johw

There are always multiple ways to tackle a problem. Both ways help. However I do not find it useful to start out with your approach, because it is more complicated, takes more action and is hard to communicate, especially in the context of a single post.

Comparing to others is not the problem.

Focusing on differences is.

The solution is to focus on similarities instead of differences.

By focusing on differences, you will always find something to let you feel inferior, let you stop tackling new things, maybe even saying things to others you do not really mean because you feel down at that moment. By focusing on similarities, you will boost yourself. You will see that others are not that different from you.

When you changed your regular comparison strategy for some time, you might even notice that focusing on differences, in the context of a retrospective is not that bad. It gives you the chance to grow.

That I do not know. However, that is not always the case. AFAIK Hypnosis after Milton H. Erickson is also part of NLP and similar terminology (if not the same) is used there.

Yes you are right in the scientific approach.

What's more, NLP was not really developed. The techniques have been copied - or "stolen" - from other approaches, starting with Gestalt therapy. Therefore it's not a simple coincidence that you encounter similar techniques elsewhere.

Also, does NLP really need to bring novel ideas for it to be recognized? It does not promise anything like that, because that is not it's goal. NLP is about stealing what works to extend its "toolbox". That is also one of the points why it is considered being a pseudo science, "copying what works" is not scientific. In my opinion, not focusing on science is a major flaw of NLP. Therefore I hope that the NLP research organisation or others will change that.

Also, like you said, it is also possible that there are flaws in the copies, i.e. by making wrong conclusion from the observations. I would find it interesting to compare the NLP versions with the scientific versions to find the differences and maybe correct one or the other model after running some tests.

Btw. Do you know if depression or PTSD therapy based on the "scientific" psychoanalysis does yield results today?

That is interesting.

To sum up, you say that a technique which NLP uses was non-NLP before and works, that's why NLP is not scientific?

Maybe I'm too tired right now, but for me that's a clearer NLP pro argument than I could come up with.

Anyway, I'm not really interested in who is right or wrong. I think NLP works and whoever wants to try it should do it, but be careful not to learn from charlatans. These who want to wait for scientific evidence can also do so.

Sorry about the bad terminilogy, I have my input from a psychology student. Maybe someone can clarify about the correct terminology.

I researched more, and at least the wikipedia arguments against NLP are critisized heavily, too. http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/research-in-nlp-neurolinguis...

There is an organisation that aims for NLP to be recognized scientifically http://www.researchandrecognition.org/

At this point, you are right that there is not much scientific evidence. I hope for the research group that it produces some proper results soon

I do not know how NLP is taught right know, however I'll explain how I come to that conclusion with a reference to the mentioned book from steve andreas.

One of the basic tools of NLP is what is called "anchoring". An anchor is an association in terms of action->response. One example lots of people can associate with is: You hear a song and have instantly a mood change. You could feel very happy, because you remember meeting your spouse for the first time when this song was played. Or maybe you feel bad because something bad happened when you heared that song and associate the bad feelings with that song.

One way to break away from a specific "action->response" pair is by using a pattern interrupt and overwriting the usual response with another response. You do that regularly yourself, for example when you learned a false fact and correct it afterwards.

Of course you can also create new associations. You probably do not have any strong feelings associated with a song when hearing it for the very first time, but you can associate something with it.

Anchoring, pattern interupts and overwriting old anchors is heavily used in behavioral therapy, and is also the basic concept for a lot methods in NLP. For me the parallels to behavioural therapy are why I conclude "generally do work".

I think the bad reputation NLP is receiving is because of "hype-riders", people who want to rip the help-seeking people off their money. And as you do not have to study psychology to practice NLP (or say you can do NLP), charlatants have an easy entry.

In Steve Andreas book, you learn how to rewrite old anchors effectiveley, specifically the ones that make up your identity, the "how you know you are you".

Example Scenario:

Current situation: Suppose you think you are bad at maths and that is simply your personality, that's why you will never solve any math problem in reasonable time. Effect: You will not even try to solve math problems or will not have fun doing it, thus taking more time or limiting yourself in other areas as well as panicing as soon as you see a math problem.

How you change that? ->

1) Think about how you know you are bad at maths.

2) Do you imagine one or multiple situations where you were bad at maths? Are these pictures or video? How are they organized in your head? In color or black/white? Big/small?

3) Now take every example in your head that support that belief and change the modalities. Already at that point you will notice with each transformed example, that you feel less bad about maths.

4) Next you build positive images around maths in the same way as before, thinking about situations where you were good at maths and transform your images to the same modalities the bad images were before.

5) Pro step: Build values for yourself such as: intelligent, resilient, motivated and associate these values with situations were they helped you in solving math problems or other problems. This would decouple your identity from "maths" and help you not fall into panic as soon as you encounter a math problem or any other problem you think you are not good at (remember, you are intelligent, resilient and motivated?)

I do not know if specifically this technique with exactly these steps is used in todays scientific therapy. However, it is based on anchoring/overwriting old anchors and I do not see much novelty there.

I do not know what experiences you made so that you think NLP is "such a big lie". It is a toolbox of methods which generally do work. Many of them are applied in behavioral therapy, which is proved to have an outstanding effect on depression (as one example).

The nice thing is that you do not have to study psychology for that, but have simple methods, which are almost common sense, to deal and/or transform most psychological issues.

From my observations, the 'No true X' Fallacy comes into play when a person identifies himself with his skill...it becomes his identity so much that if he encounteres someone better at "his" skill, he feels his identity threatened.

This arises when the person does not really have a lot of properties associated with his identity. I saw a lot of people who were really insecure in other areas of life besides the area where their skill applies. The insecurities vanish really fast as soon as this skill is seen only as skill and the person identifies its identity with the proper properties like values, e.g. "I am friendly" instead of "I am a true programmer". Therefore I cannot imagine this being a healthy discussion.

For the ones interested in how to get a better identity and get rid of insecurities, take a look into steve andreas book "transforming yourself". You will also learn the basics of Neurolingual Programming (NLP) as a side effect

I once experienced something similar in a beach volleyball match. We were up to a pair of much better...and much larger... players, but we were highly motivated and had a lot of fun.

Suddenly I noticed that everything slowed down A LOT and I could easily receive full blown attacks that were 3m away...not always clean though, as my body did not move fast enough.

It is very pleasing to read something about it here and remember this experience. I hope this "feature" will be researched more, so that everybody could unlock it at will.

I'm using dropbox for document backups. Just edit your files inside your dropbox folder and your documents will be versioned.

There are some API's you can use to send such SMS, e.g. the Tropo API. You don't even need a phone for it, works online https://www.developergarden.com/apis/apis-sdks/telekom-tropo...