Credit to Ben Bosely for the information I have just found out. Looks like Alan Johnson is rolling out over 3000 new "therapists" over the next three years. Does anyone know if this involves NLP practitioners overtly or even kind of covertly? Looks like a third will be CBTers but what do they do when working with beliefs doesn't work (i'm welcome to a correction on that feeble understanding of CBT)? Thankfully it looks like NLP is slowly seeping into the health service and education proper. Has the fuse been lit or will it fizzle out?

I suspect a lot will go to CBT and not much to NLP - I wrote my opinion about that in this article: Can NLP Learn from CBT?

Lord Layard is the guy driving a lot of the changes and he loves CBT. You might like to lobby him anyway (c/o The House of Lords) as he's open to discussions.

I was in a meeting a few days ago with some NHS CBTers who deal with people with chronic pain/health/mental health conditions. They passed around some booklets about the service and I immediately saw numerous improvements that could be made using NLP.

I asked one of the practitioners if she used NLP and she said "Isn't that to do with assertiveness training?"

How has CBT become mainstream and NLP hasn't when NLP has much more to offer

Hi Alistair et al,

Alistair_Donnell wrote:

Looks like Alan Johnson is rolling out over 3000 new \\\\\\"therapists\\\\\\" over the next three years. Does anyone know if this involves NLP practitioners overtly or even kind of covertly?

I think this is referring to the government's new Improved Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme, which is largely CBT based, but also includes psychoanalysis to keep the psychiatrists kind of on board. Having read many of the IAPT documents in full, I noticed NLP mentioned just once in very small print towards the end of one of them.

The Government are intending, naively IMO, to pay for these posts, first proposed before the recession from getting folk off benefits and back to work - i.e. by resolving depression, anxiety, somatic back pain etc with psychological therapies. One problem is the rise in unemployment since the planning took place. The other problem is that they are having to train the workforce to do it while on the job and have been advertising training posts on 75% wages and the like. All the training and the job specifications are for CBT.

Surprises all round then that nationally they are still trying to recruit and are a long way behind schedule.

So when you write Alistair,

Thankfully it looks like NLP is slowly seeping into the health service and education proper.

Sadly I see little evidence of this.

Ever the optimist

MH

Thanks for the replies. Malcomb - I know its nearly impossible to remain optimistic when the government is involved but I only know that from an education side. Trying to clean a house with handcuffs on springs to mind.

When I said slowly seeping in it prob was a bit ambiguous. I do "believe" the fuse has been lit albeit in the backdoor. What I mean by this are the sporadic trainings/achievements up and down the country by people who clearly and elegantly know how to do NLP and deliver it/research it well that I have seen on my travels. Kate Benson, Richard Churches, Paul Tosey and Jane Mathison doing NLP in education some serious justice are the biggest names I can think of and doubtless many more. Then there is, is it Garner? - magic in practice guy turning heads, I know Eric Robbie has delivered at least one (I know of) training to doctors and I think there is another lady delivering training specifically to doctors and also it looks like Nina Lancaster also is looking to offer something to the health service, and Malcomb abeit maybe more covertly, again - serious justice to NLP. Apologies for the vagueness on the health side my map is education biased!
So currently, "knowing" that it does actually work and people in those sectors who get taught at least some aspect (application) will also be able to see it work (if they use it). Paul Mckenna has been on loose women and Chris Moyles which I mention only due to the increased awareness of NLP (or as my mum remarked NFL!) in general - has the fuse been lit even though it might be a slow burner? I personally don't think anything can be learned from CBT other than how to demonstrate effectiveness on paper - its not a slight just a personal biased opinion.

Ps. I'm going out now so apologies for not replying any time soon if the discussion continues

Hi All,

StevenGoodall wrote:

I was in a meeting a few days ago with some NHS CBTers who deal with people with chronic pain/health/mental health conditions. They passed around some booklets about the service and I immediately saw numerous improvements that could be made using NLP.

How has CBT become mainstream and NLP hasn't when NLP has much more to offer

The NHS has limited itself in the free market by stating that it will only purchase treatments with a sound evidence base. So when Alistair writes,

I personally don't think anything can be learned from CBT other than how to demonstrate effectiveness on paper -

that is not to be sniffed at, even if, as I understand it the evidence base around CBT is now being shown to be less robust than first thought.

I have no desire to kick off the "scientific testing" debate once again, believe me. Nor do I think that route is necessarily the only or best way forward.

I am optimistic however that through the efforts such as those described by Alistair,

Paul Mckenna has been on loose women and Chris Moyles which I mention only due to the increased awareness of NLP

and others that through a (slow perhaps) process of raising public awareness through the media etc. when the great British public are in surgeries asking to see an NLP Practitioner, politicians and NHS Commissioners will finally take note. The other strand of NHS Policy that actually is favourable is that in the current climate, the Service User is king, and increasingly empowered to ask for what he/she wants. It may not currently be available, but supply and demand and all that.

Historically, there is a culture shift about 100 years after any major scientific breakthrough. like the industrial revolution after Newton had done his thinking. Relativity was put forward to the scientists about 100 years ago. Perhaps the time is now for the majority to realise that we are not necessarily stuck in the narrative of our lives or with the cards dealt to us by fate, or destined to just react to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" ?

Of course there's a lot more to it than just that, IMO, but you asked if Alan Johnson knows about NLP. Maybe he does, maybe not, I don't know, but as a politician he'll only start banging on about it when it is popular to do so. In the mean time it's up to all of us I would suggest to engage interest and curiousity in others by doing the business rather than talking about it. By that I mean getting results that challenge and make people think or better still, ask, "How did they do that ? " in whatever arena of application floats your boat.

MH

I recently helped a client who was undergoing CBT. After four sessions with the practitioner she was no closer to a positive outcome than when she started. From what I can gather, the main part of the treatment was setting goals, changing her diet, and getting a social life. The most mystifying part was a run down of all the bad side effects a lack of sleep can have on the body and the mind, which for someone who was unable to sleep was most distressing. Being as most of the work was homework, £180 per hour seem a little over priced. (not my words but hers). Some of the tasks that were set fit in with NLP, however there were no specific interventions used to overcome the solution to the problem.

StevenGoodall wrote:

I was in a meeting a few days ago with some NHS CBTers who deal with people with chronic pain/health/mental health conditions. They passed around some booklets about the service and I immediately saw numerous improvements that could be made using NLP.

I asked one of the practitioners if she used NLP and she said "Isn't that to do with assertiveness training?"

Well, that illustrates part of the problem right there! No one seems to know what NLP actually is, including NLPers! Where's the centralized, agreed-upon definition of NLP? Where's the "shared reality?"

A while back my wife told a shrink about my interest in NLP, and his response was something like, "Oh, that stuff about eye accessing cues?" He'd given up on NLP back in the 70s, I guess. Actually, I think psychiatry in general did.

It doesn't help that NLP tends to be massively oversold, even by the founders. You get these fantastical stories about NLP being used to cure bipolar disorder, heroine addiction, alcoholism, schizophrenia, vision disorders, cancer; then you get on YouTube and see the ugly reality--a video of Bandler just barely making a dent in some woman's fear of flying.

I think there are some really useful things in NLP, and the model of people encoding and organizing their experience in terms of their senses and language fascinates me. That said, I must at the same time acknowledge that NLP's bad reputation is well-earned and that NLP will likely never get pulled out of the gutter.

Maybe create a branch of NLP called something like "Therapy Application of NLP" or TANLP?

Alistair_Donnell wrote:

... NLP (or as my mum remarked NFL!)

!