How did it start?
NLP came about in the 1970s in California at the time Hypnosis was becoming popular. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy developed through the recognition that most of our beliefs and behaviours were generated unconsciously (i.e. we are unaware of it happening). If these were less than useful, a good way to change them was by putting our conscious mind (i.e. our aware, “thinking” mind) into a “trance”, and talking to the unconscious directly. However, It started to get a bad name with stage hypnotists “putting on a show”, and various concerns within religious faiths. Two guys around at the time Richard Bandler a mathematician and John Grinder an assistant Professor of Linguistics, recognising the importance of this unconscious part of the brain, thought there must be a more ethical way to access it.
They studied the works of eminent psychotherapists at the time – Firitz Perls – the developer of Gestalt therapy, Virginia Satir – the pioneer of family therapy and Milton Erickson – a medical doctor who made his name as a hypnotherapist. They wanted to know how these people got the amazing results they did with their clients. How did they bring about such positive change in people and empower them to continue living a happy life?
NLP has therefore arisen out of studying different disciplines, and the structure of excellence. How did these people achieve success and how can we teach other people to achieve success? How are some people ecstatically happy and healthy all the time? How can we take a skill someone has in one area of life and apply it in others? Out of this came an innovative new approach to understanding how the brain, mind and body work and a new technology that allows us to change our way of thinking and return to our inherent excellence, so we can achieve what we want to achieve. This makes it very different to other forms of therapy like traditional counselling and psychotherapy, which tend to focus on talking about “problems” as opposed to solutions.
There are some very basic key assumptions of NLP which any NLP practitioner will work by, which are nice to mention here so as a client you know what you are working with:
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It’s not so much the experience of life that makes a difference to how we feel, it is how we perceive those experiences. For example, two people who are involved in the same “experience” will never
have exactly the same experience. Therefore no two people ever represent “the world” in their heads the same way. No one way is better or worse, or real or not real. It’s completely individual, personal and unique. An example is if two people go on a rollercoaster, one person may perceive it as fun and exciting and their brain will produce chemicals which are associated with fun and joy (endorphins) where as the next person may perceive the experience to be frightening and scary, their brain would produce chemicals associated with fear (adrenalin). This emphasises again that it is not the actual “experience” which matters, but the way we perceive it, which is completely unique to the individual.
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If one person can use their brain effectively be happy and healthy and successful in life, then everyone’s brain is capable of the same thing. The hardware is the same, it is just the software that is different, i.e. more or less effective at being happy. This “way of thinking” can be changed to help your brain do more of what you want it to do! This is a wonderful way of viewing human potential. We are all inherently excellent, it is just sometimes our brain needs reminding.
How does it work?
The brain, nervous system and therefore immune system and all the organs that function in your body (remembering skin is also an organ) and skeleton are connected. The brain and the mind are without a doubt connected also. Therefore it makes sense to say our mind and our body are connected. It is well known in the public and the medical profession that psychological “stress” lowers our immune system and makes us more susceptible to illness.
We also know our body responds to certain thoughts or images that go through our minds. For example if I ask you to picture a lemon, and imagine cutting into it and tasting it, you will make a picture in your head and you will start salivating and your stomach will get ready to eat it. Your body thinks the lemon is really here and you are ingesting it! Another more obvious and somewhat unspoken example of this is how just thinking about sexual images produces feelings of arousal in the body. This “visual” part of your brain therefore, does not quite know the difference between what is “real” and what is “not real”.
You can imagine the consequences of this in some people’s case, for example the person who is scared of flying on planes. They make pictures in their head of the terrible crash they are “about to have”, their brain thinks it has already happened, and produces physical sensations in the body. No wonder they feel highly anxious and want to get off the plane. You can see from these examples that this visual part of the brain has a very significant function. Because of its significance it can be used positively in NLP to make important, permanent changes in the whole system of the mind and body.
If we think again of the person who is scared of flying. In their brain, there is a connection between planes, crashing, and fear and anxiety. These “connections” are made in the brain by millions of little neurons, which when connected form a chain, or a neural network in scientific terms. These neural networks are connected with the chemicals like adrenalin and endorphins.
It is important to recognise that these networks once formed, connect together again and again. Each time they connect they are reinforced and form a pattern, for example a repeated behaviour (i.e. smoking), or a repeated thought (i.e. “this plane is going to crash”). The connection gets stronger each time the pattern is repeated, (i.e. each time the person lights a cigarette or gets on a plane).
How the neurons decide which chemical to use to connect its network, depends on which one is “hanging around” at the time. How the chemicals get to be around at the time, depends on our emotional state. For example if we are happy our brain produces a lot of serotonin (the “happy” chemical), and therefore the neural network connects with serotonin, and then the brain produces even more, and so on. This is wonderful for the happy person! You can imagine the implications of this in reverse though (i.e. the person who suffers with “depression”). It’s also important to recognise that these networks connect and reconnect again without us having any control at all, and without us even being aware (i.e. having to consciously “think” about it). They happen entirely in the unaware, unconscious part of the brain.
Of course this unconscious part of the brain is important for major things like our heart beating, our breathing, our eyes blinking and our body healing from an injury for example. We would not consciously be able to think about these things – it would take up too much time! We also do not need to when we can trust our unconscious to do it for us. Just take a moment to think about this. If our unconscious brain controls so much without us even thinking or asking it to do anything, just imagine what we could achieve if we did “talk” to it, and ask it to do something! This is what NLP is about.
Also, consider that if all of this happens unconsciously, so does your immune system’s response to an allergen, say pollen for example. This is also the case with your brain’s phobic reaction to a spider or anxious reaction to an exam or job interview. 90% of your thoughts, feelings, attitudes, responses and behaviours, beliefs and memories are controlled by this unconscious part of your brain. Seeing as these affect you mentally and physically and pretty much control everything you do every day and in life, it is exceptionally important that you have some control over these critical internal functions.
These beliefs, responses and behaviours are in many cases set up at a time in our lives we were too young (often as children) to have a choice, or understand how we could control it, or have the “resources” to be able to do it differently or change it. This is true of physical responses as well. Your brain and body thought they were doing the best for your protection at the time the response was “set up”. The same patterns therefore will keep on repeating themselves again and again and all the information we “take in” from the world will simply reinforce it. The neural networks will reconnect and become stronger, until something happens or we do something purposeful to change it ourselves. For example, we might consider ourselves a “shy” person, so we make ourselves take a trip around the world on our own to build our confidence. However, it is not always possible to do this as we don’t always know what to do or how to do it, or we have various “limitations” that stop us from doing anything.
This is where NLP is so important. It is the development of understanding how someone takes in the world through the senses, and uniquely stores, codes and organises this information. Then, by using specially developed language patterns and processes we can “talk” to the brain and nervous system in a language it fully understands, and ask it to respond to things differently, in a way that suits us better and serves us fully.
It is important to point out that because NLP processes are so specific and direct, they have very powerful effects and positive change is often instantaneous. People therefore could have an idea of an NLP practitioner “waving a magic wand” and magically “solving” all their problems for them. This is not the case at all. It is not NLP that “works” by itself, it is you and your brain that “work”! Remember one of the key assumptions of NLP - we are simply reminding the brain of its inherent excellence. It already has everything it needs (the “hardware”) and all we are doing as an NLP practitioner and client is working together, and gently guiding your brain in the right direction (reprogramming the “software”). By doing this we connect those neural network patterns inside your brain to do what we want them to do, not what they thought they had to, do all that time ago, when they were first connected.
Einstein is quoted as saying “our thinking creates problems that the same kind of thinking cannot solve”. I think this is a good way of describing how NLP works. If it was just as easy as saying consciously “I’d like to change this behaviour now please” everyone would be their own therapist and would be completely fulfilled and happy and healthy in life. The only difference between you and me is that I know how to communicate with the type of thinking that can change you positively.
Mental and physical dis-eases therefore like depression or allergies are just a “way of thinking” (i.e. a neural network pattern in the brain) and can be changed if you really want them to be. So the next question is what types of things can NLP help me with?
It is important to remember before you read the following, that the lists here are given as examples only. Remember you are completely individual and you may have your own unique thing you would like help with:
Overcome physical health problems, for example:
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Muscular-skeletal problems
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Allergies and auto immune responses
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Skin disorders
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Illness
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Pain and scars
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Headaches / migraines
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Weight loss / gain / eating disorders
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Strengthen immune system
Achieve personal excellence and well-being, for example:
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Banish old limiting beliefs (i.e. insecurity, self doubt etc.)
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Learn to love yourself
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Build self confidence and self-esteem
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Increase confidence in all areas of life
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Identify and achieve future goals for life
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Deal with stress effectively
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Have fulfilling, loving relationships
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Integrate conflicting parts of yourself
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Recover from trauma (major or minor)
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Resolve emotional challenges
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Motivate yourself
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Believe in yourself and your capabilities
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Feel differently about home, school, college, work etc.
Change your behaviour so it suits you better, for example:
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Depression
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
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Anxiety and panic (including panic attacks)
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Phobias
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Addictions
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Smoking / drinking / drug taking
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Excessive shopping
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Over or under eating
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Any other repeated behaviour that you find on the whole unsatisfying.
Achieve peak sports performance
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Access peak states before each sporting event
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Learn useful strategies to achieve your best
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Deal with anxiety and nerves
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Set and achieve goals
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Learn and practice “attitude determines altitude”!
What happens in a session?
Together we discover your “problem” and then find out what you want instead, by identifying your goal. I then talk to the brain through the specially developed language patterns and processes, and change what it can do i.e. your responses and behaviours. Thus, achieving the desired powerful and permanent result in the whole system of mind and body, in just the way you wanted.
Who am I?
Charlotte Hinksman. I have an honours degree in psychology and a lot of experience in consultancy in varied psychological settings. I have completed my Master NLP Practitioner training, the highest level training for NLP consulting. I work independently in private practice as a neuro-linguistic practtioner, at Level 2, 136 The Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand.
You do not have to believe anything that is written here, let the results speak for themselves. I am available via appointment at +64 21 701 138 or +64 4 499 1192. Telephone consultation appointments can also be arranged. The cost of consultation is $95 per 1 hour and 15 minutes. The number of sessions necessary varies from individual to individual. This can be anything between 1 – 6 sessions.
References
Bolstad, R. & Hamblett, M., Transforming Communication, Longman, Auckland 1998.
Bolstad, R., & Hamblett, M., NLP And The Rediscovery Of Happiness.
Bolstad, R., & Hamblett, M., Postframing: Finding The Excellence That Was There. Anchorpoint, 1997.
Bolstad, R. Attitude Determines Altitude
Bolstad, R., RESOLVE A New Model of Therapy, Crown Publishing Limited, 2002
Andreas, C & Andreas, T., Core Transformation Reaching The Wellspring Within, Real People Press, 1994.
Pert, C., Molecules of Emotion, The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine (publisher to follow)
With special thanks to:
Dr Richard Bolstad , Master NLP Practitioner and NLP trainer – Transformations International Training and Consulting Ltd.
Lynn Timpany , Master NLP Practitioner and NLP trainer – Transformations International Training and Consulting Ltd.
Damian Peters , Master NLP Practitioner of The Sattwic Counselling Centre, Lower Hutt.
Joesph Quinn , Lead Trainer and Coach, Open Road Associates, Auckland.
