Source: Connirae Andreas

Pick a challenging situation.

First Position, Visual

First Position, Auditory

First Position, Kinesthetic

Third Position (Observer), Visual

Third Position, Auditory

Third Position, Kinesthetic

Return to First Position (Self).

Final Check

By correcting bad habits of perception, you can achieve dramatic improvements in your relationships with others and with yourself. This pattern addresses the tendency for people to become stuck in a particular perceptual position. For example, a person who is always stuck in the second position may have difficulty hanging on to their own reality and be easily manipulated. But this pattern goes much farther than that, by correcting the poor representations of perceptual positions. When people discover and later on correct problems such as misalignments or jumping into the wrong position, they may experience impressive and lasting improvements in long-standing interpersonal problems.

What happens when perceptual positions are not aligned?

Here’s a great example: Let’s say someone is a bit self-centered or narcissistic. They have trouble tolerating it when someone else has more expensive clothes than they do, or is more important than they are in some way. When they work with perceptual positions, they may find that when they try position number two, which is looking at themselves through the other person’s eyes, they discover that what they are hearing is not really the other person’s voice. Instead, they hear what seems to be their own voice, telling them that they are inferior and that someone else is better than they are. But they go on to another discovery. Those thoughts add an emotional energy to that judgement. Those thoughts are loaded with the feeling that it is not acceptable, that it is horrible that this other person has a better car, or whatever. This person has been so busy trying to push away those feelings that they have been preoccupied with gaining status in any way they can. This means they have not realized how they are being driven by a voice that they have lost in the second perceptual position and that they are being attacked with feelings lost in the second perceptual position.

It gets a little farther out than even that. They realize, doing this work, that the thoughts are not really their own. Those thoughts about inferiority and superiority were the best thing they could come up with when they were children with a parent who humiliated them and who was very harsh. You could say then that they kind of inherited the voice from the parent; the voice was primarily coming from the second position. That judgmental voice had gotten assigned to random people, but it was not from them; it was from the parent, who was very judgmental. And the feelings? Those are first position feelings, and that’s good because we are imagining from the first position, from inside our own skin. But these intolerable feelings aren’t really a reaction to other people’s having nice things. Those are the terrors of a child who fears his or her big, harsh parent.It’s just that those thoughts and feelings were a defensive or protective posture. Defenses tend to stick around, because they are there to protect us.  Unfortunately for this fellow, though, they went out of date long ago. However, they didn’t know who they were, so they became lost in a struggle with what they had become. For the client, it had become a drama of who is best, who has the nicest things, and who is superior and inferior. The fear of the parents became the fear of anyone being superior. This, in turn, became a struggle for prestige, a struggle that seems like an adult struggle, but is actually a holdover from the past. It’s very difficult for someone to untangle themselves from a drama that masquerades as a grown-up pursuit. Aligning perceptual positions can rescue people from such suffering, and it can unlock maturation that has been frozen, maybe for decades. The beauty of aligning your perceptual positions is that it makes it much easier to let go of feelings and thoughts that don’t belong to you. When you are aligned, the misaligned parts feel out of place. You want to put them where they belong: in the past, or give them back to the person who started them in the first place. Many NLP practitioners work without talking about the past. That can work, because alignment happens in the present, and you can let go of thoughts and feelings without knowing where they came from. Most are practical and work with or assess past experience as necessary. They don’t, however, get lost in the past; the focus is on outcomes.

What Do Aligned Perceptual Positions Feel Like?

Let me give you a sense of aligned perceptual positions. Imagine yourself listening to these words. As you listen, with your eyes open, notice that you can see out of your own eyes, feel your own body, and hear with your own ears. You know that each of those senses is yours because of where you sense them. You are the center, and they are in the right positions. So what we have done is use real experience with your rep systems that you can refer to when you do visualization or a perceptual position alignment exercise. To sum up, when all your rep systems are in the same perceptual position, you see, hear, and feel your senses in the right physical location. If you are imagining yourself in the first perceptual position, then it is like you are actually in your own body, looking through your own eyes. You feel grounded or connected, even more powerful as an individual.  You will start your alignment by finding where the misalignment is. This means you’ll have to imagine a challenging situation. Then you’ll check each primary perceptual position: seeing, hearing, and feeling. Once we know where the misalignment is, we will use that for the alignment. We’ll start by determining whether you have any misalignment in your first perceptual position. Let’s actually imagine something and see if you get the same sense of properly placed senses as you do when experiencing real life. Let’s see if, in a visualization, you are the center of properly placed senses.

Step 1: Select a difficult situation. #

Pick a situation that is challenging for you and involves another person, such as having an argument with someone. Imagine yourself in that challenging situation.

• 2a. First Position, Visual:

Consider how you see; how your imagination represents your visual sense. Is your vision 100% exactly where it would be if you were really there, or would you say it is placed a little off from where it should be?

• 2b. First Position, Auditory:

Let’s try this with hearing. In the imaginary and challenging situation, imagine the sounds you might hear in it or add some appropriate sounds. Do they feel that they are coming to you in the same position that real hearing does? Imagine what the person might say to you. If they are saying what you are thinking, or if they are saying things that are truly how YOU feel about yourself, or what YOU are insecure about, you are hearing your own thoughts from a different perceptual position. That is a significant misalignment. This type of misalignment can make people feel self-conscious or jump to the conclusion that people are judging them too much. Aligning a problem like this is very empowering, because you own your own thoughts, and you feel much more grounded and confident. Include your thoughts as well, as though you “hear” your thoughts.  Ask yourself if those thoughts are really yours. Do they feel like they are really from your values and from the core of your mind, or is there anything alien about them, such as a resemblance to someone else’s style of speaking? Or are some of your thoughts actually what you think the other person is thinking? Adjust so that you hear your thoughts as your thoughts. If someone else’s thoughts or thinking style has intruded, turn this into thinking about what they think instead. If you have a judgmental voice, see what it feels like to try to own that voice. See what it feels like to place that voice in your throat and speak those judgments. Many people find it very awkward. They send those thoughts off to some mean school teacher or bully that isn’t even on the scene. That means those thoughts should be gone and no longer even audible.

• 2c. First Position, Kinesthetic:

We will do the same thing with feelings. Do you have emotions, tension, or any other feelings in this situation? If you are aligned, your feelings are coming from the part of your body that they should come from. But if your kinesthetic rep system is not aligned, then your feelings may seem to be coming from elsewhere. They might be a little off, or way off, like when you project feelings onto someone else. A more common problem, though, is when people mistake other people’s feelings as their own. This makes them easy to manipulate. Con artists, addicts, and other destructive people seek out these overly empathic individuals. Codependency involves this problem of being at the mercy of other people’s feelings. 3.a. Third Position (Observer), Visual: As you look at your challenging situation, move your point of view out and away, so that you are looking at yourself and the other person. Now you are in third place. Place your point of view so that you and the other person are both the same distance from your point of view as an observer. Have them at eye level. From this perspective, you may notice any changes in your experience. See if you find it helpful to move closer or farther away, to feel like you have a good sense of perspective. Is there anything else to adjust, such as any sub-modalities? For example, is your view dark or fuzzy?

• 3b. Third Position, Auditory:

Explore your auditory sense. Are you hearing what is going on from where your point of view is? Remember that your thoughts are only as an observer. Your reactions are not as the “you” in the first position, but as the observer of that “you,” and as the observer of whoever else is in the scene. You are unable to hear the thoughts of the “you” that you are observing. You can only guess as to the content of others’ thoughts. You might feel emotional about what is going on, but only as an observer. Thus, you might feel empathy or some other emotion about what you are observing. Here is a powerful alignment move: take what you think the other person may be thinking and have them speak the words. This allows you to be free of distraction, free of being occupied by your thoughts. Instead, you are actively imagining. This helps to secure you in the observer position and to see if those words are coming from the right person. Does it really sound like what they would say? Are you imagining it coming into your ears as if you were hearing it instead of thinking it? If so, you are aligned with your auditory observer (third) position.

• 3c. Third Position, Kinesthetic :

As you look at the situation as the observer, with “you” and the other person at the right distance from you, you are hearing from the observer position. You are also thinking as an observer who has some distance from the emotions in the situation. Notice what feelings you do have as the observer. If you have strong feelings that belong to someone in the scene, place them back in that person and feel what it is like to really be the observer. What feelings do you have about the scene as the observer? If you need to, adjust your feelings so that they are in the appropriate areas of your body. Notice what feelings are the most resourceful. What feelings best support you as an observant, curious, creative person, a person who generates solutions and excellence? This process can really liberate your unconscious mind as a problem-solving force. Allow yourself to relax in observer mode for a few moments, creating some space in your unconscious mind to benefit from this objective point of view. Open your mind to wisdom as it becomes available to you. The novelty of this experience can trigger unconscious resources. The unconscious is always looking for ways to connect the dots, to help you pursue a meaningful agenda even though you begin not knowing what will emerge. And now, the observer perspective is a resource that you can draw upon whenever you like. It is not only a position for a fresh perspective, but also a safe position that can give respite from raw personal feelings because it is a relatively dissociated state.

Step 4: Return to First Position (Self): #

Lastly, we will return to the first position in order to fine tune its alignment. Bring your perspective back to yourself in the scenario. Do you notice anything different about being back in your self-position?

• 4a. First Position, Visual:

Check each rep’s system. Are you looking out through your own eyes? If there is any kind of offset, or any misalignment, correct that by shifting directly into your normal vision, seeing directly out of your eyes. You should now view the other person as you normally would. Adjust any sub-modalities you care to, such as brightness, clarity, and size.

• 4b. First Position, Auditory:

How is your voice? As you speak, make sure it is coming from your throat. Of course, any internal dialog, thoughts, and judgments should really belong to you and come from your mind, emanating from you. Make sure your thoughts are in the first person, using phrases like “I think this” and “I think that.” Your thoughts are not talking about you; they are coming from you; they are yours. And your hearing should be coming directly into your imaginary ear. Adjust the placement as needed, so that it sounds natural and normal.

• 4c. First Position, Kinesthetic:

What has changed in your feelings? Do you have your own feelings coming from the normal areas of your body where such feelings come from?

Step 5: Final Verification: #

Do a final check and see if you feel aligned in the first position. Make any final adjustments as you like. You do not need to spend time trying to make it perfect. You are learning just the same. Since we are at the end of this pattern, and we know adjustments can spread, spend a few moments back in the third position as the observer, and see if there have been any other improvements.