Quite often people ask what is NLP, but how can you answer this question, if only a whole book can be written on the topic itself? But I will try to make it simple. Quite often you can hear: “NLP is hypnosis. NLP is methods of zombification. NLP is methods of personal growth. NLP is psychology.” Is it so? Let’s figure it out.
That is, we have a person who does something very well, for example: he is an excellent hypnotist, NLP teaches – how can we understand what he does, what is special about his behavior, what makes him the best?
He may not realize that his whole secret is in his voice or floating intonation. Milton Erickson – he was the best hypnotherapist of his time, but how he realized this only after the founders of NLP removed the model from him. He personally wrote about this in the preface of the book “Patterns of the Hypnotic Work of Milton Erickson”, in which the founders of NLP R. Bandler and D. Grinder described what was the secret of this man’s effectiveness.
Modeling is what NLP is. But due to the fact that NLP removed a huge number of models from successful people in various fields of activity, Neuro-Linguistic Programming is now known more as an excellent application to psychotherapy, a way of manipulation, a way of self-development. All these are just parts of models of skilled psychotherapists, manipulators and successful people.
It is worth noting that NLP also includes methods of hypnosis, both open and covert effects on the subconscious of a person, thanks to them, business representatives noticed it at an early stage and began to take it into service. Agree, it is beneficial to possess such skills during business negotiations. The so-called Pickup (quick seduction of the opposite sex) has long taken similar techniques from NLP. Now many generally equate Pickup and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Personally, I don’t think this is correct.
NLP is a wonderful model of the human psyche – it makes it possible to conduct a very deep analysis and, most importantly, analyzes not the area that was accepted – the past, as psychoanalysts do, but the one in which lies the very essence – the activity of the nervous system, the brain. We can study what a person never thinks about at all – how his brain processes information, how he stores it, how he sorts it, how the brain searches for information, how it retrieves it. We can study the features of these deep processes without electronic devices, simply by remaining attentive to the smallest manifestations in human behavior.
In therapy, we can simply make painful memories simply lose their significance, or so that the brain does not find them (forgot), or by understanding why a person experiences some memories very strongly and others weakly, why some negative moments are perceived as a funny curiosity and use this knowledge so that the painful memory is experienced very weakly or becomes perceived as an equally amusing curiosity. And of course NLP is a huge set of tools for working with a person, with his subconscious.
Recently it has become “fashionable” to criticize NLP. Some criticize that it is not effective, others for the fact that with its help they manipulate people and turn them into zombies. I do not think that this should be heeded – these are two mutually exclusive positions, it cannot turn people into zombies if it is not effective, agree.
How can NLP turn a person into a zombie if NLP doesn’t work? Moreover, making a zombie out of a person is not an easy task. It’s easier and easier to put a knife to his throat.
Let’s take for example not NLP, but Body Oriented Therapy… There are psychological problems – this is the reason. They lead to muscle clamps – this is a consequence. The specialist eliminates muscle clamps – psychological problems disappear. It’s funny, because we have eliminated the effect, and the causes have also disappeared. Well, or an example from NLP, how can I give it here, so that everything looks right from a logical point of view?
A man has a problem with girls – he is embarrassed to get acquainted. The psychoanalyst will delve into the past, start digging, find self-doubt and work with it. Then the guy can and will become confident, but with the girls he will suffer for a long time – after all, he already has a reflex – embarrassment when talking with strangers. Until he enters a new rut, and maybe worse – now this consequence will become the cause, and he will again become insecure due to the fact that he cannot get acquainted with girls. The consequence and cause have changed places – the guy became insecure due to the fact that he was embarrassed to make acquaintances with girls. NLPer – will change behavior, give new ways of responding; the boy, even remaining insecure, will be able to meet girls normally, as a result, self-confidence will also rise against this background. Such is the metaphor.
Therefore, it is very difficult to work with linear templates and algorithms with a non-linear system. In fact, there are patterns in NLP, but R. Bandler himself, the creator of NLP, warned against blindly following them. And in our time, professionals do not use techniques, but create them individually for each new person.
Many criticize that NLP doesn’t really work with causes. This is not true Neuro-Linguistic Programming works with the original causes, which lie in the nervous system. Much lower than, for example, psychoanalysis, After all, this is Neurolinguistic and not Psycholinguistic programming. NLPers work with the causes of the causes that conventional psychologists are looking for. Therefore, probably, it is so convenient for manipulating other people, as it “touches” not only the psychological component of a person, but also the physiological one. And now it seems to me that it would be more correct to give you the right to decide what NLP is based on what you already know.
