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NLP

Glossary of NLP


Many people ask me about terms used in NLP. These may help you.

I will endeavor to describe the words, but please send me comments and new words as you wish.

Accessing Cues As the human thinks or processes information, they give of information in breathing, gestures, eye movements
Ambiguity Words or statements that can be interpreted in more than one way.
Analogue A variable that can change on a continuum from say high to low. See Digital. – on or off.
Anchoring A state or process that can be captured by a word, sight, feeling, which when triggered will cause that state or process to be recalled.
Associated Seeing, hearing feeling as if doing those things from within oneself. Actually doing the act.
Auditory The act of hearing or speaking.
Backtrack To go back, review, recall, using the same tonality, words, actions.
Behaviour Any process to be engaged with, physically or mentally.
Beliefs The way a person understands the world from their generalised view.
Calibration To notice and to be able to reproduce another’s state. 
Capability A strategy of success to do a task.
Chunking To take an idea or concept, to chunk up to a higher logical level being less specific, to chunk down a logical level, to be more specific.
Complex Equivalence Two statements which have no relevance to each other, but are joined together as if they are.
Congruence A state of persons being in rapport, thinking and doing together to a common outcome.
Conscious The state of mind that we are aware of at the present time.
Content Reframing By taking a statement and giving it a different meaning.
Context Reframing By taking a statement and using it in another context or situation.
Conversational Postulate Posing a question in such a way for it to become a command. 
Criterion What is important in a certain situation or process.
Cross-over Mirroring To match another’s physical movement with another movement of ones own.
Deep Structure That part of communication which has been omitted, leaving the surface structure.
Deletion That part of an experience that has been omitted, removed from the conscious process.
Digital Two states, which is either true or false, yes or no, with no variability, see Analogue.
Dissociated Seeing, hearing or feeling as if watching ones self doing, not in the experience. See Associated.
Distortion An inaccurate representation of an experience as a internal experience.
Downtime To go into ones own thoughts and feelings, in a relax state or hypnotic state.
Ecology To have regards to customs, beliefs, values, environment, surroundings.
Elicitation Using questions and observations, possibly with the Meta Model to gather information about behaviour
Epistemology Knowing how we know how we know.
Eye Accessing Cues The movement of the eyes that indicate the processing of information, of visual, auditory, both internal and external, Kinesthetic, and auditory digital.
Eyes Closed Process Used to describe the process of going into trance or hypnosis.

Feedback                 

First Position

Are we communicating what we are meant to communicate?

Part of Perceptual Positions. Seeing or being as ones self.

Frame The way we perceive, understand something.
Future Pace To mentally rehearse some future event or happening with a positive outcome.
Generalisation Combining all experiences of a similar nature into one specific experience.
Gustatory The sense of taste V.A.K.O.G.
Hypnosis A state, perhaps of relaxation.
Identity How one sees ones-self, the self-image.
Incongruence Not in agreement with, having conflict with, often seen or expressed in behaviour.
Installation To facilitate the acquiring of a new state or behaviour.
Intention The desired outcome of an action.
Internal Representations How information is stored in the mind, Visually, Auditory, Kinaesthetically, the tastes and smells.
Kinesthetic The sense of feeling, internal and external, sensations, emotions.
Lead System The representational system to load information into the conscious mind.
Leading The actions or processes that others will follow.
Linguistic Language, how it is constructed.
Logical Level Levels of information, lower levels are pieces of information contained in a higher level of information. 
Looping

Lost Performative


Starting a story or metaphor, without finishing starting another, then going back to finish or end the stories or metaphors. 

The person or thing doing the act is missing, see Meta Model

Map of the World The understanding or representation a person makes of the world with their own experiences.
Matching Enacting another’s posture, actions or language to gain rapport.
Meta More of, greater than, beyond.
Meta Model

Meta Model Diagram

To use language to recover the deep structure about a belief, experience or understanding, the opposite of Milton Model.

A diagram showing the language patterns of the Meta Model with links to explanations.

Meta-cognition Being able to explain knowledge to others.
Metaphor To tell a story with a hidden meaning, having a comparable situation as the real situation.
Metaprograms Habits that we filter information of experiences to get information or understandings.
Milton Model Using vague language patterns, so the resources of the individuals unique unconscious mind has to be accessed to gain understanding. Derived from the works of Milton Erickson. The opposite of Meta Model.
Mirroring To match another’s physical movement with the same movement of ones own precisely.
Mismatching To break rapport by doing different patterns, pattern interrupt.
Modal Operator of Necessity Terms in linguistics to change the rules or how we process the information, should could, will etc.
Modal Operator of Possibility Terms in linguistics that will change how processes can be done, can, cannot etc.
Modality The representational Systems V.A.K.O.G.
Model Term used to describe how a process is done, with V.A.K.O.G.
Modelling The act of or the process of finding out how a process works in the sequence it happens in.
Multiple Descriptions Describing a process or experience from different positions or viewpoints.
Neuro How the human processes information in the brain.
Neurological Levels Different logical levels of experience, involving the, environment, behaviour, capability, belief, identity, and spirituality. 
New Code NLP “New” NLP descriptions and ideas from John Grinder et al.
NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming. How people achieve excellence and how they structure that experience.
Nominalization To change a verb into a noun. To love becomes love.
Olfactory The sense of smell. V.A.K.O.G.
Outcome A sensory-based specific result of a future event that is well-formed.
Overlap To work in or communicate in one sense or representational system, then access another. Seeing into hearing. 
Pacing To gain rapport with someone and keeping that rapport over a time. Used with leading.
Parts The subconscious actions or intentions that guide us.
Pattern Interrupt To pace an individuals habitual processes or actions, then interrupt them, then guiding them in another direction or process.
Perceptual Filters The individuals beliefs, ideas, experiences that create their model of the world.
Perceptual Positions How we understand the world from our perspective (1st position), another persons (2nd), an observer’s (3rd), a 4th can be added that of a Martian. 
Phonological Ambiguity Two words that sound the same but have different meanings. Sea/see, hear/here.
Physiological The physical body of a person.
Predicates Sensory based words that indicate the use of the representational system. V.A.K.O.G.
Preferred System The representational system mostly used to process information or experiences.
Presuppositions Statements or ideas that are taken for granted to make sense of some communication.
Punctuation Ambiguity Joining or merging two unrelated sentences together without punctuation as if they were related.
Quotes To say something as if someone else has said it.
Rapport To establish and maintain trust and understanding between people.
Reframing To change an idea, belief  or frame of reference, by issuing another statement giving the original belief a new meaning.
Representation How sensory-based information V.A.K.O.G. is stored in the mind.
Representation 
System
The V.A.K.O.G. (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, Gustatory) sensory systems stored in the mind.
Requisite Variety Being able to be flexible to have choice in behaviour and thought.
Resourceful State The state when physical and psychological states are very good to achieve good results.
Resources Any experiences, learning’s, states, strategies that can be used to achieve an outcome.
Second Position Part of perceptual positions, that of seeing things from another’s view point.
Secondary gain Where some function is derived from another action, strategy or process that may be problematic, a phobia etc.  
Sensory Acuity Being more aware of the sensory-based information of any experience.
Sensory-Based Description Using sensory-based descriptions to describe an experience.
Sleep-Like People belief that hypnosis is sleep is untrue, it is a sleep-like state, where the subject is totally aware of the environment.
State The mood one is in at a given time, being the sum total of physical and psychological processes at that time.
Strategy How one achieves an outcome, the process of thoughts and behaviours, defined by V.A.K.O.G.
Submodality The representational Systems V.A.K.O.G. broken down into smaller part, to hear, – load, soft, far away, near.
Surface Structure The communication we make, deleting or leaving out , information from the deep structure.
Synesthesia Linking one sense to anther sense automatically.
T.O.T.E. Test, Operate, Test, Exit. A model of a strategy.
Third position Part of perceptual positions, that of seeing things from an observers position.
Timeline How past, present and future experiences are positioned in space as we thing of them.
Trance The altered state of hypnosis.
Transderivational Search The process of accessing experiences and representations to make sense of the present experience.
Translating The process of rephrasing words from one representational system predicates to another.
Tuple (4-Tuple) The short hand method of writing down the strategies or expeience using the four primary modalities or representation systems, V.A.K.
Unconscious All that is not in the conscious mind at that moment.
Universal Quantifiers Used in the Meta Model, that in linguistic terms links “everything” together in one word, All. Nobody.
Unspecified Nouns Nouns that have no referral as to who they belong to or what they refer to.
Unspecified Verbs 
    “Predicates
The process is no described by an adverb, how it was carried out. He ran, how did he run, fast or slow.
Uptime Where the attention or state are aware of everything.
Values Those beliefs that are important.
Visual The sense of sight.
Visualisation The act of imagination of seeing things in the mind, with the third eye.
Well-Formed An outcome or idea that is achievable, verifiable and ecological.
INDEX