Categories
Travels

A weekend in Rome – The Journey

I was asked by my good friend Alessio Roberti founder of NLPItaly to give part of the NLP Practitioner course to participants in Rome.

It is not the first time I have been to Rome. Over the years I have given many courses there, and seen private clients on a 1-2-1 basis.

Rome certainly has a character of its’ own, from the cobbled streets, to the history of ancient Rome, the religious aspects of the many churches, plus the Vatican.

Every building in Roma has character, unlike Milano which are built in a style from Mussolini days, very flat and square, no shape.

I had decided to leave Friday 12:15 midday, on an Alitalia flight from Heathrow, and checked in on the internet, and I checked the flight details prior to leaving home, and all was OK.

On arriving in Heathrow, Terminal 2, I approached a representative of Alitalia, only to be told the flight had not even left Rome on its’ inward journey to London. Oh Poo Poo.

Would it actually be flying or would it be canceled?”


No problem, there will be other flights, the course does not start until Saturday morning.

I went through to departures. At least I can look around the limited duty free shops. Now I know why they are there, as I am forced to buy more books to read. Thank goodness for PhotoReading.

Two and a half hours delay. Oh Poo Poo but no rush, I can relax.

An announcement is made over the public address system:-

      “All Alitalia passengers on AZ203, please go to desk number one, where you can obtain a food voucher.

Great, I can get some decent food for lunch, as all Alitalia now serve is a non descript sandwich, a small biscuit and a soft drink in a plastic cup. One good thing to come out of the delay.

The queue at desk number one is long, and I begin to talk to the fellow passengers around me.

I heard different accents. American, Australian, German, Italian, British. All had a tail to tell. All of the looked tired, sleepless, and were complaining.

The Americans had flown into London the previous day, but instead of seeing the sites, had gone to bed.

The Australians had left Australia two days previously, the flight was late leaving, flown to Hong Kong, were their connecting flight with Cathay Pacific to Rome had just left. They were re booked onto another fight with Korean Air going to London, from London they would take Alitalia to Rome. In all the confusion, their baggage had been lost.

Oh Poo Poo.

My delay was nothing.

But the queue was not moving. For half an hour we stood in the same place. Alitalia had run out of meal vouchers.

Oh Poo Poo.

Eventually, I got my voucher, and had my lunch. I was lucky, I had nothing special to do. Elena Martelli my translator for the weekend would not arrive in Rome until 8pm, when we would meet and have an evening meal together. No rush.

That’s another story.

Categories
NLP

NLP is content free

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. 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.