PRINCIPLES OF NLP
- If you ain’t got rapport you ain’t got nothing. You might as well not bother. Rapport is achieved by matching/mirroring (without mimicking), helping you to influence with integrity.
- To be an effective communicator/therapist you need three things: outcome (know what you want), acuity (notice what you’re getting) and flexibility (change what you do until you get what you want). The meaning of your communication is the response you get, irrespective of what you intended.
- NLP is much more interested than “how to” (i.e. structure, process) than “why” (i.e. content, historical underpinnings). According to Bandler, “the reason is, is because the world is tilted on its axis twenty degrees, so actually we each have someone else’s brain and it’s pissed” (1985: 44).
- All of our experiences – outer and inner – can be put into a sensory framework. This is the most useful framework to operate from.
- The map is not the territory. The “world at large” is modelled (deleted, distorted and generalised) through the levels of sensory experience, experience of experience and language, sometimes resulting in psychological disturbance.
- Therapeutic change involves expanding the client’s “model of the world” (which can be inferred from external indicators – “accessing cues”), assisting him/her to increase choice. If better choices emerge (in terms of satisfying the positive intent behind problematical states/behaviours), the client will use them.
- The client has all the resources required for desired change, such resources being accessed and recontextualised (through techniques like reframing, metaphor and the swish pattern).
- Change is also encouraged by the therapist’s communication skills (see above) and may unfold through the hierarchical levels (Dilts’ “neurological levels”) of environment, behaviour, capability, belief, identity and spirituality.
- Change may be remedial (symptom focused, “fix it”, dismantling) or, preferably, generative (proactive, developmental, opening up new choices).
- Rather than being a set of techniques, NLP is essentially an attitude which leaves behind a trail of techniques. This attitude is made up of curiosity, adventure, humour and concern for personal ecology.
