Nick Kemp Blog

Milton is a major influence on my work

Last week I was clearing out my house of old NLP and Hypnosis manuals and started to think about who I really rate in the world of Change Work. As many people will know I have been involved in personal development for over three decades and spent 1999 – 2008 exploring the world of Hypnosis and NLP. When I agreed to help out on the London Paul McKenna and Bandler events from 2000 – 2004, I saw literally thousands of people attend NLP events but relatively few folks seem to have gone on to create their own work and build their own identities. Of course people attend events for all manner of reasons and some trainers and event promoters actively discourage others to become successful in their own right as this makes for “competition…”

These days I actually find very little in the world of NLP and Hypnosis that really interests me. Many courses seem very expensive and with a great deal of padding.  In the world of NLP there also seems to be an increasing trend towards trying to reinvent basic NLP material as “new” and “advanced”.  This trend includes “new certifications” which is in my view yet another blatant attempt to generate income, often recycling the same material.  Worse still as predicted inevitably some trainers have now tried to bolt on a host of established terms to gain attention and the internet is already full of “Meta” and “Quantum” style descriptions of events and products. I remember talking to Dave Bowman MD at Anglo American Books many years ago about this issue and he commented about being flooded with requests to publish books and distribute products. This year Anglo are hosting the London NLP Conference and I am pleased to be invited to run a workshop at this event.

There are a handful of individuals who strike me as producing really interesting work. Aside from my current co trainers (Frank Farrelly, Steve Andreas, Andrew T Austin and Doug O Brien) all of whom are excellent, names that come to mind include Dave Dobson (sadly now departed) and Danie Beaulieu, whom I will be co training with at The Advanced Mastery 7 day event in Denver this year. I have only seen a few video clips of her, but to date remain very impressed by her style, content and delivery.  I also am hearing good reports on John Overdurf from my New York friends and colleagues and will check him out when time permits. Similarly I have met and have been impressed with Charles Faulkner who I also intend to train in future times.

 I set up www.nlpmp3.com as a facility for people to communicate a variety of views and in 2010 and 2011 I will be adding new interviews to the site which has no allegiance to any specific NLP community or business concern. I am on the lookout for new people to interview with something different to say, so if you are reading this and reckon you fall into that category please e-mail me at info@nickkemp.com

Hope to see you there - www.nlpiash.com

Just in the right place at the right time to take this

The Provocative Change Works™ approach was developed from working with thousands of clients in my private practice, and from my 26 weeks of consecutive guest appearances on BBC Radio working with different phobics live “on the air”.  This work was inspired by my interactions with Frank Farrelly and his generosity and assistance in studying his Provocative Therapy for many years. Studies of Milton Erickson’s work also form the basis of the hypnosis aspect of this approach.

Provocative Change Works™ combines three specific approaches to shift clients from “a stuck state” to a more fluid state, allowing for greater freedom and choice. This is a conversational way of working and requires the practitioner to pay excellent attention to the client responses, whilst simultaneously maintaining excellent state control. 

These three elements that underpin this method are

• 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 perceptual positions, 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 perceptual position 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 but 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 perceptual positions 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.

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’s 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…”  Another example showing the time framing element is “As you are now listening notice which single smallest step comes to mind that will be useful for you to move through time and space with greater ease” As well as running a very busy private practice I am delighted to be running Provocative Change Works™ trainings in London, Warsaw, New York, San Francisco, Denver and India throughout 2010 and 2011.

Nick Kemp – Creator of Provocative Change Works™ and Frank Farrelly approved Provocative Therapy Trainer

www.nickkemp.com