Complex Equivalences
"How can you do that if you Love me?"

Nothing is ever what it seems.  In NLP we use the term “Complex Equivalence” which is a pattern where we read “This means that”. For example, you looked at me that way, you must be angry with me.  Well, we can only read people’s behaviours, and we only have five senses to do that, so we can not possibly ever know what someone else is feeling; we can not communicate the actual feeling in itself.  The only thing that we have, that we can read, is the behaviour.  And of course people’s behaviours come from different feelings and beliefs.

So whilst you may see someone’s behaviour as meaning one thing, there is a very high probability they think or indeed intend on it meaning something else.  This is where those situations come from where we are left trying to understand why someone did something, why did this happen, it just doesn’t make sense for them to do that when they feel like this.  Likewise, if we are “told” someone feels in a certain way, we come to expect certain behaviours that we feel would be congruent with those feelings, but that congruence may not align with theirs. “How can you love me and behave like that?”  Our expectations are not met or do not match.

For us to develop understanding of any behaviour we have to fill in gaps, and we fill them with assumptions, with Complex Equivalences.  Even to the extent that “love” for you will mean something different to me, and hence we have a different starting point for any behaviour associated with the feelings of love.  Furthermore, the gaps can never be completely filled with detail.  If I explain to you what “love” is and means to me, I can only use words, actions, behaviours, terms which leave gaps that will again be filled with assumptions.

So how can we communicate effectively with our loved ones?  Well, behind all behaviours are intentions.  If we can get to the intentions we will be able to better understand the behaviours, and even accept behaviours which previously we felt were incongruent with our own beliefs.  Two people that truly love each other will never have an intention to cause hurt for the other, and yet time and time again we allow behaviours to hurt us without considering what the actual intention was.  Raising our own awareness that there is always a positive intention behind the behaviour will help us reconsider that there was a negative intention because we initially feel hurt.  “Hmmm… I’m kind of hurt by that remark, and I know you don’t want to hurt me, so rather than react to the hurt I will seek to gain deeper understanding of the behaviour, seek out the intention”.

If you are feeling hurt by the behaviour of a loved one, chances are you are misreading the behaviour and missing the intention.

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