The client's job is to come up with a complaint. You could role–play a client of yours and state some really powerful complaint that you typically get from clients in your practice. Or you could pretend to role–play a client but come up with a complaint that might be relevant for some part of your own personal evolution. I want you to state your complaints in a particular form to make it easier for your partner. The form of the complaint will tell the other person which kind of refram–ing is most appropriate.

1) Present your complaint as a complex equivalence that links a response to a class of events: «I feel X when Y happens» or,

2) Present the complaint as a comparative generalization about yourself or someone else, with the context deleted: «I'm too Z» or «He's too Q.»

The programmer's job is to find a way of reframing the problem, and then to deliver the reframe in such a way that it has an impact. This is a training seminar, so don't force yourself to respond immediately. Let me give you a strategy to generate reframes. First you identify the form of the complaint that your client has presented so that you know which kind of reframe to go for. With a complex equivalence you do a meaning reframe, and with a comparative generalization you do a context reframe. The next step is to create an internal representation of the complaint that you have received from the other person: either make a picture of it visually, feel what it would be like kinesthetically, or describe it auditorily.

For a context reframe, ask yourself «In what context would this particular behavior that the person is complaining about have value?» Think of different contexts until you find one that changes the evaluation of the behavior.

For a meaning reframe, ask yourself «Is there a larger or different frame in which this behavior would have a positive value?» «What other aspect of this same situation that isn't apparent to this person could provide a different meaning frame?» or simply «What else could this behavior mean?» or «How else could I describe this same situation?»