Meta Model · Pattern 3 of 13
Cause & Effect
One event or person is presented as causing an internal state or outcome — usually with the cause placed outside the speaker.
Recover: Mechanism, choice and counterexamples
What it is
The speaker's response is described as automatic and externally driven, which removes their choice from the picture. Recovering the mechanism ('how specifically') puts choice back with the person — without blaming them.
Recognition / tip-offs
What has been distorted, generalised or deleted
- Distorted: a link is treated as automatic and inevitable
- Deleted: the steps between the event and the response
- Deleted: the speaker's own part in the response
Client-language use
"You make me feel insecure", "My boss makes me feel incompetent." The client is not lying — they genuinely experience it as caused. Your question opens the space between event and response.
How to challenge it
Test the mechanism, or look for a counterexample. Keep the tone curious; the aim is choice, not fault.
- “How specifically does what I do cause you to choose to feel that way?”
- “How does X cause Y?”
- “Has X ever happened without Y?”
- “What happens between X and Y?”
Practitioner judgement: challenge what is useful, not every pattern you can hear.
What to recover
You are recovering choice and mechanism. Where appropriate, return the choice to the client — carefully, so it reads as possibility rather than accusation.
Client autonomy first — offer language the client can verify and decline.
Examples
“You make me feel insecure.”
Missing How the behaviour becomes the feeling, and the speaker's part in it.
Challenge: “How specifically does what I do cause you to feel insecure?”
“She always gets her way because she is so manipulative.”
Missing The mechanism, the exceptions, and how manipulation was established.
Challenge: “Always? And how does being manipulative cause her to get her way?”
Universal Quantifier + Cause & Effect + a label that may be a mind read.
“My boss makes me feel incompetent.”
Missing What the boss does, and how it produces the feeling.
Challenge: “Has he done that at a time when you didn't feel incompetent?”
Common confusion and overlap
- Confusing it with Complex Equivalence: causes (X → Y) versus means (X = Y)
- Sounding accusatory — 'you choose to feel that' lands badly if rushed
- Challenging the cause when the more useful pattern is elsewhere in the sentence
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