META-STATING FOR HEALTHY AGING

 

While the states you access certainly play a big role in your well-being and
health, your meta-states play an even bigger role.  There are many reasons
for that.  Primarily your primary or first-level states are nearly always
appropriate.  After all, all of your emotions are valid and appropriate-if
they come from correct assessment of the situation.  In this, you and I need
our fear, our anger, our stress, our sadness, etc.  If and when appropriate,
these emotions create the energy you need to respond effectively.

 

What you do not need are negative thoughts and feelings as meta-states to
your primary states.  That's when and how things become unhealthy.  Bring
negative states of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, understandings, etc. against
your experience (whatever it is), and you put yourself at odds with
yourself.  And that begins the process of neurosis!  Consider the following
negative thoughts and emotions and how they set a frame-of-reference for the
first-level experience:

              "I hate feeling this way!"

              "Why do I have to be this way?  It's not fair!"

              "I'll always be this way.  Nothing ever works out for me."

"Getting healthy is a matter of luck-the right doctor, the right
medicine..."

"Some people just have healthier genetics.  They don't have the struggles
that I do."

              "I gain weight just by looking at food..."

              "It's too much work to eat right, exercise regularly, etc."

   

When you take a meta-level position to an unpleasant primary state and bring
a state of hate, rejection, non-acceptance, a discounting state, an
excuse-making/victim state, etc. to it-you outframe your distress state in a
way that amplifies your distress.  The state-about-a-state that results
generates a layered complexity and neurosis.  You are meta-stating yourself
into illness.

 

Here the way you use your self-reflexivity is creating a living hell out of
what you would otherwise experience as something normal and a bit
unpleasant.  This illustrates that how you communicate to yourself about
your primary states can create psychosomatic illnesses.  But it doesn't have
to be that way.  You can use your reflexivity for vitality and well-being.
If, for example, you apply an empowering state to your distress, you can
generate an enhancing state of well-being.  How?  By meta-stating your
everyday first-level states with such healing emotions as-love, compassion,
acceptance, serenity, curiosity, hope, purpose, humor, etc.

 

The subjective structure of many psycho-physiological states resulting in
sickness, disease, and psychosomatic problems arise because of the negative
mental-emotional states that you set.  For example, the problem is not that
you have a headache, it is rather that you hate your headache.  The problem
lies in how you are interpreting your experience.  You are turning your
psychic energies against yourself-and to your detriment.  You are layering
your experience with judgment, self-rejection, hatred, guilt, shame, etc.
No wonder you feel sick; no wonder you are aging unhealthily.

 

In this lies the paradoxical nature of accessing states of joy,
pleasantness, acceptance, humor, fallibility, affection, meaningfulness,
etc. about your fallibilities, hurts, dysfunctions, etc.  As you lighten up
to cease taking your first-level states so seriously, you are setting a
higher level frame-of-reference around things.  This creates what we call
neuro-semantic magic at higher levels.  Here there is the seeming "magic" of
accepting and welcoming a headache so that the headache vanishes.

              Play with that one sometime.  When you experience the ache in
your head, instead of cursing it, rejecting it, tightening your muscles and
trying to make it go away, just sit back, take a deep breath, and welcome it
into your awareness.  Notice the kind and quality of the "ache."  Do you
experience it as tightness, warmth, a pulsing, or what?  Where do you
experience it most intensely?  Where does it begin to fade?  How far does it
extend?  How do you experience a different intensity in it at different
places?

   

The heart of a great many NLP and Ericksonian approaches to states of
ill-health involves outframing.  This means moving to a higher logical level
and establishing a frame-of-reference of acceptance, love, purpose/meaning,
learning, etc.  In Milton Erickson's classic approach to headaches, he first
simply accepted its presence and encouraged a welcoming of it.  He did this
by having a person curiously explore its kinesthetic qualities.

              Does it throb or pound?  Do you feel pressure or heat?

Where do you centrally feel it?  Where does it begin to fade out?

And if each throb is like a kitten stomping its feet-and you imagine the
kitten stomping even harder...with more force...

At a higher level Erickson presupposed that the person could become curious
about the pain.  Then by accepting the pain from the frame of curiosity, he
wondered how much control can you exercise over the cinematic qualities.
Typically, the experience changes.

 

When it comes to health and well-being, aging healthily, there are logical
levels.  There are higher level meta-states that can build up a much more
healthy mind-body system.  At the primary level-you can think and access
environmental helps-sunshine, walks, good food, good medicine, restful
sleep, exercise, etc.  At the behavioral level of your primary state, you
can do these things to create healthy habits.  At the first meta-state
level, you can believe: "I can influence my health and aging by establishing
healthy mental and emotional habits."  As an identity meta-state, you can
believe, "I am a healthy person."  At the intentional level, "I intend to
live healthily in my eating, exercising, sleeping, etc."  Herein lies a key
to aging healthily.

 

How about one additional meta-state?  Years ago Bob Bodenhamer found the
following quotes in the USA Weekend Magazine , in the Gaston Gazette
(January 3, 1999) and sent it to me.  It came from an Annual Health Report
on brain research. 

"Recently, a Dutch psychologist tried to figure out what separated chess
masters and chess grand masters.  He subjected groups of each to a battery
of tests-IQ, memory, spatial reasoning. He found no testing difference
between them.  The only difference: Grand masters simply loved chess more.
They had more passion and commitment to it.  Passion may be the key to
creativity." (Italics added)

 

The point?  To increase your effectiveness and well-being, meta-state your
work with love and passion.

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA