NLP in Private Practice and a GP’s Perspective

In recent years NLP has become more of a household name in the UK, but just how effective is NLP in real life settings. This article offers insights from the perspective of an established NLP practitioner and trainer working in private practice and that of a General Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner working within the NHS.

Quick links:
| The Perception and Practice of NLP and Working with Clients | A Perspective from General Practice |
| NLP and working with addictions | Final Thoughts |

Nick Kemp is a well known NLP Trainer, co owner of Tranceforming NLP, Hypnotherapist and Provocative Therapist having trained with Richard Bandler and Frank Farrelly among others. He has also regularly appeared on BBC Radio as an expert on curing phobias using NLP.

Dr Susan Elton is a General Practitioner with an interest in substance misuse management who works in Leeds, as well as being an NLP Master Practitioner. She is also an assistant on Tranceforming NLP courses.

 

The Perception and Practice of NLP and Working with Clients - by Nick Kemp

I have found NLP to be an extraordinary set of tools for dealing with a host of different conditions which can often succeed where more traditional methods may not.

It is important to note that a simple one week or 20 day course does not qualify anyone to be a clinical practitioner and sometimes “a certification in NLP” can be just a certificate of attendance with the practitioner needing to then gain (if they haven’t already) further experience, qualifications, professional insurance etc., before even entertaining the concept of working with paying clients!

I work in a practice alongside psychotherapists and counsellors which sees over 1000 clients a month and have worked with cases of OCD, anger management, food disorders, phobias, addiction in various forms and panic attacks amongst other conditions.

In 2006 I was asked by BBC Radio to work with 26 volunteers suffering from a variety of different phobias on a weekly basis, all of whom were cured within an hour using various combinations of the classic NLP fast phobia cure and Provocative Therapy.

Some of these phobias had been with clients for over 50 years, so this was an excellent example of the power of the NLP toolkit in a live situation. It really sharpens the mind to know that within an hour of first meeting the person I was then going live on the air to take calls with the client feeding back on how well NLP had helped resolve their phobia!.

NLP is an excellent in identifying and changing patterns of behaviour with clients. Crucially, changing the belief systems of clients, who often arrive with the unhelpful idea that they have a permanent condition which they have usually labelled as “an eating disorder, depression” or other such labels. As part of the international “Just Be Well Network”, many clients I see have already tried numerous other approaches without success. In some cases have said that their well meaning therapists have literally seen clients for many months without producing useful outcomes for the client where the therapist has attempted the exact same approach over and over again to no avail.

A major advantage of using NLP is that this approach focuses on where the client wants to be, rather than returning to the “problem” over and over again. My good friend Frank Farrelly who's work and style was modelled by Bandler and Grinder during the creation of NLP...." calls this approach “the archaeological dig!

 

A Perspective from General Practice - by Dr Susan Elton

I agree with the above by Nick Kemp and would also like to add the following observation, that the NLP skill set and tool kit are hugely useful to General Practitioners and all other communicators, whilst undertaking their usual duties, when not specifically using NLP as an approach in its own right.

Within the NHS at the moment there is great emphasis on healthcare services providing the population as a whole with “good health” which one would expect and support. Under the most recent contracts in General Practice the care given for chronic disease is assessed, and rewarded, as being measurable using given parameters, such as ,for example, the recorded practice population hba1c levels in diabetes management. Good control of this is associated with reduced risk factors for catastrophic events, such as stroke, and reduces the level of end organ disease in the future. Evidence based medicine backs up therapeutic strategies and this has been adopted to give more evenly distributed standards of care and therapeutic outcomes.

One would whole heartedly support this, but how do you get this rather dry information across to individuals and persuade them to take this on board in a useful fashion? Human nature is not so easily defined, and these are not necessarily the issues that patients attend with or which distress them or which make it hard for people to go to work and hold down their jobs, or enjoy family life and the ups and downs of that life and major life events.

There is a natural limit to how much of the gross national product can be dedicated to the NHS, the care given, the hospitals, primary care services and workforce. As a result some therapies and services are commissioned by the NHS and some very effective therapies and strategies are only available in the private sector to a population becoming increasingly informed and interested in their own well being. Can people live effective lives, hold down a job, travel with their families or for work, feel content with their lot in life, and take responsibility for their wellbeing knowing more about a healthy lifestyle and making good parenting choices? All of these are the burning questions relevant to the individual rather than to the public as a whole, and different things suit different people.

Communication skills are now becoming recognised as being important enough to form part of every Doctors medical school curriculum, as correct advice poorly given falls on deaf ears. The business and education sectors also increasingly recognise this. In fact, where ever performance outcomes can be improved using effective communication strategies there is a huge role for NLP.

The NLP toolkit is useful whenever one communicates internally or externally, whether that be with oneself and ones attitudes to getting up in the morning, time management, attending to paperwork, being in a useful and effective state all day long, in business meetings and interacting with staff and colleagues, as well as in a therapeutic setting.

Specifically within the clinical setting, these communication skills assist in many ways.

Examples of this include-

- Motivating patients to take responsibility for change in their own lives
- Offering different perspectives
- Assisting with using all sorts of positive personal health and lifestyle choices
- Moving on after bereavement, divorce, separation and loss.
- Encouraging compliance with therapy
- Giving clear and positive encouragement and support

Effective communication skills become increasingly useful as, when more and more is done in the primary care setting, and patient expectations increase exponentially, the time available for each patient needs to be used to best effect.

The NLP skill set is hugely valuable even without using specific NLP exercises or interventions. Patients often want to be listened to, and need to be heard. There are many ways of achieving this but I have certainly had extremely positive feedback from patients having improved my own communication skills using these tools.

Substance misuse management offers enormous opportunities to motivate those with addictions to turn their lives around, and return to the wider community with their families and children. It is widely recognised that physical addiction is only part of the story and the psychological elements are multi factorial and far reaching .Communication skills which can be greatly enhanced by learning the NLP skill set can play a huge role here, gaining trust, assisting engagement and continued engagement with services, attending appointments and complying with therapy. Without good skills in these areas, many opportunities for positive outcomes, (which mean continued life, as well as the eventual hope of living drug or alcohol free) can be missed. It is imperative that the communication skills of those working in these fields are genuinely up to the task in hand for those using these services, as well as for society as a whole. The Linguistic aspect of NLP is especially powerful in giving therapists and practitioners a greater insight into patient problems and in eliciting valuable information needed for a better assessment of particular conditions. Those with substance misuse issues can often have extremely negative outlooks on life, poor self image, and find achieving even little things overwhelming. Making real friendships and establishing a drug free support network can be a massive hurdle. Assisting with someone who wants to turn their lives around, but does not yet know how to achieve this, to actually achieving a self responsible, self motivating, positive future is hugely rewarding both for the clients themselves and for their families and children.

The NHS has specific limitations, and traditionally the mental health services have been under funded and limited to those with only the most extreme of issues. This means in effect that a huge amount of disease is left to the primary care services, self help groups and voluntary organisations, and for many people, their individual misery is unattended to, falling through the gaps in service provision. For those lucky enough to be able to afford and access the specific services of someone working as a qualified NLP practitioner, conditions such as fears and phobias, anxiety and panic attacks, smoking cessation, anger management, certain eating disorders and addictions amongst other conditions, can all be treated successfully and simply, often in a minimal number of sessions.

NLP and working with addictions - by Nick Kemp

I have had many memorable successes with clients who previously had problems with various forms of addiction. One of the most memorable ones from over the years was a 19 year old client who had an alcohol addiction that resulted in him frequently drinking to the point of blacking out. This often resulted in him waking up in a police cell and when I met him he had already attended AA meetings, substance misuse help and extensive counselling. In short he had heard just about everything about the dangers of drink and how it could ruin his life. I always ask clients to complete a questionnaire prior to meeting with me. This form supplied includes the following key questions –

What do you want from the session?
How will you know when you have it?
What has stopped you from changing up until this point?
How will life be different once this problem is resolved?

I also audio record each session and give the client a recording at the end of the session on CD to listen back to for the next seven days. In this way I can future pace my suggestions during the session, including such phrases as “when you listen back to this, notice what has changed” I also use Provocative Therapy to break any generalisations made often to hilarious effect, taking everything said as literal fact. I noticed Richard Bandler use a similar approach in working with clients (of course he also extensively modelled Frank Farrelly) and often uses humour to great effect in changing client perceptions.

Here is an extract from an e-mail I received from his mother after two sessions -

"My son is doing so well after having had two sessions with you . The change in him is remarkable. I contacted you in desperation in November 2006, He had just been released from Young Offenders Institute for a crime he committed whilst intoxicated, a crime he couldn't even remember, after his release he was so sad because he knew and I did that it would only be a matter of days before he would take a drink. ONE drink for him is not really possible, after one he can't stop till he is unconscious. I asked if you could get him in to see you before Christmas as I knew if something didn't change by then he could end up dead. He came to you the first time on the 15th December and to date has been sober !!! But more than that, he’s actually taking pride in himself again , he's exercising and actually planning the future. I honestly think its saved his life over the festive (Drinking) season! I heard him on the phone this morning telling one of his drinking friends "... I'm keeping fit now! ..."

Final Thoughts

Dr Susan Elton

There is an enormous duty of care when working with clients, in whatever context that this occurs in, to use what works best, in an effective responsible fashion, to best serve the interests of all concerned. Failure to do this can be disastrous. The best way to be most effective as a practitioner is to train well, undertake continuing professional development, and peer review, be accountable to a professional regulatory body, work from a suitable setting with adequate insurance.

Nick Kemp

In the interview I conducted with Karen Moxom from ANLP for the www.nlpmp3.com site, we talked extensively about the importance of NLP being perceived as a more credible approach in society. In my view the bundling of NLP in with activities such as EFT, Crystal healing, Reiki, fire walking etc is not particularly useful in promoting NLP as a serious stand alone set of skills.
The best hope in my opinion for NLP is for training institutes to produce practitioners who are self responsible and who can demonstrate results so that NLP increasingly becomes a worthwhile addition to existing medical and psychological approaches.

 

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