23NLPeople Blog

"Why are you always bashing NLP?"

I get asked this quite a lot.  A couple of years ago in Liverpool, a workshop participant said, "What happened, were you bitten by an NLPer when you were a child?"  I get his point and did wonder if maybe, just maybe, I had pushed it a bit far.  But I admit, on reflection I haven't changed my position one bit.

But here's the point.  I don't, and never have, "bashed NLP."  Really.

It's the behaviour NLP practitioners that I bash, not the model. 

The behaviour of so many NLPers makes me reluctant to consider myself "an NLPer", I think to do so would be a mistake lest I get associated with those individuals that, quite frankly, I regard as foolish.  Whilst NLP forms just a small, but important, part of what I do, but I certainly don't draw my identity from such activity.  

Some of the behaviours of so many practitioners that I do object to is as follows:

- the obsession with status
- showing off on Facebook when they get a client
- showing off on Facebook what an amazing time they are having and how happy they are
- the amount of alcohol and drugs consumed by so many NLPers that I know
- ludicrous claims made for the power of the techniques
- discussion of client cases on public forums where members basically ask, "what should I do with this client?"
- obsession with pseudoscience (i.e. "energies", "quantum healing", "law of attraction")
- the inability of so many NLP trainers to stay financially solvent, whilst simultaneously promoting themselves as business success coaches
- people suffering "too much NLP", whose fixation is on "how much pleasure can I stand" and who have rendered themselves completely dysfunctional in normal life

In addition to this, the level of bickering, gossip and sheer humourless smug hostility displayed on internet discussion groups such as NLPConnections and NLPWeekly is horrible. It suggests to me an unpleasant paranoia and in-group mentality to the regular posters who simultaneously bemoan the lack of participation from other people involved in NLP.

Now, all of the above moans are about behaviours that can be equally applied to all sorts of people outside of NLP.  But here's my issue: we don't see dentists behaving in these ways, or doctors, or nurses, firemen or the police.  If they did, the governing bodies that maintain professional standards would take a pro-active role in correcting the public representation of that profession.

There is no end of self-professed groups and individuals pretending to be in possession of governance over NLP, yet I have yet to see any such pro-active role being assumed by any of them.

Thus the public image of NLP is seriously in decline, but it is not "NLP" that the public experiences, but rather it is the behaviour of the practitioners that is witnessed.  The naive observer may not, and indeed usually doesn't, necessarily distinguish between the practitioner and the practice.  The result of this is frustrating to say the least, so I seek to distance myself from NLP practitioners and the embarrassing public image that so many present.