David Grove, the originator of Clean Language, was an astute observer of his therapy clients. He was the first to alert us to the importance of clients’ comments which do not follow on from the previous statement and which appear incongruous. Grove called these comments non sequiturs. We extracted the non sequiturs from a number of verbatim client transcripts. We noticed that most of these remarks were a more or less thinly disguised comment about what was happening for the client in the previous moment – hence we called them meta-comments.

We define a ‘meta-comment’ as a verbal or nonverbal expression which refers to what has just been experienced. These self-reflections range from the fully conscious and explicit to the completely unconscious and implicit.

Apparently Michael Palin used the term ‘meta comment’ when he was part of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Pythons used them to comic effect when an actor would refer to the situation their character was in. For example in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, following Sir Galahad’s discovery of the Castle Anthrax, Dingo is telling the sad tale of her life:

“Oh, wicked, bad, naughty, evil Zoot! She is a bad person and must pay the penalty…

… she turns to the camera:

“Do you think this scene should have been cut? We were so worried when the boys were writing it, but now, we’re glad. It’s better than some of the previous scenes, I think…”

This is analogous to when clients meta-comment. They interrupt what they are doing to pass a judgment, reflect on their knowledge, give notification of a change, or in some other way reveal something about the current state of their inner world. To understand meta-comments you need to extract them from the flow of normal speech and recognise that the client is commenting on their in-the-moment experience. Because they are embedded in the client’s narratives, meta-comments are somewhat hidden and easily ignored. But to ignore them is to miss out on some of the most important signposts for how best to proceed with facilitating this particular client at this particular moment.

The following example is from a client who was struggling to come to terms with her new role as a mother.

It’s got a new quality about it. It’s a very new thing. It’s … What I’m finding out with the mothr role which I love, and it is true I have somehow taken to it naturally, I’m aware that what’s creeping in is this sort of more negative side where I will more easily lose myself, the bit that I do know is me which comes through when I feel free, which is quite interesting. And before it goes too far where … I don’t want to become in some ways like my mother did, which was really putting her life on hold. And giving in to exhaustion. And I can, I know I have that in me to do. And eventually I think, you know, that’s what killed her, you know with the cancer, the stuff just ate her up. So … I am strong. I am quite a strong person and I … that works against me sometimes, because I will do things to exhaustion. And then I collapse. There’s a negative aspect which comes through as resentment. Because I can be so resentful as well because I can take on things but I’m not, I’m no saint. You know, I will go, ‘oh,what about me?’.

Did you notice any meta-comments? What alerted you to them? What did they point to? And what would you ask as a result?

Penny noted “which is quite interesting” was a meta-comment on “the bit that I do know is me which comes through when I feel free”. The meta-comment indicated that the client’s attention was attracted enough by what she had just said and thought for her to interrupt her narrative and pass comment. As a result of this signposting Penny used Clean Language to ask:

And what about me? And there’s a bit that you know is me that comes through when you feel free. And when you feel free and you know that bit is me, where is that bit?

In case you are interested, the client replied:

On my shoulder, sort of here [right hand gestures to right shoulder]. Like a conscience, but not a conscience. Yes, it’s a knowing, yeah it’s a knowing. That’s interesting. It’s funny identifying a place because now I can remember when I have … m-m-m, now that’s interesting. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard this before but not known the locality of it.

Below are some more examples of client’s meta-comments:

• This is important.
• That’s a new option.
• There must be a place that knows.
• I realise I need to decide which way to go.
• God knows.
• No, that’s not what I meant. [self-correcting]
• Do I want to go there?
• That’s a hard question.
• Oh look, there’s no green in the rainbow.
• Does that make sense?
• Phew, I’ve gone all hot.
• I know I shouldn’t say this but …
• … so anyway …
• It’s obvious that ….
• It just occurred to me …
• I can’t believe I just said that.
• Now let me see …
• [A tap of a watch]
• [A hand over the mouth]

The key to understanding the role played by meta-comments is to model what the client has had to do with their attention or perception to have made this particular comment. Meta-comments indicate a momentary shift in perspective (and possibly perceiver) from a more descriptive narrative to a statement with a degree of self-reflection.

Because we are remarkably consistent beings and we cannot not be ourselves, the structure of what we do in the micro (seconds) is oftenisomorphic with what happens in the macro (days, months, years). In this way meta-comments in the session can be seen as fractals – vignettes that when scaled up retain a similar organisation to how we experience our ‘real life’.

From a facilitator’s viewpoint, meta comments can be considered as orientation pointers and as messages from the ‘wisdom in the system’. In broad terms they can be taken as a directive to:

• Continue attending to the current perception (to stay put)
• Attend to something else
• Not attend to something
• Change your way of facilitating (e.g. slow down, speed up, etc.)

Since meta-comments are about the client’s relationship with their interior landscape they often reveal something about the the degree of significance or insignificance the client attaches to a part of their experience.

Why ‘Meta’?

The notion of ‘meta’ and ‘levels of communication’ was extensively discussed and utilised by the groups that formed around Gregory Bateson at Stanford University in the 1950s and at the Mental Research Institute at Palo Alto, California in the 1960s. Strangely, although Bateson regularly mentions meta-communication, metalogues and metalinguistic messages in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, we could not find the term ‘meta-comment’ in the book.

Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier have attempted to clarify the plethora of meta-this and meta-that in their Encyclopedia of Systemic NLP  [pp. 718-720]:

The term meta is a Greek word meaning ‘over’, ‘between’ or ‘above’. In English it is also used to mean ‘about’. A ‘meta model’, for example, is a model about other models.

‘Metacognition’ is the awareness of one’s own cognitive processes, i.e. cognition about cognition.

‘Meta messages’ are messages about other messages, which provide frames or context markers that influence the meaning of those messages. Meta messages are typically nonverbal and give emphasis or provide cues for how to interpret a verbal message.

‘Meta communication’ is communication about communication. For instance, a meta communication is often a verbal statement that sets a framework around a communication situation in the form of rules, guidelines and expectations. A study of the communication patterns of effective leaders revealed that almost half of the leaders’ communication was actually meta communication.

It is important to distinguish meta communication from meta messages. Meta communication is a more macro level process from sending a meta message. A meta message operates as a kind of subtext that emphasizes certain aspects of a message. If a person says, “YOU weren’t respecting the rules” it marks the communication as directed to the ‘who’. Saying “You weren’t respecting the RULES” shifts the emphasis of the message to the ‘what’. Meta communication, on the other hand, would be saying something like, “Let’s talk about what the rules are, and why we have them.”

Meta-comments are another member of the above family of Meta’s. They can involve metacognition, and they can be a meta message or a meta communication. Typically they are short and interspersed within ordinary speech. If they go on for too long they cease to be ‘meta’ and become a comment in their own right. Their primary function seems to be a communication to self and secondarily a communication to someone else. It is like the person is externalising their internal dialogue without realising it.

Meta-States

Meta-comments signal a momentary shift to a meta-perspective. L. Michael Hall’s model of Meta-States (2nd edition, 2000) covers a similar but wider territory than is relevant to this article:

Examples of meta-states are: Worry about worrying; reasoning about our reasoning; anger at self for being too emotional; etc. While working with meta-states opens up all sorts of possibilities, we have found great value in simply regarding a meta-comment as a pointer to what is happening for a client and a guide for how to work with their process.

Congruence/Incongruence

Because all forms of meta -communication, -messages, -states and -comments operate at a different level to that which they are referring to, they can be perceived by the facilitator as either congruent or incongruent. While incongruence can be considered as evidence that the client is operating with incompatible behaviours, desires, values or beliefs, from a systemic perspective if you go to a high enough level you’ll find that a functioning system is always internally congruent. If you cannot see the congruence in what they are saying and doing that’s a signal that there is more for you to model.

Categories of Meta-Comments

In everyday conversation meta-comments rarely become the topic of conversation and an inexperienced listener will barely be aware they have been said. It’s like the viewers of a videoed basketball match who are so intent on counting the number of passes they don’t notice a man in a gorilla suit run onto the court. However, once you start to look for these particular gorillas you’ll see them everywhere.

To model the way clients use meta-comments we took the first 20 minutes of eight verbatim transcripts each with a different therapy client and picked out all the meta-comments. This resulted in over 120 different examples (excluding repetitions). On average that’s one meta-comment every 45 seconds. We categorised these examples into the following broad headings: