By: Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

Dilts developed his logical levels to guide the process of intervention. Rather than focus on physiology and behavior, or emotional states, Dilts tells us to focus directly on strategies, sub-modalities, beliefs and identi-ties. His levels help to put them in perspective.

Lets apply this to the phobia we were just talking about.

The first level is about where, when and with whom the phobia occurs. That is the environmental level. It is the context of the behavior. You can’t really understand a behavior without context. After all, there are times that the phobia does NOT occur; there are people with whom the phobia does not occur. What is special about the times, places, and people connected with this phobia?

The second level is the specific behaviors that occur. This is the behavior level. This level helps you get spe-cific in defining or identifying the behavior. It helps you escape the trap of vagueness that can help keep people in a neurotic tangle.

The third level is capabilities and strategies. How does the phobia get expressed as far the person’s existing skills go. If they panic in an airplane, what skills do they use to channel that energy constructively. How to the prevent themselves from screaming and running up and down the walkway? Or are their energies ex-pressed in utter chaos? The more capabilities that a person has that can serve as resources for coping with the phobia, the more complex and functional the person’s behavior can become. Chaos looks more complex than organization, but that is because organizations use complex rules and abilities to stay organized. On the surface, they are usually orderly and appear easier to understand. In reality, they are complex and require exploration and study to understand their complexity.

The fourth level is beliefs and values. What can the client tell you about their conscious values that guide what they do around this phobia. The phobia itself may seem to the person to be very much counter to their values, but there is more going on that just the phobia. There is how they react to it from this higher level. A good place to start is to simply ask the client why they do what they do. Don’t just ask about the phobia it-self, but what they do to cope, or how they avoid situations, or how they explain their behavior to them-selves and others. You can clarify their values further once you have this. You can ask them what they are trying to accomplish, or what they feel are their obligations or responsibilities in the situation. From there, you will see that they have heartfelt values, and other values that seem to have been attached to them by their parents and others. Their values exist along with beliefs. They have beliefs about where their values come from and what would happen if they did not have their values and act on their values.

The fifth level is identity and mission. How does your client perceive himself? How does having the phobia affect his identity? How does his identity affect the phobia? That one is especially interesting because the phobia doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The person’s identity is kind of like an environment for the phobia. The client might say, “Well, I’m a very private person, and I keep these things to myself. I will never fly on a plane because no one should see me like that. I’ll tell my relatives that I’m helping a sick friend and can’t come out for the holidays.” One way to get at the identity level is to ask who the person feels they are when they are dealing with the phobia, or what roles they are acting out; roles like parent, role model, employee, airplane passenger, and so forth.

The sixth and final level is spirituality and purpose. This level addresses the client’s connection to a higher reality. What is it that they believe about spirituality or the universe that guides them. This is an expanded version of the two levels that precede this level. The previous two were of beliefs and values, and of identity and mission. This spirituality and purpose level exists because people tend to have this level of belief. Even non-religious people usually have values that they feel extend beyond them and define their place in the world. Those values tend to shape their behavior as strongly as religious beliefs shape a believer’s behavior. If nothing else, this level helps to summarize the way that beliefs and identity work together to create an-other level of meaning.

Does this all sound like too much to think about for a silly phobia. Well I’ll wager that you already think about these levels more than you realize. But these six levels help you to put such thoughts into perspective, and to ask some questions to round out your understanding; understanding that will help you provide a rele-vant response.

You don’t have to spend an hour asking all the questions that go with each level. With experience, you’ll get better and better at knowing what questions to ask which people. You will develop an efficient approach.