“NLP is content free”, is a phrase heard many times when working with clients or within trainings.
There are many “technologies” or methods of working with clients, for example to cure or remove phobias.
Many of these methods will require the client to re-experience their fear, or to go back and describe the incident as it happened.
An example of this is called flooding. Here the client is confronted with the situation they are fearful of, and by continually putting the client into that situation the client will become used to it, and thus the fear will go. In a TV program some years ago, a professor was given a client who was phobic about earth worms. The professor had on his desk a clear plastic container on his desk with an earth worm into. As the client was shown in and saw the earth worm, she ran out in a “flaming phobia” state, crying and screaming.
All day the client was work with, and shown back into the office of the professor, each time getting closer and closer to the clear plastic container with the earth worm, each time crying and shaking with fear.
Eventually, the client was able to place her hand inside the clear plastic container, but not touch the earth worm, still having a fear.
The professor called this a success.
Other methods will ask the client to talk about the problem, for example CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), which talks about the here and now, or other therapies which look for the cause of the problems and difficulties, by going back into the past, and even further back into past life.
With NLP the Practitioner does not have to know about what the cause was, or even what the problem is to be changed.
NLP is content free.
By using the Milton Model language, and looking for what needs to be put in place for the client to overcome the problem, thus change will happen.
I had a very big phobia of heights, so bad that my knees would knock looking out of a 3rd story window, I could not cross a bridge. It became so bad that I asked a fellow NLP Trainer to run the Fast Phobia Cure on me. I had no idea of the film I was seeing in the cinema.
It was months later that a memory came into my mind. I remember being on holiday in the Welsh seaside town of Saundersford with my family and cousins, and walking across the harbour wall.
The harbour wall of Saundersfoot.I remember singing a song as we skipped along, holding my uncles hand. All of a sudden, my uncle held me up by my ankles and dangled me over the edge of the wall upside down, and everyone laughing at me.
I was scared. But then, he put me back onto the wall, and off we skipped, as if nothing had happened.
There is another advantage as to why the Practitioner should not get involved in the cause of the problem, to not know the content.
As the client is reliving, talking about the experience, the Practitioner will have to go on a transderivational search, to process what is being said, to go through the experience themselves, to have an understanding. Thus the Practitioner may anchor the same emotions, create a similar fear in themselves.
As long as the Practitioner knows what is the outcome required, the problem can be worked upon. Simply by referring to “the certain thing” or “certain situation”, being very ambiguous, the client will go on their own transderivational search, to put their own understanding, their own experiences into what is being said.
NLP is content free.