DICTIONARY OF 
NLP TERMINOLOGY

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Accessing Cues
Behaviors that are correlated with the use of a particular representational system; e.g. eye movements, voice tones, postures, breathing, etc. (See Representational Systems)

Analog
All aspects of  communication which are not words including; voice tone, tempo, and body posture.

Analog Marking
Emphasizing a part of a sentence using nonverbal means; e.g. a louder tone or a hand gesture.

Anchor
A cue or trigger that elicits a response, similar to the stimulus-response of classical conditioning.

Associated
Being in an experience or memory as fully and completely as possible (with all the senses);  looking out from one's own eyes, hearing from one's own ears, feeling one's own feelings. (See Disassociated, and Dissociated)

Auditory
The sense of hearing. (See Representational Systems)

Backtrack
A spoken or written review or summary of information, usually to build / maintain rapport and to invite revision or correction.

Break State
To change a person's state dramatically.  Often used to pull  someone out of an unpleasant state.

Behavioral Flexibility
The ability to vary one's behavior in order to elicit a desired response from another person (in contrast to repeating a behavior that hasn't worked).

Calibrate
To "read" another person's verbal and nonverbal responses and associate specific behaviors with specific internal processes or states.

Channel
One of the five senses. (See Representational Systems)

Chunk Size
The size of the object, situation, or experience being considered.  This can be altered by chunking up to a more general category,  chunking down to a more specific category, or chunking sideways or laterally to others of the same type of class.  For example, beginning with "car." you could chunk down to a Ford or to a carburetor, chunk up to a  "means of transportation," and chunk sideways to a plane or train.

Collapsing Anchors
See Integrating Response / Anchors.

Complex Equivalence
The complex set of experiences that equal a certain  meaning in a person's map of reality; e.g. the specific set of behaviors that indicate that someone loves you.

Congruent
When all of a person's internal strategies, behaviors, and parts are in agreement and  working together coherently.

Conscious Mind
The level of experience that is within current awareness, generally recognized as consisting of between five to nine bits of information.  Contrast with  Unconscious Mind. (See Unconscious Mind)

Contrastive Analysis
Determining the differences between two representations, particularly submodalities.

Context
The environment within which a communication or response occurs.  The context is one of the cues that elicit specific responses.

Context Reframing
Placing  a "problem" response or behavior in a different context that gives it a new and different—usually more positive—meaning.

Core Transformation®
A process for personal growth that offers a graceful way to  change unwanted habits, thoughts, and feelings through discovering a person's "core states."

Corpus Callosum
A network of over 200 million fibers separating the left and right hemispheres of the brain.   It transfers information between the left and right hemispheres, allowing the hemispheres to "communicate" with each other.

Criteria
Standards for evaluation; qualities that can be applied to a wide range of  specific behaviors or events.  Examples: fun, exciting, inexpensive, interesting, high quality, bold, practical, and new.

Critical Submodalities
The submodalitites which are most powerful in determining  a person's response. (See Driver)

Disassociated
Being associated into an experience from a perspective outside the aligned position of self, and into another perspective. (See Associated, and Dissociated)

Dissociated
Being disconnected, or separate from, an experience without necessarily changing one's perspective.  Without feeling.  (See Associated, also Disassociated)

Driver Submodality
The most critical submodality in a given context; changing it automatically changes many other submodalities and "drives" the response.  (Unique for each individual)

Ecology
Considering the effects of a change on the larger system, instead of on just one isolated behavior, part, or person.

Eye Accessing Cues
Movements of a person's eyes that indicate the  representational system being used. (See "Accessing Cues)

Firing an Anchor
Repeating the behavior—touch, gesture, voice tone, etc—that triggers a certain response.

First Position ("Self")
Experiencing the world from your own perspective; being fully associated into yourself and your body.

Flexibility
Having more than one behavioral  choice in a situation. (See Behavioral Flexibility)

Future Pace
Rehearsing in all systems so that a specific behavior, or set of behaviors, becomes linked and sequenced in response to  the appropriate cues and occurs naturally and automatically in future situations.

Guided Search
The process of searching back through one's memories to find experiences that are similar  in some way—usually in kinesthetic response.  Often used to identify important early formative experiences that continue to affect a person.

Gustatory
Referring to the sense of taste. (See Representational Systems)

Hallucination
An internal representation of, or about, the world that has no basis in present sensory experience.

Incongruent
When two or more of a person's representations are in conflict.  Being "of two minds." or "torn between two possibilities," etc.

Integrating Responses / Anchors
Eliciting responses simultaneously, in order to blend the experiences.

Installation
Teaching or acquiring a new strategy or behavior,  generally by rehearsal or future pacing.

Kinesthetic
The sense of feeling.  May be subdivided into tactile feelings (Kt – skin sensing, physically feeling the outside world), proprioceptive feelings (Kp – movement, internal body sensations such as muscle tension or relaxation), and meta feelings (Km – "emotional" responses about some object, situation, or experience). (See Representational  Systems)

Lead System
The representational system initially used to access stored information; e.g. making a visual image of a friend in order to get the feeling of liking him / her.

Leading
Guiding another person their ecologically defined outcome.

Map of Reality
A person's unique and individual perception of events.

Matching
(See Mirroring, also Pacing)

Meaning Reframing
Ascribing a new meaning to a behavior or response without changing the context.  Usually done by directing  attention to deleted aspects; e.g. "You thought he was just slow; you didn't notice how thorough and reliable he is."

Meta
Derived from the Greek, meaning beyond or about.

Meta-model
A set of language patterns that focus attention on how people delete, distort, generalize, limit, or specify their realities.  It provides a series of questions useful for making  communication more specific, recovering lost or unspecified information, and loosening rigid patterns of thinking.

Meta-outcome
The outcome of the outcome: one that is more general and  basic than the stated one; e.g. "getting my self-respect back" might be the meta-outcome of "insulting that person."

Meta-person
The observer in an exercise, who has the task of giving  sensory feedback to guide (and sometimes also to the person in the "explorer" role) in order to improve performance.

Metaphor
A story, parable, or analogy that relates one situation,  experience, or phenomenon to another.

Meta-position
(See Observer)

Milton-model
A set of language patterns useful for communicating directly with the  unconscious, influencing and delivering messages in such a way that others readily accept, and respond to, them.  Usually vague and, therefore, inclusive language.

Mirroring
Matching one's behavior to that of another person, usually to establish rapport.  Sometimes preparatory to leading or intervening. (See Pacing)

Modality
One of the five senses. (See Representational Systems)

Modeling
Analyzing the specific behaviors and thinking patterns of another person or system in order to duplicate their successful results.

Neurological Levels
The logical levels of experience: environment, behavior, capability, belief, identity, and spirit.

Observer Position
A dissociated meta-position from  which you can observe or review events, seeing yourself and others interact.

Olfactory
The sense of smell. (See Representational Systems)

Organ Language
Idioms that refer to specific body parts or activities; e.g. "Get off my back," "pain in the neck," etc.

Other Position
To step into someone else's experience or perspective (borrowing a  persons perception as a tool for gathering information).

Outcome
Desired goal or result. (See Well-formed Outcome, also Meta-outcome)

Pacing
Matching or  mirroring another person's nonverbal and / or verbal behavior.  Useful for gaining rapport, sometimes preparatory to leading or intervening. (See Mirroring, also Matching)

Parts
A metaphoric term for different aspects of a person's experience.  Parts are distinct from the specific behaviors adopted by the "parts" in order to get their positive outcomes.

Perceptual Filter
An attitude, bias, point of view, perspective, or set of assumptions or presuppositions about an object, person, or situation.  This attitude "colors" all perceptions of the object, etc.

Polarity Response
A response which reverses, negates, or takes the opposite position of a previous statement.

Predicates
Process words that express action or  relationship with respect to a subject (verbs, adverbs and adjectives).  The words may reflect the representational system being used, or they may be non-specific; e.g. "That looks good," "Sounds good to me," "That  feels fine," or "I agree".

Preferred Representational System
The representational system which a person habitually uses to process information or experiences; usually the one in which  the person can make the most detailed distinctions.

Process Words
(See Predicates)

Rapport
A condition in which responsiveness has been established,  often described as feeling safe, trusting, or willing.

Reframing
A process by which a person's perception of a specific event or behavior is altered, resulting in a different  response.  Usually subdivided into Context Reframing and Meaning Reframing.

Representational System
The internal representations of experience in the five senses: seeing (visual),  hearing (auditory), feeling (kinesthetic), tasting (gustatory), and smelling (olfactory).

Resource State
The experience of a useful response.  An ability, attitude, behavior,  characteristic, perspective, or quality that is useful in some context.

Second Position
See Other Position

Secondary Gain
The positive intention or  desired outcome (often obscure or unknown) of an undesired or problem behavior.

Self Position
Experiencing the world from your own perspective; being associated into yourself and your  body.

Sensory Acuity
The ability to make sensory discriminations to identify distinctions between different states or events.

Sensory Based
Information  which is correlated with what has been received by the five senses. (Contrast with Hallucinations)

Separator State
A neutral state between two other states that prevents those states from combining or connecting with each other.

Sorting Polarities
Separating tendencies or "parts" that pull a person in opposite directions into cleanly defined and organized  entities.  Preparatory to integration.

State
A state of being, or a condition of body / mind response or experience, at a particular moment.

Stealing an Anchor
Identifying a naturally-occurring anchored sequence (stimulus-response) and then firing that anchor--rather than establishing an arbitrary "ad hoc" anchor for the response.

Stimulus-response
The repeated association between an experience and a particular response (Pavlovian conditioning), such that the stimulus becomes a trigger or cue for the response.

Strategy
A sequence of mental and behavioral representations which leads to a specific outcome; e.g. decision, learning, motivation, and specific skills.

Submodalities
The smaller  elements within a representational system; e.g. a visual image can be bright, dim, clear, fuzzy, moving, still, large, or small.

Swish
A generative submodalities pattern used to change habits and responses.

Synesthesia
A very close and quick overlap between a sequence of two or more representational systems, such as  "see / feel" (feelings overlap with what is seen) or "hear / feel" (feelings overlap with what is heard)

Third Position ("Observer")
A dissociated meta-position from which you can  observe or review events, seeing yourself and others interact.

Unconscious Mind
The total experiences and systemic working of the brain, not currently in conscious awareness.  (See  Conscious Mind)

Visual
The sense of seeing

Well-formed Outcome
A person's goal that is appropriately specified, obtainable, chunked-down, and  contextualized, that either helps satisfy, or does not interfere with, the person's other goals.

 

 

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