Your mental landscape

What if the way you picture someone, including where you place them in the imaginary space around you, affects how you feel about them and relate to them?

“Yeah, right!”

That was more or less my response when I first encountered the idea many years ago. I couldn’t believe that anything so simple could make the slightest difference.

Then I tried it.

Dutch NLP Trainer and social psychologist Dr Lucas Derks developed the concept of Social Panorama which examines how, when we think about people we create mental projections of them and locate them in the imaginary three-dimensional space around us — our mental landscape.

Lucas presents Social Panorama as an NLP-based approach drawing particularly on submodalities and parts work.

The key concept is that your emotional response is influenced not only by the person, but by the way your mind represents that person. Once you become aware of that representation, you have something you can experiment with.

We represent each significant person in our lives as a simplified mental image or “personification”. This location process is largely unconscious and thus you’re unlikely to be aware of how your mental positioning is affecting your relationship with them. .

For several years now I’ve used the concepts of Social Panorama with hundreds of clients and course participants, and can attest to the enormous difference it can make to how people experience and respond to their relationships.

So I’m sharing Social Panorama in this post, hoping it will help you change any of your less-than-useful connections.

You can make your social landscape conscious

Once conscious, you can experiment by putting your personifications in different places. Changing where you imagine them can change how you feel and how you relate to them.

The language associated with our mental landscape isn’t coincidental

The language we use to talk about people often offers clues to how we represent them in our mental landscape.

• We’re very close.
• Distant relatives.
• Hold in high esteem.
• In my face.
• Low self-esteem.
• Near and dear.
• Low self-confidence.
• Look down on someone.
• Look up to someone.
• Keep at arms’ length.
• There are many more.

If your role involves coaching, pay attention to the language your clients use to discuss relationship issues. The client’s language may contain useful clues about how they represent the problem and what could help change it.

Here’s an exercise you can do to become aware of your Social Panorama

A picture tells a thousand words — so here you go — make some pictures! Ready? O.K.

Close your eyes

Actually, don’t close your eyes yet — read the exercise first!

Better still, do the exercise with a friend or family member. Let them ask you the questions below, then swap over.

Think of various people with whom you share your life and notice where, in your imagination and in the space surrounding you, you locate them. For example, where are your:

• Siblings? (Locate them individually)
• Parents? (Locate them individually)
• Partner?
• Friends? (Locate a couple of them individually)
• Colleagues? (Locate a couple of them individually)
• Your boss?
• The CEO?
• Someone you admire.

Notice where they are in your mental landscape

Who is:

• Closest?
• Most distant? (The physical location of a person — where they live, has nothing to do with this. Someone can live on the other side of the world yet still be near you in your social panorama.)
• Higher?
• Lower?
• On the right?
• On the left?
• Behind you?

You could plot these on a piece of paper.

Now try moving them around (in your mind — not on the paper!)

For example, what happens if you move someone who is close to you, further away? How do you feel?

Move someone that’s in the distance really close and up higher. What are you experiencing now? If the change makes you feel uncomfortable move people back to where they were to begin with.

Location isn’t the only factor. You may also notice the person’s size, which way they’re facing, their expression, whether they’re moving or still, and whether the image is clear or hazy. All these qualities can affect your response.

Here’s an illustration of how this works

Many times I’ve had clients who suffer from ‘stage fright’ or problems with public speaking and presenting. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I wrote ‘Presentations That Rock’. The way presenters symbolise their audience in their social panorama is one of the key factors contributing to their fear. It’s therefore also a key part of the solution.

A lot of the problem is in their mind

In their mind, this — or some variation of this, is how my clients perceive their audience: They imagine each person as huge (larger than life!) and often with belligerent angry faces. And my clients have them towering over them in their social panorama.

By implication that leaves my client feeling small, insignificant, anxious and overwhelmed.

What better way to experience total vulnerability!

The solution is unbelievably simple:

I have my client move the audience, in their mind’s eye, down to the same level as themselves and make the people normal size. Just making this simple change results in a big deep breath and their body relaxes. Then I have them make the audience appear friendly and interested (as opposed to hostile and disinterested).

The result is a huge upward shift in confidence when speaking and presenting. Then, their self-confidence evokes a much better response from their audiences — which further builds the presenter’s self-belief.

Low self-esteem

We also give ourselves a position within this social landscape. This contributes to our sense of identity, our role in relation to others and what we believe we can or cannot do.

One client related that she had low self-esteem.

In Social Panorama terms, the word low made me curious about whether she experienced other people as being above her.

Your self-esteem comes from your self — hence the term self-esteem.

When I asked where she located the significant people in her life, she discovered that almost all of them were higher than her. Bringing them down to her level created an immediate change in her physiology, from tension to calm. Two weeks later, she reported that she was relating to people more as equals and that they appeared to be responding to her in the same way.

The emotional reaction to people placement

Someone who is up front and in your face (notice that language again) in your social panorama, is more likely to elicit an emotional response in real life. If this emotion feels good, that’s great. But it’s often where people locate a bully.

Changing someone’s position in your mental landscape doesn’t change who they are or what they do. Nor does it replace sensible boundaries or practical action. It changes your experience of them, which can help you respond with more choice.

If you don’t particularly like the associated emotion, push the person away and into the distance. (In your mind that is — I’m not advocating pushing people around in real life!) Then be aware of how you feel differently — instantly. Does it feel as if there is more distance between you?

How to build a closer relationship

If you want to explore feeling closer to someone, try moving their representation nearer and notice what changes. You may find yourself feeling warmer or more connected, which could influence how you relate to them in real life.

I said this was simple

OK, over to you. Please try this out for yourself because it truly can work wonders and change relationships for the better.

The person isn’t the picture

Social Panorama is not saying the other person is superior, threatening, distant or overwhelming. It suggests that our internal representation of them has been organised in a way that creates that experience. And because it’s a representation rather than the person themselves, there’s often room to change it.

Things to remember about mental landscapes

• We have a way of mentally positioning the people in our life in our mental landscape.
• The way we imagine someone affects our relationship with them.
• A key to understanding a person’s mental landscape is listening to the language they use.
• Changing the location of a person in your mental landscape can affect the way you relate to that person.
• This work is applicable not only to personal relationships, but also to teams, organisations, social groups, family systems, the deceased, spiritual figures, self-worth and identity.

Like I mentioned at the start of this post, when I first learned about Social Panorama, I was sceptical. Now I know that it’s amazingly effective, not only in my own life but in the lives of others.

Try it with one person and notice what happens. You don’t have to force a change or persuade yourself of anything. Get curious, experiment and let your own response tell you whether it makes a difference. And check out this related post: How To Protect Yourself From Bullying — By Changing Your Mind

If you’ve ever wondered about what your mind gets up to when you’re not paying attention, I think you’ll enjoy Thinky Things, my short, weekly-ish email — fresh reflections, questions, and small noticing-points — written for the inbox rather than the website.
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If you found this post insightful, please feel free to share it with anyone you think might also find it useful. And I’d love to read your comments and any experiences you’ve had from using it. Please comment below.

Tags: Health and wellbeing, Language, Perception, Self-awareness, Self-confidence and self-esteem