How your language is trapping you in a problem state (and how to change it!)

I'm stuck...

My anxiety is bad today...

I have trauma...

It's the fear that stops me...

You may recognise one, two or even more of the above phrases, and if you do, today's lesson is a BIG one for you.

Sure there isn't anything overtly strange or left-field about them, they're certainly common phrases.

But...

If we look a little deeper, something subtle but very impactful is going on.

In each of the phrases above, a hidden linguistic process is causing you more emotional distress than you might realise.

It's called a nominalisation.

Definitely a bit of a mouthful and not a topic to discuss after a couple of glasses of wine. But it's crucial to understand why people get frozen in problem states.

A nominalisation is when we turn a verb (a doing word, a process), into a noun (a thing).

For example, 'I'm feeling anxious' is a process, it's the presence of an emotion - defined as energy in motion - the 'feeling' of the anxiety is a fluid, ongoing process.

"I have anxiety' on the other hand, turns the process of feeling anxious into a thing - a nominalisation.

The feeling of anxiety is 'frozen' so to speak to become a thing we call anxiety.

But this is just linguistics Danny... I hear you cry.

Yet when we think about how the mind works we can start to see how this causes a problem.

Your mind processes the world through pictures and images.

These pictures and images are stored on your Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad.

Most of the time, you are not aware of the pictures and movies playing on the sketchpad in your mind. It's mostly a nonconscious process.

It is however a vital process when it comes to your health and wellbeing.

The simplest way to describe it is that your brain creates all the chemicals and hormones to match whatever picture is on the screen of your mind.

If you were to close your eyes and think about something you're worrying about, you might notice that you have a movie clip running of the worst cases scenario.

The process of worrying is an ongoing, fluid, ever-changing pattern of events, expressed in the mind as a series of pictures or movies.

But when we talk in the language of nominalisations, the pictures in our minds eye get FROZEN in place. They get jammed. The stop moving and become a thing -  a problem thing.

That's why when someone says 'I'm stuck', in a very literal sense they are, the image of the problem in their mind has got jammed which prevents it from moving and flowing through.

The same can happen in many other contexts.

If you turn former painful relationships, traumas, shames or any of those other nasty things into a nominalisation. They get jammed in your mind's eye and can block you from moving on.

The test for a nominalisation is a simple one...

Can you put it into a wheelbarrow?

(Admittedly it's an odd test too!)

For example, can you put trauma, hate, anxiety or stress into a wheelbarrow?

The answer is of course no. Therefore they are most effectively described in terms of a feeling. Let me show you with our earlier examples:

I'm stuck... is transformed into 'I'm feeling stuck'.

My anxiety is bad today... changes to 'my body is feeling anxious today'.

(there is another hidden little trick in this one which I'll save for another day).

I have trauma... changes to 'I have had some traumatic experiences'

It's the fear that stops me... changes to 'I'm feeling afraid of...'.

Simples.

(And yet powerful from your minds perspective).

Summary

Applying a nominalisation to a problem state causes it to become frozen in time and it therefore gets stuck on your Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad.

Converting these back into a feeling, back into a fluid process allows for the smoother change and resolution of the feelings.

My invitation to you is to keep in the language of feelings and avoid all nominalisations for a full week. They are sneaky so you'll have to pay really close attention. Give it a go and notice what happens.

Until next time, 

Danny