Survival and Its (Annoying) Consequences
http://www.mymeditationcoach.com/articles/4207/1/Survival-and-Its-Annoying-Consequences/Page1.html
Carl Buchheit
Carl Buchheit, MA, has been the Training Director at NLP Marin (<a href="http://www.NLPMarin.com" title="http://www.NLPMarin.com" target="_blank">http://www.NLPMarin.com</a>) since 1993, and has deeply been involved with NLP for over thirty years. Informal calculations suggest that Carl has probably taught more NLP classes, and worked with more clients, than any other teacher/practitioner. By Carl Buchheit
Published on 08/26/2009
by Carl Buchheit, co-founder of NLP Marin, training director and lead facilitator
Recorded and first published in 2009
Carl responds to questions by students
by Carl Buchheit, co-founder of NLP Marin, training director and lead facilitator.
Recorded and first published in 2009
Carl responds to questions by students.
Note: The following transcript is edited for clarity.
Student:
I know [that there is a] distinction between highly valued states and baseline states, but I’m wondering what their relationship is, or maybe what the highly valued state’s relationship is to flapping?
Carl:
For starters, the lingo highly valued states and baseline states is probably not present (I don’t know for sure, but I don’t know that it’s used any place else) at any other NLP center. So, the baseline states are states that everyone has—“existential baseline states” as Jonathan Rice used to call them. They’re consequences of being gestated and born, and being alive a little while. [Baseline states are] helpless, hopeless, worthless, terrified and perhaps grief.
Highly valued states are the states that we learn to endure, that we learn to survive across time. It takes some time to develop highly valued states. Having survived them, then our creature neurology regards those states as necessary for continued survival, and thus they become highly valued for our creature self, although our human is seeking to do anything possible to get away from them and not have them anymore.
So the existential baseline states are essentially a function of being born, and highly valued states are a function of having some difficult, unfortunate learning over time. So, ‘alone’ and ‘ashamed’ probably would be examples of highly valued states. Say, if a kid grows up someplace where they have that experience of being alone and ashamed and it almost does them in—and it doesn’t do them in—their creature self will associate; literally, it will make the connection between not perishing and the experience of being alone and ashamed. And then those two things become a unity; the threat to the child’s survival and the child’s capacity to survive the threat, joined together, become a unity. Then, without the threat there’s no survival. That’s very annoying later on.
Student:
So, on that subject, do we flap [away] from highly valued states?
Carl:
No. No, actually we seek them out. They’re not coded as scary. They arrive more with the meaning of “Oh,...” I guess I should say “Heck…I’m back in this again.” We try to get away from them, and then we end up bungeed back into them. This is a discussion between the action of flapping and the action of being bungeed, which I think requires an engineer and a physicist to be present when we have that discussion.
Student:
So, I’m imagining a highly valued state would be the state that if someone were to say “Well, imagine this was never going to change, and you were always going to feel this way?” then that would be a way to access a baseline state [for the person listening]?
Carl:
It would probably lead directly to a baseline, yes.
Student:
And with the flapping—let’s say you have some kind of highly valued state that’s going on, or you’re finally succumbing to the point (whatever it is) about the highly valued state not going away, would that kind of flapping be what would happen until you hit the baseline?
Carl:
Yeah. I mean, if someone is hoping that they’re going to be able to be properly seen and wanted and loved and so forth, and they all of a sudden lose hope for that for whatever reason (they just broke up in their x number of relationships, or they just gave a public lecture that no one attends—distressing things like that), then they’re probably going to start crashing. They will have re-stabilized for themselves the feeling and the meaning and the state of “alone and unwanted,” let’s say. When they’re faced with that, they’re bungeed back into that [baseline] territory.
They’re probably going to crash into helpless, hopeless, worthless or terrified. I guess the baseline states are like the Ganges or something; they carry all the effluent away and all the other tributaries lead there.
That’s the end of my Indian subcontinent analogy.
© 2009 Carl Buchheit and NLP Marin
Recorded and first published in 2009
Carl responds to questions by students.
Note: The following transcript is edited for clarity.
Student:
I know [that there is a] distinction between highly valued states and baseline states, but I’m wondering what their relationship is, or maybe what the highly valued state’s relationship is to flapping?
Carl:
For starters, the lingo highly valued states and baseline states is probably not present (I don’t know for sure, but I don’t know that it’s used any place else) at any other NLP center. So, the baseline states are states that everyone has—“existential baseline states” as Jonathan Rice used to call them. They’re consequences of being gestated and born, and being alive a little while. [Baseline states are] helpless, hopeless, worthless, terrified and perhaps grief.
Highly valued states are the states that we learn to endure, that we learn to survive across time. It takes some time to develop highly valued states. Having survived them, then our creature neurology regards those states as necessary for continued survival, and thus they become highly valued for our creature self, although our human is seeking to do anything possible to get away from them and not have them anymore.
So the existential baseline states are essentially a function of being born, and highly valued states are a function of having some difficult, unfortunate learning over time. So, ‘alone’ and ‘ashamed’ probably would be examples of highly valued states. Say, if a kid grows up someplace where they have that experience of being alone and ashamed and it almost does them in—and it doesn’t do them in—their creature self will associate; literally, it will make the connection between not perishing and the experience of being alone and ashamed. And then those two things become a unity; the threat to the child’s survival and the child’s capacity to survive the threat, joined together, become a unity. Then, without the threat there’s no survival. That’s very annoying later on.
Student:
So, on that subject, do we flap [away] from highly valued states?
Carl:
No. No, actually we seek them out. They’re not coded as scary. They arrive more with the meaning of “Oh,...” I guess I should say “Heck…I’m back in this again.” We try to get away from them, and then we end up bungeed back into them. This is a discussion between the action of flapping and the action of being bungeed, which I think requires an engineer and a physicist to be present when we have that discussion.
Student:
So, I’m imagining a highly valued state would be the state that if someone were to say “Well, imagine this was never going to change, and you were always going to feel this way?” then that would be a way to access a baseline state [for the person listening]?
Carl:
It would probably lead directly to a baseline, yes.
Student:
And with the flapping—let’s say you have some kind of highly valued state that’s going on, or you’re finally succumbing to the point (whatever it is) about the highly valued state not going away, would that kind of flapping be what would happen until you hit the baseline?
Carl:
Yeah. I mean, if someone is hoping that they’re going to be able to be properly seen and wanted and loved and so forth, and they all of a sudden lose hope for that for whatever reason (they just broke up in their x number of relationships, or they just gave a public lecture that no one attends—distressing things like that), then they’re probably going to start crashing. They will have re-stabilized for themselves the feeling and the meaning and the state of “alone and unwanted,” let’s say. When they’re faced with that, they’re bungeed back into that [baseline] territory.
They’re probably going to crash into helpless, hopeless, worthless or terrified. I guess the baseline states are like the Ganges or something; they carry all the effluent away and all the other tributaries lead there.
That’s the end of my Indian subcontinent analogy.
© 2009 Carl Buchheit and NLP Marin