Viral thoughts and limiting beliefs

[Tomcat]

Limiting beliefs arise from generalizations, omissions and distortions of information placed in the frames of a problem, error, or impossibility. Such beliefs limit us even more and are even more difficult to change if they exist independently of the experiences, values, inner states and expectations of which they are derivatives. In such cases, a belief can be perceived as some kind of abstract "truth" about reality. As a result, people begin to view beliefs no longer as a "map" that serves as a reference point for us in some area of the territory of our experience, but as "territory" itself. The situation can be further aggravated if the limiting belief is not formed on the basis of our experience, but is imposed on us by others.

The basic assumption of NLP is that each person has their own "world map". Maps of different people can differ significantly depending on the origin, social stratum, cultural development, professional skills and personal history of their owners. In NLP, a lot of attention is paid to the study of how people should behave, taking into account the difference between their cards. The main task that we solve throughout life is the coordination of our "world map" with the maps of others.

For example, people have different beliefs about the healing ability of the human body and what can and should be done to heal themselves and others. Accordingly, there are maps showing what can be done in this area and what treatment is in general. Sometimes such cards can significantly limit our possibilities and lead to confrontation and conflicts of beliefs.

When one woman was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, she began to figure out what can be done to heal by acting on the body through the psyche. The surgeon observing the woman told her that "all this nonsense about healing through the psyche is complete nonsense, from which you can only go crazy." Her own experience allowed the woman to form a completely different belief. However, since this surgeon was her attending physician, his beliefs had a major impact on the decision. Willy-nilly, the woman had to accept the doctor's belief as a factor influencing her own belief system (in the same way, a person is under the threat of infection if there is a patient next to him - a carrier of infection).

Note that the therapist's belief in the problem frame was not associated with any positive intention, inner state, or any sensory input. There were no expected or desired consequences associated with it. The belief was presented as a "fact." Consequently, it was not easy to assess its fairness or usefulness. The woman was faced with the need to either agree with the doctor (and therefore accept a limiting belief) or argue with him, which could lead to undesirable consequences for her treatment.

A belief of this type, especially if it is presented as a "correct map of the world", can turn into a so-called thought-virus. Thought-virus is a separate category of limiting beliefs that can be serious obstacles to healing or self-improvement.

In fact, a thought-virus exists in isolation from the surrounding meta-structure, which creates a context and a task for persuasion, and also determines its "environmental friendliness" (Fig. 37). Unlike ordinary limiting beliefs, which can be updated or adjusted as new experiences accumulate, virus thoughts are based on unspoken assumptions (usually other limiting beliefs play their role). In such cases, the thought-virus becomes a “reality” that confirms itself, instead of serving a wider reality.

Thus, thoughts-viruses are difficult to correct or update due to incoming information or opposite examples that new experience gives. To combat them, one should rather identify and transform other beliefs and assumptions on which they are based (and which ensure their preservation). However, these other, more powerful assumptions and beliefs are not always visible in the superficial structure of beliefs.

The aforementioned woman worked as a nurse for a general practitioner. Instead of accusing her of stupidity, as the surgeon did, the doctor who worked for the woman called her over and said, "You know, if you really care about your family, you have to prepare them for anything." Despite the fact that this phrase was less aggressive than the words of the surgeon, it could potentially turn into a much more dangerous thought-virus. Most of this phrase unspoken, implied, so it became more difficult to realize that "this is just a private opinion." Willy-nilly, you start to think: “Yes, I care about my family. No, I don't want to leave without preparing my family for everything. "However, what remains unspoken, not visible from the surface, is that" to prepare for everything "means" to die. " The premise of this statement is that that "you are about to die." And its meaning is “stop doing nonsense and start preparing for death,” otherwise it will be even more difficult for your family. If you really care about your family, you will give up trying to get well, otherwise you will not be able to prepare the household “for everything”.

What makes this statement especially dangerous is the assumption that the only "correct" way to behave like a good, loving mother is to accept the fact that you are about to die and prepare yourself and your family for the inevitable. It is assumed that attempts to regain lost health when death is so obvious are indicative of selfishness and irresponsibility towards their family, generate false hope, potentially require financial costs and lead only to grief and disappointment.

Such thought viruses can infect the mind and nervous system in the same way that physical viruses infect the body or a computer virus - a computer system, leading to confusion and dysfunction. Just as the software base of one computer or an entire network can be destroyed by one virus, so the human nervous system can be "infected" and destroyed by thoughts-viruses.

Biologically, a virus is a tiny piece of genetic material. The genetic code is the physical "program" of our body. A virus is an imperfect piece of software. In reality, he is not a living being, so the virus cannot be killed or poisoned. The virus enters the cells of its "host", which, having no appropriate immunity, involuntarily becomes a "home" for it and even helps the virus to develop and produce offspring.

(Bacteria, unlike viruses, are living cells. A bacterium can be killed, for example, with antibiotics. However, antibiotics are powerless against viruses. Since bacteria are cells themselves, they cannot suppress cells in our body or "invade" them. Some of them are parasites and cause harm by overgrowing, but many bacteria are beneficial and necessary for the body - in particular for digestion.)

A computer virus is similar to a biological one in that it is not a complete and complete program. He has no "idea" about which part of the computer belongs to, which sections of memory are open or safe for him, has no idea about the computer "ecology". The virus does not perceive its own identity in relation to the rest of the software. Its main goal is to reproduce, to reproduce their own kind. Since the virus does not recognize the boundaries of other programs and data, it overwrites everything, erasing information and replacing it with itself. This disrupts the computer and results in serious errors.

Thought virus is similar to both of these types of viruses. Unlike perfect, full-fledged ideas, which most naturally fit into and organically support the vast system of our ideas and beliefs, the thought-virus causes confusion or conflict. Thoughts and beliefs themselves do not have any power. They "come to life" only if some action is based on them. Having decided to realize this or that belief or coordinate their actions with this or that thought, a person "revives" this belief, which can become "self-fulfilling".

For example, the woman we mentioned earlier lived about twelve years beyond the predicted age - largely because she did not share the limiting beliefs of her doctors. The doctor she worked for said that at best she would live for two years, but in reality one can only talk about months and even weeks. The woman left this job and lived for another twelve years without any signs of cancer. A few years after she left her job, her former chief physician fell seriously ill (however, in a much milder form than herself) and committed suicide. Moreover, either he managed to persuade his wife to do the same, or he simply killed her (the truth was never established). Why? Probably, the doctor believed that his death was inevitable, and did not want to "leave his wife unprepared."

The conclusion that can be drawn from this story is that a thought virus can lead to death as easily as the AIDS virus. She can kill her master and harm the "infected" others. Remember how many people died as a result of "ethnic cleansing" and "holy wars". It is possible that a considerable part of the harmfulness of the AIDS virus is the accompanying thought-viruses.

This in no way means that our heroine's doctor was a bad person. From the point of view of NLP, the problem was not in him, but in the belief itself, in the "virus." In fact, the doctor's suicide can be seen as an act of absolute integrity of nature - from the point of view of this belief. Only beliefs need criticism, not people who share them.

Thought-virus cannot be killed, it can only be recognized and neutralized or separated from the rest of the system. It is impossible to kill an idea or belief because they are not living organisms. Even killing a person who acted on the basis of this or that idea or belief does not kill the idea or belief. Centuries of war and religious persecution have borne this out. (Chemotherapy is similar in principle to war: it kills infected cells, but does not heal the body and does not protect it from the virus - and, unfortunately, leads to a relatively large number of "civilian losses", that is, healthy cells in the body.) C limiting beliefs and thoughts-viruses should be fought in the same way as the body fights a physical virus or a computer fights a software virus: through the identification of a virus,

Viruses infect not only those people or those computers that are "weak", "stupid" or "bad". Viruses trick their electronic or biological hosts by pretending at first that they fit into the existing system or are harmless to it. For example, the human genetic code is also a kind of program. It works according to the principle "If there is A and B, you should do C" or "If something has the structure of AAABAWAGADAYE, it is located there and there." One of the functions of the immune system is to check the codes of various parts of our body and substances that enter it for health and "organic". If the presence of certain substances is unjustified, the immune system "expels" them or sends them for processing. A virus (such as the AIDS virus) manages to trick the body and the immune system because that its structure is in many ways similar to the code of our cells (a kind of "adjustment and guidance" at the cellular level). In fact, humans and chimpanzees are the only creatures of nature suffering from AIDS, because only their genetic structure has such a structure (close to the structure of the virus) that the virus can "adjust" and infect the body.

As an illustration, let us imagine that the individual human genetic code has the structure "AAABAWAGADAYE". The virus can have the structure "AAABAOARGAE", which somewhat resembles the structure of an individual code. If only the first five letters are checked, the immune system considers the codes to be identical and allows the virus to enter the body. Another way a virus deceives the body and the immune system is to enter the body under the guise of a harmless protein shell (the "Trojan horse" principle). In this case, the immune system will not suspect a dirty trick.

The above remark of the doctor has similar properties: "If you really care about your family, you will have to prepare them for everything." At first glance, there is nothing harmful in it. Moreover, it seems to correspond to the positive values of “caring for the family” and “being ready”. What makes this belief deadly is the context in which the remark is made, and the subtext that remains unspoken but implied.

It is important to remember that a virus - biological, computer, or psychic - has no intelligence or intention of its own in relation to the system into which it is embedded. Expression of belief, in particular, is just a collection of words - until it takes on life through the values, inner states, expectations and experiences that we associate with these words. Likewise, a biological virus becomes harmful only when the body lets it in and takes it for "its own." Probably, each of us had to be under the influence of flu viruses or colds and not get sick, because the body's defenses were on the alert. Vaccinations, in fact, teach the human immune system how to recognize a particular biological virus and recycle it or expel it from the body. The immune system doesn't know how to kill a virus (since a virus cannot be killed). (It is known that the so-called killer T cells, which are part of our immune system, can destroy cells and tissues affected by the virus. However, like chemotherapy, it is more about fighting the symptoms than the cause. Good immunity will primarily prevent cells from becoming infected.) In particular, an anti-virus computer program does not destroy parts of the computer. On the contrary, it recognizes a virus program and erases it from memory or from disk. Often, in order to completely protect your computer, antivirus programs simply disconnect the "infected" drive. Good immunity will primarily prevent cells from getting infected.) In particular, an antivirus computer program does not destroy parts of the computer. On the contrary, it recognizes a virus program and erases it from memory or from disk. Often, in order to completely protect your computer, antivirus programs simply disconnect the "infected" drive. Good immunity will primarily prevent cells from getting infected.) In particular, an antivirus computer program does not destroy parts of the computer. On the contrary, it recognizes a virus program and erases it from memory or from disk. Often, in order to completely protect your computer, antivirus programs simply disconnect the "infected" drive.

Like a child who, while learning to read, gradually develops the skills of recognizing combinations of letters, the immune system gradually improves the ability to recognize and "cull" the various structures of the genetic codes of viruses. It subjects virus programs to ever more thorough and deep scans. A good example: we practically wiped out smallpox from the face of the earth without killing the viruses that cause smallpox - they are still around us today. We have just created a way by which the human immune system has learned to recognize these viruses. Vaccination gives the body the opportunity to realize: "Yeah, this virus is foreign" - nothing more. Vaccination does not kill the virus, but it helps the immune system to better understand what is part of our body and what is not, what belongs in it,

Likewise, picking a file on a computer disk and sending it to the trash can is drastic enough, but much less brutal than the terms “fighting a virus” and “killing a virus” might suggest. This process is used not only to protect the computer, but also to remove outdated data, as well as to replace old programs with new versions.

Obviously, you shouldn't try to "erase" every limiting thought. In fact, to begin with, you should establish a positive intention or meaning of this or that manifestation. Many are trying to simply get rid of painful symptoms and face enormous difficulties, because they do not take the trouble to listen to their situation, to understand it. It often takes a certain amount of wisdom to recognize and isolate a “virus”.

To heal the thought virus, it is necessary to deepen and enrich mental maps in search of new points of view and alternatives. Wisdom, ethics, and “sustainability” are not a consequence of having “correct” or “accurate” maps, because humans are incapable of creating such maps. Rather, our task is to create the most detailed map that reflects the systemic nature and ecology of ourselves and the world in which we live. Along with the expansion and enrichment of the model of the world, a person's perception of his own identification and mission also expands. The body's immune system is a tool for clarifying and maintaining the integrity of its physical identification. The immunization process implies that the immune system gains new knowledge of what is and is not part of the physical body.

Ultimately, techniques such as Tongue Tricks allow us to work with limiting beliefs and viral thoughts in a manner similar to vaccination rather than chemotherapy. Many of the ideas and techniques of NLP - like those embodied in the Tricks of the tongue patterns - can be seen as a kind of "grafting" that helps our belief systems develop immunity against certain thought viruses. These techniques disarm limiting beliefs and viral thoughts by reconnecting them with values, expectations, inner states and experiences and returning them to a context that allows natural renewal.

Source: Robert Dilts Language Tricks. Changing beliefs with NLP