NEURO-SEMANTICS AND THERAPY

Our primary focus in Neuro-Semantics is on psychologically healthy people and facilitating their ongoing development so that they can create the best version of them and the best version of their families and organizations. This focus led to all of the developments in Meta-Coaching (the 12 books in that series) and in Self-Actualization Psychology (four books on this subject). It has led to our focus in business on leadership, self-actualizing business leaders (Unleashing Leadership); it has led to our focus on politics— on developing self-actualizing politics and politicians (Political Coaching). It has led to our focus on wealth creation (Inside-Out Wealth).

With all of this focus on people who are basically okay, what about those who are not? What about those who need therapy— psychological healing? What about those who are not only not-okay, but suffering on the inside their mind-emotion system? Who are inwardly traumatized and who simply are not psychologically healthy, but unwell?

This is actually where NLP began as it model the therapeutic skills of Fritz Perls, then Virginia Satir, and then Milton Erickson. For that reason, NLP was quickly and early mis-identified as a therapy, or a meta-therapy discipline. Yet it is not. While the early developers modeled psychotherapists, that was not their interest and it was not what they actually created. Yes, they were fascinated by what those world-class therapists were able to do and how they did it. Yet above and beyond the content of therapy, they were interested in the process of communication and change. Subsequently they created a Communication Model— the Meta-Model of Language.

Neither Bandler nor Grinder were therapists, only Pucelik studied therapy (Gestalt Therapy) at the University and only he continued doing what we would recognize as “therapy” as he focused on drug and alcohol addictions and ran (and still runs) recovery programs. And yet, in spite of that history, NLP has numerous patterns that are recognized as therapy patterns and for the first two decades, NLP mostly attracted therapists. Accordingly, the majority of the early books on NLP applied NLP to therapy and some of the early authors didn’t differentiate what NLP is (i.e., a Communication Model) and its application in psychotherapy.

My primary work in this area was the book I wrote on personality, Personality Ordering and Disordering using NLP and Neuro-Semantics (2000) in which I addressed the 14 personality disorders in the DSM IV. Collaborating with me in that book was Bob Bodenhamer, Richard Bolstad, and Margot *. Other books on psychotherapy was the second book on the Meta-States Model, Dragon Slaying (1996/ 2000) and Games for Mastering Fear (20??) With Bob Bodenhamer, also Mastering Stuttering and Blocking (20??) By Bob Bodenhamer, now titled, In Their Voice. Later, The Crucible (200?).

Therapy— The Neuro-Semantic Approach

What is the approach that we, in Neuro-Semantics, take regarding therapeutic work? How do we conceptualize therapy— what it is, how it works, who needs it, the therapeutic change work, etc.?

What it is. “Therapy,” by definition, refers to healing. So given that we’re talking about psycho- therapy, this kind of therapy focuses on healing the mind, emotions, memories, and relational and social skills. Given that, what is there about one’s mind, emotions, memories, etc. that is “hurt”or “sick” (toxic) and needs “healing?” How can our mind-body-emotion system be hurt or get sick?

Using Carl Roger’s definition of self-actualization provides what I consider an excellent answer. He said that a self-actualizing person is a fully-functioning person— fully functioning mentally, emotionally, relationally, professionally, etc. So when that is not present, when one is not fully well, then one is not-fully-functioning in those areas or dys-functional.

So what is hurt or damaged or not working the way it ought to work? Answer: One’s mental maps. The meanings that a person has constructed about things are not the kind or quality of meanings that enables a person to function or cope well in the world. What’s wounded is one’s understandings, beliefs, decisions, identity, etc. How one thinks (cognitive processing style, cognitive distortions) and what one things (erroneous understandings, limiting beliefs, toxic decisions, false knowledge, etc.).

To have “hurting” emotions requires having a mis-match between what you think, believe, and expect from what you are getting and living. If the mental map is severely disconnected with the reality on the ground of one’s everyday experiences, then we experience what we call “the negative emotions.” These “negative” emotions (anger, fear, frustration, annoyance, stress, upset, grief, sadness, depression, etc.) indicate a gap between experience (territory) and mental model of the world (map). The larger the gap between experience and expectation, the more we sense that our map of the world is being violated. That’s what gets hurt when we feel bad. We feel disappointed or upset or disillusioned because reality felt far short of our expectations.

Neuro-Semantically, these “negative” emotions provide tremendously important information and are therefore highly significant and valuable. The negative emotion of anger says that something of value in your mental map feels violated. The negative emotion of sadness says that something of value in your mental map feels lost. Fear says that something feels dangerous. To the extent that this is true, and an accurate appraisal, that emotion provides emotional energy to “stop, look, and listen” to make appropriate change. This is the positive use of negative emotions.

Normally none of this does any semantic damage to us. In fact, it is the natural and normal functioning of our emotions. But if we hate, reject, and refuse the negative emotion— paradoxically it does not go away, but gets stuck in us. Then we keep re-processing things over and over and keep feeling worse and worse. This is the resentment (feeling the sentiment repeatedly) process and thereby turns our energies against ourselves (hence, it creates a “dragon” state). And if we do not use the negative emotional energy for changing either our mental map about things and/or our skills in handling the challenges of life (our coping skills), the “hurt” doesn’t go away, but keeps repeating. In this way we keep re-traumatizing ourselves with limiting beliefs, inadequate coping skills, meta- stating of negative emotions against ourselves ... and let that continue and it will distort human

thinking–emoting– and coping. And given that is how we “do” personality, it will over time distort personality. It is in this way that we create a strategy for misery— depression, anxiety, and all of the other problems that call for therapy. While there is nothing wrong with the person as a person— the person has come to so misuse his or her personality powers and functions that the person now needs to stop the traumatizing and heal the old traumas that are kept alive inside.