What's Actually Happening: APHS Frame & Field Podcast

This is What's Actually Happening, the APHS Frame and Field Podcast.

I'm Jim Zboran, and each week we look at how human systems actually organize themselves through meaning, through frames, through the interpretation that's already running before effort begins.

And thank you for joining us today.

And joining us also is Chantelle Neufeld.

And Chantelle is a first time reader of paper two, zero one, zero two.

So book one, paper two, what APHS is not and why that matters.

And it does matter.

And we'll find out if it mattered to Chantelle.

Chantelle, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

You're very welcome.

And you were on the show previously, you were interacting with paper one of book one.

And so we really enjoyed that conversation.

And so we're looking forward to today's conversation.

Yes, I certainly am.

This is a fascinating topic for me.

Very good.

Chantelle, you approached this book.

I know I sent this paper, so it's a little mini book, really a paper, a monograph.

You approached it, I believe you received it yesterday.

So you've had about 24 hours.

And so this was your first reading of it, was it not?

Yes, it was.

Very good.

So what was your initial impression, which is overall, what's your what's the big impression that comes to the top of mind?

I guess what resonated most with me was the well, just the whole idea of defining something by what it is not, but also like the energy of reducing pressure like that stood out to me over the whole thing.

And also like reconsidering our relationship to control.

Yes.

That stood out a lot.

It probably was triggered by the word autonomy because that appears a few times in there.

So yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

Yes.

And APHS as a field refuses to take control.

And that's by design.

So good.

Those are really good intuitions there.

What do you think those resonated the most with you?

Well, just, I guess, well, and that's another thing that came up as I was reading it.

It was talking about worldview.

And so I've always considered my worldview to be very, like, open minded and, you know, open to interpretation and but you also mentioned about the worldviews can create dependency instead of flexibility.

So I thought that was a fascinating idea, too.

There are frames within frames within frames and worldviews is a frame, but it's there are deeper frames and there's nothing wrong with worldview.

We have to operate with them.

We have to operate with every frame, you know, we have them there to operate with.

And so they make sense.

But what really helps is when we can evaluate them and examine them and being open minded is a great worldview.

It creates a worldview from collapsing into something too narrow to really be able to navigate life with very effectively.

So excellent.

So really, you know, it doesn't change your your worldview and it doesn't change your the need or the importance of the worldview that you have and you've developed and is obviously very important to you.

You know, so it's kind of nice.

And maybe there's some freedom in that, too, isn't there?

Yes.

Freedom and flexibility.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think in my observation of life, freedom of flexibility is where things will naturally kind of go to after all the chaos and all the complication proves not worthy.

So it seems like things want to go simpler.

They're very complex, but it seems like there's there's a natural tendency towards simplicity sometimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I I was toying with the idea of it being like a neutral concept, but also like you were talking in the paper about passive withdrawal versus an allowing presence without interference.

Yes.

And there's a big difference there.

That's a good thing to pick up on, because there are a lot of worldviews or philosophies and frames where it's like, well, I just need to be passive about this and I just need to just accept everything kind of they don't really usually say that.

But but really, in order to make sense of it, they almost have to operate that way.

And which, of course, is very difficult to do for a functioning adult, you know, any human being, really, let alone a functioning adult.

We have to make judgments.

We don't have to be judgmental where we don't have to assign meanings to things, but we have to use good judgment to say, well, this is good for me or this is not good.

You know, this is bad for me.

And so we do have to we do have to have ideas and we really can't be completely passive about life unless we just want to float through life and allow whatever happens to happen to us.

And really, that's not the way humans are, you know, as a system are designed to be.

We can train ourselves to be that way, but it's an unhappy way of being, in my opinion.

And maybe some other people have that experience and it's great for them.

And so, you know, more power to them.

But I can't really, you know, at the moment see that.

But what I would prescribe more is an awareness of what's there and an acceptance of it being there without having to adopt it myself.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

So what's coming up in my mind right now is a picture on the projector in my NLP training of the filters of the mind, how information comes in and gets distorted and generalized and forget the other word.

Yes.

Yes.

Exactly.

And, you know, we might look at that from the outside and think, OK, well, it's distorted.

That's bad.

Or it's generalized.

That's really, you know, that's not good.

You know, and you're through the filters, those three filters.

But it was delete, delete.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's deleted.

That's that's bad.

I don't have all the information.

Well, the fact is, we couldn't operate.

We have so many sensors and so much information and data coming in that our mind has to give a shorthand so that our conscious mind can make decisions of what's most what it thinks is most, you know, most needed to be, you know, optimized or most needs to be looked at or dealt with immediately.

And so it will give the information in shorthand for our conscious mind to make a decision.

And so it's a very important function.

But you see, our other than conscious mind hold all of that information, but it's having to give a little little frame of information and the information it's going to choose is a lot of it's based on our frames.

So so we do we do, you know, our frames are going to interpret what the shorthand message is going to be very often at a certain level.

So, you know, the frames are very important, but but the seeing through frames and operating through frames is how we do it.

It's not a bad thing.

It's it's it's it's actually a good thing because it allows us to handle a lot of data coming in, which are other than other than conscious mind can handle.

But we are able to co-create with it because our mind can function with some little piece of that at a given time.

And that's the shorthand.

And the projector is exactly right.

And we're projecting on there and worldviews.

We all have a worldview.

We can turn that into more of a conscious thing where we decide our worldview.

But there's going to be a deeper, you know, quote unquote worldview that we are not aware of, you know, at a conscious level.

And those are the ones that are really going to catch us.

Yeah, you talked a lot in your papers.

The word coherence stood out to me because that's obviously a word I've heard before, but not one that I've necessarily defined for myself or studied at length.

But I feel like it kind of has the energy of harmony, of harmony between the unconscious and the conscious.

Entirely, entirely.

Later papers, in fact, a paper forward, as I believe in the first book, deals with theory of mind.

And that is coherence is extremely important, I think, you know, to this, to this field.

Like the ultimate goal of the field?

Well, it's, it's, let's see, could I say it's an ultimate goal?

I would say it's my ultimate goal to have coherence between my conscious mind and my other than conscious mind.

Because then we are, you know, I, me, it's all the same mind.

It's just different.

It's different.

There are just different capacities all operating at the same time.

And there's, there's those different, I hesitate to say layers, but, you know, there's, there's just the operation of the mind is, is complex, so complex that we have to, we have to, you know, in a conscious sense, have to categorize it into these different areas when it's really not different areas.

I don't believe it's really all happening at the same time.

It's just that they're doing different things.

That's how amazing the mind is.

And we, we can, you know, typically our experience, you know, moment by moment when we're waking is we're, we're really engaging at a conscious level, but, but really, you know, we, we shift in and out to a, to a subconscious level.

We're always in an unconscious level, what the body knows, you know, because we're always, we're always, you know, our body is always interpreting data coming in.

Like the body is the subconscious mind, science is discovering.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, it could be seen that way.

And so in fact, I kind of do see it that way.

You know, if I wanted to, you know, localize it, I might see it more in the solar plexus than I see it in, in, in the brain.

I don't know.

You know, that's, that's just kind of my, my picture of it.

But, but the fact is what I'm really talking about is I'm observing these things happening.

And so they are happening, you know, exactly how, I don't know, and I know a lot of science behind it.

So there's a lot of good ideas, but the real point is, you know, there's something going on and it's happening at a lot of different levels and all those levels are happening at the same time.

And we can shift to conscious, to subconscious, you know, hypnosis is a great way to shift, you know, to the subconscious mind, although we're all shifting back and forth all the time anyway, just naturally.

Anytime we're imagining anything.

Exactly.

Or engaging with anything that requires, you know, picturing something in our mind and, and, and, and, you know, listening to a story, all kinds of things.

So the mind is very powerful, but where things get tripped up is when there's a lack of coherence, you know, in these different areas.

And so, you know, it's, so for me, it's, you know, I'm listening to my body, so I'm listening to my, you know, what I would call the unconscious and I'm listening to my subconscious mind, which I, you know, via what I would consider to be intuition and, and listening to my, my cognitive mind, my logical mind.

So my conscious mind, I'm listening to all those and I want them lined up.

And so it's one mind that I'm operating as, as, you know, one human being and, but that human being, that human system is very complex and, and, you know, even the eye that is thinking is, is, is made up of many layers of eyes that developed over time, which is by design.

So it's a good thing, in other words, in my opinion.

And so, so I want to be coherent with my design.

I want, I want to be able to operate like my design and within the design, I have many layers of mind and many layers of I, you know, my, my identity, the ego.

And so, you know, the thing that holds things together in a coherent picture, so I can operate in daily life and I can operate with other humans and they can understand who I am because there's a coherence of my ego, you know, the I.

But none of that is, is, is in a material sense.

It's not fixed.

But thankfully it's consistent, thankfully it's persistent, you know, and so we can, we can use that as a tool to, to move forward and we can grow, but we're not locked in to anything we don't want, really.

You know, some things we can move to another position faster than others.

Some things are much more persistent, you know, and it might take a little more time, but we can direct these things when there's coherence.

Usually what's happening is there's not coherence between the mind and the rest of the mind, the other than conscious mind.

I should say it's, it's kind of confusing, but the conscious mind, there's not coherence with the conscious mind and the rest of the mind, the other than conscious mind.

And that creates all kinds of self-sabotage and lack of motivation and everything else.

And so when there's not coherence, it's like, it's like sand in the engine.

Yeah, that's a good metaphor.

Yeah.

So what, what it brings to mind for me is when I was the client instead of the therapist

and I was asked questions and so for example, I said yes, when my body was actually saying

no and like there was a bit of muscle testing in this one session we did where, you know,

like my mind logically would, would give an answer, but my body would lean in a different

direction or it would feel, you know, contracted versus expansive where my body was, you know,

saying where it was, where there was incoherence, it was showing where there was incoherence.

And just how much easier it is when, when there is coherence for that to be reflected in the outward reality versus trying to force a specific change that isn't working like that, there's some resistance, subconscious resistance too.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And it does reflect in our reality what we're, you know, if nothing else, the way we're seeing our reality, we're interpreting it that way because of those deeper things.

But certainly the, I believe their experience of life is that the moment that we're living in right now is, is super, super responsive.

And so, you know, in my opinion, this goes more to an application.

I have a timeline surfing and how to work with that.

So it's really, that's more applicational, but it's based on the APHS field.

But it's so responsive that you're very right.

You know, in my picture, a manifestation law of attraction, people would see a little bit differently perhaps.

But that idea there is when we are incoherent, that signal that's going out, you know, is read very strongly.

And then whatever we think is going to be the response to a strongly read signal, that's probably what's going to happen.

Because there's no resistance pulling it back from manifesting.

And so, you know, that kind of, it kind of points out that maybe we shouldn't get it.

If we're feeling resistance, there's something about us that says it's not, it's not right.

It's not right for me now.

It's bad.

It's going to kill me.

It's something.

Or that whole secondary gain, you know.

Or there's a secondary gain that has a higher priority and we'd rather have, you know, attention for not getting something.

But it's unconscious that we don't, we're not aware that it's operating behind the scenes.

And that's okay.

That's not broken.

That's the way it's supposed to be.

And if it's not, if we're not getting what we want or we're not going in the direction of life that we want, we don't have to fix, in my opinion, we don't have to fix a subconscious that's working in the wrong direction or anything else.

It's all working in the right direction.

We made it that way, but we have to then go in there and we have to bring coherence.

We have to bring them in line.

What the body knows is oftentimes wrong, dead wrong.

And what the subconscious thinks is often wrong, dead wrong to what the logic mind can think of.

And what the logic mind thinks is often dead wrong to whatever other parts, you know, can think of.

But what we need to do is not bring one in line with the other in the sense that one knows more.

What we need to do is we need to bring them all together into coherence.

And that means that sometimes one is going to be less right, but it's not less right in an ultimate sense of right or wrong.

It's less right for what I want to do.

Right.

But it's right for what it was supposed to do at some time.

It's just not the right time anymore, often.

And how, like, I'm just thinking now how everyone's interpreting the world differently and everyone has different perceptions.

And so in the helping field, when a coach, counselor, therapist imposes their solution on the client, it's there is it's almost always incoherent because it's not taking into account all of the subconscious things that are at play for the client.

Absolutely.

That that is such an important insight there, Chantelle.

And it's a common mistake, but it's it's it's a person gets more experienced, it becomes less of a mistake.

But really, you know, when I went to a certified college of hypnotherapy and I learned some really great techniques from really great teachers, but, you know, it was all all the technical stuff was fine.

It was really good.

But the I wasn't really good at it until I started realizing that I didn't have the answers for people that they had the best answer themselves.

And all I had to do is get out of the way.

And I didn't have to figure out their problems.

I just had to create an environment where they could see what they needed to see to fix their own problem.

Yeah.

And that was really holding that space and having that nonjudgmental compassion.

And yeah, yes, exactly.

So it didn't.

So when we're really good at what we do, you're helping people.

We're not solving the problems.

We're giving them some space to to see a solution, you know, in my perspective, and probably yours too.

I'm not saying it's not.

But but in my perspective, a lot of that is helping them get perspective, helping them get oriented, you know, where they're at, where they want to go, and then allowing their own other than conscious mind or their conscious mind to work together to get that coherent answer to what they're looking for.

I find often that when a person tries to figure out their issues on their own, there tends to be a lot of distractions or like parts of them that are trying to help them by not feeling and distracting.

And then in the in the context, when there is a helper involved, it kind of like keeps that focus directed on the, you know, what they want, the outcome they want or the feeling that they want to to have.

Yeah, so so I do feel like it's very helpful.

It is.

But not if there is any kind of like coercion involved on behalf of the therapist.

Right.

And that really brings it around to what you were saying originally that, you know, a lot of times people are introducing a worldview or something that's irrelevant to the person.

It may be very true.

It might be more true than what the person thinks, who knows.

But but the fact is, it's irrelevant to what that person can do because they don't see it that way.

And we do all see life different.

It's designed that way.

It's made that way.

It has to be that way because we all have different experiences in our in our beliefs are coming from our experiences.

And so in our experiences are shaped by our beliefs about them.

And so we have interpretations of those things.

So we are all very different.

And that's that's a good thing because we can now start learning other perspectives.

We don't have to experience everything and we can then create even more in life because we can now start learning from other people and their experiences.

But that is a problem.

I've sat through hundreds of hours of practice sessions towards graduating and also just helping other people graduate.

And I can't tell you how many times people implanted in my subconscious all kinds of belief systems that have nothing to do with my outlook on life.

And that's OK, because my subconscious, I say that tongue in cheek.

You're able to take the meat and leave the bones.

Yeah, exactly.

Because my subconscious is able easily to filter.

It has to filter advertising and everything else.

Every other idea I hear every day.

So so certainly you can accommodate somebody who's learning and but it but it is striking to me how how it really is not a helpful thing.

I don't think it could be helpful if somebody's from the same world view.

I work with people who come from more of the same world view as I do.

Often enough.

You know, I don't specialize in that area, but but often enough.

And I know their world view.

And so I can use metaphors and I can use ideas that I know that they're they're familiar with.

But mostly I work with people who are not of that world view and none of my world view comes into their world view because I'm aware that, you know, I'm really holding space for the person.

That's really what APHS is about.

It's it's the orientation, you know, so a person can can get some, you know, I often call it mobility.

They can they can navigate or they can move, you know, a lot of times they're so really where where they're where they come to me or, you know, a lot of people are, you know, for help is they're constrained.

They can't see anything else.

And really, it's basically just holding space for them where they can see for themselves or different options.

And there's a lot of different methods to do that.

Those are all applications.

But the idea is it's not a good idea to impose our viewpoints on other people.

It doesn't help.

In fact, it is irrelevant.

Exactly.

It reminds me, I really enjoy Esther Perel's podcast because she incorporates many different cultures.

She speaks very many different languages and she sees how different cultures have different belief systems.

And she, you know, has such an open minded perspective to to work within their frames.

And also, it's just really interesting how she repeats back what they've just said to her.

But she says it in the first person, like she pretends to be them, you know, just explains it like, you know, I experienced this and I feel this.

And then that reflection just allows the client to to see a new perspective.

You know, how often, like if you're talking to a friend over coffee, you know, you have all this advice you could give.

But then for yourself, it's hard to find that advice.

So it's just like that reflection is just really helpful.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's a very important technique, a way of doing that and why that works.

I think it can be explained in the APHS field.

The there will be something I would call parrot freezing.

A lot of times coaches are are taught to paraphrase or in conversation were taught to paraphrase what somebody said.

But when we paraphrase, we are interpreting what the person said.

And it is external to the person, really, when they hear it back.

And they can, you know, give assent or disagree if it's the correct interpretation.

But it's still an interpretation.

It's still externalized.

But there's what you're describing is really adjacent to, if not from Brooks's clean language and where what's what's happening is you're you're saying what the you're mirroring what the person is saying.

Exactly.

OK.

And it sounds like she might change it to first person, which is fine because it actually connects a little bit nicer.

I like that kind of little twist to it.

But by saying it, the person is is what is in their head and is bound up in everything that they can't see from all the angles.

When it comes back from the outside, they're now looking at it from another perspective.

It's them.

They connect with it because it's what they said.

But it's it's they're now seeing it not through the eyes of what were their eyes at the time it was put there.

But they're now seeing it from more mature eyes.

They just had never examined it before.

It was like hidden.

But because it's parroted back or because it's like put out and then it comes reflected back to them in a pure form, not an interpreted form.

They're seeing their thought and but they're seeing their thought with a more mature perspective.

If it's one minute later, it's more mature.

Right.

So.

Well, yeah, I mean, it it it just makes me think of like effective communication and asking for clarification, because so often even very used words in our language have different meanings to each person all the time.

Always.

Right.

Like, for example, in my in my hypno training, we had an experiment where we took the word education and we all had to write down 10 words of what it meant to us and then read them to each other on the circle.

And everyone had a very different meaning to a very popular word.

And so to have effective communication, I feel it's very helpful to ask for for clarification.

Oh, it is.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that and that's that's especially when you notice that incoherence happening.

Yeah, exactly.

And see, that's that's another another angle is it's it's it's.

It's asking by asking for clarification, you're you're the person is now putting something out from their beliefs.

And then when you parrot it back now.

So the combination of clarification and parroting, it's it's a very hypnotic thing.

It's a it's a it's a very it's a it's a waking hypnosis, but it's a very hypnotic thing for people.

And they you know, so that's another important angle to that is is is by asking for clarification.

So what kind of education is an education like this?

Right.

If I want to go into my my my Brooks.

Yes, because you don't need a long like deepening, walking down a hill or anything, because when you're trying to ask for clarification and get them to explain what they mean, often they have to resort to metaphors because there's no other way to explain it.

Absolutely.

And even just by asking the question, it puts them in hypnosis from a trans derivational viewpoint.

They have to they have to go inside to get the answer because it's you know, it's it's so they have to go inside.

Right.

So they're already going into hypnosis, in my opinion.

Yes, a helpful hypnosis, like from their perspective, like their subconscious is coming up with the answers.

It's not us implanting anything, which is a very common misconception of hypnosis.

Exactly.

And then they put it out and then they get it.

Then it comes reflecting back and it's also like, whoa, and all of a sudden you're speaking the same language because you're talking in metaphor.

Exactly.

And the metaphors are so important.

We think, in my opinion, it's really a pre-verbal language.

We're really thinking in pictures.

They're so much more efficient than thinking in words, you know, because we can now work with associations in a much faster manner than than a linear set of words that we have to parse.

And we we build up intuitive response of the pictures more than words.

Words are important and they're very helpful and they're symbols themselves.

But they're a symbol that now requires a degree of parsing or interpretation.

So it adds another layer of slowing down to the thoughts.

But when the person can think in pictures, you know, it's they can think very quickly because the associations come so quick.

And that's really where they're thinking anyway.

The words are, you know, our conscious mind thinks that it's thinking in words, but it's actually not.

The words are added later because we think they're important.

But metaphors is how we operate completely, really.

Yeah.

And I feel like so much of our traumas are pre-verbal anyways, and that's why that is so helpful.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And so bringing it over to APHS, really, these experiences and these understandings and these interpretations are really everything.

And if we're going to be helped ourselves, we're going to help ourselves and we're going to help other people.

We really want to go to these frames, but not frames in the popular sense, like a cognitive frame where we just like we convince ourselves something different.

Not at all.

What we do is we have to have a different orientation and different perspective.

And then all of a sudden the beliefs shift.

And a lot of times it's from the metaphor because the metaphor is simply, you know, the metaphor is a symbol, but it's really more than a symbol.

It's a collection of symbols, all of which are relating to one another.

And all of those symbols correspond to the reality within us, the way we're conceptualizing, the way we're relating to that problem.

And when we can pull, when that metaphor comes out, we can then, we are now changing our relationship to it.

And now all of a sudden we see it from a little different perspective.

And when that metaphor shifts, the frame shifts, the belief shifts, it self-organizes.

And this is really what APHS is about.

It's about humans as self-organizing systems that operate in terms of meaning and in terms of interpretations of things that are the meaning of it.

And so those frames are very, they're very malleable.

They're very strong and solid because they're kind of hidden from being monkeyed with by the conscious mind, thankfully.

But on the other hand, they probably need that protection so that they don't get monkeyed with because they're so changeable.

And that's the beauty of it is we can really move forward in our life in the direction we want to go by bringing that coherence and the coherences in terms of those metaphors and the thinking.

But they're all connected because if we change the metaphor, we change the thinking.

If we change the thinking, we change the metaphor too, but it's much slower.

And as you mentioned now, there are so many layers in the mind that's competing and trying to hide it that it could take lifetimes to trickle through at that level.

And at the same time, I find that in hypnosis, especially when I'm the client, how all of these things, how meaning organizes experience in a split second, how thousands of things can just be reorganized and it doesn't take a lifetime of therapy sessions to do that.

Like so much help can happen in a very small amount of time because of the subconscious mind.

Absolutely.

It's self-organizing.

We really are not organizing it.

We're allowing it to self-organize.

So we're just so much more effective than the conscious mind therapy, you know, trying to be like control things and it's not a it's not a it's not a bad reflection on therapy, but sometimes it's trying to do things that really should not do.

And we really, the therapy is going to end up being effective if it's a self-organization.

Otherwise, we're forcing ourselves to do something and the self-organizing system of the human does not like being forced.

Just like the New Year's resolutions that kind of peter out after a few weeks.

Exactly.

And so, you know, so we are looking for a self-organization.

The thing is, a lot of therapies in my experience or in my studies or in my opinion are really based on searching for causes that are really totally unnecessary to know.

We just have to know what the symptoms are so that we can say, well, I don't want this symptom.

I want a different symptom and then change a perspective.

But a lot of them are so focused on drilling down into the problem and finding the problem, the root causes and fixing that.

And we don't need to do that at all.

In fact, that makes it harder and it makes it worse because, as you pointed out earlier, you know, those parts don't want to be discovered a lot of times.

They're there for a reason to protect us and they think that being discovered will not protect us.

So it's against the coherence of that part to be discovered.

So it's going to throw up all kinds of smoke screens.

And so you can spend your entire life trying to figure out why you're doing something.

And but the problem is because but the perspective is that you have to figure that out to fix it.

And there's just a completely different reality out there.

Yeah.

Or in resistance to those parts or in resistance or like hating yourself in some way.

Like there's obviously not coherence if there's that inner conflict there.

And like it was revolutionary to me to reframe my beliefs that all parts of me are doing the best they can from their level of understanding.

Yes, exactly.

And that's that's an important understanding about human systems is that they're all doing the best they can.

And, you know, and then collectively we are doing the very best that we can.

And then therefore, by extension, everybody is doing the very best they can.

That's a very important concept that NLP as a field, you know, has that as an assumption, which is a really good assumption to have.

And I mean, it would help the world so much if all therapists and literally all people would who are in relationship with each other would have that, you know, when they're relating to the other person that they're doing the best they can.

Exactly.

It doesn't it doesn't treat a seemingly opposite point of view or, you know, as as such a threat, you know.

Exactly.

And here's the thing.

I think that's a that's a really a nice thought.

And I think that's very accurate and it would be a great goal.

The thing is, it takes people a lifetime sometimes to figure all that out.

And they've created all kinds of chaos, you know, in the meantime, that that's reverberating out into into, you know, humankind, I guess, into the field we're in, you know, into our reality because we're we're seeing it reflected back by now everybody's just certain behaviors that are helpful and unhelpful.

Exactly.

In the therapy context, it's just more helpful to to see the other person with that compassion.

And if you can't, if there's something in your personal experience as a therapist that's holding you back from seeing them in that light, then they should find a different a different therapist.

Yes, yes, exactly.

And APHS would say that we don't have to see the person in a bad light.

But if we see the person in a bad light, well, then that's an indication of something going on inside and we can then begin to look at what that's coming from and we can then change our orientation.

So APHS, APHS, without being a system or a framework, it can actually allow people who want to do that a way to even do it more.

But they would be interpreting in their way and then using, you know, you know, how we change and how we orient it to to our world and the interpretations of it and how we change those things.

And we can do we can take it in that direction.

But I think the thing everybody's going to be developing in different ways at different levels.

And so we're really going to always have this.

I think theoretically, we could probably say that there could be a point where everybody does operate from that level.

I mean, that's that's, you know, conceivable, probably not realistically, but theoretically it's conceivable.

But I wonder what we get from having it not that way.

I wonder what how we benefit from having it like this and knowing it can get better and knowing it probably is getting better.

And it's certainly probably, you know, centuries ago, it wasn't even, you know, even as good as this.

But in other ways, centuries ago, it's probably better than other things.

So I wonder why, what will be gain and benefit from it being like this?

Well, I feel like we would evolve when we can see that the world is yin yang and that there are these polarities that exist.

And I like to sometimes view the world through the elements, like how fire and air work together.

And when they're not in balance or incoherent, it can be like a forest fire or, you know, the frozen tundra, or there could be a nice balanced campfire, or like even like earth and water, how earth, you know, has like the boundary for the water, and how out of balance that could be flooding or, you know.

And so what if we have coherence, we probably have to have incoherence for a polarity.

And so what we need incoherence almost, don't we?

Yeah, well, like, it shows what it's what it's not like the whole discussion.

Based on this paper, it's important to know what something is not to be able to understand what something actually is.

Because it has like a boundary, like, like the land and the ocean.

It shows what is the land and what's the ocean.

Exactly.

So incoherence is not a bad thing either, I don't think.

And I don't think it's actually unhelpful, because it'll allow some people a chance to understand what coherence is.

But there also probably is an evolution, you'll use that word, there's probably is also an evolution, where, you know, this, the the polarities will be different, there will still be...

Yeah, just like opposites attract, or when you have that tension, that is this the space where creativity and creation happens.

Yes.

And so when there's incoherence, it's probably a good thing for us.

In fact, my timeline surfing framework, the incoherence is the wave that we ride on, and it lifts us and it carries us to where we want to go.

I love that metaphor.

And like how the resistance is the path.

The resistance is, yes, but not in a stoic sense, which is which I admire in itself, but but but in the sense that it is what empowers it and drives it and gives it context and shapes it into a physical reality, because before it meets that resistance outside, it's already in a conceptually good workable thing inside.

But when we bring it to create it into the world now, now it's that tension.

Now it's that resistance.

Now it's that incoherence.

Those points of incoherence creates tension and resistance.

But that's what a surfer is riding on.

The surfer is riding on that tension, otherwise they'd be going to sink, right?

So it creates that feeling of aliveness.

Yes, exactly.

So incoherence is not a bad thing.

I just would not want to live like that.

But I don't mind living in an incoherent world.

And in fact, because I can't know everything, it always will be incoherent because I will not always understand everything around me, right?

Yes.

And it's like more of a flexible perspective than a fixed.

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that's so important, Chantelle.

I really appreciate how you really tune into that, because I think that's so important.

Because if we have to control life, and I think as kids, at first we're not, because we don't think we had, then we kind of have to feel like we have to, and different people have different layers of that or levels of that.

But there's kind of that tendency to want to control things.

And if we have experiences in our life where we're not in control, or where control was imposed on us and we didn't like that, then we can develop where we have the frame is we need to control.

And that creates a lot of tension in our own lives.

And we don't really end up controlling much anyway.

But if we can not control, we have a lot of freedom by not trying to control.

And when we have that freedom, we can be free to be what we want, and we can live with those tensions because they don't threaten us.

They can't control us.

But they are in the environment out there.

We're trying to make our way through that environment, but we can relate to them different than as threats.

We can relate to them as tensions.

And not tensions that are bad tension, but good tension that gives that framework and that flavor and that structure that's going to hold up what we're doing.

I'm not sure why I'm seeing this picture right now.

Maybe you could bring some light to it.

But I'm seeing like a playground at school and one playground has a fence around it and the kids are playing everywhere on the yard and right up to the fence and they feel safe.

And another playground has no fence around it.

And so they're all the kids are all huddled very much in the center, feeling very uncertain about where the line is.

That's how does that relate?

That's a good metaphor, because when those fences are artificial, those fences are artificial barriers, but they're doing an important thing.

And we may feel like not having fences is healthy and good.

But really, when we we are finite in our in our understandings and, you know, our understandings and our knowledge.

And when we go into a finite space and we can see the boundaries, we feel very secure as humans.

And that doesn't mean that we can't go outside the fence.

We can.

It doesn't mean that we can't be explorers and live outside the fence.

That we can.

But the thing is, for the most part, in at certain times in our lives, we need that fence because it explains the boundaries within which we are safe and which we can make sense of the world more.

And that even in that sense of the world is only a model in every model is only a working model.

They're never accurate.

So the fact that it's a it's a limited fenced in playground world makes no difference.

The people within it, the children within it, they are able to understand the world.

They're able to understand the boundaries.

They are able to then explore in all the boundaries.

And then when they grow up, they can understand they can go outside those boundaries.

And but there's going to be outside boundaries from that.

And the boundaries are always going to be our perceptions.

Right.

There's always going to be more reality out there than what we can perceive.

And so we can always be running up against boundaries.

So the boundary works to to contain our reality, but but it doesn't constrain it where we can't go outside of it.

But a lot of people think we can't.

That's a whole nother story.

But the boundaries give a person safety to explore that entire world and when they and get good at who they are in that world.

And then once they get that strength, they can operate outside of those fences.

But the fences serve a beautiful purpose of constraining the person so they can learn within a limited world, important skills that could translate outside that world as well.

Does that does that answer your question?

Or it was pretty.

Yes.

It also opened up hundreds of tabs.

I have to only pick just one.

I know my brain is it's my brain crashed all the time from too many tabs.

Yes.

So I was thinking about like personalizing this like to my experience.

I grew up in a very strict environment.

And then I landed up raising my kids in a very freedom and like all the flexibility and pretty much no fence.

And then I was surprised at the anxiety felt as they're like sort of crouched in the center because there was no there was no boundary there.

And it it puzzled me for a long time.

But I'm beginning to understand it more.

And also another one of the tabs I was thinking about was myself as as a chameleon.

I feel like when I'm in my own energy by myself, then I know what I want.

But when anytime I'm in the energy of someone else, interacting with someone else, I just become their color and talk about what they want to do what they want to do.

And I feel like it's it's imbalanced.

There's there's some incoherence there.

I would I would I would like to have more balance in my life so that when I'm with another person, I can still have some of my color, too, and not completely turn into their color.

Does that make sense?

Of course.

One hundred percent.

That's supposed to be that way.

And so like this whole exploration of like what this is and what it isn't and the boundary and talking about all of this is helping my subconscious like evolve in that exploration.

Yes.

Yeah.

And, you know, frankly, what you describe there in terms of that doesn't make sense.

Oh, it makes complete sense that that that you know, given what you just said, I don't really know the details, but but given what you just said, you were in a controlling environment and now you find that you're you become a chameleon when you're in the environment.

Well, well, you had to be that way to survive a controlling environment.

I don't know the details, but but it just makes sense.

You don't need the details.

Exactly.

Just the context says you probably had to survive by becoming a chameleon because you were in a restrictive environment.

So that is completely reasonable to adjust to that, to do that.

So really what's in balance is not that, but what's really imbalanced is that that is not required now.

And so really, you're you may be looking more for where the boundaries are now and what's the fence and you don't want to have no fence necessarily, but but you need a broader fence that allows you to be you in even in other people's energy.

So, in other words, have your own energy, hold your own frame and keep your own space even while other people.

My own color.

Yes.

Yeah.

And that's a skill, you know, and I think you probably have already well developed it.

In fact, anytime anybody thinks of a skill that they want, they probably have already that's already on the road of doing that.

So so you already are on the way of doing that.

I'm quite confident, just simply the way you said it.

But the and the fact that you identified that there are frame shifts going on means that they're actually shifting deeper.

You were voicing something you felt.

So you're already shifting that way.

Yeah, I found that like the energy of preference has been very helpful to navigate it because it is a more flexible field.

And the field doesn't and the beautiful thing is the field doesn't make the reality of it.

The field simply describes what's already there.

Yeah, I guess it's more of a lens that the preference is a lens that is helpful to not change color.

You know, yes, exactly.

And I think to APHS, that's what it is.

It's a lens that helps a person orient themselves so they can navigate.

It doesn't say where they should navigate.

It doesn't say how they should interpret what they're oriented to.

It just.

Yeah, because you can't you can't come up with every scenario.

And, you know, that's why all these rules are, you know.

We don't have to because humans are self-organized in the optimal way.

Yeah.

They won't think it's optimal because it will probably usually be not too much fun.

But the fact is, there is a logic to it, not a not a conscious logic.

But there is there is reasons for like a sort of golden rule thing is helpful in a way.

But I can also see how it could be misconstrued sometimes because, you know, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's, you know, speaking of that golden rule, it kind of connected with something you said earlier.

You know, it's nice to have the freedom, you know, to not choose.

But then the golden rule is we have to give other people the freedom to see it their way, whether it's coherent or incoherent.

And I know you know that, but I'm just bringing that out as an important point, that that the freedom is freedom to to not have to control everybody else either, which goes to something else we said.

It's it's all a part of a fabric.

Yeah, because the golden rule is like do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

But what if they wouldn't want to be treated like that?

Their perceptions are completely different and their worldview is completely different.

Yeah.

And so they can do it the way they want to do it.

I'm doing it my way.

Yeah, it's just like, yeah, we we we get in there and we we you know, we don't have to be chameleons, but it's not bad to be a chameleon either because it does help to be able to to fit in, to be able to work with other people.

And we are designed to work with other people.

And that's an important part of coherence.

But I think where you're really saying is we don't want to become somebody else.

We want to be ourselves in that whole milieu of different opinions.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I just think also it's important for empaths to have that that personal responsibility for themselves, but also for other people and not to take their stuff on as their own.

Yes.

I feel like it takes away that personal responsibility for others or it makes them not be able to progress on their evolution because the empaths are just holding all their stuff for them.

Does that make sense?

Oh, it does.

It does.

That that's that's an important realization for an empath.

Absolutely.

And, you know, really, when you look at it, there really is no requirement that they'd be responsible for all that.

And that's just a frame they have.

And it's a frame that they they needed to survive somewhere, some way.

And it doesn't mean they actually needed it.

They interpreted that they needed it at a conscious level.

And so, you know, for them, it is a very freeing.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So back to the to the paper about what it is not, how would you sum it?

How would you sum it up your.

I would sum it up that APHS is a field and that it's not a framework or it's not a method and that it simply describes what's there and it doesn't even it doesn't even claim that it's right.

It's just based on observations and it's open to being changed.

But as a frame, it gives helpful orientation.

And then with that orientation, it allows that orientation is what brings the freedom to move, because you now, you know, you are now oriented to where you are and you also see what other places and you can move within that.

So APHS is is really upstream of all kinds of frameworks and applications and methods.

And that that could be disconcerting to people because usually they're looking for those things, but they can have those things.

But those are applications.

The field itself is not enough to do anything.

The field just allows you to see what's there.

And then what you do with it is just depends on the person.

I don't think that's really a summary as much as.

But, you know, I think it's a good summary.

I think it provides people with the agency that they might not know that they want and the flexibility and choice that they didn't know was available to them before.

Yes, 100 percent, Chantelle.

Well said.

That's that's really what the goal of APHS is.

It's not to give a method or framework, a belief system.

It's not to define how things are in an ultimate sense.

It's a it's a model.

And in fact, the fourth book, the fourth and fifth in the paper in the first book, they keep flipping around in my mind.

One is theory of mind.

The other one is is how metaphors and truth and how we don't really need the truth to really.

Oh, I'm looking forward to that one.

Yeah, it's a good one.

Those are good.

Yeah, I love them all.

Well, of course, they're your babies.

It's very coherent with me.

But I think that's the value of this conversation is I want to see if it's actually coherent with other people.

And so I really appreciate the conversation today, Chantelle.

Any last thoughts before we close up?

No, I think that we we covered a lot.

We did.

It's a big world.

And we actually cover the whole world, but we we don't really know how.

We just we just know the little piece we've talked about today.

So pretty cool, huh?

Yes.

Awesome.

Well, Chantelle, I'm looking forward to perhaps some future conversations and really wish you all the best in your life and in your work.

And just very excited to hear about that, that, you know, that shift in that move away from, you know, towards being who you are and holding your frame.

Well, you're allowing others to have their frame.

I think that's a powerful place in life to be.

So I'm really excited for you on that.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Chantelle, any last words before we close?

No.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Chantelle.

And thank you for listening today.

You're listening to What's Actually Happening, the founding papers of applied philosophy of the human systems.

Those papers are available at APHSfield.com and they include everything we discussed today and much more.

I look forward to continuing the conversation with you next week.

Until then, see what you know.