Being of Two Minds: Congruence/Incongruence “Have you ever felt like you wanted to go”

Being of Two Minds: Congruence/Incongruence

“Have you ever felt like you wanted to go, but you felt like you wanted to stay?”

It’s like the lyric from the song “Should I Stay or Should I Go?’, it’s a great example of something we all experience. It’s that sense of inner conflict, like one part of us wants to do one thing, and another part of us wants to do something else. Or it can seem that we’re just uncertain about what we really want to do. In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) terms this is called “Incongruence”: times when you feel conflict about a goal or a situation.

You can also feel incongruent about a more pleasant conflict, like what part of you want’s to go to the mountains and what part of you wants to go to the beach. More important is when incongruence reveals conflict in our values. Imagine, for example, that your boss told you that you should to be more aggressive with a certain customer. Yet, to you, being aggressive means being pushy and being pushy violates your values and your sense of who you are. 

You’ve also experienced times when you’ve felt no doubt or conflict, and everything seemed to be going your way. This is frequently referred to as ‘being in the zone” or being in a state of flow. This is called being “Congruent.” Learning to detect when you are congruent, and when you are not, is a very important life skill. The more you are aware of your personal signals of incongruence, the faster you can identify and resolve the conflict you’ve uncovered. The faster you resolve any incongruence, the easier things will be because you’re not spinning your wheels and unconsciously resisting or debating an issue.

Incongruence is a real source of friction in our lives. It takes a lot of personal energy to overcome a part of you that’s really opposed to a certain course of action. The more you try to override that part, the more likely it is that the unwilling part of you will object more strongly. And when you fight with yourself, you tend to lose.

It’s far more effective and in the long run simply easier to develop the ability to notice when you’re incongruent and resolve it. It’s one of the easiest skills to learn and one of the most rewarding. One of the greatest sources of emotional and physical stress is when your mind is trying desperately to override your body’s righteous desire to stop you from doing something that violates your integrity. The most effective way to turbocharge your life is to learn to move in harmony with your values.

Recognising Incongruence

You’ve had many recent experiences of being congruent about something you wanted. So simply think of the first one of those recent situations that comes to your mind. Now, very specifically remember the time and place where you felt that way. Remember who, what you saw, what you heard, and what you felt. Remember that experience now as if you were there and looking out from your eyes. What are you seeing now? What are you hearing? What are you feeling? 

Recalling all that is pretty empowering, isn’t it? Right now, just pick one aspect of that memory, whether it’s a picture or something heard or felt – one aspect seems most important to you. It’s your mind, so whichever element seems most important to you is the one.

Now, set that aside and consider the opposite experience. Think of a time when you were really uncertain, when you really felt ambivalent about something that you were supposed to do. It’s often easier to find a useful example when you think of something that someone else wanted you to do and you didn’t really want to.

Now take that feeling. Sound or image and magnify it, make it louder or larger or brighter or stronger. You want to be sure that you’ll recognize it every time it comes up. This is your warning signal. This is the signal that will let you know you need to really pay attention and sort out what’s going on. Whenever you get that signal, it’s time to stop the action, step back, and thoroughly assess your situation.

If you make a habit of doing a Congruence Check when you review your goals and dreams, you are less likely to get into situations where you find yourself in conflict with others or with yourself.
 

Are You In or Out? Being Associated or Disassociated?

In the two memories you just recalled, you may have noticed something different about the emotional impact. If you follow the instructions, in the first memory you were “in” the experience. NLP calls this an “Associated” experience. In the second memory you were outside the memory observing yourself, and this is call a “Disassociated” experience.

The technique of association and disassociation is really useful and here’s why: When we associate into an image or an experience, whether it’s real or imaginary, it’s much more intense for us. When we disassociate from an experience, we are watching ourselves in it and we still get most of the information from that image, but not the emotional impact.

The ability to recall an experience in a disassociated way allows you to observe it more impartially. Think back to the two different experiences you remembered. In the first experience, which was associated, you were in your feelings. In the second one, the dissociated experience, your feelings, were observed from outside. They were “over there.”
If you have a memory that feels yucky, I suggest that you always visit that memory dissociated. There’s no reason to feel those old yucky feelings again, even once. You can still access the information by just seeing the movie, if you even want to do that. If a memory is really bad or traumatic, there are powerful ways to deal with it.

It’s fascinating to me that some people tend to see all the unpleasant things, whether they’re real or imagined worries, as associated. In this way, they’re doing a lot to make themselves unhappy. Even if they’re not doing it deliberately. It’s a bad habit that causes them to get in the image and live the yucky bits. And, all the pleasant stuff, they view dissociated! If you sometimes do this, you can easily turn that around. You could immediately start changing your experience that was pleasant and revisiting them in an associated fashion, so you’re actually reliving the experience. Try it; it will enrich you.