NLP Communication Model

 What is NLP Communication Model?

At the conscious level, our brain will filter out anything it finds irrelevant at that point in time because of the deluge of incoming information.

Our brain receives information from:

• Our eyes
• Our ears
• Our skin (touch)
• Our nose (smell)
• Our tongue (taste)

All the other information received remains in the unconscious level.

Note that one of the primary functions of the conscious mind it to protect and preserve and it can do that by ensuring things which are irrelevant (at that point in time) are removed. For example, as we are doing a chore, listening to an important podcast, we are not concentrating on the touch of our clothes or the temperature of the bottom of our feet. These information are being passed along, but our conscious mind deems them irrelevant (at that point in time).

There may be times when we may have unconsciously responded to a task told to us by someone but may not have consciously heard it since we were engrossed in something we deemed more relevant. Thus, while we may have subconsciously nodded our head to that person, we may not remember a thing at all.

Has this ever happened to you?

The above is an example of deletion.

Have there been times that you have woken up in the middle of the night thinking you heard some sound. You try to use your listening skill to the max capacity only to realise it was the sound of the fridge (or AC)? This is an example of distortion.

The third type is generalization where we take in some information and apply is generally in all situations. e.g. if you know how to drive a car, you can drive any type of car. The same knowledge is applicable and it may take some time to figure out the ways of making a different car/truck work, but you will get the hang of it.

The good side of generalization is that once you have learned something, you don't need to keep re-learning.

The bad side of generalization is that we assume that things work the same way as they were in the past and we make assumptions (on items/people etc etc).

Lets think of a scenario where maybe we have generalized (based on a certain way a person looks at us or talks to us) that the other person is angry with us.

This is our internal representation. 

This puts us in a specific emotional state and its not ideal to deal with that person.

To change, we need to change our internal representation.

Another example is when a person doesn't want to exercise will mostly put his morning alarm on snooze and look for reasons to not go and exercise.

However, if the person understands the need of exercise and its benefits to him/her, inspite of not wanting to exercise, the person will get up to his/her morning alarm and look at it positively.

Just by talking to themselves differently, they are changing their internal representations.