TETRALEMMA: Going Beyond the Duality

How to embrace the totality of yourself

Either/or thinking lies at the root of so many psychological problems.

Am I right or wrong?
Strong or weak?
Worthy or worthless?

Whatever answer we choose, it rarely satisfies us. We long for a simple, black-and-white world, but reality is almost never a binary switch. It’s a spectrum.

Either/or thinking squeezes complex experience into false categories. When life doesn’t fit them (which it almost never does), tension and distress arise. “If I’m not confident, I must be weak” ignores the rich middle ground where learning, uncertainty, and growth live.

So how can we move beyond the either/or dilemma? How can we embrace both ends of the spectrum and everything in between? Can we go even beyond the spectrum and realise that we are so much more than we imagine?

The answer is the TETRALEMMA.

I’ve learnt this experiential method from Stephen Gilligan, and it’s one of my favourites. With clients stuck between opposites – strong or weak, for example – we explore being strong, being weak, being both strong and weak, being neither strong nor weak. Finally, they will experience all of these at the same time, and realise they are so much more… It is a wonderfully hypnotic, mind-expanding experience.

The result is a realisation: you are much more than any category your mind tries to assign. You are a totality.

I am going to teach participants how to do the Tetralemma with themselves and with their clients, both in a formal and a conversational way.

I am an MD, a psychiatrist, a certified Master Hypnotherapist, and an NLP Trainer certified by Richard Bandler, Chris Hall and John Overdurf. I have been using hypnosis and NLP in my clinical practice since 1998 and teaching it since 2000. I specialise mostly in Ericksonian and Conversational Hypnosis.