Nick Kemp Blog

Many of the core NLP skills are really excellent and can provide a great insight into how best to get the best outcomes in client sessions. I have often lamented how many NLP practitioners and trainers have become too fixated on relying on techniques, rather than learning how to refine and develop more intricate and useful skills. However the linguistic elements of NLP and an awareness of sub modalities is a great platform for other explorations. I have previously blogged about which aspects of NLP I have found useful and which ones I have never found of any benefit. I have never used kinesthetic anchoring and have always been somewhat dubious about the whole aspect of eye accessing cues.

The reality of seeing private clients is a whole world away from the theory taught in workshops, many of which are essentially basic introductions to many techniques but don’t teach how to integrate and use the actual skills. This integration requires a practitioner to practice, practice and practice interacting with a wide range of different people and a wide range of “problem issues” Since the 1990s I have met only a few individuals who actually earn a living from running a successful private practice and even fewer have developed their own work and evolved approaches that transcend basic NLP which of course was inspired by therapists from the 1970s.

Clients who seek assistance have rarely heard of NLP and in many cases have a belief that hypnosis and hypnotherapy requires dancing with a broom as seen in many stage hypnosis shows! Many NLP practitioners and hypnotherapists have only had a few weeks training before being “certified” and then consider themselves “qualified” to work with paying clients. In some instances the claims made are quite ridiculous and such behaviours are not helpful to those of us who have a true duty of care towards clients. Developing professional skills requires constant practice and application and it not a weekend fix despite what is proclaimed online in forums!

In private practice clients simply want a solution to “the problem” and the first stage of addressing this is to obtain accurate and complete information before any client session. Prior to seeing any clients I require them to do the following –

• Look at the relevant sections of my site www.nickkemp.com
• Complete and return a set of client notes

Then and only then I will agree a client session. This requires the client to commit to the process of change and it’s important to remember that every client session is “a trade” This trade is not just a trade of money; it’s also a trade in other ways. Both parties agree to allocate time to resolving the issue and it’s essential that the practitioner doesn’t anticipate what “they imagine” the client needs, but rather instead responds to the client’s responses.

Most of the clients I work with come to see me for anxiety related conditions.  I always remind clients that you can’t just “get” a feeling, there has to be an element that triggers this process. Feelings are mostly created from the four following ways of thinking either individually or in combination –

• Seeing something externally to create a feeling
• Picturing something internally to create a feeling
• Hearing something externally to create a feeling
• Thinking or saying something to yourself to create a feeling

The Provocative Change Works™ approach has 3 main components for working with clients, which are as follows –

•  Provoking or stimulating client responses by verbal and non verbal interactions
• Using non-specific or indirect Hypnosis – to create “fluid states” for the client
• Time Framing - Promoting new ways of moving through time and space

The practitioner deliberately provokes (calls forth responses from) the client by adopting different discrete stances, which stimulate the client into new ways of thinking and feeling.  The practitioner seeks out resistances in the client and then approaches most what the client seeks to avoid in the discussion, and identifies the client’s “blind spots”, using a great deal of humour and by working in an improvised manner. Great use is made of “sensory rich language”, and the full expression of this, to engage the client, and thus take them on a journey outside their existing beliefs and experience, to a new sense of freedom. The practitioner works in a multi layered way without the limitations of some conventions found in many talk therapy approaches,(such as removing the therapist as much as possible from the interaction) and crucially always with an attitude of warmth as if chatting to an old friend. This apparent freedom is of course underpinned by all the ethical and professional principles of good clinical practice. The benefit of this is that one can have warm caring and human interactions, which enables the client to find their own solutions from a new and useful state.

I created “The Provocative Icon System™ to help train others in this art of provocation after studying extensively with Frank Farrelly the creator of Provocative Therapy. Each icon card represents a different stance that the practitioner can adopt to provoke changes in client thinking.

There are currently 36 provocative cards, cards which are inspired by Frank’s work. Provocative Change Works™ crucially differs greatly from classic Provocative Therapy in that in this approach I deliberately include elements of hypnosis alongside the “provocative conversation” Some of these stances include the following – blame the client, encourage the client to do even more of the same problem behaviour, give bad advice, mimic the client, ignore the client, interrupt the client, pause and blame everything else for the client’s “problem”  These communications take place “as if talking to an old friend with a twinkle in the eye and warmth in the heart”.  Often these interactions can seem somewhat surreal, but to use a musical analogy the practitioner is aware of the central musical theme and even though he or she may play outside the main tune, they are fully aware of where they are heading to create a dynamic and memorable experience for the listener.

Provocative Change Works™ also includes a number of specific bespoke exercises which incorporate hypnosis and provocative communication to help shift client “stuck states”. Many of these are excellent for working with anxiety states, which I specialize in when working in private practice. These exercises include “The Voice Tempo Exercise” that was published In Steve Andreas’s book “Help with Negative Self Talk Volume 1” To date I have used this approach with over 1800 clients with complete success .This is one of the exercises used on the recent 4 DVD “Provocative Change Works™ for Anxiety set, which also includes real client sessions and includes step by step video narration from myself. See http://www.nickkemp.com/spartcart/product/provocative-change-works-for-anxiety-4-dvd-boxset-pal.htm

All client sessions are recorded on CD and the client is given a copy of the session to listen back to as a key part of the session. When working with clients I deliberately frame the communication so that when the client listens back to the recording it’s as if they are listening in “the here and now.” A typical example of how aspects of the hypnosis are framed in these sessions is “As you are now listening back to this, you can continue to discover…”  

This year I am teaching this approach in the UK, Europe and USA, starting in Denver next week!

See http://www.nickkemptraining.com/calendar.php for current training schedule