Written by Roger Ellerton, PhD, CMC
As a certified NLP trainer, I am often asked, “What is NLP?”
The term NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming and was coined in the early seventies by John Grinder, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Richard Bandler, a student of psychology at the university. They began their work by studying Fritz Perls, a psychotherapist and originator of the Gestalt school of therapy, Virginia Satir, a well-known family therapist and Milton Erickson, a world-famous hypnotherapist. Their intention was to model outstanding therapists and identify patterns in order that other practitioners could use these ... Read the rest of this entry »
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NLP is a very exciting new area of practical psychotherapy that has much to offer. It spearheads a new approach to changing destructive patterns of emotional reactivity in which there is an active investigation into the inner structure of emotions. Yes emotions and also emotional beliefs have a structure - and this is typically in the form of internal imagery. The energetic intensity of an emotion is encoded in the specific sub-modalities of color, shape, position, texture, movement to name a few. When a phobic sees a spider, he doesnt react to the external image, but to his internal picture, which has undergone extensive symbolic reprocessing. What he actually sees is a huge brightly colored image that is literally right in his face. Size, position, color intensity encode the fear. The same applies to emotions such as anxiety and depression - they all have an internal structure in the form of experiential imagery. This is a great insight, because by changing the imagery, the client can begin to change the particular energetic configuration of the emotion. Make the image small, black&white and off to the side, and he will not feel fear. hence, NLP is a very focused approach to work with what the client actually experiences, rather than trying to change his emotional reactivity indirectly through talking. It is truly client-centered, rather than therapist-centered. The only caveat is that the client must be allowed to discover the internal imagery for himself - it must be experiential, originating from his intuitive felt-sense of the emotion. Hence, NLP benefits greatly from applied mindfulness, which is the sensitive investigation into present experience - in this case the present experience of the emotion being worked on. Peter Strong, PhD is a specialist in Mindfulness Psychotherapy and Experiential Imagery-based NLP.