Nick Kemp - Removing Stress from Modern Living
 In my Leeds private practice I used to see an average of one in five people for stress
related conditions. In the last 18 months this numbers has increased to one in two.
This is hardly surprising when we live in an era where the media constantly reports
on what is now known as "the credit crunch", where petrol prices are increasing, food
prices are increasing, mortgage increases and unsurprisingly many people's individual
stress levels are on the rise.
We live in an information age where we have access to twenty four hours news, twenty-four hour
shopping, and the Internet. Little wonder that more and more people find themselves in greater
states of anxiety. The idea of "a job for life" has now been shown to be really just an idea so
job security is often just a myth. With changes in the housing market the phrase "safe as houses"
has also proved to be another myth as people realize that everything in life is increasingly in a
state of flux. Years ago most people didn't even know what the term "carbon footprint" meant,
whereas now individuals such as AL Gore have brought out attention to the need to protect the
environment. All of these factors can and often do create greater amounts of stress for people.
Hell, even banks don't look that safe with the advent of the Northern Rock debacle!
How we think and what we think determines how we feel. How we feel determines to a large
extent what we believe and how be behave in life. Problems such as panic attacks, depression,
social anxiety, OCD, Phobias and other such issues all occur when an individual finds that they
find themselves in "a problematic emotional loop" or "stuck state" and in all instances it "feels"
like there are few if any choices available. In my Leeds private practice and during the Human Alchemy,
NLP and Hypnosis trainings my style of working is always to create environments for people to discover
new possibilities in being able to think, feel and respond in new ways.
Unhelpful Internal Dialogue
I saw a client recently who had in recent times experienced what she called "panic attacks" I make
the comment "what she called'" because I am a firm believer that all such labels are Genera-LIES-ations
and should be treated as such. As with all clients, my approach is to determine what she is doing, rather
than engage in what my good friend Frank Farrelly describes as "the psychotherapeutic archeological dig!".
When I asked her what she was thinking to herself and "how" she was thinking it, all became clear. Each
day she would think or say to herself in an anxious voice "What's wrong with me'" which of course
trains the brain to scan for all the potential problems which could be present according to her own imagination.
The "What if?" Club
The "What if Club" is the term I give to all clients who (regardless of what is going well for them in life) will
always say to themselves "What if X happens?" This "X" factor will always be a problem, so the "what if member's"
brains only pay attentions to "problems" and ignore everything else, successfully creating a series of stuck states.
Of course the very phrase "what if?" is an anticipatory phrase and anticipation is an important ingredient in creating
anxiety states. Most club members will repeat this phrase in a fast anxious voice to themselves and many are not even
aware that they are doing this, only noticing how they feel and not realising what is creating these feelings. Many
clients with OCD and depression are long-standing members of this club.
Making Unhelpful Pictures
When Richard Bandler and John Grinder first created NLP, they both noticed how people make internal pictures
which determine how they feel. The creators of NLP discovered that they could quickly change client states and
beliefs by changing their own internal visual representations. The Fast Phobia Cure uses this approach to in many
cases dramatically change a client's stuck state to a state where they don't experience the same fear at all. In
an era of HD TV and twenty four hour news, many people will discover that their senses are literally bombarded with
pictures of problem scenarios, whether this is people queuing outside banks to withdraw savings, picketing over the
fuel protest, handing in petitions to Downing Street, famine overseas or other such scenarios.
By using the tools of NLP and Hypnosis we can quickly change such unhelpful associations to create better
states of well being for clients. The beauty of this approach is that this is an accelerated process for
change where most private clients discover major benefits even in the first session.
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