23NLPeople Blog

This is a quick post.  It is regarding the seemingly never ending overuse of the word, "powerful" that coaches and therapists use to describe their techniques.  The technique is always "powerful" and quite often is also "secret", giving us, "the secret powerful technique."

It isn't of course.  Steam locomotives are "powerful"; Jet engines are "powerful"; a Barrett M82 is pretty powerful too.

But getting a person to shift a picture or two around inside their head or to recite a poxy affirmation is not "powerful."  Really, it isn't.

I cannot help but get the feeling that the desperate need to feel that their techniques are "powerful" and can cause harm as well as good, reflects the therpists need to feel and be important.

I wonder if the word powerful and its synonyms were made unavailable, how different the descriptions might be.

This was something I posted on NLPWeekly recently.  Someone asked about matching/mismatching modalities and submodalities as a possible exercise at a practise group:

You may want to consider the submodalities that are expressed in language as well, this is commonly missed, even by many master practitioners I see...

Some people fail to focus in on a concept and see it really clearly.  The concept remains too far away from their understanding, and stays distant and outside of their frame of reference.  By sharpening their observation skills and becoming able to pay attention to the finer details they can find that their world is not quite as black and white as it might appear.

I once had a client arrive, in tears, who stated to me right from the off, "I want to separate myself from the memories of my husband, put them behind me and move forward in my life."  In Magic in Action, Bandler had the lady who "wanted to be able to get some distance from her problem" (or something pretty similar).  It is amazing how precise some people are when you ask them what they want.

Unfortunately the issue of mis-matching remains endemic in the field.

Imagine the following....

Client:  "I want to get some distance from my problem."
NLPer: "OK, now think of a really good time in your life and let's anchor that...."

Now that anchor would be really useful if the thing anchored involved a scenario whereby the client distanced the problem from herself.  But alas, my experience in NLP is that mostly these things go unconsidered.

Client:  "I need to get some clarity."
NLPer: "OK, let's do the swish pattern or the 6 step reframe!"

You get the idea.

Try this - get your submodality list and start noting down every verbal reference that reflects that submodality.

For example, size:

"It blew out of all proportion."
"He is so small minded."
"It's a big problem."

And so on.

Once you listen for them, you will hear them everywhere.

Be well,

Andy Austin

I need to have another little rant here.  There is a pernicious cliché afoot that is beginning to really irritate me, and just when I thought I’d seen the last of it, it keeps re-appearing fully accompanied by an ever present level of crass ignorance and stupidity.

Yes, it is NLPer bashing time once again.

“The best thing about the past is that it is over” seems to be the new mantra.  It’s another Bandlerism, quoted utterly out of the original context that has become one of the New Psalms of NLP Practitioners™.  I keep seeing it posted on people’s Facebook pages, often met with large numbers of “X likes this” and supportive comments written afterwards.

My guess is that these fools who post this don’t ever actually work with real living human beings as clients.  For so many troubled and emotionally/psychologically distressed people, the past is anything but over and to even suggest otherwise might really be rather insulting.

Here’s some simple examples:

• One client was raped.  Her husband couldn’t cope with this, labelled her “soiled goods” and left.  She is now depressed, taking industrial strength psychiatric medication.  Oh, she also now has herpes.
  
• Another client suffered the unexpected death of their child (he was 22 at the time of his demise).  That loss is unlikely to ever be “over”.
  
• Someone else, who worked in a popular shop in a small town, worked up until a few days before the birth.  There were complications during the delivery and the child died a few hours later.  Now, everyone she meets who is unaware of this detail asks her how the baby is.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

When I was 19 and a nursing student, I had a brief placement on a mental health unit for a couple of days.  One of the ladies who was in her late 20’s that worked there was on her first day back after a prolonged absence following the accidental death of her husband (he was killed crossing the road).  It was a difficult day for this lady as it was, and it was made all that much more difficult when an apparently well meaning older member of staff commented, “Well, look on the bright side dear, at least you are young enough to get married again.”  It was an awkward moment I shall never forget.

For so many people the past is not over – there are after effects firmly rooted in the past that will continue for the duration of life, and there are some problems that no therapy in the world is ever going to be able to fix. Also, to attempt to disconnect a person from their past in an attempt to improve a person’s existence in the form of “we are doing NLP, but it isn’t therapy” is hugely problematic and is ethically highly questionable.  It’s cult like.  It is sick.  Why not go the whole hog and get the client to change their name to “Star Child”, wear a white robe and disconnect from their family members altogether.

Oh fuck, isn’t that what so many long time NLP trainers/assistants are doing themselves already?  It certainly seems that way to me.

I might just start stocking up on the Kool-Aid.

It’s almost as crap as the gusto with which some NLPer-but-I’m-not-a-therapist go about using dissociation with traumatic events in the vain hope that everything will be fine.  I know I’ve said it before, but I think it worth saying again, that suffering and human experience goes far deeper than the quality of the pictures a person makes in their head.  It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp really, yet so many people exposed to NLP training seem to struggle with this.  

There, my rant ends.  I fully expect to receive the usual round of “he’s attacking NLP again” (I’m not, and never have “attacked NLP” – but my frustration at so many of the practitioners of NLP that I meet is obvious to all, I think) followed by a short time delay before I see those very same people posting this as their own on some popular NLP forums as an original idea.

I've uploaded the edited recording of Anxiety - A Neurolinguistic Perspective.  It is available for £19.99 and can be downloaded from here: http://www.freshbraincompany.com/mall/productpage.cfm/BlueTranscendenceShop/_1

The “tea or coffee” bind is a very useful predictor for how well a session may go.  Whilst I use an offer of a hot beverage, any bind of alternative choices will do.

Here is how it works.  When the client arrives I quickly show them in, point out where the toilet is (many have travelled far) and offer “Tea of coffee?”

This is a bind of comparable choice.  I have not asked, “Would you like a drink?” which is a simple “yes or no” question.  The bind is to accepting a drink, and the choice is either tea or coffee.

Here are the possible answers that a person might give.

1. Tea.
2. Coffee
3. Neither thanks
4. No thanks
5. Oh, I’ll just have a glass of water please
6. Do you have herbal tea?
7. I’ll have whatever you are having

This might sound a bit daft, but the response that is given can be a remarkable predictor on how well the client session is going to go.  The person who accepts either tea or coffee will invariably be co-operative and engaging in the therapeutic process.  This doesn’t mean that they will be easy to “cure”, but certainly will be easy to work with towards that “cure”.

Not everyone drinks tea or coffee, and some, having travelled far and arrived early, may have just come from the café around the corner, but don’t want to reject what is offered.  These are the people who will say something along the lines of, “Oh, I’ll just have a glass of water, thanks.”

Independent thinkers will request an alternative such as “herbal tea.”  Nearly always, these are the clients who come to learn rather than be “therapised”, and will actively ask questions, discuss, argue and apply what they learn to themselves.

The people who say, “oh, I’ll have whatever you are having” have usually come to be therapised and look to be led and directed in their responses.

The client who rejects the offer outright will nearly always be the “difficult” client.  Difficulties emerge in their response sets along the lines of: 

• Most answers to most questions begin with “I don’t know…”
• When pressed, the client will just sit there silently, as though in deep inner contemplation, and then eventually look up and ask, “What was the question?”
• “Yes, but…” is a common expression for them
• “What if…” is their preferred style of questioning (“What if…” is a way of generating a counter example to any generalisation that is created)
• Any responses that are given tend to be tangential (basically, they don’t answer the question)
• The client will tend to focus on the performance of their therapists, past and present and offer critical reviews on these performances.  They can be very good at not talking about themselves but preferring to discuss the behaviours of others.
• The client will expect the therapist to “fix” them without their own active engagement in any process.  This is what my colleague Nick Kemp refers to as “The Magic Wand Mind Set.”

In younger and more naïve times, I would attempt to do “therapy” in the face of all these behaviours.  It rarely went well.  Now, I will actively address these behaviours – address what is happening in the here and now, what is right in front of you.

In my book, “The Rainbow Machine” I give the example of the man with “low self esteem” who thought he was unlikeable (he was pretty much right about that).  What his previous counsellor had missed, or ignored, this man’s ongoing behaviours, his dress sense, his level of hygiene, his hair cut (all of which were appalling) and instead chose to focus on the therapeutic goal of raising this unfortunate man’s self esteem. 

Try this in your next client session.  Offer tea or coffee.  If the client rejects it, do this.  Say, “It’s not a choice.  Do you want tea or coffee?” and do this dead-pan, don’t be tempted to break the emerging tension.  This is difficult to do at first, as it goes against what so many of us do naturally.  I like to allow the tension to rise a little and watch how the client handles this.

Either the client will acquiesce, or a stand off will emerge.  The stand off takes as long as it takes.  Wherever possible, I like to get the stand off out of the way before the session begins proper.  It makes things much easier that way.