Monday Seminars

Example Counselling Session: How NLP helped Peter to change destructive beliefs into hope

NLP is a very good instrument in personal counselling. In short time easy things can be learned.

Sometimes there is a big belief in your life like a big mountain, which is obstructing your way. This can hide your aims and visions so that you have no power to do something in another way.

So it is very important to identify your belief sentences.

And it is also important to know in which context this belief sentences had been helpful. There was a day in the life and in this day the sentence was right and important.

But now the day is gone and another day has begun and you need for this new day a new helpful belief sentence.

Here an example:

Peter has problems to be sure in his job. If somebody criticised him, he always felt bad and lost his self-esteem. So he became depressed and afraid to do something new.

In a counselling session we looked back in his life: At what times in the past did he have all these negative emotions for the first time? When did he loose his self-esteem?

And so he told me about his experiences in the job, in the school, in the children’s play ground and also about the first time when he remembered that somebody criticised him and he was feeling worthless. He remembered one day when he was sitting outside at the street and playing with other children. It was a hot day and the children went to a lake to play in the water. Peter knew that his mother would not allow this, because the lake was deep and he could not swim. But he ignored this and went to the water.

While he was playing, suddenly he lost the ground under his feet. It was real deep and he could not swim and was afraid to die. The mother came along the way and saw what happened. She jumped in the water and saved the life of his little son. But she was very angry and criticised his son very hard. Peter was very ashamed about what he had done.

So we talked about this situation and about the mother’s good intention with her criticism. At that time the mother wanted to do best for her son, and it was okay that the son felt bad about what he had done.

But now the situation has changed. Peter is now a man and knows better was is right and wrong. And now he needs to be strong in his life and not be ashamed. So now he has to say good bye to the old believe that he must always feel bad after criticism. In that moment at the lake, it was okay, but now it is not always okay. It is time for a new belief in his life.

After looking at the story about his feelings, Peter feels good. Now he has place in his heart for a new belief, to start a new way. He creates for himself a new belief sentence:

“Criticism is a sign for me that I have power in my life to go new unusual ways. I do not have to feel bad about criticism. Criticism is a beautiful help to grow.”

Peter believed this in his heart and could do his job with much more self-esteem from then on.

Learning to see life in a new way can help a lot.

This is only one story of a lot of other stories how to use NLP in personal counselling.