In our experience, one of the results of calibrated communication cycles, such as those we have observed between Dave and Marcie, is that, as they continue to miscommunicate in other ways, they come to doubt their worth as human beings. For example, Marcie may come to question whether she is worth Dave's attention, and Dave may come to wonder whether Marcie's being unhappy with him is because he is incapable of being the cause of her experiencing happiness.

A pattern closely connected with one way by which the therapist breaks up a calibrated communication is that of translation. Marcie's most used representational system is visual, and, consistent with this, is the type of Complex Equivalence she sets up: Dave is not paying any attention to her unless he is looking at her when she speaks. But Dave's primary system for his experience is kinesthetic. Since he feels bad (tight and blank) when he sees her look at him in a certain way, he then shifts his gaze to the floor in order to be able to pay attention. The therapist recognizes this pattern and states it explicitly, in effect translating from one model of the world (Dave's) to the one which Marcie uses.

Omitting part of the transcript, we come now to another example of incongruity:

Therapist: (turning to the son) OK, Tim, just tell me one thing that you would like to change in your family.

Tim: (glancing quickly at his mother) Well, I don't really know . . . Mom always says not to talk about...

Marcie: (interrupting, leaning forward in her chair, pointing her finger, slowly moving her head from side to side) Go ahead, dear; just say whatever you'd like, (voice tone shrill)

Tim: Ah ... I think that I don't want to . . . maybe later.

Therapist: Margaret (15-year-old daughter), when Marcie spoke to Tim just now, what were you aware of?

Margaret: Well, I don't know . . . she looked kinda angry and . . .

Therapist: What did she say to Tim?

Margaret: Gee, I really don't remember.

There are several useful patterns in this exchange. First, notice that the words which Marcie uses to express herself do not agree with the posture, body movements and voice tonality which she uses as she says the words. The boy Tim (12 years old) must decide to which message he will respond from the conflicting ones he is receiving from Marcie. We can represent this process visually:

Tim decides (not necessarily consciously) to accept the first group of three messages and respond to them rather than to the last single one.

The therapist has identified another piece of incongruent communication — in this case, rather than comment on it himself, he asks another member of the family to do so. Her response allows the therapist to determine several things: Margaret, apparently, is not aware of the incongruity; she reports only the information which she received visually. One of the unfortunate but all-too-common patterns which result from incongruent communication is that the people exposed to it decide to shut down one of their major sources of information. In other words, since the messages which they are receiving do not fit together, their response to this incongruity — the way in which they resolve it — is simply to delete one of the sources of the non-matching messages. In Margaret's case, she is aware of what her mother, Marcie, looked like but not of what she said.

Several unfortunate things result from this kind of decision on the part of Margaret. First, she has developed a pattern by which, whenever she is presented with an incongruent communication — a situation in which the messages which she is receiving from the other person do not fit — she systematically selects the information which she receives visually. This deprives her of a major source of knowledge about other people and the world around her. Secondly, when Marcie (or anyone) communicates incongruently, she is indicating that she, herself, is uncertain, split, or of more than one frame of mind about what is going on. Incongruent communication is a signal that that person has more than one map or model for his behavior, and that these maps or models conflict. Since these maps or guides for his behavior clash, when he attempts to respond to others, he presents messages from each of these models and the messages do not agree. When Margaret chooses to respond to only one set of messages (derived from Marcie's one model of the world), Margaret loses touch with the other part of Marcie. Each of the models which Marcie has is truly a part of, and a resource for, her. When the people around her come to respond to only one of these parts, Marcie herself begins to lose touch with the other part, and she becomes wholly unaware of this other resource which could be available to her. Typically, she becomes blocked in her growth and development as an alive and creative human being, her communication remains incongruent, and she feels split, paralyzed — even confused — about what she really wants.[17] Thirdly, when Marcie communicates incongruently, other family members are faced with the task of deciding to which set of messages they will respond. Take Margaret as an example: She is only aware of the information she receives visually. Notice that she labels the non-verbal signals: She looked kinda angry. This, of course, is a pattern which we have already identified several times, that of Complex Equivalence:

This particular Complex Equivalence is likely to become generalized into a piece of calibrated communication — that is, whenever Margaret sees and hears the signals listed above, no matter what else is happening, she will decide (again, probably unconsciously) that Marcie is kinda angry. This is the way in which the phenomenon of incongruent communication serves as the basis for establishing the Complex Equivalences from which come Mind Reading and the calibrated communication sequences which are all too often the source of pain. By asking different members of the family to describe their experiences of the ongoing processes, the therapist begins to find out about the rules, the patterns of what the family members are allowed, or are not allowed, to do, say, or notice about themselves and each other.[18]

One of the classes of rules which is, in our experience, very useful in coming to understand family systems, especially in the context of therapy, is the class of rules about what the family members may perceive and act upon when they experience incongruent communications. Another way of understanding these rules is to determine which input channels the family members may use. These are often the patterns of Complex Equivalence which occur over and over again. The foregoing example of Margaret and Marcie suggests that the information from the visual input channel will take priority over the other channels when there is a mismatch.

Another, and in our experience, equally important, set of rules is that which specifies which output channels may be used to express which types of messages by which family members.

Therapist: Yes, Marcie, I understand that you are worried about what Margaret is doing at school. I wonder if you would let her know directly by telling her right now about your concern for her.

Marcie: That's silly; of course she knows that I'm concerned about her.