Nice detailed post, great with examples.

A lot of what’s written about NLP has no where near the detail needed to be useful or practical. This is a great example of also HOW to write a decent instructional NLP article.

In appreciation,

Mr Twenty Twenty

PS: I agree with Fatih too. You two being able to disagree and yet the focus getting placed on moving forward toward a specific result is priceless.

Steve Bauer: Language is constructed on top of sensations. Sensations serve as references for language. Language is but a representation of sensations.
Sensory linkages can definitely exist without language. Children of pre-linguistic age associate external cue to internal states without running them through any language filter.
We maintain that ability throughout our adult life and can greatly benefit from leveraging it. You’ll notice extensive use of this skill in athletes and artists, who process sensory data purely at a sensory level without it ever crossing into their linguistic module.
For more information on that, you can read Turtles All The Way Down and Whispering In The Wind, both by John Grinder

Hmn…, Ok, I am doing a wrong emphasis here. I will try to explain me in another way. My main point isn´t if feelings can be processed before language, or if what happens first is the feeling and after that comes the linguistic expression of that feeling.
My main point is this: Beliefs determine feelings, so feelings follow from beliefs.
In practice this means something very simple: If one is feeling something one doesn’t want to feel, it’s because in that moment, one is believing something one doesn’t want to believe; If one is feeling something that one want to feel, it’s because in that moment, one is believing something one wants to believe.
Any belief we don’t want to have will produce feelings we don’t want to feel, and in the other way around. Shift the belief, and the emotion will shifts by itself.

Steve Bauer: Yes. Belief is one of the driving factors of emotion. What’s important to note in Fatih’s case is how his TOTE has streamlined and bypassed the language module. What he feels isn’t emotion, but physical reaction.

So in my view of the fatih´s case, the feeling he talks about is the result of his belief, and so he is feeling it because he is believing something he don´t want to believe. That feeling he is feeling doesn´t exist by itself, is linked to his belief. Then, when Fatih say he experience the feeling: “They must know it better than me so I’m wrong about what I know” (his own words, not mine), when someone disagree with him, is because he has a belief operating and that feeling is the product of the belief.

Steve Bauer: If you use the term “belief” in a very broad sense, yes. I think of beliefs as structures that exist explicitly in language. They have gone though the language module and are stored as explicit definitions we create of the world. A great example of this would be a lady thinking “All men are pigs” because one or two of her boyfriends broke up with her. She decided that using language.

But I’m purely sharing my model with you. It’s just the way I find it useful to carve things up. If you feel more comfortable, you can call all those generalizations “beliefs”.

With regard to try to impose my own model of the world here; hmn… well, you may be right here…
I was saying that because looking back and checking my own process, it has been my experience several times when I want to describe a belief or a situation and I am immersed in the feeling of that belief. And also this has been my experience observing other people, for example friends of mine in a simple and trivial conversation, when they are fully immersed feeling a situation that their language turns very sensory when they begin to describe what simply are facts, situations or conclusions, something like: “ … … and I felt like I had to stand up and embrace him and say thank you guy, … …

Regards
Javi

Ok, I see it now. Your adress both type of situations with the two questions at the same time, and the idea is that every question unlock new choices he hadn´t thought were as possible as the only one he was able to see until this moment, right?
I think it was an excellent piece of linguistic work!!

Although Steve, I disagree with you in the theorical base:
“”So linguistic links can’t exist without sensory links. But sensory links can exist without linguistic links”"

I don´t believe sensory links can exist without linguistic links. There would be always an “interpretation” of that sensory links/feelings, and that interpretation would lead almost always to a belief. What happens many times is that the person is unaware of that belief/interpretation and he is only being consciouss of it through the feelings he is perceiving, although he doesn´t know which belief is.

Steve Bauer: Language is constructed on top of sensations. Sensations serve as references for language. Language is but a representation of sensations.

For more information on that, you can read Turtles All The Way Down and Whispering In The Wind, both by John Grinder.

I still think this can be seen as a cause-effect, and inside it there is a complex equivalence. Look at this in this way:
If somebody disagrees with me on something, then (I think) I’m wrong about what I know, (so I immediately feel They must know it better than me)

Steve Bauer: Key element in what you wrote: “I still think this can be seen [..]” You can definitely frame this any number of ways. It doesn’t mean it’s Fatih’s experience. That’s where you have to be careful!

I’ll show you how it works in a second…

As I see this, what is happening here is that Fatih is expressing his belief putting emphasis in how this belief is making him feeling: “I immediately feel they must know it better than me”.
But this: “I immediately feel They must know it better than me”, in no way is a feeling, is the interpretation or linguistic part of the feelings he is feeling. If you want to know what are the feelings, you will have to ask for them then: So, what are you feelings exactly? Or, Where are you feeling that? And he will go and would say probably something like: “well, I have this pressure here in my chest and so on…”

Steve Bauer: Actually, Fatih is using words here for the sole purpose of trying to communicate to me what and how he feels.

Keep asking. You’re on the right track.

Regards
Javi