Understanding the patterns running in the background

I qualified as an NLP Practitioner in 2009, with my training connected to ANLP – The Association for Neuro Linguistic Programming.

NLP explores how our thoughts, language, beliefs and behaviours influence the way we experience ourselves and the world around us. Because we all develop patterns. Ways of thinking. Ways of responding. Stories we tell ourselves. Assumptions we make. Things we automatically avoid or move towards.

Some are incredibly useful.

Others were useful once, but may now be keeping us stuck.

NLP supports changing the pattern, not just understanding it.

One of the things I value about NLP is its focus on what is happening now and what could happen differently.

You might constantly imagine the worst outcome before anything has happened. Tell yourself you're not confident. Replay conversations afterwards. Automatically say yes when you want to say no. Interpret someone's silence as rejection. Or find yourself responding in exactly the same way despite promising yourself you wouldn't.

NLP gives us practical ways of becoming curious about those automatic responses and creating alternatives.

How NLP can help

I draw upon NLP techniques to help clients:

- recognise automatic thoughts and behavioural patterns

- challenge limiting beliefs and old assumptions

- change the internal language they use about themselves

- interrupt habitual emotional responses

- see situations from different perspectives

- build confidence and greater flexibility in how they respond

- clarify what they actually want rather than focusing entirely on what they don't want

- create new ways of thinking and behaving that fit who they are now

NLP isn't something I use as a rigid formula or standalone answer to everything.

After more than 20 years working therapeutically, I use it alongside psychotherapy, counselling, clinical hypnotherapy, parts work and subconscious approaches, choosing what is useful for the individual sitting in front of me.

Because sometimes the most important question isn't:

“Why am I like this?”

It's:

“Now I understand the pattern, what do I want to do differently?”