Smart Thinking
The Smart School Blog

XPeggy Guglielmino E-mail: peggy0027@googlemail.com Info: Posts by the author (7)

The client already has all the resources they need – NLP Case Study #3

Today I saw Clare, one of my regular clients, who initially came to see me a bit more than a year ago for help with low self esteem. Despite having completely sorted out most of her issues, Clare continues to come back because she enjoys her sessions and as she describes it, in her very busy life it’s an opportunity to take some “me time”.

Clare came into my practice feeling quite under the weather and mentioned having a bad sore throat. In the past we have worked on her physical symptoms, such as stomach pain or back ache with impressive quick results, so Clare asked me if we could do the same on her throat.

I decided to work on it using submodalities. She visualized her throat as being quite swollen and red with the image being very close, big and bright. I asked her to think of a part of her body that was healthy and as she visualized it, we observed the submodalities of this “healthy” one. Then we decided to match the modalities of the throat to this healthy image: we changed the image location to put it further away and it immediately started to feel better. Next we changed the reddish colour back to normal skin colour, and reduced the size of the image.

It was quite impressive how quickly Clare felt better; it is very rewarding when you can see “live” the results of those techniques!

To end the session, I used metaphors; for example I guided her to wrap her throat in a warm white blanket and she imagined that some workmen dressed in matadors (!) were rubbing some honey on her throat. Clare came up with those metaphors, and I always encourage the clients to create their own ones as it’s a direct communication from their unconscious mind’s needs. Clare was amazed on how the sensation was immediately changing and concluded by saying with a puzzled look on her face “It actually already feels a lot better!!”

That illustrates well one of the NLP presupposition “the client already has all the resources they need”. A skilful practitioner will merely be the facilitator in helping the client access those resources so they can make the change they need, which is much more empowering. Very exiting work indeed!

Filed Under A Day in a Coaching Life

Comments