A very interesting Newsweek article on how American children are being misdiagnosed as suffering from bi-polar disorder and the dire consequences highlights the relationship between language and our health.

In his article, Stuart Kaplan, a child psychiatrist with nearly 50 years experience, talks about the fad diagnosis that launched bi-polar disorder as a juvenile disease and the subsequent 40-fold increase of outpatient office visits for children and adolescents with bipolar disorder from 20,000 in 1994–95 to 800,000 in 2002-03. “Before 1995, bipolar disorder, once known as manic-depressive illness, was rarely diagnosed in children; today nearly one third of all children and adolescents discharged from child psychiatric hospitals are diagnosed with the disorder and medicated accordingly”.

What he tags as ‘trendy thinking’ started in the 1990s, is founded on shaky scientific grounds he says (notably that the symptoms for children bi-polar disorder include behaviours that are natural in children, and that several of the studies done by some leading scholars on the disease are based entirely on reports by parents).

Children (mis)diagnosed with bi-polar disorder “will likely be given dangerous adult medications with no known effectiveness for children and plenty of known dangers. One of these is the powerful drug valproate, a medication for seizure disorders, which has proved useful as a “mood stabilizer” in the treatment of bipolar adults but has yielded anything but clear results in children. The side effects can include fatal damage to the liver, pancreas, and brain, as well as the masculinization of female patients”. The issue is serious.

It is well worth reading the whole article which is an eye-opener on how a certain type of medicine is practiced and the consequences on our health.

NLP is a study of how language not only describes but literally determines the world we live in. And this article is a good illustration of this.

Take ‘nominalisation’ for example. A nominalisation is the process of turning a verb (i.e. a process which has movement) into a noun (thereby freezing it in time). For example: blood pressure is a noun that refers to the how the blood flows (a process) in our body. Virtually all diseases are nominalisations (i.e. a name that describes a process that is happening inside the body).

A process has movement, and can therefore easily be changed, but nouns refer to something that IS. The issue with nominalisations is that it becomes very difficult to see a way out of it.

Then, there is the issue of the psychology behind influence. When someone in a position of authority/celebrity (a fortune teller, a doctor, your parents, a friend, a celebrity etc…) tells us something, we tend to believe it (read “Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion”, by Robert Cialdini for a very good study of those mechanisms at work). So when ‘a Harvard child-psychiatry group led by Dr. Joseph Biederman, a prominent supporter of the diagnosis, recently insisted, “Juvenile bipolar disorder is a serious illness that is estimated to affect approximately 1 percent to 4 percent of children’ most people, even psychiatrists, will deem it to be true.

Another dimension of influence is that, as propagandist and advertisers know, the more we see and hear a message, the more familiar it becomes and the more we tend to believe it is true.

Finally, the more we invest (time, money, efforts) in something, the more attached we become to it because our focus becomes solely concentrated on the subject we study. Someone who specialises in studying bi-polar disorder in small children will more likely indeed find that the disease exists because the mind is programmed this way.

Have you ever wondered how psychiatrists know that someone suffers from a mental disorder? All mental disorders are compiled in a ‘bible’, a book called the DSM (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). The book is published by the American Psychiatric Association, but is used outside the US as well. There have been several editions of the DSM since its first edition in 1952, the DSM in use nowadays is the DSM 4 published in 1994, and a major review is to be published in 2013 (DSM 5).

Of course, we need objective references and  scientific criteria in medicine, hence the necessity for a reference book such as the DSM. And it is also true that putting a noun in print and making it a ‘condition’ has a huge influence on how we see the condition, which is why the revision of the DSM attracts so much criticism. In the first edition of the DSM published in 1952, homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder. What would we do with this nowadays? Societies evolve with time and societal beliefs change.

Kaplan laments that ‘in the U.S., popular culture has had an outsize influence on psychiatry, […] the popular debut of a medical disorder began with the publication of a book, The Bipolar Child, by Dr. Demitri Papolos and Janice Papolos, a husband-and-wife team. As part of the book’s promotion, the authors were featured on the show 20/20. Within 30 minutes of the segment’s airing, 20/20 received more than 6,000 emails. Shortly thereafter, the authors appeared on Oprah and eventually sold more than 200,000 copies of their book’.

It is not possible for the human mind to be completely objective (see the post ‘the limits of reason’ in The MasterMinds Blog), but it is worth keeping an open mind and getting a wide range of information on subjects that affect us as deeply as out health.

Click here to check the schedule of courses and certification trainings on language and communication that will change how you understand information.

NB1: Kaplan is a child psychiatrist and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Penn State College of Medicine. This article is an adaptation from his book, Your Child Does Not Have Bipolar Disorder: How Bad Science and Good Public Relations Created the Diagnosis.

NB2: For more on the business model of the pharmaceutical industry and the business of defining mental illness, read this post on The MasterMinds blog.

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‎“Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It’s a piece of neuro-audio technology for rewiring other people’s minds. I’m talking about your language”…

Biologist Mark Pagel shares a theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language and transformed humanity in the process.

Did you know that the European Union spends over 1 billion Euros every year just on translating between the 23 languages of its members countries? Pagel makes the point that language has been shaped by the evolution needs and that our world requires cooperation more than ever before. Is it far fetched then to think that we are heading toward a one language world? Watch the Ted video to find out.

And click here to check the schedule of courses on language and communication.

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Words are just ways to express what’s in our mind. Right? Well, maybe not quite so.

In a NY Times article titled “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?”, Linguist Guy Deutscher contends that our mother tongue in fact, trains our brain to think a certain way, and even alters our perception of reality.

Take words gender for example. While English speakers can equivocally evoke meeting a ‘neighbour’ for lunch or dinner without mentioning their sex, French or German speakers do not have this flexibility. Whether they like it or not, they will have to reveal the sex of their dining companion.

It gets even more subtle when you consider that many European languages assign genders on words referring to inanimate objects. As a native French speaker who has spent the past 20 years in a Chinese & English speaking environment, I can relate to how language shapes our reality. After 20 years of using mostly English as my main language, I still can’t shake off the deep and unexplainable feeling that the water in my glass is feminine and my bed is masculine. And my Chinese or English speaking friends just cannot understand how my mobile phone and my unconscious mind (this is getting weird!) are masculine, but I viscerally know that they are.

As Guy Deutscher (whose mother tongue is Hebrew) points out: “When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed.

In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory.” i.e. speakers of gendered-languages will have a range of emotional responses to objects that others will unaware of.

But the influence of language in shaping our reality goes well beyond genders. Take time for example. Deutscher’s mention that “Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions” is true. Past, present or future tense are usually indicated either by context or by a word added at the end of the sentence. I smiled when I read this paragraph, because after 20 years, I still have not managed to completely master the Cantonese sense of time. To the question  “at what time do we meet”, it is not unusual to get an answer as precise as “after 10″ (‘sap dim gei’ meaning, 10 and a bit”).

And then there is the issue of how language describes space. The Australian aboriginal tongue, Guugu Yimithirr for example, does not have a word for “left”, or one for “right”, or any word to describe space egocentrically like we do. In Guugu Yimithirr, space is described geographically in terms of East, West etc… Deutscher describes the story of a young boy who was sent to study dance in another village and who could not follow the instructions of his master (lift your northern leg, bend your head towards the south etc…) because he had lost his sense of cardinal directions.

David Bohm, in his essay ‘On Dialogue’ mentions that culture is shared meaning. Language certainly contributes for a large part to that shared meaning in how it shapes the way we think and perceive the world around us. The challenge then, is to become aware of the end result of this shaping process and to remain open to other ways of thinking and perceiving.

Click the links below to read the full NY Times article, and to discover how The MasterMinds can assist you toward a greater mastery of language and a greater cognitive and behavioural flexibility.

NY Times Article

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We’ve just posted an article on Ericksonian Hypnotic patterns on the MasterMinds NLP Tutorial public blog.

Click here (or copy and paste http://www.mastermindsnlptutorials.com in your browser).

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Alfred Korzybski in “Science and Sanity” (1933) reflects on the verb “to be” and the process of identification. He used to train people to avoid saying “I am”, asking them “Is this all you think you are?”.

Have you noticed when we are asked “who are you”, often, we say our name, and maybe mention our occupation/job title? Is this all we are? The verb TO BE can be limiting and reflects our beliefs about ourselves.

His work was based on the view that human beings are limited in their knowledge by the structure of their perceptions and their language. Unable to experience the world directly, they resort to “abstractions” (non-verbal perceived impressions and verbal indicators expressed through language). The structure of our perceptions and our language (which determine our understanding) sometimes misleads us as to what is going on, what we must deal with. We create an abstraction and this is the reality we deal with. He called for an increased awareness in each of us of that process of abstraction.

Interestingly enough, some 800 years before Korzybski, in India, Shankaracharya, the creator of the philosophy of non-duality Advaita Vedanta, mentioned the human process of “Adhyasa”, superimposition of meaning onto the unchanging reality through our senses, and its remedy, “Apavada” deconstruction of the operation of the senses.

Expanding the structure of our language and our perceptions, we can truly achieve mind-bloggling results!

Mind-Changing Courses.
Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

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Alfred Korzybski in “Science and Sanity” (1933) reflects on the verb “to be” and the process of identification. He used to train people to avoid saying “I am”, asking them “Is this all you think you are?”.

Have you noticed when we are asked “who are you”, often, we say our name, and maybe mention our occupation/job title? Is this all we are? The verb TO BE can be limiting and reflects our beliefs about ourselves.

His work was based on the view that human beings are limited in their knowledge by the structure of their perceptions and their language. Unable to experience the world directly, they resort to “abstractions” (non-verbal perceived impressions and verbal indicators expressed through language). The structure of our perceptions and our language (which determine our understanding) sometimes misleads us as to what is going on, what we must deal with. We create an abstraction and this is the reality we deal with. He called for an increased awareness in each of us of that process of abstraction.

Interestingly enough, some 800 years before Korzybski, in India, Shankaracharya, the creator of the philosophy of non-duality Advaita Vedanta, mentioned the human process of “Adhyasa”, superimposition of meaning onto the unchanging reality through our senses, and its remedy, “Apavada” deconstruction of the operation of the senses.

Expanding the structure of our language and our perceptions, we can truly achieve mind-bloggling results! In coaching, conscious use of language assist clients to expand their model of the world, and consequently, solve their problems.

Click here to learn how.

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Beliefs are prime examples of generalisations about ourselves AND the world, which act as a spring board to all our decisions. Beliefs are JUST IDEAS, there is nothing intrinsically TRUE about them.

One of the most powerful character of beliefs is that they often become self-fulfilling prophecies.

A common example of this is when a person firmly believes they’ve lost something, and sure enough, they can’t find it until someone points out that the lost object is right in front of them!

The unconscious mind deletes the visual information (“the object is right here”) to prove the belief right.

Where do we learn them from?

• From direct experiences filtered through the senses (what we see, hear, feel etc…)
• From our parents,
  
• From other people and what we hear in our direct environment (example: religious figures, teachers, media, peers, etc…)
  

Most of the time, our beliefs have an enormous positive power in how we see the world around us. For example, the most confident and successful people have a strong deeply anchored supportive belief about themselves and what they can achieve.

Sometimes however, some beliefs, which used to serve us have stopped doing so, and have become a source of limitation in our life.

One little known fact about beliefs is that they are embedded in our senses, and in the language we use to communicate with the world AND with ourselves (the conversation that we run in our own heads, that you are probably familiar with.)

Therefore, of the many techniques that are used nowadays to assist people change their beliefs about themselves to create results in their life (be it business, relationships, or health), none is as astonishingly effective and swift as the sensory and language-based belief change.

HOW TO IDENTIFY A DISEMPOWERING BELIEF?

Look for clues in words such as: “I must”, “It should”, “I ought to” etc… Technically, these are called modal operators of necessity. What they do is limit the possibilities which are open to us.

Also, possibility words used in the negative such as “I can’t”, “I couldn’t”, “I’ll never be able to” etc.. have the same effect.

When someone uses these words repeatedly, it shows that their model of the world is extremely restricted.

EXAMPLE OF QUESTIONS TO SCRAMBLE A NEGATIVE BELIEF

“How is that a problem?”

This will get people to the source of their problem, which ISthe limiting belief. Most people are only aware of the manifest issues in their life (example: “I smoke”, “I am overweight”, “I can’t sleep”, “My back aches”, “nobody takes me seriously”, “I can’t get promoted/loved”, “I should exercise more” etc…) but very few are aware of the source of their problem (if they were, their problem would disappear by magic!)

“How do you know it is a problem, as you sit right here right now?“
This will put light on the internal process they go through to make the problem a problem. Each belief exists because it follows a certain thought sequence (called “strategy”). The only thing often needed to get rid of the entire belief, is a mere scrambling of ONE step in the sequence.

“What is the higher purpose of this behaviour?”

All behaviours have a positive intent. Even those behaviours which appear silly, impossible to understand, or even downright obnoxious, have some kind of positive intention behind them.
A classical example is the unruly/“badly behaved” child (NB: “badly behaved according to whom?” is the question, but that’s the subject of another article!) who just uses offensive behaviour as a way to attract attention and confirm that the adults around him love him.
Don’t underestimate the power of the positive intent behind negative behaviours. Some people can make themselves sick if they believe it is the only way to attract attention from loved ones who seem too aloof.
Once the higher positive intent has been discovered, it is easy to
– find the belief behind the behaviour
– change the negative behaviour to satisfy the positive intent.

“How would you know if it wasn’t true?”

This question challenges the belief, the idea, that we hold true. It opens the possibility that, maybe, after all… there is another way to think about this. This question acts as the grain of sand in a perfectly polished mechanism.
Hum… Maybe, just maybe…

And finally, I want to share a secret with you.

This is something I ONLY teach in the advanced levels of language training certifications we run.

It’s a HIGHLY advanced language pattern that is used to totally scramble someone’s thinking sequence, and in the process, help them to dissolve deeply anchored disempowering beliefs.

And you’ll probably feel very uncomfortable using it the first few times, but I promise! It REALLY works!

The patterns uses a DOUBLE NEGATIVE question that the brain cannot process.

It goes something like this:

“What would not happen if you did not do it?”

Have fun!

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Alfred Korzybski in “Science and Sanity” (1933) reflects on the verb “to be” and the process of identification. He used to train people to avoid saying “I am”, asking them “Is this all you think you are?”.

Have you noticed when we are asked “who are you”, often, we say our name, and maybe mention our occupation/job title? Is this all we are? The verb TO BE can be limiting and reflects our beliefs about ourselves.

His work was based on the view that human beings are limited in their knowledge by the structure of their perceptions and their language. Unable to experience the world directly, they resort to “abstractions” (non-verbal perceived impressions and verbal indicators expressed through language). The structure of our perceptions and our language (which determine our understanding) sometimes misleads us as to what is going on, what we must deal with. We create an abstraction and this is the reality we deal with. He called for an increased awareness in each of us of that process of abstraction.

Interestingly enough, some 800 years before Korzybski, in India, Shankaracharya, the creator of the philosophy of non-duality Advaita Vedanta, mentioned the human process of “Adhyasa”, superimposition of meaning onto the unchanging reality through our senses, and its remedy, “Apavada” deconstruction of the operation of the senses.

So how to expand the structure of our language and our perceptions? Mind changing courses.

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