What Im lacking, and want to see bit more of, which are both concernd with NLP and decision space, is "conditioning". The science going back to Pavlov and his dogs. From my perspective, I can see how being aware of how conditioning actually works from a physiological point of view, can enhance and quicken a repatterning (self awarness) process. Lots of reactions and emotions in people are pure conditioned, and can start working in them uncounscious by some external stimulus as simple as a car honking his horn. Any thoughts on this linked to both decision space and NLP?

This is what 'popped' into my head regarding 'conditioning' -

Adjust your environment to different things. You are on this board. That's different.

What else did you adjust to get here ?

In short hang out with people who are 'open' in real life, if at all possible, as it can increase awareness.

In my case, for example, I hung out socially with those stereotyped as New Agers. While this has it's own particular drawbacks, it was at least incremental improvement over who else was available to hang out with.

I studied these concepts of conditioning and extinction (conditioning a conditioned behavior to stop) during either my BS or MS degree, can't recall which, and with it came a computer program called "Sniffy the lab rat" and it is very easy to do only taking consistency and repetition. Used with bad Intent it's insidious I'd say. Behavior modification bugs me personally because it's a trick and coercion they use to try and make people with autism appear normal. That's the entire goal, normal appearance so the autism is invisible and quiet rather than any better quality of life for the person with autism unless being ignored is better (it isn't).

There is an urban legend or actual event of a psychology instructor being conditioned to stand in front of one side of the room over the other by the student reactions to his lecture. The students were all in on it and simply had one half of the room attentive and the other half not and the professor eventually ended up in front of the nice side. That's conditioning.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Autism is defined by outward behavour. Someone who doesn't have the behavour is by definition not "autistic". It is not a description attempting to capture an actual physiological condition, it is a collection of observations aggregated into a "diagnosis".

Conditioning, in the sense of pavlov, may be used with various intentions. In a trance-state, capture the feeling of something and "anchor" it to a word, or feeling of touch, or something similar. Anchoring (rather than "conditioning") happens spontanously. The emotional reactions to brand names, people, voices, words, environments are all anchored.

Anchors fade, or their triggered responses might cancel each other. When you hear the voice of someone you love, it triggers feelings. When you break up, the feelings change. The idea of NLP in this case, is for example to capture the feeling one wants to have, like "neutral friend", and then anchor it to the voice or face of the person. Ofcourse, it is not trivial or easy. Trance/hypnosis is used to induce states, they are then anchored. For example, imagine hearing the voice as it fades away and disappears. Or, imagin seeing the face slowly fade to gray and shrink in size. The idea is that, the feelings are proportional to the strength of the triggers.

Or something like that.

Being aware how feelings are anchored can help. Think of how certain clothes remind you experiences, how letters remind you of people that remind you of whole episodes. How would affect you if you burned the letters? Or framed the pictures? How music from a certain period can make you sense smells, feelings, etc. The idea is to manipulate these things while in trance.

Many the ideas come from the therapist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson.

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Johan

Johan,

I believe that this is not correct.Bette is referring to someone being coerced and conditioned to sit quietly and not display any behavior in order to conceal autism. Sitting quietly and behaving does NOTHING for autism. Autism still remains as their internal mental and neurological functioning, even if they sit quietly after being conditioned. Sitting quietly cannot give you language skills that autism takes away. It cannot give you normal neurological functioning that autism takes away. Outward behavior is not autism. It goes much deeper than that. Autism is not a trivial behavior subject to modification but a serious failure of neurology. Bette will no doubt say this much better than I have.

Ted

Autism is a severe neurological disorder which effects the ability to interpret the data being received the same as neurologically typical people or animals too in my opinion (animals can have autism). It is an inner condition not an "outward behavior" as any "odd" behavior is a result of the condition. Behavior mod is to make people that don't understand and that don't want to be bothered by trying to understand feel better so people with autism can be allowed to go into public. That is what needs to be modified then, everyone that is neurologically typical that needs people with autism to appear the same at they are. It, the need to make other people appear to be like those making the rules by setting the norms as whatever behavior those setting the norms like, is a big undertaking to change let me tell you. It might be harder than helping people see that death is an illusion or that the brain is derived from Consciousness.

The current system has it that autism is a syndrome one of the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) categories that has levels of mild, moderate, and severe. There are lists of symptoms and if one has 10 or more (that was the criteria when my son was diagnosed in 1993) of the symptoms that interfere with their functioning then they have autism. We all display one or more of the symptoms of autism.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

How do you know? What specifically is out of order in the brain?

_________________
Johan

Johan,

Are you aware that there is an extensive research literature on autism? No one knows specifically what is wrong to result in autism. But it is well known to be a matter of serious neurological problems, not just some trivial behavioral pattern that can be modified by some kind of behavioral therapy.

Ted

There are a lot of unknowns but it is known that there is an abundance of gray matter or a lack of neural pruning that would be one thing different. The brains of people who experienced autism when studied have differences. Personally I think it is the data coming in that "has" autism and the brain that develops during that life time of dealing with that data is behind any differences structurally. Consciousness leads and the body follows.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Bette,

That is of course the case. As Tom has said, it is not the person as an IUOC with autism, it is a result of the PMR rule set. That rule set creates the neurological situation, when examined, that matches what the rule set does.

Ted

Now try and inform the status quo of that...
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.