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Using General Semantics
By Susan Presby Kodish, Ph.D.
Co-author of Drive Yourself Sane
© 1995
General semantics can be
considered a neuro-semantic, neuro-linguistic discipline. Therefore, I
have found that learning the definitions and descriptions of the formulations
found in Science and Sanity, staff presentations and other
sources provides a necessary but not sufficient condition for developing
a general semantic orientation. Using the following material will help
you to incorporate general semantics into your everyday habitual reacting,
getting it into your nervous system, thus learning it neuro-semantically.
By using general semantics,
we can learn to understand ourselves and others better. We can also learn
to react-evaluate differently, if we so desire. In developing a general semantic
orientation we thus can improve our functioning.
In the material on the following
pages, I summarize some of my formulating on how to approach these goals.
The format of presentation is:
The formulation
Some reactions that relate to using this formulation
Some questions to ask yourself, and answer, that will help you to use this formulation
in your day-to-day life.
The 15 formulations which follow
are:
1. Semantic reactions
Note total organismic reacting;
my and your sensing-thinking-feeling-acting-etc.:
What was
going on in and around me as I reacted?
What was I sensing?
What was I 'thinking'?
What was I 'feeling'?
What was I doing?
How was I moving?
Develop an orientation
of delaying reactions:
How can
I delay my reaction?
When I wait to
react, what happens?
Increase response options:
How did
I choose to react that way?
Can I make other
choices?
What?
How?
2. Time-binding (Personal)
Note developmental life processes;
changes over time:
How did
I get this way?
What led to my
reacting in the ways that I do?
What kinds of response
habits have I learned and developed?
How can I learn
to "date" myself? (See "Dating" below)
What habits do
I like?
What habits might
I like to change?
How will I do this?
What are the first
steps to changing?
When will I take
them?
Accept present, including myself:
How can I best
build on my personal experiences?
How do I help and hurt
myself and others by demanding that events, including myself, should happen
differently right at this moment?
When I don't accept events
as they happen at the moment, does that cause them to change?
How does this hinder
my growth?
What problems are created?
Should a flower not happen
as it does?
Then how come I shouldn't
happen as I do?
How will accepting myself
help me to move on?
3. Organism-as-a-whole-in-environments
Broaden awareness of what
is going on, 'inside' and 'out':
What do I
sense 'inside' and 'out'?
What do I smell, hear,
see, touch, taste, etc.?
What else can I become
aware of?
Cope with uncertainty:
How will
having greater awareness help me to deal with whatever happens?
How can this help
me to experience more security, even when I can't 'feel' certain about
anything?
How can I learn
to "index" better? (See "Indexing" below)
4. Map-Territory Relations
Assume non-identity of orders
of abstraction:
Is the
way I evaluate something the way it 'really is'?
Are my words the
same as my non-verbal experience?
Am I referring
to a 'fact' or an inference?
How can I tell
the difference?
What happens when
I avoid the word 'same'?
Can I ever know
the way something 'really is'?
If not, how might
I better evaluate?
Assume non-allness of abstracting:
What might
I have left out?
What else?
What effect does
this have? (See "Etc." below)
Recognize that semantic reactions
refer to the particular person reacting:
What about
me contributes to my reacting in a certain way?
What about 'I'
gets in my 'eyes' as I develop my view of events?
What effects does
this have?
5. Non-identity
Remember that my conclusions
are not the same as my inferences are not the same as 'facts' are not the
same as non-verbal experiencing are not the same as "what-is-inferred-to-be-going-on":
Can I ever
know what some event 'is', apart from even my non-verbal evaluating?
What happens when
I don't use the "is of identity"?
Does what I do
equal what I 'am', as a totality?
Does what others
do equal what they 'are', as totalities?
How could I ever
know what I and others 'are', as totalities?
What differences
will I experience when I focus on what I do rather than on what I 'am'?
What differences
will I experience when I focus on what others do rather than on what
they 'are'?
What happens when
I don't put over-generalized, over-restrictive labels, like good/bad
and smart/stupid,
on myself and others?
Can I ever describe
anything apart from my evaluating?
What happens when
I don't use the "is of predication"?
Can I ever know
that something 'is' pretty in and of itself?
Where are the sights
I see, the sounds I hear, the aromas I smell, the flavors I taste, the
sensations I experience
located?
What happens when
I say that something looks pretty to me?
6. Non-absolutism
View formulations as hypotheses
to be tested:
How can
I test this out?
How will I know
to what extent I've evaluated this accurately?
Can I ever feel
absolutely 'sure' of my evaluations?
What does this
suggest?
Use quantifiers and qualifiers
to express tentativeness:
How does
this seem to me?
What happens when
I use the word "perhaps"?
To what degree
does this apply?
What happens when
I avoid the word "same"?
What happens when
I use "a" or "an" instead of "the"?
What happens when
I use plurals in place of singular forms?
7. Self-reflexiveness
Take responsibility for my
own reactions:
What happens
when I say "I" instead of the rhetorical "you"?
When I say "you"
is it you I'm talking about or myself?
How can I rephrase
this using "I"?
How can I acknowledge
the "to-me-ness" of my evaluations?
Recognize multi-meanings:
How did
I develop my idiosyncratic definitions?
Can there be other
ways of defining/describing events?
How can I remember
that we all have personal meanings for words and non-verbal experiences?
8. Consciousness of
abstracting
Separate 'facts' from inferences,
uncover assumptions, etc.:
What do
I 'mean'?
How do I know?
Can I sense what
I'm talking about?
What observations
support or negate my inferences?
Note assumption-conclusion-behavior
links:
What assumptions
do I make about this happening?
What conclusions
am I reaching?
How am I behaving?
What changes in
my assumptions and conclusions will be needed in order to behave differently?
Become aware of different levels
of internal processes:
What's
going on in me now?
What am I 'thinking'?
What memories are
triggered?
What assumptions
am I making?
What do I believe?
What images do
I have?
What rules for
living do I follow?
Note dead-level abstracting:
Am I getting
stuck on either higher-order or lower-order abstractions?
What kinds of inferences
and conclusions can I draw from what I observe?
What do I need
to observe to test my inferences and conclusions?
What happens when
I alternate among these levels?
9. Multiordinality
Recognize semantic reactions
to semantic reactions:
How am
I reacting?
How am I reacting
to these reactions?
What happens as
this process continues?
What happens when
I get upset about my semantic reactions?
What happens when
I accept my semantic reactions?
What happens when
I focus on my current experience, rather than my past experience or anticipated
future?
10. Question formulating
Note answerability of questions
asked and usefulness of answers:
What kind of
answers do I expect when I ask this question?
To what extent can I
feel satisfied with any answer?
How can I rephrase this
to find out more of what I want to know?
Shift from "why" to "how" questions:
How can I know
"why" something happened?
How far back do I have
to go?
What will happen when
I ask "how" something happened instead of "why"?
Avoid complex questions:
Does my question
include an opinion in disguise?
What do I 'mean', e.g.,
when I ask, "How could I have done that?"
What happens when I separate
this into three questions:
1) What did I
do?
2) How did I come to
do that?
3) How do I evaluate
what I did?
11. Dating
Use dates to show how things
change over time:
Separate past from present,
look for changes over time:
When did
something like this happen before?
How did I react
then?
How old was I?
How have I changed
since then?
How have other
happenings changed since then?
How can these changes
influence how I react now?
12. Indexing
Use indexes to show differences
within classifications:
Seminar(1)
is not seminar(2).
Look for differences:
How does this
situation seem different from similar ones?
Do these differences
make a difference?
How?
Develop specific, detailed descriptions:
What do I see,
hear, smell, taste, touch?
What happened?
And then?
And then?
How many semantic reactions
can I list?
What physiological sensations
occur?
Develop a multi-valued orientation:
What happens
when I give up a two-valued orientation and look for continuums instead?
For example, what happens if, instead of labeling my reaction as anxious
or calm, I rate the degree of anxiety or calm I experience
on a scale of 1-10?
How can I describe this?
Focus on moment-to-moment experiencing:
What do I notice?
What is going on 'inside'
of me?
How are others reacting?
Label what is going on as accurately
as possible:
How do I react
to "whatever"?
How can I best describe
my reaction?
How can I differentiate
my reactions, e.g., distinguish anxiety from excitement?
How do I know what my
reactions 'mean'?
Develop an orientation of minimum
expectations:
Can I expect
with certainty that someone will behave differently than usual?
How does having more-than-minimum
expectations lead me to react?
What will happen when
I have minimum expectations?
Watch for overgeneralizations:
Does that apply
all of the time?
When and when not?
13. Quotes
Use single quotes to note
words that you consider elementalistic or otherwise questionable:
What happens
to my reacting when I note 'think', 'feel','mind', 'body', etc., instead
of think, feel, mind, body, etc.?
How does this alert
me to possible problems in evaluating?
14. Hyphen
Connect with a hyphen words
that suggest separation of what we best understand as unified processes:
What happens
when I note my thinking-feeling instead of 'thinking' separate from 'feeling'?
How about mind-body instead
of my 'mind' separate from my 'body'?
Can these ever be separated
other than verbally?
15. Etc.
Use "etc." to note non-allness:
Is that
all?
What else?
What else?
Do I have it 'all'
now?
What happens when
I add "etc." to the end of my communications?
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