A Great Sleight
by Kevin Creedon and Richard Berman
Sleight-of-Mouth Patterns are tools for inviting others to be more choiceful in a conversational manner. They are conversational vitamins for your best friend who always has to do laundry whenever you mention NLP, for the co-worker who doesn't need any help ever—especially when he's in over his head—and for the people who are convinced that they can't see, hear or feel anything internal (and no one else can either). When you use sleight-of-mouth patterns, you're not doing NLP, you're just talking. And since you're just talking, people won't have to worry that you'll take over their minds and make them think they're a chicken.
One of our favorite sleights is Reversing Cause and Effect. Simply put, if someone says, "X causes Y," you rapportfully reply with, "Oh, I thought Y caused X." Here are some examples.
- When I finish these, then I can relax.
Oh, I thought that when you relax, then you'll be able to finish those five easily.
- I need to see the complete picture before I can take action.
Oh, I thought that by taking action, you can see the complete picture.
- I get angry when he looks at me that way.
And one of our favorites:
- I'm the way I am because of the way my parents treated me.
I thought your parents treated you that way because of the way you are.
Try it with a partner with the following statements.
- Doing too much therapy makes people nuts.
- The weather has to be nice in order for me to feel good.
- When I do better in school, then I'll be happy.
- I'll be able to enjoy life after I get a few more bills paid.
All the Selight of Mouth patterns can be pivotal within an NLP process as well. Here's a real-life example of Reversing Cause and Effect. While teaching in Mexico, a woman with cancer got 'stuck' doing my "Ten Steps to Forgiveness" process. Since I don't speak Spanish, a few participants jumped in to assist—but they couldn't get anywhere. Then the woman told me, in Spanish, through the translator, that she couldn't forgive herself until she had forgiven other people. I had the translator carefully repeat the following to her in Spanish: "Oh, I thought that once you really forgave yourself, then you could fully forgive other people."
When she heard these words, she had dramatic changes in skin color and breathing, and she started using her arms symmetrically for the first time. She was able to complete the process and reported major breakthroughs because of it. —Kevin Creedon
WARNING: The Following is for people
really, really into the details.
Logical Levels and Sleight-of-Mouth Patterns
As you may remember if you took a practitioner training, the mathematical concept of logical levels* was adapted by Gregory Bateson and others and applied to human interaction. Mathematicians had concluded that a statement about a group of numbers was intrinsically different (on a different logical level) than a statement about the numbers themselves. For instance, the set of all integers from I to X, X being the highest number allowed in that system, is different from the statement X+I, where X is a variable, meaning the highest positive integer. Since the second statement refers to the entire set, it cannot be considered part of that set. This explains the famous paradox, where a Cretan said all Cretans are liars. This paradox becomes understandable only if the statement is considered on a different logical level than the logical level of the lies that Cretans tell. Now that that's clear...
How does this apply to Sleight-of-Mouth Patterns? If a speaker says, "When he does that, he makes me so mad!" a cause and effect belief, he is speaking from certain presuppositions, from first position, and from a set of beliefs that rely on those presuppositions. When one reverses the cause and effect, as in, "Oh, I thought that when you got mad, he did that," those beliefs must be set aside in order to make sense of the reply. The initial speaker adopts a Meta Position and a different logical level.
Frequently, after using a sleight-of-mouth pattern, the subject will appear to ignore you, go into a brief spin, and say, "You know, I just thought of something..." and then go away never answering your challenge. Unfortunately this is one of those NLP interventions that you can't take credit for. But you can smile to yourself.
*Logical Levels, though related to the NLP Neuro-Logical Levels of environment, behavior, etc., are a different kettle of fruit (please note our sensitivity to animal rights).
A Great Sleight © 1998, Kevin Creedon & Richard Berman.