NLP Newport
NLP has been intimately linked with hypnosis since the beginning. NLP is based on the best practice of therapists who seem to succeed with the people they dealt with in therapy. So it is based Milton Erickson, MD, who is considered to be the “father” of modern techniques in hypnosis and in NLP. That hypnosis is linked very closely with NLP is due to the influence of Milton Erickson.
NLP is also based on Carl Rogers, “father” of client-centred counselling, where the client or patient is the focus of attention and the therapist listens in a genuine, warm and empathetic way. Many others who have proved their worth in therapeutic practice are also used as “models” in NLP.
The linguistic part of the programming concerns the language we use and the way we think. So it is about what affects us mentally. For example, people think in terms of success or failure, but a powerful NLP phrase turns this on its head: “Nothing succeeds like failure and nothing fails like success.” Think back in your own life about times when you thought you had what you wanted and then it wasn’t really like that. Suddenly, once you had it you didn’t really want it. It was just the fact that you didn’t have it that made you think that you did want it. Other times you may have thought you were up against it and then things worked out for the better. In the long run it is not possible to know what is successful and what fails until well after the event and some perspective can be given to it. It is much better for you to think of an example from your own life rather than I give one to you. That is one way that NLP itself works-from your own experience. CBT works in exactly the same way.
Bring reactions under your control
What is emphasised in NLP is that it is not what happens to us that is important but how we react to it that is important. This means it is important to bring our reactions under our control. What breaks one person another person manages to come through with flying colours. Think of Nelson Mandela and his 25 years in prison after which he had the strength and energy, at the age of 70, to run his own country. Or think of Terry Waite chained to a wall in the Middle East for six years even though he went over there as an envoy for peace. There can be no mental preparation for such an experience but he survived!
Since NLP is such a universal technique then it can be used for a wide range of problems such as were listed earlier for hypnosis itself. Any problem ultimately comes down to how we think about it so it is important to be aware of how we can programme ourselves to deal with problems rather than be programmed by others, e.g., “He/she makes me so angry.” The constructive statement here would be, “I have allowed myself to become angry in response to what he/she said.” Phrased in this way it then becomes clear that the person is more empowered because then it is more like a choice how the person reacts. It is more about seeing problems as things that you can solve rather than they overcome you. This is true whether the problem is caused by situations that you have to deal with or is caused directly by people that you know.
Accepting the possibility of change
Naturally it is important to be realistic too. Natural wisdom comes into what we do and the way we respond to life. It is important to know what we can change, what we can’t change and to be wise enough to know the difference between the two. In a similar vein is the statement, “I accept myself as I am whilst also accepting the possibility of change.”
Whether the problem is the need to lose weight, control drinking, stop smoking, tackling anxiety, stress, depression or the myriad of other problems that humans have the important thing is to build up belief, motivation and commitment to the idea that we can do what we set out to do. A good phrase for this is, “If you think you can, you can, if you think you can’t, you can’t. Either way it’s true for it all starts in the mind.” Hypnosis is an excellent way in which to engrain deeper and deeper into the mind such thoughts as the above.