Blog

Until recently, I lived at the back of the former home of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, by the sea in Rustington, West Sussex. I now live about 150 metres down the road, closer to the sea.

We have two herring seagulls that live with us. They were here before us and came with the house. Whenever I give them fresh fish (usually the leftovers after we’ve been out mackerel fishing), they bring us presents of bundles of twigs and hay.

As a teenager, my hobby was breeding tropical fish, primarily Mbuna cichlids from Lake Malawi, and among other awards, I once won a regional show with a guppy that I had selectively bred to have a blue sheen and an elongated upper tail fin. Owing to space and overseas work commitments, my fish collection is currently reduced to a tropical brackish water aquarium and some goldfish.

I started studying the Qabalah and the Western esoteric system at age 18 and have been a small-time member of various lodges and orders ever since.

As a nurse, I worked in several clinical areas, including casualty, cardiothoracic surgery, neurosurgery, and neurology. As an occupational health advisor, I worked in the automotive industry, aviation hydraulics, and further education. I once worked as a consultant for a bakery, which lasted a few days. I raised several serious issues about health and safety, which culminated in the employees staging a walkout and a senior manager threatening to “do” me in the car park. I had to hide in the office for a couple of hours before being able to sneak out unassaulted.

In my early 20s, I briefly worked as a clinical researcher (I forget the exact title, but it was probably “assistant”). It was the single most stressful time of my life, and everything I touched either broke, fell over, spilt, or went missing. I learned years later that the entire clinical research team celebrated when I resigned in tears after six months.

Many times when travelling I have attended to an accident or heart attack victim. Two of the most recent resuscitations were one on a transatlantic flight and another at London Victoria Station.

Both survived.

I am usually disappointed at how unwilling people are to offer assistance but always impressed and relieved with how amazing and generous people are when they are actively directed to help. Two years ago, I also assisted in the resuscitation of a drowned casualty near to where we live. Sadly, he didn’t make it.

I have been a motorcyclist since I was 16 and only learned to drive a car a few years ago. My first motorbike was a Yamaha DT50, and my last motorcycle was a Suzuki Bandit 600.

I have never attended a football match, a cricket match or any other form of sporting event. I have no intention of ever doing so. Apparently, I do not possess a sports gene or a dance gene. I loathe nightclubs.

My favourite authors of fiction are Iain Banks, James Herbert, and Paulo Coelho. My favourite book ever is “Illusions” by Richard Bach, but I didn’t enjoy his other works.

I often work with clients via Skype.

Despite a popular rumour to the contrary, I have never had the police turn up at a workshop, nor have I ever hit an attendee with a chair (but I confess to having been tempted once or twice).

This story originates from two things: I once punched a freak of an assistant therapist at an event where I was refused permission to leave the room because he felt that I was “running away from my feelings”. I was attempting to assist a demo subject to leave the room who was being ordered to reveal details of a rape to the group. She declined and was coerced into continuing with the demonstration.

At the exit, the brainwashed assistant stood blocking my way whilst a bunch of other assistants moved in to “love-hug” me. That part happened overtly 20 years ago. I do not know where the origin of the police part of the story comes from, but I am aware of the person who likes to tell that story at his NLP practice group in the UK. Curiously, this same person also likes to tell people that he reviewed and edited my book, “The Rainbow Machine”. He didn’t.

The three films I least enjoyed were The Shawshank Redemption, Flightplan, and Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings is the only film I didn’t bother staying ’til the end for. Oh, and Star Wars. Truly dreadful.

Whilst being a big fan of Robert Anton Wilson, I thought the Illuminatus Trilogy was dreadful. This small detail has seen me unfriended by some RAW obsessives.

For my 39th birthday, I was given some baby Giant African Snails (they are now enormous), and for my 40th, an AK47. Laura knows me well.

No matter what some people continue to claim, I have never taken an NLP training in Ireland and misbehaved whilst doing it. Why this story persists, I do not understand.

I have been keeping and training rats for several years. The last two I had, Minni and Mika, were very affectionate female dumbo rats whose favourite food was pasta, and when they tired of following me about the apartment, they tended to nest down in the stationary cupboard. I have lost count of how many times I have had people tell me that they don’t like rats because of their tails.

My favourite book as a child was “The Amateur Naturalist” by Gerald Durrell.

The strangest thing that ever happened to me occurred when I visited a monastery high up in the hills in northeast India and, without me realising it, was mistaken for a visiting dignitary. Like a fool, I interpreted all the meets and greets merely as exceptional hospitality shown to an overseas visitor and went along with it. The moment I was ushered onto a podium in a very large and busy conference room, the misunderstanding became apparent to all.

I make model aeroplanes.

I like to study all sorts of things and have taken courses and studies in philosophy, fungi, magic/illusions, stand-up comedy, self-defence, car mechanics, herbalism, waterskiing, astronomy, and firearms. If I am ever missing, look for me at the nearest rocky beach with tidal rock pools. I can spend days there and not notice the time passing.

The “tea or coffee” bind is a very useful predictor for how well a session may go. Whilst I use an offer of a hot beverage, any kind of alternative choice will do.

Here is how it works. When the client arrives, I quickly show them in, point out where the toilet is (many have travelled far) and offer, “Tea or coffee?”

This is a bind of comparable choice. I have not asked, “Would you like a drink?This is a simple “yes or no” question. The bind is to accept a drink, and the choice is either tea or coffee.

Here are the possible answers that a person might give.

1. Tea
2. Coffee
3. Neither thanks
4. No, thanks.
5. Oh, I’ll just have a glass of water, please
6. Do you have herbal tea?
7. I’ll have whatever you are having

This might sound a bit daft, but the response that is given can be a remarkable predictor of how well the client session is going to go. The person who accepts either tea or coffee will invariably be cooperative and engaging in the therapeutic process. This doesn’t mean that they will be easy to “cure,” but they certainly will be easy to work with toward that “cure.”

Not everyone drinks tea or coffee, and some, having travelled far and arrived early, may have just come from the café around the corner but don’t want to reject what is offered. These are the people who will say something along the lines of, “Oh, I’ll just have a glass of water, thanks.”

Independent thinkers will request an alternative such as “herbal tea”. Nearly always, these are the clients who come to learn rather than be “therapised” and will actively ask questions, discuss, argue and apply what they learn to themselves.

The people who say, “Oh, I’ll have whatever you are having,” have usually come to be therapised and look to be led and directed in their responses.

The client who rejects the offer outright will nearly always be the “difficult” client. Difficulties emerge in their response sets along the lines of:

• Most answers to most questions begin with “I don’t know…”
• When pressed, the client will just sit there silently, as though in deep inner contemplation, and then eventually look up and ask, “What was the question?”
• “Yes, but…” is a common expression for them
• “What if…” is their preferred style of questioning (“What if…” is a way of generating a counterexample to any generalisation that is created)
• Any responses that are given tend to be tangential (basically, they don’t answer the question)
• The client will tend to focus on the performance of their therapists, past and present, and offer critical reviews on these performances. They can be very good at not talking about themselves but preferring to discuss the behaviours of others.
• The client will expect the therapist to “fix” them without their own active engagement in any process.

In younger and more naïve times, I would attempt to do “therapy” in the face of all these behaviours.

It rarely went well. Now, I will actively address these behaviours – address what is happening in the here and now, what is right in front of you.

In my book, “The Rainbow Machine”, I give the example of the man with “low self-esteem” who thought he was unlikeable (he was pretty much right about that). What his previous counsellor had missed or ignored were this man’s ongoing behaviours, his dress sense, his level of hygiene and his haircut (all of which were appalling), and instead chose to focus on the therapeutic goal of raising this unfortunate man’s self-esteem.

Try this approach in your next client session. Offer tea or coffee. If the client rejects it, do this. Say, “It’s not a choice. Do you want tea or coffee?” and do this deadpan; don’t be tempted to break the emerging tension. This is difficult to do at first, as it goes against what so many of us do naturally. I like to allow the tension to rise a little and watch how the client handles this.

Either the client will acquiesce or a standoff will emerge. The standoff takes as long as it takes. Wherever possible, I like to get the standoff out of the way before the session begins proper. It makes things much easier that way.

I’ve been thinking about problem clients recently, as it is something I get asked about quite often by fellow therapists, especially those just starting out. “How do you deal with problem clients?” is a common question so I thought I’d write it up as a blog entry so I have something to refer people to in the future.

The first thing to consider is just what is a problem client. “Problem to whom, specifically?” is an important consideration point.

We need to differentiate between those clients who, despite all the help they are offered, fail to change, and those clients who are a royal pain-in-the-ass for other reasons.

It is common, especially amongst brief therapists, to view clients who fail to change, or who reject our methods, or argue with us as being a “problem” – i.e. they do not fit into the models of understanding of the therapist and thus not only damage our own fragile ego states but also bugger up our success rates (or at least the success rates that we claim!)

My advice in these situations is that maybe the therapist ought to change their view on things a little.

Maybe from the client’s point of view, the therapist is a problem therapist, i.e. inexperienced, uncertain, lacking the relevant skill base and so on.

Or maybe, the client simply isn’t going to change, because that is just how they are. NLPers hate that – “Everyone can be changed!” is something they so often like to claim. I disagree. I have met many people that are unlikely, or indeed are unwilling, to change their behaviour despite all the therapy, training and change work in the world.

I don’t see these situations as a problem, it is mainly a function of time. The majority of people do change over time, clients as well as therapists. And of course, experience can only be gained with time. I tend to be very wary of people who like to hold someone’s lack of age and lack of experience against them. I think it is a way of maintaining a fragile status position over other people. I know a number of NLP trainers who do this, and it isn’t a nice thing to do.

Now, I am not talking about the classic, “You are not what we are looking for, we really require someone with more experience, maybe come back in a year or two” type of thing.

But I am talking about the, “You weren’t there back in 1984, you young whipper-snapper, so don’t try and tell me that….” Where the speaker uses the person’s age and experience level as a direct criticism of the person. Age and experience are a function of time (and effort) and to a large degree are outside of the control of the person, so isn’t something that they can do much about.

For some difficult clients, much of the difficulty may result from simply a lack of experience. Young, recently affected schizophrenics can have a very hard time in understanding and dealing with their symptoms. They can become very confused, frightened and helpless quite easily. Older, more experienced schizophrenics handle things quite differently, primarily owing to their level of experience. This is true for so many psychological problems and conditions.

Thus, for me, a problem client is not a person who fails to conform to the therapist’s wishes and intents.

Here is a little list of things I see as a problem:

• • Incessant midnight phone calls
  • Mad or abusive text messages/answer phone messages
  • Stalking
  • Turning up on the doorstep outside of appointment times
  • Unwarranted/inappropriate/nuisance complaints
  • Blaming the therapist for their own behaviours, alcohol/drug consumption etc.
  • Threats of violence, threats against property

Given the client group that I tend to work with, and the volume of clients I tend to see, I average one ‘serious’ problem a year and three lesser issues per year also. These are rarely “serious” in a life-threatening kind of way but can prove very problematic. Over the years I have developed a number of strategies which prove effective in both minimising the number of problems but also dealing with them when they arrive.

Without any shadow of a doubt, the clients that generate the most problems are the drinkers/alcoholics.

Some will arrive slightly edgy and act as if they are simply looking for a reason to take offence at something I do or say. I wondered if this was just me – after all, I’m not exactly known for my love-and-light approach to change work – but I have seen exactly the same behaviours in support groups and other change work sessions I have observed.

The pattern is consistent. The drinker who behaves in this way is the drinker who is not interested in giving up alcohol, but rather wishes to “control their drinking” – abstinence is not an acceptable outcome for them. Now, others may well disagree, but personally, I think getting a problem drinker to a position of “controlled drinking” is not much different from trying getting a heroin addict to a position of “controlled heroin use.”

Now, at the first point of contact (usually email/’phone) I will put this proposition to the client with the drink problem, and the potential client who rejects this and demands that they get a service which enables them to have “controlled drinking” is not accepted as a client. I wish them luck and move them on. This reduced the number of problems significantly. If I am not connected to the outcome that the client requests and the client is not willing to reconsider their outcome, then clearly it is foolish for me to try and work with them – I am the wrong therapist for them.

Another thing that reduces significantly the number of problems is demanding that the assessment form is filled in correctly. The forms that get returned to me with only token information in the form of one-word-answers and no real information get rejected. The client is sent the form back and politely asked to fill it in fully and correctly. It interests me how one or two people will refuse to do this and simply either get angry or take an “Oh, I can’t be bothered, forget it” type of attitude. It is good to know this early on. Those clients do not get an appointment.

And another much less common thing is how many people do not put their address or contact details on the form. Everything else gets filled in well, but not these parts. Small detail, but important. OK, I already have their details because I have sent them the form in the first place, but still, I send the form back asking for the form to be completed.

Most people are happy to comply. One client responded with, “Why didn’t you do this for me?” Whilst I don’t wish to thin slice here, but when I hear this, I suspect this attitude might extend into other contexts.

Alarm bells also ring when people reject all available appointments that are offered and instead insist on a time or day that is unavailable. And I must say, I am pretty flexible with my appointment times. Without an exception, every single time I shifted my schedule to suit a client in this way, I regretted it. These are the clients who are either late or simply don’t show up, and then expect another appointment.

In the last 18 months, only two clients have failed to show. Both were people who wanted appointments on evenings where they were not offered and both were clients who I volunteered to see for free. So, I booked out evenings for people who aren’t paying and then they don’t show up. Not my preferred thing at all.

I am clear with my clients that if they are late, or fail to show up, I never offer a second appointment.

Both those clients complained about my lack of “caring.”

Two other indicators that I have found prove to be a 100% predictor of a “problem” client. (i.e. problem to me, not to themselves in terms of chronicity).

1. 1. They arrive bearing a present and I have never met them before.
   2. They reject the offer of tea/coffee/water.

People who arrive bearing presents or songs of praise for me on the first time we meet tend to make me nervous. A pendulum will swing both ways and at the same speed. People who buy favour will often withdraw it at the same speed.

Now whilst it isn’t common, some clients will arrive with a present and offer it at the end of the session. Whilst they are paying a fee, some people will still feel a degree of debt. So this isn’t the same as people who offer a gift at the beginning – it creates a mutual degree of appreciation and for many will help balance things out. At workshops, it isn’t uncommon for people to arrive with biscuits or cake to add to the refreshments table. This is a good thing and, I’d just like to add, homemade fruitcake is my favourite.

Thus the client who arrives offering the gift puts me in a position of gratitude to them before we have even started. It’s an interesting dynamic and from experience isn’t a good one. It is difficult to maintain an attitude of gratitude and act in a therapeutic manner at the same time. Gifts offered at the beginning of a session tend to act as a Trojan horse. Be aware.

This has only happened once in the past two years, and the individual who did so went on to make numerous late night phone calls, abusive text messages, threats against property and unpleasant emails and Facebook messages.

My advice to anyone on the receiving end of such action is to respond only once asking what the problem is. This gives the person an opportunity to properly record what their grievance is. For some people there is no reason, they just enjoy being aggrieved – it’s their thing – and so are unable to tell you exactly why they behave in this way. Cease all further communication and simply record in hard copy where possible all evidence of the abuse. I keep impeccable records of such actions.

Therapists tell me that they worry about being sued by such individuals – maybe as a therapist, they did or said something wrong during the session to provoke such a reaction. Well, it would make for an interesting court case, don’t you think?

“You see, it is like this your Honour, I didn’t like what the therapist said to me, so yes, I threatened him, send abusive messages, harangued and generally acted like an asshole for the past 6 months. Now, I want you to award me some compensation.”

The other predictor is whether the person accepts the offer of “tea or coffee?” when they arrive. I’ll save this for another blog entry, but basically, at the first offering the person receives, they reject it. It tends to set the precedent for how the session will go subsequently.

I must be getting old; either that or I am just getting tired. I’ve seen it happen to relatives and their peers who take up political causes, rage at the television news debates, get angry at the behaviour of the youth and lament the nostalgia of times gone by. So I think I am definitely getting older. I’m also growing a bit weary.

That said, rant mode is now engaged. Again.

While I know several excellent life coaches who are very successful in their field, I am getting a bit tired of receiving emails from so-called “life coaches” who make grandiose claims about their coaching skills but then ask me for advice on how to get actual clients.

Unemployed “life coaches”? Gimme a break.

Pardon my scepticism, but I can’t help but think that most life coaches are simply people who don’t want to work and would rather want to get paid riches by encouraging other people to do the work instead. Unemployed “life coaches” are surely a joke if ever I heard one, and I sincerely hope they are merely a passing fad.

I’ve also seen 20-something-year-old “life coaches” advertising services on their websites for up to £5000 per session (yes, really). How they get the idea that this is realistic is beyond me, and if anyone were to be so foolish as to sign up for such coaching, well, fools and their money will be rapidly parted, although it seems not nearly often enough for most struggling life coaches.

However, one can only wonder what sort of problematic life a person actually has in the first place in order to have £5000 ready to hand over for some “life coaching”.

Five grand could actually be quite a good investment, though a lot depends on just who you are paying it to. I did half an ‘O’ Level in cookery (I think they called it ‘Home Economics’) when I was a teenager and have attended several business courses. If you need coaching for a restaurant business, you could come to me.

I’ll be delighted to help if you pay me five grand.

In fact, I’d be really, really delighted. Or you could pay to go and see that rude man from the television who has probably never done life coaching training in his life. Much of the value depends on the experience level of the person you pay, not on who they did their coaching course with – which is contrary to what every life coach that writes to me seems to believe.

Meanwhile, I’m especially appalled by NLPers on newsgroups who flippantly advise “the fast phobia cure” for other people’s clients who may be suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as though the suffering of victims goes no deeper than the quality of the pictures that they make.

Based on a few books and possibly a week-long training course, a few self-appointed experts in human excellence profess to understand the situations facing combat veterans, war refugees, torture victims, victims of crime and so forth.

So rather than suggesting the newsgroup enquirer refer the client to someone more competent, the advice proffered takes the form of “just dissociate them” and is cited so commonly as to have almost become a mantra used to relieve the most serious examples of human suffering. Bastards.

The effect that such advice can have is that it trivialises what is otherwise an excellent toolset for anyone working in the change-work and people-helping professions. I credit the development of “the fast phobia cure” (FPC) as one of the most important landmarks in psychological therapies.

The FPC is a fairly dependable and replicable process that demonstrates unequivocally that mental and personal change is both possible and practicable. It seems strange these days, but it was not so long ago that other self-appointed experts in human psychology suggested that such rapid mental change was impossible. Things such as the FPC changed all that, of course, and for that, I am truly grateful.

What was innovated and begun by Bandler and Grinder is remarkable and created a massive evolutionary leap in the field of improving the experience of being human for so many people whose experience would otherwise have been less than desirable.

It created a field that enabled several spin-offs, creating new areas of research and development in human communications, psychology, therapies and so on that have benefited significant numbers of people. How wide, then, is the gulf between the practice and so many of the practitioners? Yet it seems that it is “NLP” that gets slammed by the critic, not the practitioners themselves. This is a real shame.

To be clear, when the local maths teacher gets caught dogging in the local car park, no one criticises or blames the field of mathematics. When someone’s complicated mathematical theorem gets disproven, the field of mathematics isn’t invalidated, just that particular aspect of it.

So, while the technology is one thing, some practitioners can be something else entirely. I do tend to get quite angry with NLPers waxing lyrical on their blogs and Facebook accounts about how they are so excited to have “another client to play with – who says change work has to be boring” (genuine quote) and other such appalling and smug condescension, often to the expressed glee of their fellow NLPers.

I can only wonder how the naïve client would feel, who, upon booking an appointment with someone they naively believe to be a professional, finds that their appointment is being used as an idle boast and status grab on social networking sites.

A similar game exists among psychotherapists who compete to gather status by seeing what they believe to be the most serious client group. Some will fixate on child sexual abuse, others on PTSD, and others on personality disorders, multiple personalities, and so on. Stories circulate about how extreme the “cases” are, and the “interesting cases” are brought into conferences and displayed to the voyeuristic masses. It’s a strange world like that in psychotherapy.

In nursing, I noticed that pretty much everyone agreed that cardiology was “superior” to elderly care, and general medicine was somewhere between the two, but no one could strongly agree whether neurosurgery was more or less superior than cardiology. The pediatric nurses weren’t really regarded as real nurses, just like the midwives.

And talking of social networking sites, why do so many male NLPers, who also use their profiles to try and promote themselves, fill their profiles with endless photos of themselves drinking and being drunk? I’ve seen a couple who have pictures of themselves rolling what is clearly a marijuana joint and smoking bongs.

It seems that some NLPers have a tendency to measure success by how good they feel and suffer from an intolerable need to demonstrate just how great they feel at every opportunity, even if feeling great is artificially induced by chemical means.

I wonder if these are the same arseholes who shout in the street on Friday and Saturday nights after the pubs close, advertising their states of mind to anyone who cares to listen. Surely they can contribute to humanity and learn to stay in and express themselves more quietly on blogs instead?

I come from a professional clinical background (nursing), where a professional manner is demanded both in one’s working and personal life. Can you imagine a world where nurses, teachers, and surgeons publicly advertise their drinking habits in such a manner and discuss their patients/students on chat forums and social networking sites? It’s not just about appearances; it is about trust.

As a discipline, NLP is rapidly losing that trust.

I doubt that this is because of any inherent weakness in the NLP models themselves, but more likely it is as a direct result of the collective behaviours of so many self-professed “practitioners” of these models.

In my book, The Rainbow Machine, I gave the example of the appalling woman who demanded that I show her my “peak state” as some kind of proof of my authenticity, as though other people’s emotions and positive states are some kind of personal plaything designed to be shown off at gatherings. I see so many references on forums to “eliciting positive states” and “installing states” and so on that I often question if the writers of such things actually have any idea that real people live in the consensual reality that exists external to the NLPers’ collective imagination.

Back in the days before I was banned from such forums, I sometimes wrote to those people and asked what actual experience they were writing from. All too often, I was told that, although they had no personal experience with such things, they knew enough about them to advise others. I can only speculate about how it happened. Anyway, I get banned for being such a party pooper, and that probably serves me right. Reality can be a real bitch when it comes to knowing stuff; it just keeps getting in the way of an excellent theory.

Rant mode disengaged. For now.

One tip I offer therapists in my Brass Bollocks workshop is that to get more clients, some may need to lower their claims of success. The main issue is that many such clients simply won’t and don’t believe the claims that are made, even if those claims are in fact accurate. Let me give you an example. I am well aware that flashbacks and related problems associated with post-traumatic stress disorder may well be cleared up in a single session, sometimes with just a few minutes of work. So imagine the claim, “PTSD symptoms cleared in under 5 minutes or your money back!”

Such a statement might well impress other people trained in NLP and suchlike who understand the possibilities, but to a person who has been tormented over a prolonged period of time by the torture of intrusive imagery, anxiety, fear and nightmares, such a claim not only may seem incredulous but also may well be quite insulting.

“I’ve suffered for 20 years, and this idiot reckons he can change all that in less than 5 minutes?”

Here’s my axiom: claims of success may well insult the suffering of the affected.

The other thing that happens is that a person with such problems has often seen such claims before, numerous times, and may well have invested in all sorts of panaceas, treatments, and remedies, all to no avail.

Another problem occurs with “charge by the change” – an admirable ethic that is common to a certain persuasion of NLPer, where the client pays only if the client gets change. I tried this approach for a time many years ago and still offer this occasionally when it comes to simple phobia treatment.

When used as an advertising gimmick, the reason this approach can put clients off is that to a person who is suffering the pains of emotional and psychological hurt, “change” is often the last thing on their mind.

“Relief” is often more paramount: an easing of the hurt, a reduction in symptoms, a panacea to reduce suffering. The person may seek care, understanding, empathy and professional expertise, with ‘change’ being the last thing on their mind. “How can I be expected to change when I feel as bad as I do?”

Something I like to ask therapists on my training courses is this: how do we measure change? Is it possible for a person to be sitting in front of us at the end of the session, reporting that they feel just as bad as they did when they arrived, yet we can measure verifiable change?

Conversely, would it be possible to have a smiling client sat in front of us, reporting that they feel infinitely better, but in fact, no useful change has occurred?

My experience is that too many therapists spend too much time measuring change simply by asking the client how they feel. This is not enough. But anyway, that’s for a different day. Back to those extravagant claims.

A call I had recently went like this.

Caller: “Do you have any experience with aphenphosmphobia?”

I was flummoxed. “What?” I squeaked.

“Aphenphosmphobia. Do you have any experience with this?”

“No idea,” I said. “Never heard of it!”

“Well, I am looking for an expert,” the caller told me. “Don’t you know what it is?” the caller continued after pausing for effect.

I know well the game of “I know something you don’t know”, and when people try this on me, I never ask. Ever.

“I can’t even say it, let alone define it,” I told the caller.

“Oh,” the caller said.

“Ever feel like you might have called the wrong person?” I offered.

Silence.

I waited.

“Do you think you can help me?” The caller asked.

“I doubt it,” I said. “All I can ever tell people is that there are no guarantees and that I can only try my best. But you need to know this – there are some people that I cannot help. Usually, the ones that make my heart sink when I listen to how they tell me about their problems.”

The client booked in to see me there and then.

Now I know that most therapists and clinicians won’t and don’t talk in this way; they are too worried about appearing “professional” and like they are experts. I gave both those up a long time ago. I was lucky enough to have screwed up enough times to learn a few lessons in humility.

I often have a big sign at the front of the training room: “Humility will save you from humiliation.”

Many overzealous NLPers would do well to remember this. So would the people who use this quote as their own since they attended my trainings.

Another common problem with those working in personal development is that they are also so damned optimistic. It is worth knowing that many of those outside of the personal development industry are not quite so positively orientated and can be readily intimidated by all that smug optimism.

Here are two examples that I encounter almost weekly from NLPers. I run a workshop entitled “Weight Loss – A Neurolinguistic Perspective”.

Every sodding week, some idiot emails or calls me to offer me advice.

The advice goes something like this:

“Hi, I’m an NLP master and I wanted to tell you about your workshop title, I think you might find it works better if you didn’t call it “weight loss” – that is a negative you know. I prefer to call my workshops, ‘positive slimming’, it sounds so much better.”

My reply is always the same these days, as I can no longer be bothered to explain. “I don’t care,” I tell them.

I don’t bother explaining normally. But anyway, for the record, here’s why I don’t care. That workshop title has enabled me to travel all over the world; the workshops require minimal advertising, and ever since I stopped calling it “positive slimming” several years ago, the workshops are always full. I have an edited online version of the workshop available, which is my biggest-selling product and continues to gain positive reviews and acclaim. Really. Buy it here.

The issue here is that it seems to me that only NLPers worry about the positivity frame; “weight loss” sounds too negative to them because it violates some NLP principle, but to the general public, naive to such nonsense, it is perfectly plausible and familiar. I have given up reminding NLPers of that other injunctive of NLP, “meeting the client at their model of the world”. This seems to have been forgotten in the quest to be the most positive person of the pack.

The other product that seems to cause difficulty for so many NLPers is my “Depression – A Neurolinguistic Perspective“. I am often being told that putting the word “depression” onto a product with a black, depressing cover will put people off. “Who would want to buy that!?!?” someone scoffed recently.

Well, depressives would buy it to begin with, and quite a few of them would too. (It is now available for free at the above link.) Why? Because I’m a nice guy, and more importantly I want your email so I can sell you stuff.

Someone even suggested I should call it “Lessons in Happiness” or something equally positive.

Needless to say, this wannabe “happiness coach” has never seen a paying client in his life, and each month he slides ever further into debt.

Depression isn’t necessarily about an absence of happiness. Claiming to teach depressives how to be happy is not all that different to offering lessons to the armless on how to juggle.

So, in summary, here is my tip to get more clients.

Make fewer claims and stop being so damned optimistic about your clients before you have even met them.

Try it. It will change your life for the better, bring you riches beyond your dreams of avarice, and make you a better lover. It will. Really, I guarantee it.

Today’s idiot phone call. I get one or two a week.

Ring, ring…

Me: “Good afternoon, Andy Austin. How can I help?”

Caller: “Hello, is that Mister Austin?”

Me: “Yes, it is. How can I help?”

Caller: “You run a plumbing business; is that right?”

Me: “No, I don’t.”

Caller: “Oh, you are a roofer, yes?”

Me: “No. Do you want a plumber or a roofer?”

Caller: “But it says here that you are a plumber and run your own business.”

Me: “Well, what it says there is possibly wrong, or you have dialled the wrong number. It happens, you know.”

Caller: “So, you are not a plumber?”

Me: “No.”

Caller: “Roofer?”

Me: “Sorry, the answer is still no.”

Caller: “What do you do then?”

Me: “Tell you what. Let’s start with the pleasantries first. Why don’t you tell me who you are and what it is that you want before you start asking me questions about who I am? After all, you called me, remember?”

Caller: “Are you self-employed, Mister Austin?”

Me: “Now, I really think we might need to discuss your manners here. How about telling me who you are?”

Caller: “I’m calling from Orange, and you have been selected…”

Me: (interrupting) “I doubt that somehow.”

Caller: “You doubt what?”

Me: “That Orange would employ you to make phone calls such as this.”

Caller: “Excuse me, Mister Austin, why do you say that?”

Me: “Because if Orange really employs you to make idiot calls to their customers, then I think it is time for me to sell my shares.”

Caller: “Oh, OK, Mister Austin. Have a nice day.”

Call ends.