What can NLP not do?
We are always a raving on about our own techniques and our own distinctions of training that can do so much for other people. Not many of us, especially as trainers, will look at what our own genre of transformational work can’t do!
I think this is especially useful for new practitioners – let’s say practitioners who have had less than 20 or 30 clients, who are still under the illusion that NLP can fix anything.
I’ve got nothing against the conviction and confidence of what you’re doing and that you can fix just about anything that you put your mind too. That was exactly my mind set as a newly qualified practitioner of NLP.
Yet from my own experience (which has been since 1996) with literally hundreds of clients and hundreds of people trained, I found there are some limitations that are good to be honest about.
For instance, when you’re dealing with physical complaints such as psoriasis and any other complaint that has physical symptoms, you have to be very careful about what you can say in regards to the symptoms disappearing.
These days what I normally tell clients, that I agree that I will get them on the journey and on the path of recovery.
The symptomology that they may be having in the body or on their skin may take a while to disappear, yet when I can find out the patterns of what’s behind it and get them working on those patterns, I can always find success there. That whole process may take many years to work out.
If I start out by promising to remove this or cure this (which we are not allowed to say unless we are a doctor), then I’m setting myself up to put a lot of pressure on myself in terms of getting a result then may be unreasonable. The body may have a good reason to hold onto some of the symptomology more than one or two sessions.
One of the reasons why it may be unreasonable that symptomology disappears is because the body is usually the last thing in line to be able to let go of its habit or its relationship to the past problem.
For instance if you look at somebody’s face, the whole of their history is sketched or etched into that face. When you’re changing somebody’s life behavioural habits, that face will not completely change overnight. It will take some time for the new habits to be incorporated into somebody’s life – and just like writing a new desk on a CD, it will take some time for these new features to come out of them.
So when talking to clients, the most truthful and easiest thing to do is show them that you can find out their patterns, discover how things are put together – release all the triggers, get them on their path to recovery and then let them know that the symptomology in the body can recover over a period of time.
Where this is different is with phobias, traumas and memories which are in singlets. These can be cleared up with NLP in one session and I can usually guarantee that those single memories, phobias or traumas can be cleared up within one or two sessions.
To have a look at how memories work or how the unconscious mind can release issues – click here.