Nick Kemp Blog

I have been observing with interest in recent years the decline and impending death of many online forums and newsgroups and the rise of social networks. I first came across NLP and Hypnosis newsgroups in the 1990s and for a few years these provided a useful source of information. In early 2003 I noticed a change in trends and an increase on some quite crazy behaviour.  These trends continued and new newsgroups attempting to “promote NLP” (when mostly seeking to generate revenue for their own personal use) began to appear in 2005 and this was a big contributing fact to the decline of professional standards in the field. Many NLP trainers and other professional individuals were regularly libeled online with those engaging in this behaviour seemingly unaware or disinterested in longer term actions that might result from such behaviour. Many forum owners fail to realize that when their pages are indexed by search engines then they too have a greater liability for their actions. All of this territorial fighting and gang mentality has in my opinion resulted in a decline of interest in newsgroups and instead people have spent more time on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately most NLP forums are simply a giant advert to promote the forum owners favorite trainings. On one NLP forum, posters are not even allowed to add to their posts the kind of trainer they are as this is considered to be “an advert” while the site points all posters to just one style of NLP training. The quality of discussion is lamentably poor and it’s little wonder why NLP has such a dreadful reputation in some quarters…

So much for freedom of choice! It seems that in these tougher economic times some forum owners are desperate enough to try to set up clone forum sites and Andrew Austin outed a forum owner who set up a clone version on alt.psychology.nlp to try and drive traffic to his own site. He registered the exact same domain with the single difference of adding hyphens so an unsuspecting online surfer wouldn’t know the difference. On landing on the fraudulent site browsers see this

http://www.alt-psychology-nlp.com/nlp/1398-nlp-ad-nlp-hypnosis-practice-group-bath-somerset-uk.html

This kind of desperation also suggests that the social networking sites are really taking over as people increasingly find forums full of unemployed rather unpleasant characters who spend a great deal of time trying to attack each other online!

Facebook in particular is far less secular than online forums and there tends to be less evangelism in the discussions. I remember in 2005 when I was working from home I was working on one laptop and had another one on my desk as an experiment noted how long some people remained online on a particular forum. To my amazement some individuals literally spent 10 – 12 hours a day online posting! With the advent of mobile communication it’s very easy to post to Twitter and Facebook and Twitter in particular has become a popular mechanism for dispensing information. Online video resources have become a major players in this new era of global communication and most marketers have realized the benefits of linking these mechanisms with their websites and blogs.

In the world of NLP with the economic downturn there is increasingly an almost desperate attempt to use old style NLP forums alongside social media outlets to promote courses. Youtube has become flooded with clips which are essentially content free clips advertising forthcoming events! Many companies have realized that employees are spending increasing amounts of time online socially networking and often employers have blocked this capability during working hours. With the launch of the new ipad, it remains to be seen if the accent of this new medium is going to change how we read magazines and newspapers and my guess is that this will also contribute to the demise of old style forums.  I was talking to a co author of a major marketing book recently and he made the exact same comments about the rise of social networking mediums and it will be interesting to see how this develops in future years.

I have just completed a mini road trip running three Provocative trainings in the UK. The first was an evening in Swindon with Tony Nutley’s NLP group and then an evening and a full day’s training hosted by Al Whitton from Essex.  My thanks go out to Al and Tony for organizing these events and especially Al for the two London events as I know just how much work takes place behind the scenes.

When I am teaching both Frank Farrelly’s “classic” Provocative Therapy as well as my own Provocative Change Works™ material requires careful sequencing so the attendees don’t become totally confused. Both these approaches are very sophisticated multi layered ways of communicating and in my view far superior to other approaches I have studied including NLP. This way of working really requires the therapist to pay excellent attention to their own state and to be able to maintain excellent rapport with the person they are interacting with while at the same time being able to provoke or stimulate a wide range of responses.  For the casual observer much of what is occurring can seem at times like a scene out of “Alice in Wonderland”, truly surreal and with no immediate obvious thread, but as the training progresses people begin “to get it”

The ability to improvise is crucial to producing great results and I was very pleased with all the attendee questions during these events. It’s great to have individuals really think about what they are witnessing and asking good questions that also get me to think about this process in new ways. It has become clearer and clearer to me that creating The Provocative Icon System ™ was a very smart move in making this material more accessible. Using the different icons to demonstrate how the therapist can adopt a variety of “perceptual positions” allows me to really allow people to access a lot of what Frank does in an easier way and crucially in a way where they can then begin to use these tools. These approaches also require the therapist to have really good state control and to be able to provoke or stimulate a wide range of different behaviours and reactions in the Provocative interviews and exercises. This can at times be pretty challenging and at least one seasoned NLP/Hypnosis trainer felt they were well outside their comfort zone during the London training. I felt exactly the same way back in 2004 and absolutely loved the fact that I had discovered a great new way of producing excellent results with all the jargon and clunky techniques that are all to often present in some change work approaches. We filmed everything (thanks to Mark Zaretti for this) and a section of the filming will appear on the international Hypno Summit transmission in March this year.

I was also pleased to put a number of faces to names I had heard about in recent years and attendees for these three events came from all over the South of the UK with one London attendee travelling in from Paris! I have already started discussions about running a two day training on Provocative approaches for Tony’s  NLP Master Practitioner later this year and have a number of invitations to present at evening events in the UK. It’s a real pleasure to meet people who are both warm hearted and genuinely interested in learning. For those reading this who live in London , be assure “I’ll be back!” For everyone reading this, remember that in May I am running a weekend Provocative training with Frank Farrelly. As one of the co creators of NLP once remarked

“If you think I’m wild, you should meet Frank”

Not a week goes by in my private practice without me seeing a client with jealousy issues. Jealousy can appear in many different forms including personal jealousy and professional jealousy. In the wonderful Amadeus movie where Antonio Salieri is so jealous of Mozart that he actually spends his whole life plotting against him! Salieri is deeply unhappy about Mozart’s achievements and seeks to emulate his nemesis, but simply doesn’t have the talent to produce work of the same quality.

In personal jealousy situations this behaviour is often between two people in a relationship where one of them gets into a pattern of obsessive thinking about what the other person might be doing. I use the term “might be doing” here, but a jealous person “feels” that they “know” that what they imagine is actual fact and nothing will sway them from this assertion. The feeling of jealousy overwhelms all thinking and no amount of discussion alone will change this particular feeling.  The best way to resolve is to change the process that creates the ultimate feeling. It’s important to remember that a person can’t simply “get a feeling” there has to a thinking process that generates any kind of feeling. There are essentially four main ways in which a feeling is usually generated – seeing something externally, picturing something internally, hearing something externally, thinking or saying something to oneself internally.

I was warned some years ago that as I ran more events and released more products,  I would be the subject of other people’s jealousy. I thought this was quite ludicrous at the time as I don’t in any way consider myself as a high profile trainer and am really only interested in figuring out what is useful in helping others in a therapeutic and business context. I’m also not especially precious about “being right” but have provoked a lot of discussion about my blogs on some of what goes on in NLP and self help circles. I have some wonderful examples of this that I will publish someday!

I have have noticed that most jealous individuals are deeply unhappy and seem to constantly be searching for something in terms of an identity. They are often restless and fixate on other individuals rather than develop insights into their own ways of thinking. They also find it difficult to relax and tend to flit from one activity to another. Many such individuals have control issues and seek approval from others and are often obsessed with status. In their attempts to control everything and everyone around them they are often unwittingly advocates of censorship and spin, so get what “they feel” is appropriate.

Personally I am not a fan of censorship and spin and the only spin doctors I would endorse are the band of that exact same name! However jealousy is great for business in private prctice and I have excellent results with clients who seek help with this issue. It's great to help people become free from this kind of obsessive thinking.

I have been watching with some interest the media attention surrounding the Sarah Pratt/Gordon Brown news story and have noticed how this behavioural pattern appears in other areas of life. I regularly see clients in my private practice who have been subject to bullying and unfortunately those in positions to wield influence are often totally complicit in creating such situations. Sometimes the person is just not very aware and sometimes they know exactly what they are doing. Certainly those who are professional communicators or in management really should in my opinion know better.

 In these scenarios confidentiality is often breached and parties retort to stating “I was only making a comment” or “I didn’t mean to give that impression”, which is of course after the event and when the damage has already been done. Individuals who make such comments often feel “compelled” to speak out, when they would in my view be far better advised to think before joining in what essentially then becomes “a pack mentality”. In the Pratt case all four of the company’s benefactors resigned, which in my view was the right thing to do.  

In an age of instant communication more than ever people press a button to make a public comment without engaging brain first. What many people don’t fully realize is that once they make comments in the public domain, there is usually a record of such happenings. For example when someone posts on facebook, even if they withdraw a comment the communication still is sent to all those on that particular thread. Similarly sometimes individuals can make ill advised comments on websites not realizing that prior website versions are usually archived and facilities such as http://www.archive.org/web/web.php will reveal previous versions.

Newsgroups of all kinds are similarly full of quite ludicrous comments which in some instances can be quite libelous. Anyone is considering any form of legal action is advised to obtain screen shots of any such comments as sometimes these are conveniently altered or deleted at a later date! Similarly text messages can often be retrieved from phones and often when people make impulsive comments they do so without any real thought only to later regret their actions.  In the Sarah Pratt situation it’s unclear whether she herself will resign. My own view is that anyone who is unable to be discreet and maintain professional confidentiality should not be in such a position of responsibility, whether this is in a political, private or the self help arena.

I was thinking about what inspires me and what has inspired me over the years. One of he most obvious inspirations for me is music and even at the age of thirteen I was collecting albums. I recall listening to Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland and the first Doors album many years ago and being amazed by what I heard. In the 1970s similar inspiring albums included Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and of course Springsteen’s Born to Run. I still listen to these many decades on as well as seminar albums by Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Miles Davis, John Martyn and john Cale among others.

I started playing the guitar in the 1970s and had a very basic acoustic. These days I can afford much better instruments and of course instruments made by Stephan Sobell, Santa Cruz and Collings are a joy to play. I started learning guitar from Martin Simpson a few years ago and regularly have lessons which remain one of the most inspirational elements in life today. He is one of the very best singers and songwriters and it’s an honour to spend time with him.

In the world of Changework I have explored meditation since 1979 and although many will know me for my work in NLP, Hypnosis and Provocative Therapy, I was involved in exploring meditative systems way before I ever can across those fields. I still regularly meditate and teach others in the UK. In 2004 I first met Frank Farrelly and he remains a great friend and professional colleague who has taught me an extraordinary amount about working in therapy. I consider myself privileged to be able to regularly have him come to stay in the UK and to discuss client issues as well as our mutual love of films.

Travelling is another inspiration and in recent times I have been fortunate enough to visit the USA and parts of Europe for my work. My favorite city remains New York and I’ll be there again in a few short weeks time. There’s something wonderful about a city waking up and seeing all the sights and sounds that accompany this process. In many ways I know NY better than London and have some great friends there. I was lucky enough to see some wonderful music when I visited including seeing Les Paul, Bill Frissell, Michael Franti among many others.

Inspiration comes in many forms and of course being married to my wife and simple things in life remind me just how amazing life can be. One thing for sure is that there’s never a dull moment and I wouldn’t exchange it for anything!