What you choose to emphasize and to subordinate can have a profound effect on another person’s response. This is especially true in medical situations. At some point in your career, you may have heard a physician providing a patient with information required for “informed consent.”
Emphasis on the Negative
Doctor: First, you may die during surgery. Although that doesn’t happen often, it is a risk.
In the above example, the possibility of death is emphasized, and the infrequency with which that happens is subordinated.
Emphasis on the Positive
Doctor: Although death during surgery is a possible risk, it rarely occurs.
In general, put negative ideas in a subordinate clause beginning with a subordinating adverb or conjunction, such as “although.” Other subordinating words include before, after, although, because, since, and when.
Compare the following sentences:
The medicine tastes bad, but you will feel better when you have been taking it for a few days.
You might think that the medicine tastes bad, but you’ll be glad that you’ve been taking it in just a few days.
Both sentences use the “magic but” to emphasize the focus on the positive outcome, but the second sentence includes the use of might, which presupposes might not, and adds just to emphasize the short amount of time it will take for you to feel better now.
Send your questions about how other-than-conscious communication skills can hurt or help your patients and clients to Joel P. Bowman (Joel@SCS-Matters.com) or Debra Basham (Debra@SCS-Matters.com), co-developers of Subtle Communication Systems. We will provide answers to those for you. For more information about Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy, or about the Imagine Healing Process, visit:http://ImagineHealing.info or http://SurgicalSupport.info. Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication is available for a limited time for $10 plus $5 shipping within the U.S. For volume orders and overseas shipping, check with Debra.See the Table of Contents and List of Exercises in PDF format for more information about this comprehensive text and training manual. |