhm.)OK. I want you to give metheseare actually content Well, let meask specifically. As you see yourselfin this one, is there any difference inthe size, between you and the otherpeople?


3/13



Woman: No. Theres

Steve: Because you are real sizeand they are real size, or they areproportional, or whatever?

Woman: Well, they are propor-tional to each other, but they are big-ger than the background. I just no-ticed that.

Steve: They are bigger than thebackground. (Umhm.) So, like unre-alistically bigger? Orjust moreprominent?

Woman: Umm. Maybe its more

prominent, is what it is.

Steve: You notice them a lot. (Yeah,umhm.) Now, where are they look-ing? . . .

Woman: Well, its hard for me toget that, because the content of it wasliterally a swinging around.

Steve: OK. Soyouwere swingingaround in the picture itself? (Yeah,umhm.) Like on a swing or some-thing like that?

Woman: (laughing) No, somebodypicking me up.

Steve: Somebody picking you up.(Yeah.) And swinging you around.And that was not pleasant, right?(No.) Now over here, how manyother people, roughly, over here?

(Um, a couple.) Just a couple? (Yeah.)And over here? (Two.) OK, two inboth.

Let me just explain what I am fish-ing for a little bit. Sometimes in theexperience of shame there is somekind of distortion. Sometimes theother people are larger. Sometimesthe personyourself in this casesometimes its not real in some way.

The person is deformed, or withoutclothes, or in some way there is arepresentation of not being fully your-self. (Umhm.)

Man: If you are a kid and they arebigger

Steve: Yeah, well, I mean biggerproportionally. Unrealistically bigger.

Sometimes, you know, you feel verysmall and theres these giants aroundyou, and although kids could expe-rience that just with the normalsize, often theres a distortion of

advanced neuro training


4/13



this nature. So I gather there arentany of these in that? (No.) Fine,good. Now, just as an aside, if therewere distortions like that, right nowI would change those before I didanything else.

Just as in the grief pattern, if some-one sees the lost person in a coffin,you make it into the live person, theperson that they miss, the person thatthey loved and cared for, not the bodyin the coffin. You would make a spe-cific content change in the picture atthis point if that were the case.

Man: So those are not only con-

tent distortions, but also size distor-tions? What are you talking about?

Steve: Im talking about that as acontent distortion, because its spe-cific to content. You can think of sizeas a submodality. If the whole pic-ture changes, I call it a submodalitychange. Maybe theres a middleground, I dont know what youd callit. But anyway, if there was a big/little

distortion, I would have them changethat at this point.

Man: And also a looking distor-tion?

Steve: Yeah. Often the person overhere, everyone is looking at them andlaughing, or criticizing, or doing what-ever they are doing. And typically inthe resource one, its just like nor-mal, you know, where people are

looking at each other, or at the wall,or at whatever is going on. OK?

Man: If you were going to deal withthat content distortion, what wouldyou do with it?

Steve: Just say, Make yourself big-ger, or Make them smaller. Makeyourself bigger, make the otherpeople smaller, until they are appro-priate, realistic. You just tell them todo it. Ive never had any problem withit yet. Just tell them to do it and theygo, Yes, sir! and they go ahead anddo it.

Woman: Just, you know, theywere I guess theywerebigger be-cause I did that when you just saidthat, and it opened out the frame(laughs) enough to where its notnearly as panicky as it was.

Steve: OK, so they were probablya little bigger. (Yeah.) So, heres anice example. I didnt even tell herto do it, and she did it. You said itopened out the frame. Did it actu-ally make it larger?

Woman: Yeah, and it

Steve: And is it less impactful?Woman: Yes, because it made it

square all of a sudden.

Steve: It made it square?

Woman: Its not oval anymore.

Steve: OK. Now, the next thingwe want to do is map across, andusually the easiest thing to do is tochange location. So take this pictureand move it out to that location (onthe right), and find out what else

changes at the same time. Its alreadygot a square frame over here, right?And as it goes over there, does itbrighten up a little?

Woman: OK. The . . . ah . . . yeah. Itbrightens up, and all of a sudden the

sound goes from cackling to morelike a

Steve: normal sound?

Woman: Yeah, or like a merrygoround. You know, its . . . like nowits fun.

Steve: Now its fun. (Yeah.) OK.Thats a difference, huh?

Woman: (laughs) Yes!

Steve: OK, do you see it out there,about where Keith was? Hes gonenow.

Woman: Umhm. Kind of behindNelson and Clinton.

Steve: Behind Nelson. OK, great.(Yeah.) And you hear the soundchanged already. And now what hap-pens if you were to step into it?Briefly. . . . (She moves her head in asmall circle.)

Steve: Boy, it sure turns your head

around, doesnt it? (Yeah.) Nowcome back out (laughter) or youllget dizzy. (to the group) Did yousee her head going around?

Woman: It just . . . um . . . it doesnt. . . you know, its . . . I could get dizzybut it doesnt have the scary feelingto it, the off balance feeling and outof control feeling.

Steve: How about shame?

Woman: Um, well the samecom-mentsare being said that were sham-ing, but its like Im not reacting asthough


5/13



Steve: (to the group) Isnt thatfairly obvious, just looking at her?Shes kind of smiling and shes talkingabout this like, No big deal.

Woman: You know, its kind of likeI could say, No, up yours, you know.

Steve: There you go. OK. Thatlooks real good to me. Now, at thispoint I want you to do somethingelse. Now the shame is gone, right?(Umhm.) Now, keeping that pictureover there, and I dont imagine youwant to ever move it back, right?(No!) OK. Just keep it over thereand now I want you to consider what

was the standard that was not metin that situation.

Woman: Um, it had . . . OK. It had. . . do you want the content?

Steve: If you dont mind.

Woman: No. It just had to do withbody image.

Steve: Body image. OK. Now, isthat a standard that you want tomeet? Is that a standard that you wantto have for yourself?

Woman: It is . . . OK, how can I saythis? . . . I do, but not with that personscriteria?

Steve: Fine. So you want to have

your own criteria for body image.(Umhm.) So in terms of this specificsituation, you are essentially saying

their standards, given their criteria,are not something you want to havefor yourself, is that correct? (Right.)Great. Now, at this point, take a mo-ment to consider whatareyour stan-dards and criteria. You may havethought of this already, and it may be

just a matter of accessing it and justbriefly thinking about it. What stan-dards doyou want to meet? (OK)Given that this happened in child-hood, its possible that this may neveroccur again but just in case--

Woman: This one was about likeas a teenager.

Steve: Teenager. (Yeah.) OK, nowgiven that that happened so long ago,it may be that nothing like this will

To order outside the USA,contact:The Anglo American Book Companytel:+44 (0) 1267 211880fax:+44 (0) 1267 211882e-mail:[email protected]

To order in the USA,contact:

LPC Grouptel:800-626-4330fax:800-334-3892www.lpcgroup.com

The Life Coaching HandbookEverything You Need To Be An EffectiveLife CoachCurly MartinISBN:1899836713Paperback 205 pages

$24.95

Communication MagicExploring the Structure and Meaningof LanguageL.Michael Hall,PhDISBN:189983673XPaperback 335 pages

$24.95

Emotionally IntelligentLivingGeetu OrmeISBN:1899836470Paperback 224 pages

$19.95

See our full range of books at

www.crownhouse.co.uk

CROWN HOUSE PUBLISHING

A must-read bookfor those interestedin gaining a betterunderstanding ofemotional

intelligence.Reuven Bar-On,co-editorof The Handbook ofEmotional Intelligence.

Curly is,withoutdoubt,a major

talent in her field.Ted Edmondson,IndependentDistributor,The BookPeople

A revised andsubstantially

expanded edition ofthe classicThe Secrets

of Magic.


6/13



ever happen again. But if it were tohappen again, or anything similar toit, we would want you to be prepared.Given that those other people havethis different standard than you have,how do you want to respond tothem? Is it enough to just know thatyou have a different set of standards,and that you can now say, Up yours,or something like that insideoroutside if you want to? But whateverresponse you want to have in thatsituation, just think about that andthink about that if that should everhappen again, that in this situationthats what you would be satisfieddoing. (OK.) OK. And that looks

pretty good. Any parts object toany

Woman: No!

Steve: (laughs) No! It doesnt looklike it!

Woman: Its nice to tell people Upyours! (she laughs)

Steve: OK. There are times fordoing that. Its like, Off my suedes.Back off! (Yeah.) OK, now do youhave any questions about this?

Woman: No, I just want to take itback through a bunch of other

Steve: We will do that next. (bothlaugh) OK. Now, youve done thetimeline generalization stuff, the de-

cision destroyer and all those things.Now I want you to first take a mo-ment to just think about this situa-tion and that by perceiving this in this

area rather than over here, you canhave all these resources of being ableto notice the other peoples demandsor standards and cheerfully just say,Well, this is not one I want to meet.(Uhhuh.) And I want you to con-sider that there might be some situ-ations in which you would want tomeet their standards, or somehowdeal with it in a different way thanUp yours. (OK.) It might be spe-cial friends of yours with whom atleast you would want to be a littlemore political about it. (she laughs)Or that you might even at somepoint be willing to make certainconcessions to their standards be-

cause you value their friendship ortheir relationship sufficiently. (OK.)

That was important to you, and thaton balance, given all your differentcriteria, that would be good for you,(Uhhuh.) OK? Can you think of--

Youve already thought of a coupleof situations like that? (Uhhuh.)Great.

Woman: And how Id respond dif-

ferently, you know.

Steve: Sure, right. We want you tohave the full range of response to this.We dont want to just send you outinto the world, raising your middlefinger all day long. (laughter)

Woman: Aw, shucks.

Steve: This is not life supporting inthe long run. (laughter) OK. Now,

think about this whole situation, andI want you to feel that in your wholebody, feel that whole situation, theseresources, and your ability to evalu-ate a situation and respond the wayyou want to, and I want you to floatup . . . above your timeline . . . and go

nlp connection


7/13



back . . . as far back as you want to go.It could be to birth, or to concep-tion, or wherever you want to go, aslong as it is way back there . . . . (OK.)And then come right up through time,carrying these resources, and eachtime you get to one of those timeswhere you felt ashamed, it can change,and most of this will take place onthe unconscious level. Go at yourown speed and your own tempo . . .and come right up to the present. . . .

Woman: (surprised/satisfied)Humph!

Steve: Now, see yourself in the

future, going on in the same way inany such situations where otherpeople are attempting to imposetheir standards. Consider them and

decide if that is something that youwant to accommodate to or not. . . .

Woman: Yeah!

Steve: Now that looked pretty good.

Woman: Thats . . . yeah . . . thatsreal nice

Steve: Is that good? (Ummm. Yeah.)Do you want to do it again? (Um . . .yeah.) Take a double dose back now.(OK.) Float above, go back to wher-ever you went. This time come up alittle faster, just come zipping up, andwhen you get up to the present, look

out into the future and see yourself inthe future with these resources in allthe appropriate situations.

Woman: OK. (laughing) I have toshare the auditory part that I am sogood atits kind of like, Eat yourheart out, buddy. (laughter)

Steve: OK. Any questions?

Woman: It feels good.

Steve: Yeah it looks good.

Woman: (laughing) Yeah. Noquestions for me.

Steve: OK. Go forth in the worldand be shamed no more.

Woman: Wow! Thank you!(laughter)

Michael Hall


8/13



(This session took a little less than21 minutes.)

Follow-up

About three months after this ses-sion, the client boarded a sold-out

jumbo jet bound for Europe. Sinceshe is only 5 3 and weighs 297pounds, she overflowed a bit into theadjoining seats. A very expressiveFrenchman had been assigned to aseat next to her, and when he arrivedlate, he pointed at her and said in aloud voice, almost screaming, Lookat this! Im not going to sit here!

and made quite a fuss. Throughoutthis the client remained calm, think-ing to herself, Ill bet everyone isthinking what a jerk this guy is. Shesaid, Only later did it dawn on methat before the session, Id have beenlooking under the seat for a place tohide.

Three years later, she said, Once Ihad the awareness that I automati-cally clicked in to feeling comfort-

able in that situation, it had a real free-ing effect; Im no longer inhibited inpublic situations where people mightstare or point. Ive never been in asituation since where Ive felt shame.

I have just spoken with her again,over 11 years since the session. Shesaid to me, What has changed atthe belief level is that before I thoughtI didnt have the right to be. Now,

its Hey, I have the right to be here,too. I remember one time in Cali-fornia, a couple of children, about 6and 8, were pointing at me and star-ing, and saying, Look at the fat lady.I went up to their parents and said,You know, its not kind to teach thesekids to be so critical and judgemental.

Everybody has some disability, and ifI had a choice to be different, I would.And then I walked away, and thoughtto myself, God, did I say that? Thatchange has really stuck.

Now, if you read any JohnBradshaw or any of those otherpeople, they will tell you that thereare two kinds of shame. There is use-ful shame that gets you to changeyour behavior, and there is toxicshame which eats your heart out ina bad way. And I think they have madea valid distinction. There is one kindof shame in which it is basically basedon behavior. You did something, you

screwed up, you know. Somebodycaught you naked or whatever it is,and it is a specific behavior and youare ashamed of thatbehavior,but youare not ashamed of your self. Itdoesnt become a comment on yourbeing. What they call toxic shame iswhen it is a comment on your being.Its actually a reflection on your self,your very being and that is certainlymuch more harmful. But I dont think

you needeitherkind.

And as we demonstrated here, if youare in touch with your own criteria andyou realize when you want to meetsomeone elses standards and compro-mise in some way, or dovetail outcomesin some way, and this person is yourspouse or your boss or someone thatyou do need to have ongoing relation-ships with, then you simply decide whatyou are going to do. Life does face you

with difficult decisions sometimes, butyou just do what you do and, you know,You pays your money and you takesyour choice, as they used to say.

The basis for changing shame issubmodalities. They are very, very

powerful. It changes how you codethings. It changes how you accessresources and, as you saw here, assoon as she moved that picture over,it made a huge difference. And no-tice that even though she initially saidthere was no size difference, when Istarted talking about thatand thatis why I did it just in casewhen shechanged that, the picture opened upand she already had a changed feel-ing for it. It was already not as bad,even before mapping across to thenew location. So, any questions?

Man: What if the person reallydoes believe that they violated their

own standards? They look at the situ-ation and still go, Yeah, I really vio-lated my standards.

Steve: My own standards? (Yeah.)Then what do you have? If you vio-late your own standards, what do youhave? (Guilt.) Guilt, right. So thatswhat happens. Thats why we aregoing to do guilt, or selfforgivenessnext. (Great.) Because sometimes

when you do this and then you mapacross, now you feel guilty. The for-giveness pattern deals with that. Itsvery parallel and very similar, but it isalso different, and to keep thingssimple, lets just stay with shame now.But that is the next step.

Very often people just say, Well,you know, those standards are notones I want to meet, they are otherpeoples standards. Or if I want to

meet them, then I just figure out whatI want to do. And sometimes, youcan fluff it and just say, Well, youknow, you and I have different stan-dards; can we still remain friends?

Theres a wide range of possible re-sponses in there.


9/13



Sometimes it can be very useful toreexamine old standards and updatethem, or refine them to make themmore detailed and specific. You can findseveral pages about doing this inHeartof the Mind, (pp. 151-154)

Man: I really like it when you men-tioned that part about, you know, thetimes when you want to look at dif-ferent possibilities for what you wantto do.

Steve: Yeah. Well, if you are sloppy,then you get sloppy results and ifseriously, it is possible. People usedto go to assertiveness training semi-

nars and all it did was teach them tobe a prick. They just went out in theworld going, Up yours! and I wantmy demands and to hell with yours!It really does happen. And we wantto build in all the forks so the personhas the full range of response and thefull range of choices. If you dont ex-plicitly build it in that way, it may notget in there. Some people will do itanyway, but in this case we like to think

of other people as not competent, andmake sure that we are competent sothat just in case they are not compe-tent, we can cover all the bases.

Man: I was thinking that in somesituations where you have shame, theparental reimprinting might be a realhelpful part of the process?

Steve: Sure.

Man: Do you think growing a partup might be helpful?

Steve: Of course.

Man: So theres a lot of things wevealready done that just blend in with it.

Steve: Yes. Thats true. Absolutely.Now, so far every time I have donethis, it has been enough, we didnt needto do those other things. But I haveno objections. And you see, when youbuild this thing in and you make thistransition and then you take it backthrough time, you are making it into athroughtime characteristic of theperson. So you are building a piece ofselfconcept. You are building a selfresource that the person will carrywith them through time.

This is a really important distinc-tion. You can change a single eventwithout thereby building it into the

person as acapability. Thats one ofthe lovely things about the decisiondestroyer, or timeline reprinting, and

am pac

so on, where you go back and youbring all that stuffwithyou. Then itsthere with you all the time. Its justlike your name. You are never with-out your name, its always there. Youdont think about it, but if somebodyasks you, or you have a challenge thatrelates to that, thenboom, that stuffis there. Are there any other ques-tions before we go through the stepsof the process?

Resolving ShameProcess Outline

Overall, the Shame Resolution pat-

tern first eliminates the feeling ofshame in response to not meetingsomeone elses standards, by utilizing


10/13



shifts in submodalities. Then it teachesa decision process to examine theexternal standard, and determine: a.whether the person wants to havethis standard, or some modificationof it, for himself; and b. what the per-son wants to do in response to thissituation.

1. Contrastive Analysis

Compare the following two expe-riences, and list thecontentdifferencesand the submodalitydifferences be-tween:

a. An experience of shame. (Thiswill always be a response to notmeeting someone elses stan-dard.)

leading edge

b. An experience of not meetingsomeone elses standard with-out shame, andwitha more re-sourceful coping response.

2. Testing(Optional)

Test to find out which of the con-tent and submodality differences aremost powerful in increasing or re-ducing the feeling of shame. Changeone difference at a time to find outhow powerful it is in changing thepersons feeling of shame, and thenchange that difference back andchange another one, in order to learn

more about what is going on.

The typical important content dif-ferences we have found are:

a. Other people are facing andstaring directly at the ashamedperson, disapprovingly.

b. The person who is ashamedmaybe seen as naked, misshapen,etc.

c. Others are seen as muchlarger than the person who isashamed,

d. Innotshame, the person is some-times surrounded by some kindof protective shield, often trans-parent.

The major important typicalsubmodalitydifferences we have foundfor shame are:

a. The location of the image is dif-ferent, and usually a driver of othersubmodality shifts.

b. The image is often still, or al-most still: a frozen eternal moment intime, or a short repeating tape loop.

3. Transformation:

Map across the content of theshame experience to that of notshame, using the most powerful con-tent and submodality elements youfound by testing in step 2.

a. First adjust any content distor-tions in the selfimage. (Put clothes

on, change misshapen image to nor-mal image, etc.)

b. Make the self as large as theothers. (Occasionally, in severe shame,you may want to temporarily makethe self larger than others, or makeothers smaller than the self.)


11/13



c. Change the location of the image.

When these changes have been made, usually all the othersubmodality differences will have changed automatically. Checkto be sure, and shift any that remain unchanged. When themapping across is complete, the person will not feel any shame,and will feel resourceful instead.

4. Evaluate Standards:

Now that the person feels resourceful, its important toexamine the external standard, its outcome, and the possibleconsequences of meeting or not meeting it.

a. Whose standard is this?

b. What is the outcome/intention of the standard?

c. Keeping the outcome in mind, Is the external standardin this situation one that you want to have for yourself?

1. Yes. If the answer is Yes, go directly to step 5.(Even when someone basically agrees with the stan-dard, usually they will want to revise it or restate it insome way to make it completely appropriate.)

2. No. If the answer is No, ask, If not, what standarddoyou want to have for yourself in this situation? . . .

(Be sure this standard applies reciprocally, as in theGolden Rule.)

3. Unsure. If the person is ambivalent or incongru-ent, sort polarities, get outcomes/intentions, and thenintegrate the two in some way, or negotiate for a jointagreement on a standard. (See footnote1, pp. 151-154)When you are done, they will be able to answer yes orno congruently.

5. Plan a Specific Response:

Having decided onyour ownstandard in this situation inwhich you did not meet someone elses standard, what doyou want to do in this situation?

a. Same standard. If your standard is the same as, orsimilar to, the other persons standard, you might want

canlp


12/13



to consider an apology, or somekind of amends, a specific com-mitment to meet that standardin the future, etc.

b. Different standard. If yourstandard is different, you mightwant to consider not associat-ing with that person, explainingthat your standards are differ-ent, going through the mo-tions of meeting their stan-dards, even though you thinktheyre silly, joking about yourdifferences, leave the country,etc. Keep in mind that no twopeople have exactly the same

standards. If the person needshelp developing a satisfactoryresponse, use the New Behav-ior Generator (including the

as if frame and modeling) toselect an appropriate response.

6. Future-Pace

Actually rehearse whatever re-sponse you decided upon in step 5.Imagine carrying it out associated.(Do it dissociated first, if you haveany doubts about it, in context, to besure its satisfactory to you. If not,back up to step 5.)

7. Congruence Check

Does any part of me have any

objection to having this ability toevaluate a situation, and the standardsinvolved, and decide what I want todo?

8. TestingThink again of that situation in

which you felt shame. Check fornonverbal as well as verbal responses.

9. Timelinegeneralization

If the person has had many expe-riences of shame, it can be very use-ful to use timeline generalization tohelp the person reevaluate all theirpast experiences of shame in the waythey have just learned through theshame resolution pattern.

You have just reprocessed an ex-perience of shame in a way that givesyou more choices about how yourespond to situations in which some-

filler


13/13




one else has different values or standards than youdo. I want you to take this capability with you backto an earlier time in your life, before you had anyexperiences of shame, and come rapidly forwardthrough time, carrying this ability with you as part ofyourself, reprocessing any other experiences ofshame, realizing that much of this will take place atthe unconscious level. Take all the time you need,and when you reach the present, see yourself mov-ing forward through time, still carrying this abilitywith you.

This timeline generalization process can have adramatic impact on a multitude of past experiencesas it installs this ability as a through time and crosscontextual ability that becomes part of the personssense of themselves, their identity. This is particu-

larly useful if the shame was about the self, ratherthan just about a specific behavior.

2002 by Steve and Connirae Andreas

REFERENCES:

1. Andreas, Connirae; and Andreas, Steve.Heart of the Mind(Chapter 14) Moab, UT Real People Press 1989.

2. Andreas, Steve. Resolving Shame (videotape) NLPComprehensive, Lakewood Colorado 1991.

Steve Andreashas been learning, training, researching and

developing NLP methods for the last 24 years. He is theauthor ofVirginia Satir: The Patterns of Her Magic, and ananthology,Is There Life Before Death, and is coauthor

(with his wife, Connirae) ofHeart of the Mind andChangeYour Mindand Keep the Change. He lives with his wife

and three teenage sons in the foothills of the Rocky

Mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Address: 1221 Left HandCanyon Dr. Boulder CO 80302 [email protected]

neuro-energetics

andreas shame

Documents