I have a mate (no honestly it is a mate and not me!!) whom recently his girlfriend has left him, he is distraught, he is usually quite a happy lad telling jokes kind of chappy although always beneath it he has been a bit insecure and i have seen signs of OCD eg i have had 19 missed calls from him today and when i spoke to him it was nothing important at all!

Anyway i was basically wondering whether anyone had any practical advice i could covertly use on him eg language, sleight of mouth patterns (but more stuff to try aswell) to lift his spirits and help him look at life more positively etc. it cant be a therapy like session but just friends talking interaction as he will just close up and wont want to know.

I have tried changing his physiology everytime i see him looking down and slumping his shoulders etc. but i cant get that sad look out of his eyes.

He cant even stay in the house they had together for more than 5 mins and is out every night

how does one get over a broken heart who is convinced she is 'the one'?

Hi Ryan

Sorry to hear about your friend. There's a technique I use with clients where they focus on the bad times and chain the experiences together and use that the strong kinaesthetic to collapse the feelings of wanting them back - basically a collapsed anchor, but done using the negative feeling to collapse the needy ones.

You need to check the ecology with this one and make sure the friend has had time to grieve the relationship.

Anyway, McKenna show's you how it's done in this vid.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek0Pb72IPUc[/ame]

Viv

check the ecology

I think Viv is spot on; your friend needs time to grieve.

He was, you say, happy with 'the one', and that may have been, partly at least, because the relationship compensated for, or helped to suppress, a basic insecurity.

Asking for advice or suggestions on covert techniques seems, somehow, disrespectful of your friend's personal ecology.

If you do get such advice and act on it, you will be interrupting a normal, healthy and essential, albeit painful process of grieving and healing. At best you will achieve a symptomatic solution - what happens to the fundamental problem?

I have tried changing his physiology everytime i see him looking down and slumping his shoulders etc. but i cant get that sad look out of his eyes.

If you get the sad look out of his eyes, the underlying issue of his loss of 'The One' and his urge to grieve will still need time. Interrupting the process simply prolongs it - or buries it deeper where it festers until it erupts, like a boil, with worse symptoms of terrible side-effects.

I wonder if the sadness in his eyes could be restimulating something for you? An anchor for ...?

In trying to change him every time he is in a state of manifest distress and in your company, what message could he be picking up regarding your feelings about his feelings?

If your attempts are overt, he could figure that, finding his pain unbearable, you want him to stop feeling, and experiencing his sense of loss - or at least stop showing it to you. But, being overt, at least he will know that you are doing it.

Furtive attempts will surely impact as powerfully as any covert technique. Depending how skillful you are at covert operations, he might only sense your distress - and get the subliminal message that you want him to alleviate your distress.

His awareness of your loving intent (in trying to speed him up to cheer him up) combined with his alleged insecurity, could make him feel 'guilty' that he is taking your time or 'stirring' your distress.

All this is simply my (not so idle) speculation, of course.

I cannot possibly know and do not assume that this is 'correct' - but if it were the case that your friend feels an added emotional responsibility to meet your needs by getting over it, might there be a connection with the 19 aborted phone calls?

Perhaps he is trying to reassure you by telling you that

19 missed calls ... it was nothing important at all!

I wonder what the

it

was (for him)?
Was it picking up the phone 19 times? Was it not following through on the calls? Was it the feelings he feels less able to share with you? Was it the response he anticipates? Or was it that he

decided to just close up and wont want to know.

?

I have a suggestion ... simply be in your friend's company and be with his pain and your own.

If he is silent, be in silent communion with him.

If he speaks, listen with an open (tho aching) heart. Ask {metamodel?} questions about his state, accept, validate and honour his feelings despite your own discomfort. Use your NLP skills to maintain your own resourcefulness and presence so that you have no need for him to be any other he is at that moment, especially not

quite a happy lad telling jokes kind of chappy able to lift his spirits

Whatever you do, I hope it serves you, your friend and your friendship well.
Go well.

I agree with Michael,

He needs time to grieve the loss.... but know that when he gets through it he will be all the more stronger for it.

You might want to notice what how he is managing to be a bit OCD.... look for signs of Internal diaglogue, making images.... elicit the strategy and then put spanner in the works with language... but allow grieving to happen in it's own time. Seems he has two things.... the OCD and grief... got to distinguish them out.

be his friend, first. There is no substitute for that

Nina

virtualAngel wrote:

Seems he has two things.... the OCD and grief... got to distinguish them out.

be his friend, first. There is no substitute for that

Nina

I cannot and do not refute the possibility that Ryan's grieving friend has OCD, but, based on the information given i.e. the signs described, is it not possible that they are not evidence of OCD but something else?

I am mindful of the number of people I've worked with who've been labelled - and treated for - ADHD when there was every likelihood that they suffered from Attachment Disorder.

That is not deny that they have ADHD, but if it is a symptom of a more fundamental problem e.g. Attachment issues, they remain hidden by the effects of the medication Indeed, the underlying issue of insecure attachment may also be obscured by e.g. the magic of NLP!

Working at the level of symptoms e.g. Ryan's need to Rescue his friend with NLP techniques or Ryan's friend's responses and behaviours (OCD?) could certainly be recognised as elements of the descriptions below I am NOT saying that either guy has any of them, indeed, I'm not really talking about them at this point. I'm illustrating the point that any behaviours could tally with some of the descriptions, be treated as if they ARE what's diagnosed, with medication or NLP, and the underlying problem festers.

Nah!! If that were the case, people would keep having new symptoms that make the same unresolved, fundamental problem look like a whole new problem!

Oh, look!

Symptoms of insecure attachment

Emotional Problems

low self-esteem, needy, clingy or pseudo-independent behavior, inability to deal with stress and adversity, depressed, unresponsive, resists comforting.

Physical problem

susceptibility to chronic illness, obsession with food – may hoard food, gorge, refuse to eat, eat strange things, may be developmentally delayed

Social Problems

lack of self-control, inability to develop and maintain friendships, alienation from parents, caregivers, and other authority figures, overly friendly and treating strangers like the primary caregiver, aggression and violence, difficulty with genuine trust, intimacy, and affection, lack of empathy, compassion and remorse, negative, hopeless, pessimistic view of self, family and society

Learning problems

behavioral problems at school; speech and language problems; incessant chatter and questions; difficulty learning

The above often ensue from the following patterns of:
Insecure attachment

Although the signs of insecure attachment are many, they are really the child's attempt to make sense out of an unpredictable world. Some symptoms of attachment disruption can be traced back to what the parent did not provide.

* Avoidant attachment. When a parent is emotionally unavailable, rejecting, or prematurely forcing independence, a child may become avoidantly attached. These children adapt by avoiding closeness and emotional connection. On the surface, this child may appear to be very independent, but their self reliance is a cover for insecurity. Avoidant children may have difficulty forming relationships, be aggressive and bully other children.

* Ambivalent attachment. An ambivalently attached child experiences the parents' communication as inconsistent. Sometimes their needs are met, sometimes not, and sometimes the communication can be overly intrusive. Because these children cannot reliably depend on the parent for attunement and connection, they may be insecure and anxious. They may also display excessive clinginess and dependence, on the unconscious hope that their needs will be met some of the time.

* Disorganized attachment. Disorganized attachment occurs when the child's' need for emotional closeness remains unseen or ignored, and the parents behavior is a source of disorientation or terror. When children have experiences with parents that leave them overwhelmed, traumatized, and frightened, they become disorganized and chaotic. Coping mechanisms may include dissociation, withdrawal, extreme passivity or aggression in getting needs met.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am often asked to work with difficult teens and preteens, as if THEY are the problem that needs fixing. I seldom agree, unless I also work with other people in the youngster's life - e.g. parents, carers, teachers, etc.

Next week, I am going to run two workshops, one for professionals From Hurt to Wholeness, the other Clean and Crafty Listening for adopters and foster carers. If you read This article originally published in the BAAF Newsletter, and scroll down to

There are no easy answers to attachment difficulties, so what can you do?

the bullet points list some (of a child's) behavioural indicators of insecure attachment. On the Crafty Listening workshops, I teach participants how to adapt their MetaPrograms from hurtful to healing, responsive instead of reactive, to the child's attempt to make sense out of an unpredictable world.

A lot of treatment - medical or psychological - is designed to create a Happy Ever After illusion of certainty i.e. that people and relationships and the world will not take us by surprise. The price people are willing to pay for that delusion is truly terrible: drink, drugs, violence, suicide, murder....

I use and teach Clean Language and NLP principles and techniques so that the adults can stay grounded in love and focused on maintaining resourceful states working on the assumption that things are not going to get better!

It is wonderful how liberating is can be when people stop running the habitual control patterns that are designed to make the world change!

It helps them be 'at cause' more readily. A 'side effect' of that change is that the world, very often, does in fact change!

Less Hurt and Hate, less Hope and more action, more Healing and more wholeness.

Oh well, go well

I am not attempting to address the above diffilculties your friend is facing - I wouldn't know what to suggest......I'm reminded of an nlp trainer once saying that it might be easier for some people to realise that there is no such thing as "the" one but "a" one. It was helpful for me when I heard this at the time.
Good luck. He seems to me to be lucky he has a friend who cares enough to help him.
simon

nlpfiend wrote:

I have a mate (no honestly it is a mate and not me!!) whom recently his girlfriend has left him, he is distraught, he is usually quite a happy lad telling jokes kind of chappy .....

So your friend is grieving.

How is that a problem?

How is that a problem to him?

I ask the questions not directed to you but to hint to you to find this out from him. Asking these questions focuses the attention to determining whether there is a problem and in doing so recognize if there is one. One needs to be skillful in presenting the question because the grieving person is locked into content and the response evoked by the question must be to raise the persons level of awareness to a meta level to recognize the existence of a problem (if there is one) associated with the grieving state/emotion and not being locked into content and identifying the problem to be that which is the trigger event for the grief.