NLP is something that is used frequently during therapy, but I know just like I was before I trained as a therapist you may be wondering what exactly is NLP? The fact is that NLP is a lot of different things such as tools, techniques and adopting new attitudes and behaviours to see rapid results.
In the early 1970’s Richard Bandler and John Grinder created NLP by studying other therapists who were highly successful their field looking at how they treated their clients’ a few of the therapists they studied were:
Virginia Satir, was an American author and psychotherapist who was known especially for her approach to family therapy and her work with family reconstruction. Virginia Satir was widely known as the “Mother of family therapy”
Fritz Perls also was known as Frederick Salomon Perls was a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who coined the term Gestalt therapy which the process is enhanced awareness of sensation, perception, bodily feelings, emotion and behaviour in the present moment.
Milton Erickson was an American psychiatrist who specialised in medical hypnosis and family therapy. Milton was known for his ability to story tell and the use of metaphors during his therapy sessions.
Bandler and Grinder did not only study these three therapists but they studied a wide array of other therapists such as Linguistics, anthropologists and psychoanalysts to compound and create the ever-popular system that is now widely used and known as NLP.
In short, NLP helps to create changes in how we perceive certain points of life and helps us to overcome our beliefs that are causing us problems. It is known that our beliefs can overcome the powers of medication, for example, if your doctor gave you a pill and you whole heartily believe that it will not or will work the fact is that whatever you believe will most likely happen, believe it or not, changes will even happen physiologically and psychologically through the power of our belief systems.
Using NLP has become increasingly popular for therapists to use due to the rapid results it can give, sometimes NLP is all that is needed. However, when it is coupled with other interventions such as hypnotherapy it can have a compounding effect where one plus one equals three. NLP is essential to me as my husband does NLP training so I can’t really ignore it.
NLP can be used in business and for sports personalities. Sports personalities use NLP techniques to manage their state whilst out on the pitch or just before that big swimming contest. for Business, managers are now using it as a way to understand communication to communicate with staff and clients more effectively, and NLP enables the practitioner to speak and communicate in another person’s language, therefore strengthening rapport and results
