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This was originally posted in September 2011. It wasn’t a good year, but it had some interesting life lessons occurring throughout.

Last week, a business trip in Turkey took a rather surprising turn. I started off in Ankara to deliver a Metaphors of Business workshop to a business group there before flying to Antalya to speak at a medical conference (it didn’t go at all well). Laura and I then travelled south along the mountain roads to Cirali for a few days’ break before flying home.

The car picked us up at 6 pm, and we were looking forward to relaxing by the sea.

Having dozed off, I awoke to discover that the driver had lost control of the car at high speed, and we were veering dangerously out of control. A crash was inevitable, and we braced ourselves accordingly. I think the first impact was as we hit the side of the mountain; the next two came a bit later.

What became immediately obvious was that we were going to go off the side of the cliff. Absolutely no doubt about that.

Also, I did not doubt that we were all going to be killed.

It was a rather strange realisation and not one I care to have again. I have heard people on the television talk about close calls with certain death but always figured it was just an expression. I now know that this isn’t necessarily the case, and the realisation that one is about to die is a very special experience indeed.

The car left the road and went over the edge at considerable speed. Now, from a psychological perspective, what happened next was quite interesting to me. I was certain the impact would be fatal, and two thoughts came to mind.

The first: “Well, at least this will be quick.”

The second was an overwhelming sense of disappointment as I thought, “But there was so much more that I had planned to do…”

This second thought was delightfully interrupted by a terrific crash, impact, and showering of broken glass. Our freefall descent had been rudely interrupted by a small group of trees into which the car landed, wheels down, perpendicular to the angle of the trees. This latter detail meant that deceleration/impact injuries were minimal and that our landing was not bad.

We looked at each other briefly, noting each other’s surprise at this fortuitous change of events before struggling out of a broken window to safety. That was when Laura looked at me and said those horrible words: “I think I’m bleeding” before promptly keeling over.

What happened next was a whirlwind mix of strangers’ kindness, paramedics’ blue lights, police cars and ambulances’ sirens, CT scans and X-rays, blood tests, specialists with little torches, and finally admission to the trauma ward of a central hospital, where we spent most of the rest of our time in Turkey.

To say all this was a bit of a shock to the system would be quite correct, and the three days spent at the hospital gave us a lot of time to reflect on a few things. I thought one of those things was worth sharing here.

From age 17, I spent a lot of time working in nursing homes and rest homes. In part, this was to fund me through my student days, and I also worked periodically doing agency shifts for extra cash after I was qualified. As a 17-year-old, I noticed that I was given an awful lot of advice from the older people who were keen that this young man looking after them didn’t repeat the same mistakes that they did. Much of this advice reflected a consistent theme:

– Don’t allow social and emotional fears to prevent you from doing what you want to do.

This is advice I have lived by pretty much. It’s partly why I have done so much in my life and explored so many different areas of human experience.

What I learned then, and still know to be true now, is that nursing and retirement homes tend to be full of people who know what they would do differently if only they could.

It might seem dramatic, but when you are about to die – either quickly in a car accident or in a few years from old age – you can get quite a different perspective on what you were so afraid of all that time ago. It is amazing what suddenly doesn’t matter any more.

I’m not talking about bungee jumping, playing with flamethrowers, or wrestling lions. I mean those things that bring social and emotional risk, those things that challenge our own “comfort zones,” and the things that challenge the rules we have somehow selected to live by and what we consider to be normal and correct. Social fear of being different from how you are supposed to be – that is what I mean.

In my professional life, I am regularly asked by NLP practitioners, coaches, and therapists for assistance in building their respective practices and helping them “put themselves out there”. The most common reason people do not do so is fear – fear of being judged, failing, being successful, being wrong, being laughed at, and so on. Of course, the reality is that once one puts oneself “out there”, there will be judgement, there will be failures and errors, and, if you are very lucky, there might be success.

What most of these fears have in common is humiliation, loss of face and loss of perceived status.

One thing I have learned in my own life is that very little trouble comes from others who are successful. The amount of support and encouragement I receive from my peers is incredible. No, the majority of judgement and criticism that I receive comes from a small group who share the following characteristics:

• They don’t know me, and most have never met me.
• They have never demonstrated anything original on any of their websites (those that have them), and in fact, most of what appears on their blogs is little more than a rehashing of my blog posts and web pages.
• None of them have ever presented any of their apparently acclaimed work in written form, video, DVD, or online presentation.
• They make exceptional claims for their brilliance and cynically deride and mock others.
• In short, they judge, but make sure that they are unavailable themselves to be judged.

I knew kids at school who behaved this way, too. They hid in tight social groups and could be as nasty to each other as they are to those people outside their groups. They appeared to feed on each other.

Luckily, most people grow out of that. Most do, anyway.

One gentleman I knew when I was 17 told me that he wondered how many people limited their lives so that the kids who laughed at them at school wouldn’t laugh at them again. In childhood, we meet the bullies and the nay-sayers who teach us to conform to their own restricted ideals. To survive school, some people change their behaviour to receive approval…from bullies, and then they live the rest of their life that way until they get to the nursing home.

I think I was lucky. My experience of people in nursing homes being so keen for me to not live like this affected me in such a positive way early in life. I am so glad that as we went over the cliff that I did not have a single thought of regret about my life. I sincerely hope others would have the same.

I don’t know any of their names, and I doubt that any of them will ever read this, but regardless, I’d like to publicly thank the army of helpers that assisted in our rescue and in the delivery of the excellent aftercare. We are both still hobbling about a bit, but Laura is recovering well and has no lasting damage.

We intend to return to Turkey for another attempt at a holiday in Cirali, where we spent our honeymoon three years ago, and I will probably request the same driver. I’m just a bit like that.

The personal development field is awash with grand claims and new hope. I regularly see advertisements offering workshops where the attendees will learn to make a six-figure annual income from coaching and therapists claiming life-changing work for a mere £10,000. Everyone was, of course, trained by the best and has travelled far and wide in search of the arcane and secret knowledge.

A good game is to do the following – “I was trained by the best, and here is my testimonial from them that says how great I am…but I don’t really rate them anymore. I am better than that these days…” Kill the king, become the king.

Yet for all the claims that people make, I see so little evidence. I’ve long said, “Don’t claim expertise; demonstrate it instead,” but I see very little of this ever happening. I often ask the “make a 6-figure income” people to show copies of their bank statements that demonstrate their own success in making 6 figures from coaching. They never do, of course. I just get accused of troublemaking. I also receive emails that demonstrate some innovative use of the English language, as my parentage challenges me.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and frankly, I don’t see the problem in asking people to prove what they claim to be able to do.

To NLP trainers, therapists, and coaches, who basically portray themselves as some God-like entity that can command the use of words so powerfully that oceans will part, the dead will rise and the universe will adjust itself to conspire in the client’s best interests for evermore.

All I ask is for some of the tiniest pieces of evidence.

It shouldn’t be difficult to do – just point a video camera at the next daily miracle and post it on YouTube.

But this is where the excuse machine kicks in. “Confidentiality”, they claim. “I can’t do that because I need to protect the confidentiality of the client.” Nonsense, I will claim it back. I honestly believe that most “therapists” will use the “confidentiality” clause to protect themselves, not their clients. They are embarrassed to be seen on camera. Why is this, I wonder?

I’ve been filming sessions for years without a problem. Curiously, when I released the Pragmatics of Change DVD set, the most common question I got asked was, “Did you have the client’s permission to film them?” The question was often asked with an accusatory tone. In all cases, I reply with the following, “No, we had to use hidden cameras,” and sit back and wait. Clearly, I don’t make friends easily.

When I advertise for filming, I am nearly always over-subscribed with volunteers, and I am always grateful to people who do volunteer for filming. After all, I must be realistic that such sessions aren’t entirely altruistic and that this work helps me financially, as I sell a finished commercial product from these sessions.

My point here is that in reality people are very willing to have sessions filmed, and most of the time in a modern change work session, the sessions are content-free anyway. Occasionally the sessions stray into areas that would not be appropriate to publish, and so we don’t release those.

The other thing I notice is just how many trainers won’t work with genuine clients when they are teaching – they most commonly work with workshop trainees or people already known to them. Basically, people who already know what to do and know what to say; after all, no one wants to “lose face” in front of an audience.

Ahhh…maybe that is what it is. It is all about saving face, rather than backing up their incredulous claims.

So miracle workers with a Google AdWords account or NLP newsgroup account, here is my request: buy yourself a little video camera and film your next miracle session. Let’s see you in action.

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I sold these back in 2010; if there is enough demand, I’ll restock them (please use the comments section to declare an interest or request a custom-made badge). Previously, the first badge on the list sold out completely the first day they went on sale.

The Training Workshop Survival Kit!

Badges for seminar/training/workshop attendees:

• “Fuck off, I Don’t Want a Hug!”
• “I Attend Workshops.”
• “I Have Trained More Than You Have.”
• “I Am One Of The In-Crowd.”
• “Smug, Pious and Proud.”
• “7-Day Expert.”
• “…and who did YOU train with, Hmmm?”
• “I deeply and completely accept myself, now fuck off!”
• “Training Workshop Junkie.”
• “Wannabe Guru.”
• “I Talk Others Walk.”

These will be available from The Fresh Brain Company, priced at £8.40 for a selection of any five badges. Others will be added soon.

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Other products I am considering adding to the range include:

One residential care environment that I worked in specialised in a particular method of annoying the insane. It used the “are you sure?” method. For those unfamiliar with this method, it goes something like this.

Staff: “Hi John, how are you feeling today? Have you been feeling anxious?”
Patient: “I’m fine, thanks.”
Staff: “Are you sure?” (spoken with a tone that suggests superior knowledge)

I saw the same routine occurring with the daily inquiry: “Any suicidal thoughts today?” The patient would deny suicidal thinking, and the staff with the same tonality would ask, “Are you sure?”

Here’s another example.

Staff: “Did you have breakfast this morning?”
Patient: “Yes.”
Staff: “Are you sure?” (with that same tone as before)

It took me a little while to work out just what goes on in that place because it seemed to me that pretty much all of the staff used the same pattern; it was as if everyone were reading the same script.

I’d have hated to be a patient there; it all seemed so demeaning and really rather unproductive. But I doubt any of it was intended that way; it was just because staff tend to adopt each other’s patterns, and such behaviour often occurs in close-knit working environments.

In hospitals, for example, cliché phrases, mannerisms and expressions emerge among groups of staff, and these can differ from department to department and hospital to hospital. For example, anyone who has received an injection in a UK hospital is likely to have heard the nurse say, “Sharp scratch!” as the injection is delivered. It’s what nurses say; it is part of the culture. Personally, I have always preferred the “you will just feel a slight prick” gag; however, that is a different story. Another common expression is the “…for me…” tag when asking patients to do something, as in “stand up for me”, “take a deep breath for me”, “squeeze this for me” and so on. Although this was more common in the elderly care units.

The adoption of these little cliches is in part the adoption of the local culture, and this often happens without conscious thought or consideration. It is almost Pavlovian in nature. For example, non-NLPers should watch out: Never say, “I am sure” to an NLPer. They will nearly always fire back with the Bandlerism, “Are you sure enough to be unsure?” NLPers can be strange like that. I once bet a nursing colleague that she couldn’t go through a day without saying, “Sharp scratch!” She took the bet and promptly lost it about 15 minutes later. As Pavlov found, some conditioned responses can be very difficult to extinguish without sufficient counter-stimulus.

People adopt cliches and mannerisms that shape the perceived role in which they operate. For example, saying “Sharp scratch” fulfilled the need to say something and was acceptable to the peer group. It fitted in. My line about feeling a slight prick, which oddly was always acceptable with doctors but almost never with nurses, simply didn’t fit in with the language of the peer group. I learned early in life that, for so many people, fitting in is more important than anything else. It is frightening sometimes to not fit in.

Hierarchy emerges within groups, and the person who best knows how to use the language peculiar to his group is the one who can garner the most status from the group.

Most institutions possess their own language. The armed forces each possess their own linguistic peculiarities; prisons have their own language and currencies, and most major professions and institutions also adopt their own expressions and terminology, not least of all, the medical profession. In medicine, the language used can sound foreign or like some kind of weird code.

For example, “upon admission, the patient was cyanotic, SOB and with pyrexia of 42 degrees” translates as he was blue, couldn’t breathe and was pretty hot. Every part of the body has a name, and that name means something to doctors and related professionals. The words “he had a heart attack” don’t actually mean very much from a medical point of view, since there are so many variables in what actually constitutes a “heart attack.”

All these variables have a name or a medical description that immediately translates meaningfully to those who understand the language. Given the complexity of what is involved and the size of the subject, it surprises me not one bit that medical training takes so long and requires so much intense study and experience.

NLP has its own peculiar set of words and phrases. My favourite, and one that I like to never miss an opportunity to use, is “kinesthetic transderivational search”. This isn’t a term I hear often from NLPers, but it is readily understandable to the initiated and rather bewildering to everyone else. Much like the medical terminology, many (but not all) of these terms are useful in communicating concepts and ideas, such as “a submodality swish” versus a “content swish”, and other referential terms such as “eye accessing cues”, “presuppositions”, “double binds”, “submodalities” and “pacing and leading” function the same way.

So, we have these two types of linguistic clichés: those that enable us to fit in and those that enable us to understand. I’ve never been too much of a fan of the former but must admit to being a bit of a fan of the latter. I urge NLPers to watch out for the former, these “fitting in” cliches such as the “Are you sure?” and the “Are you sure enough to be unsure?” examples. Unfortunately, all too often, excessive demonstrations of “fitting in” tend to negate demonstrations of understanding for those outside the peer group.

Now, it must be said that I didn’t exactly fit in at the mental health unit from which I drew the “are you sure” examples, and an inverse relationship between how much my patients trusted me and how much my colleagues didn’t trust me became apparent. The staff tended to think that I didn’t “get it”, whilst my patients tended to disagree and suggested that I did “get it”; my employment at that unit was never going to last long, that much was agreed by everyone.

In the handover meetings between shifts, the reason for the “are you sure?” nonsense became clear.

The acting unit manager was an unusual individual in that she radically changed her appearance and identity so that she became sexually androgynous on the day she was “made up” to manager level, and she would grill the staff about their handover reports. It seems a bit bizarre now when writing this, but basically, she’d demand that the staff “check” what they wrote by asking the patients if they were sure. Pettiness was taken to new extremes, as in the following example:

Staff: “…and this morning John had a good breakfast before taking his medications…”
Androgyne: “What do you mean, he had a good breakfast?” (spoken with a slight tone of contempt)
Staff: “Well, he had cereal and toast.”
Androgyne: “Which cereal?” (again, spoken with that same contemptuous tone)
Staff: “Ummm…not sure…”
Androgyne: “Well, go and ask him.”

Yes dear reader, it really did get that petty.

That member of staff would then have to leave the office and go ask the patient what cereal he had for breakfast while the rest of us waited. I guess many people have been unlucky enough to meet managers like this, androgynes or not. They don’t actually have to do too much to create significant levels of stress in employees. They also have the following effect.

Those that understand the necessary rituals and ceremonies that keep the manager happy will garner status with her; those that don’t end up ostracised by the group. Over time, the group becomes self-selecting: those who play the game will stay, while those who don’t will leave. As a result, a shared and delusional mindset emerges among the group.

It can become quite cult-like, and it can be really quite unsettling; it is the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again, only without the humour and nudity.

I have observed that many NLPers fail to model effectively and simply imitate instead. I have lost count of how many people I have seen doing a spontaneous impression of Milton Erickson, not based on their own experience of Erickson (via available audio-visual material) but rather based on a famous trainer’s impression of him. Meanwhile, I have noticed that NLPers no longer imagine things; instead, they “hallucinate”. They no longer seem to have opinions; they have “maps”. They don’t learn things; they “model” things and “install strategies”. Here are some other examples. I experience far too often for comfort.

Me: “Hi!”
Them: “Very hi!”

Me: “How are you doing?”
Them: “I’m GREEAT!! What about you?”
Me: “Err…fine, thanks.”
Them: “Just fine? You should be feeling GREEAT!”

Me: “I don’t like that.”
Them: “Don’t like it how, specifically?”

For too many NLPers, being an NLPer depends upon using all the cliches, mannerisms and attitudes that they observe the rest of the NLP herd using and making attempts at garnering status within the “NLP Community”.

Sadly, this can have the effect of distancing them from their own existing community, who worry that their loved one has joined some kind of mind control cult. People that behave in these ways do not always come across as especially functional human beings, and I cannot help but wonder if there is a degree of a cargo cult mindset meeting. The Field of Dreams – “Build it and they will come” – suggests that an NLPer only needs to use the right words and repeat what they have heard other NLPers say in order to achieve success, happiness, wealth, and status.

Experience goes far deeper than the mere use of the right words. Remember this before you find yourself abducted and deprogrammed by well-meaning people who “care”.

NLP provides a great set of tools for building great states and mindsets, and there are as many states and mindsets as there are people. The emperor wore no clothes, an intriguing choice and not one that I would necessarily choose for myself. Be grateful for that. But imagine if the crowd all chose to emulate the emperor; the sight might not be such a pretty one, depending on where you are standing in the crowd, I guess.

As I see an increased uniformity amongst NLPers striving to reach that elusive but correct NLP mindset, this is something that all-too-often tends to get forgotten.

Watch this guy…

I want to tell you a short story. It’s largely true. The bits that are not true arise merely as a result of my faults in my memory, ability to recall, and some deliberate obfuscation to eliminate identification of the subject of the story. The story comes from my time working in neurosurgery. A young woman fell from a horse.

The fall was serious, and the injuries were life-threatening.

Initially, the woman’s survival chances were rated as very slim indeed. An expert paramedic team arrived on the scene, as did a surgeon and an anaesthetist. The woman was carefully moved to the accident and emergency department, where another team of people went to work before transferring her to intensive care, while a bed in a specialist unit (neuro-intensive care) at a different hospital (the hospital in which I was employed) was found.

Transfer was arranged, and a nurse specialist, an anaesthetist, and a doctor accompanied the patient in the rather impressive mobile intensive care unit to bring her to the neurosurgical intensive care unit, where the responsibility was handed over to one of the best neurosurgical teams in the country.

Time passes, several surgical procedures are carried out, injuries start to heal, and, against the odds, the patient appears to begin to recover.

Her recovery reached a stage where intensive care was no longer required, and her care was downgraded to “high dependency.” She was then moved to our unit, where she came under the care of another expert team, of which I was one of the most “junior” members.

This lady’s neurological state remained appalling, her injuries were still very severe, and a huge question hung over her prospects for long-term survival and, if she did survive, the quality of life she might have to endure.

It’s contentious, I know, but if I were one of the patients I have seen, I wouldn’t consider survival to always have been the best of the possible outcomes.

But survive she did. And a large team of people, ranging from pharmacists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, nurses, doctors, porters, cleaners, social services, technicians, and so on, all contributed their encouragement and expertise to ensure her recovery.

Now, here is that all-important detail. Throughout all of this, the family suffered enormously, and one of the worst experiences for families of the seriously ill/injured is the experience of helplessness. It is the hardest thing to do: to stand back and allow strangers to deliver ‘care’, even if they may be faulted. Most will be just fine, of course, but some may have attitudes that we don’t like, some may seem weak, some may seem officious, and some may even seem lazy or ignorant. Some will be kind, dedicated, and hard-working; a few may appear on the edge of a breakdown themselves; and, of course, some will appear to have their own “issues” – and so on.

So, family needs to be involved. They need to feel empowered, noticed, and involved. But you know what? We didn’t always have time for that because the patient was always the main priority. Although the number of patients was large, we had limited time and resources.

So, this gap was often filled by innovation on the part of the family. Maybe they’d play tapes of the patient’s favourite music, bring in aromatherapy oils, vitamins, healers, prayer groups, and hope.

This particular patient had a healer visit every day. He was laying on his hands and channelling his mysterious energies into her body. The nurses are happy to allow such activities as long as the additional treatments being offered are medically approved in that they do not affect bodily processes in a way that conflicts with medical treatment, do not put the patient or anyone else at risk (i.e., lighting incense and burning herbs, etc.), and do not interfere with any of the routines of running the department.

The patient survived and eventually went on to recover sufficiently that, within a couple of years, she was living independently again. A good result not only for the patient but also for the Accident and Emergency, Intensive Care, Neurosurgical, and Rehabilitation teams, you might think.

Apparently not.

I was later told by “someone” the following line, and I hear similar lines a lot from the mouths of NLPers, healers, tappers, and therapists. “The doctors said that she wasn’t going to live and would die within 6 months. Well, we weren’t going to take that, so we employed a healer to see her every day. The doctors are baffled by her recovery, and it just goes to prove how well healing works. Doctors are so small-minded, they really should look at all the evidence for healing.”

Baffled?

This was one of those rare occasions where I kept my mouth shut, but needless to say, I was appalled. I regularly hear the immortal lines, “…and the doctors are baffled/amazed by his/her recovery…” which is rarely true, of course. They are mostly just very pleased. So let’s not delete all the research, hard work, dedication, medical expertise and experience; let’s not forget the sheer amount of stress suffered by many staff; let’s not ignore all the physiological processes involved and simply nominalise the patient’s recovery down to the fact that some strange man waved his hands around the room.

It used to be fashionable for credit to be given to pop stars or celebrities—the young patient’s favourite pop star was persuaded to send in a tape or visit personally, and the subsequent recovery is put down to that event and little to do with the efforts of the staff, routine biological processes, or anything else that is a little complicated and multifarious.

The reason I write this is because three times this week I have been asked by NLPers, “Why don’t doctors bother to learn NLP?” As scorn is heaped upon the medical profession for their sheer stupidity in telling patients such awful negative suggestions, such as, “This injection might hurt a little.” (If it does hurt, that isn’t necessarily because of the suggestion or belief of the doctor. It is likely due to the fact that some injections hurt. Some hurt a lot. Some don’t hurt at all.)

Recently, I’ve been hearing and reading a lot of biased criticisms by NLPers about things doctors say and do, as though all the suffering in the medical world is caused by negative suggestions that doctors say and all healing results purely from the mental might of the patients to overcome such powerful negative programming.

Such criticisms are often accompanied by lamentation as to why doctors don’t learn NLP? After all, if they did, devastating travesties such as negative suggestions could be avoided. To which I can only reply with the following: Why don’t NLPers learn and practice medicine? Might that not be easier?

I’ll write more on this later.