This was a demonstration of vantablack, the world’s blackest substance

The ball was covered with it and so was the square of material. The substance

absorbs 99.96% of light, so when an object covered with it is placed over another one, it appears to disappear.

Vantablack’s blackness comes from a forest of tiny carbon nanotubes that are just an atom wide. These tubes trap all light that enters and convert the light to heat. As such the source of the blackness is easy-to-miss. Similarly, when creating alternative interpretations it’s easy to miss some mistakes that get in the way.

We’ll discuss three easy-to-miss errors that can stop you from eliminating beliefs:

A: Not making sure that each alternative is real to the client (or yourself)

B: Coming up with all of the alternatives themselves (because client could not)

C: Arguing with a client who disagrees with many alternative interpretations

A: Not making sure that each alternative is real to the client

Years ago before we had our training approaches nailed down I witnessed the following exchange between people learning this process.

Facilitator trainee: What are other ways of interpreting how your parents criticized you besides “I’m not good enough?”

Client: I don’t know.

Facilitator: Maybe they were wrong to criticize you?

Client: I guess so.

Facilitator: OK and another one is they had bad parenting skills.

Client: Maybe. My mom was a pretty good at listening to us though.

Facilitator: And another one might be …

What’s the problem here? The client is giving signals that each interpretation isn’t quite working, but the facilitator just keeps going. Of course, we don’t want to push an interpretation onto a client. But we also don’t want to just keep running them off without making sure the client is really engaged in this part of the process. If the client does not fully take in the alternative interpretations, nothing else will work.

How do you avoid this problem?

First, make sure to ask a diagnostic question after each alternative interpretation

You ask “Does that interpretation seem valid to you?” If they say “Yes” and you can hear in their voice that they get it, you can move on to another one. If they say “No” or something else you’ll want to acknowledge that the interpretation you gave didn’t work for them.

You might also see if you can find an interpretation that works. Whatever you do avoid asking “why” as in “why doesn’t it work?” This is because people will often give unhelpful answers to this question. Instead you can ask “What doesn’t work about it?” or “What would make it work better?” People tend to respond to those questions more constructively. Of course, sometimes a client has trouble generating alternatives. So what do you do then?

B: Coming up with all of the alternatives yourself (because the client could not)

Some facilitators solve this by coming up with all of the alternatives themselves. And while this works sometimes, it’s not always the best approach. Instead, it’s better to ask leading questions.

For example, let’s say a client has the belief “I’m not important.” The events that led to the belief were his parents were always busy when he asked for attention. The client has a hard time seeing any alternative interpretations. The facilitator has some ideas but instead of offering them she decides to see if she can lead the client with some questions.

So she has the following dialogue:

Facilitator: Were your parents pretty obsessed with their work?

Client: Yeah, I think that would be pretty fair to say.

Facilitator: So one interpretation is they ignored you because you weren’t important … or maybe they ignored you because …

Client: … because they were so wrapped up in their work?

Facilitator: Does that seem like a valid interpretation to you?

Client: … Yes … yes it does. They really were.

Facilitator:. And so their ignoring you didn’t mean you weren’t important right?

Client: Right. It mean they were too focused on their work.

A dialogue like this takes just a bit longer than making a suggestion, but now the client is fully engaged and will be better prepared for the other steps in the belief process. But there are times when even this won’t be enough and it’s easy to make the following mistake.

C: Arguing with a client who disagrees with many alternative interpretations

You offer an alternative interpretation, the client says “yeah but.” Then ou offer another one and the client says “yeah but” and the same happens with a third one. So you decide to start trying to convince the client that some of these are valid. Eventually, you are in a pretty lively debate. Unfortunately, the client isn’t eliminating any beliefs as a result.

So what can you do?

This is where the power of absolutes comes in. I’ll show you this power with a simple demonstration.

Which of the following statements are the least believable?

a: Joe ALWAYS screw things up

b: Joe sometimes screw things up

a: Mary NEVER makes a mistake

b: Mary rarely makes a mistake

a: Abby ALWAYS does the right thing

b: Abby often does the right thing

You probably noticed that in each pair letter “a” was the least believable. Why? The human mind tends to look for exceptions into any absolute statement. Tell someone that something is ALWAYS or NEVER the case and we’ll immediately start to look for exceptions. When creating alternative interpretations we can use this to our advantage.

I’ll show you how this works in the following exchanges:

Non-absolute
Facilitator: Maybe you weren’t important then but you are today
Client: Actually, I still don’t feel important today

Absolute

Facilitator: Maybe you weren’t important then but that doesn’t mean you would NEVER be important

Client: OK. That makes sense.

Non-absolute
Facilitator: Maybe your parents thought you weren’t worthwhile but others do
Client: I’m not sure others see me as worthwhile

Absolute

Facilitator: Mabe your parents thought you weren’t worthwhile but that doesn’t mean that ALL people would see you that way

Client: Yeah, not all people

Notice that the absolute form demolishes objections. It’s easy to agree that something may not always be the case.

To sum up, we’ve discussed three ideas:

A: Not making sure that each alternative is real to the client

B: Coming up with all of the alternatives yourself (because client could not).

C: Arguing with a client who disagrees with many alternative interpretations

One use of vantablack is to reduce the interference of light in telescopes so that images have much greater clarity. When you use these ideas, you’ll find that you’re sessions have greater clarity due to reduced interference as well. So go ahead and use them the next time you try eliminating a belief.