Milton Model – Comparison with Meta Model and Language Patterns

Comparing the Meta Model and the Milton Model

In a sense, the hypnotic language of the Milton Model is a reversal of the Meta Model. The Meta Model aims to bring clarity and precision to communication. The Milton Model intentionally remains vague and indeterminate in order to evoke associations and activate resources.

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• The Milton Model is, linguistically speaking, the exact opposite of the Meta Model. While the Meta Model trains us to use specific language, the Milton Model provides guidance for unspecific language use. The indeterminate forms that we question with the Meta Model—namely deletions, generalizations, and distortions—are precisely the forms we deliberately employ in the Milton Model.
• The goal of the Meta Model is to gather precise, specific information (moving from the surface structure to the deep structure of language and experience). In this way, lost information and experiences can be “rediscovered.” In other words, it’s primarily about processes of making things conscious.
• Quite different with the Milton Model: it offers numerous ways to form sentences full of deletions, distortions, and generalizations. The listener finds the missing information within themselves and develops their own meaning for what is heard.
• Using unspecific language patterns aims to induce and sustain a trance state so that the other person can connect with the hidden, unconscious resources of their personality.
• In short: both approaches ultimately aim to make “forgotten” or “unconscious” experiences and resources accessible again. The route to that goal, however, is opposite.

Milton Model Language Patterns

Below you will find numerous language patterns from the Milton Model with examples. Beyond suggesting certain sensations, these patterns primarily give the client space to find the missing information within themselves and thus develop their own meaning for what is heard. At the same time, using unspecific forms aims to induce and maintain trance, helping the other person connect with hidden and unconscious resources.

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Generalization

• Universal quantifiers (all-encompassing terms):
  You have always sensed that all possibilities are open to you, because even if you never really knew it, everyone always told you so, and therefore …
• Modal operators (words of possibility or necessity):
  … and you can allow yourself to already be able to do what you will soon be permitted to do, even if you still have to wait a little until …
• Lost quotations, “general rules,” nested quotes:
  It’s good to relax, because after the work is done one may rest, because my father used to tell us how my grandmother would sit by the fireplace and proclaim that it was now time to go to sleep, and then she remembered …

Various Forms of Deletion

• Simple deletion:
  Information is missing. E.g., You can move on, letting go, he came back …
• Deletion of comparison:
  It’s already better, easier, more … it’s more pleasant to relax even more.
• Unspecified reference:
  Missing indication of what or whom the statement refers to.
  
  
  
  • something…, many people…, “one/they say,” some…, anything, certain things…, something within you
  • the rock cries, tree, sea, prince, animal … (symbolic reference)
  • the eye, ear, heartfelt, breakneck, skin-deep (organ language)
• Unspecified verbs:
  Verbs such as learn, resolve, change, think, know, experience, understand, remember, live through, become aware are relatively unspecific. If someone says, “You can learn,” it remains unspecified how learning should occur, and the client can use their own experience of learning.
• Nominalizations:
  Words that turn a process into a “thing,” such as life, relationship, ability, problem, experience … Using nominalizations allows the other person to insert their very personal experiences.
  I assume that earlier in your life there were also difficulties for which there seemed to be no solution at first. And sometimes there was a surprise when, as if out of nowhere, a change appeared that was positive.

Distortion (Fantasy/Reading Experience)

Mind reading/experience reading (matching – pacing); Example: You can hear my voice while your breath flows in and out evenly and you sit here on this chair; perhaps you also see something interesting before your inner eye.

• Pay attention to feedback and use it; calibrate
• Utilize changes (e.g., and even that frown is part of an important experience for you)
• Indeterminacy: Example: Perhaps you are wondering … you might like that, or not … somewhere, somehow, it could be …

Cause–Effect

This pattern invites the listener to believe that, because of one fact, something else necessarily happens.

• “While” creates a temporal connection: While you continue to breathe, you let go more and more.
• Verbs of causation like make, let, cause, create, help, etc., form the strongest kind of cause–effect links.

The sound of my voice makes you even more relaxed.
Because you are deeply relaxed, you can start to feel better.

This pattern is very effective when you link a behavior the client is already experiencing (pace) with a new behavior (lead).

Presuppositions

Presuppositions are statements that go unquestioned. They fly under the radar of attention. Linguistically, they are what remains true even if you negate the whole sentence.

• Apparent choice: Would you like to mow the lawn or practice the piano?
• Assumptive question: And I wonder how well you can relax today.
• Temporal sequence: Would you like to go into trance now or in five minutes?
• Numbering: Perhaps you are wondering which part of your body will relax first?
• Time-continuing words: You can continue to relax.

Indirect Commands

Indirect commands can be marked through pauses, tone of voice, and gestures.

I don’t know when you will start to feel better.
And even in this quiet state it is possible to learn something crucial.
Note that indirect negative commands can work just like positively phrased ones.
I don’t want you to feel too calm.
You really don’t have to listen to me.