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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, who reject our methods, or argue with us as being a “problem” – 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 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; they are 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 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 it 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 problematic. Over the years, I have developed a number of strategies which prove effective in both minimising the number of problems and also dealing with them when they arrive.

Without a 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, though, is consistent.

The drinker who behaves this way is not interested in giving up alcohol but rather wishes to “control their drinking”—abstinence is not an acceptable outcome. 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 to get 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 drinking problem, and the potential client who rejects this proposal 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 significantly reduces the number of problems is demanding that the assessment form be 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 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 a “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. A small detail, but important. OK, I already have their details because I had 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 whom I volunteered to see for free. So, I booked out evenings for people who weren’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 to be a 100% predictor of a “problem” client (i.e., a problem for me, not for them in terms of chronicity) are

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

People who arrive bearing presents or songs of praise for me the first time we meet tend to make me nervous. A pendulum will swing both ways 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 cakes to add to the refreshments table. This is a good thing, and I’d just like to add that 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 they 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, sent abusive messages, harangued him, 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.

Time is pressing. The sun is shining, and I have a busy day off ahead of me, so I will add more later.

It is this way. The main problem with people is that they make terrible decisions and dither about them. “Maybe Men” are everywhere, and “Maybe Men” are not only low achievers, but they also tend to infect others with their ineptitude—especially when we have to rely on them for something.

Inhabiting a never-ending shade of grey, The Maybe Man says things like:

“I’ll try…”
“I might do that…”
“I’ll do that later…”
“I really should get around to doing that…”
“I kind of think that I might possibly get around to doing that sometime…”

Pattern #3. “You Have Ruined Your Life” – Catastrophisation.

In NLP terms, this is an extreme form of “chunking up”.

This chunking-up pattern is very important if Right Man is to ensure things are a success. For example, if an employee can even be relied upon to make a decent cup of tea, can he really be relied upon to draw up a watertight contract?

When the “Maybe Man” says, “Sure, I’ll try to remember to bring your book back tomorrow.” Only to state the following day, “Oh, I am sorry, I forgot.” Can he really be relied on for anything?

For Right Man, identifying small signs of failure and ineptitude enables him to identify the patterns of failure and to chunk up and map across context. Again, how the man performs on the golf course, or simply making tea or eating marshmallows, can reveal much about him.

Pattern #4. “I Know You Better Than You Know Yourself” – Superior Knowledge.

Right Man knows well that when the Maybe Man says he “might” do something, he probably won’t. He also knows that when the Maybe Man says he “might” do something, the Maybe Man actually believes that he will. In this scenario, Right Man really does know Maybe Man better than he knows himself.

Pattern #5. “I’m Only Doing This For Your Benefit” – Acts of Selfless Duty.

Unlike Maybe Man, Right Man possesses a strong sense of duty. When he says he will do something, he will, even if the execution of the task is rendered difficult or goes unappreciated by the other person/people.

Thus, Right Man is often found in high-pressure, high-stress jobs and careers, where there is little thanks and little gratitude. Few others would tolerate or put up with the pressures willingly—Right Man’s sense of duty enables him to place the responsibility into a frame that enables him to endure where others wilt and fail.

Pattern #6. “Just Deserts. Trapped By Your Own Words” – Linguistic Wizardry.

The Right Man is adept at tracking another speaker’s words and will look for the slightest contradiction and then exploit it. The Rule of Permanency is also invoked, so any contradiction expressed over time is also pointed out. So something expressed last year that is contradicted today will quickly be brought to the speaker’s attention.

If nothing else, Right Man is dependable, if somewhat predictable. This is how he is successful over time. Maybe Man, despite his poor decision-making strategy, unreliability, and lack of commitment over time, tends to be less successful, but he still dreams. What Right Man hears, and thus expresses, is the significant difference between the Maybe Man’s dream and his actual reality. Right Man tends not to be so much a dreamer – rather, he is the doer. Action rarely relies on talking about it endlessly; just get on with it.

Pattern #7. “The End of the Matter” – Finalisation.

This is easily identified in The Right Man by a number of catchphrases that all exhibit the same characteristic: The Right Man has the habit of ending conversations. Given the drivel he has to listen to—the non-decisions, the ambiguities, the hopeless dreams that will never be actualised, and so forth—we really should not be surprised.

I first came across the term “catastrophisation” many years ago in a conversation with a clinical psychologist at Southampton General Hospital. I understood that it is a concept often explored in CBT client work. Basically, it is making mountains out of molehills. It is not an entirely uncommon thing to happen, but it is something that can prove to be rather problematic. Of course, some of these molehills can themselves be rather problematic in the first place, but the process of catatrophisation is rarely helpful on top of these.

In “The Rainbow Machine…”, I gave an example in the chapter on Right Man Syndrome of the father who told his son that he had “ruined his life” simply for getting a tattoo. The 19-year-old son hadn’t really ruined his life; he’d simply got himself tattooed. Now, had he gotten a swastika tattooed on his forehead, shaved his head, and joined the local Nazi cabal, then possibly his father may have had a point. But, of course, the fellow Nazis may not agree with that at all. Some things are just a matter of perspective.

The level of catastrophisation is undoubtedly proportional to the intensity of the feelings of the offended party.

The stronger the offended party feels about the issue, the greater the level of catastrophe.

Catastrophisation is also a pattern that can be applied to oneself. Just last week, I had a client say to me, “I might as well die if I do not pass this exam.” Pretty catastrophic reaction she had planned there – fail the exam, then die (or apply its nearest equivalent).

She is not alone. I often hear similar phrases uttered by clients, such as:

“It’s the end of the world….”
“My world came to an end that day.”
“Everything collapsed around me.”
“My life is a complete shambles.”
“My sex life is a disaster.”
“It kills me to see her this way.”
“It’s destroying everything.”

And so on.

Much of this phraseology is an expression of the level of emotional intensity the person feels, but I often wonder how much of this emotional intensity is partly due to the story the person is telling themselves about the relevant events.

Now personally, I’ve seen genuine catastrophes. I know what they look like. I am reminded of the horror that was a full-laden bus falling off a road and down an incredibly steep and deep ravine in Nepal. Knowing that we were helpless to offer aid to any unlikely survivors and knowing that formal rescue would be several hours away, the situation was as bad as it could get. Curiously, one of the distressed onlookers uttered aloud, “Why does this always happen to me?” I couldn’t help but think that nothing had actually happened to her, that it had happened to those other poor souls lying broken and dying at the bottom of the ravine.

But this wasn’t the story as she experienced it. She evidently was measuring the situation by her emotional reaction to it, and I’m guessing she was no stranger to such events. I did make a mental note not to return back onto the same minibus as her, though. No point in tempting providence, I say.

I also remember the daily personal catastrophes that I saw when working in Accident and Emergency. Most of the people who came to us never expected their day to end the way it did. Fortunately, most people survive and recover, while some die and others live on, but in such a radically changed way that things are never the same for them again. I’m thinking here of some of the burn victims, people who lost large portions of their bodies, serious genital injury, serious facial disfigurement, and, of course, irreversible brain damage. Some are the sole survivors of their family or friends; others survive knowing or believing that they were the cause of their deaths. Things change, sometimes for the worse, and some, but not all, fail to recover any form of meaningful existence or happiness following the catastrophic event, despite all the hope and help and treatment on offer.

Their remaining life is one of suffering, and their death is one of merciful release. It can be grim, very grim indeed.

I’ve personally seen people living in the slums in India and Africa foraging as best they can on the municipal rubbish dumps, or selling their bodies on the streets, or finding themselves owned and exploited by gang masters and organised crime. For so many people, life is an unremitting daily horror.

Helpless to do anything about any of this, the best comfort I can offer myself is that at least this is not happening to me; it is happening to someone else. Not an entirely Christian outlook, I must confess, but I do what I can. Which, admittedly, isn’t very much at all.

It is with all this in mind then that I receive the news from some clients that their life is some kind of personal catastrophe, when in fact, all that is really happening for so many of them is that they don’t feel all that great. The fact that the story they tell is one of catastrophe usually implies helplessness and the need for rescue.

One psychiatric client of mine, a middle-aged lady, had recently embarked on an all-new anorexic adventure. Previously she had tried alcoholism, but that hadn’t really agreed with her. She’d also tried out self-harm in the form of cutting but found that much too painful. A subsequent skin infection leading to a dose of cellulitis put an end to that nonsense.

She sat down opposite me and appeared keen to impress me with how ill she was. Thus began the catastrophisation. “What you need to understand”, she told him, “is that the anorexia is destroying everyone around me.” I nearly choked on my tea as I declared, “Everyone?! Holy shit! Do I need to be afraid?“

She laughed at this and told me that she didn’t mean everyone. She meant her family. I started to break this down further.

“Why exactly do I need to understand this?” I asked her a question, but she responded with a rather blank look. “You see, you began this by saying, ‘What you need to understand is that the anorexia is destroying everyone around you.’ Why me?”

The blank look continued.

“And you also refer to the anorexia like it is some kind of creature. And I must say, I have just got to tell you this. The fact that you are not eating very much isn’t likely to be destroying anyone at all. Well, you might be getting a bit thinner and saving money on food bills and stuff, but really, destroying people? Give me a break!“

And before she could protest, I ushered her back out of the door.

In working with patterns of catastrophisation, a reality check may well be in order. But I have also noticed that therapists often catastrophise too. I have lost count of how many inexperienced therapists ask me the classic question, “What if that client went and killed herself?”

I must get someone to ask me this question at least once a workshop and also once a month by email. I even had a psychiatrist email me once who, having read my book, emailed me to intimate that she thought that I probably left a trail of corpses everywhere I went.

I think I might have noticed if this was the case. It did leave me wondering what it must be like being a patient in her hospital ward. Tightly bound in cotton wool, “ward policies” and straitjacketed with sufficient neuroleptics to remove all sense and reason? In some places, no-one flees the cuckoo’s nest—too many rules preventing such an action.

When therapists catastrophise, there are two main patterns at play. 1. They significantly overestimate the level of influence they can exert upon people, and 2. They tend to view people as woefully fragile and rather dependent upon therapy for any form of mental functioning and future.

This leads to an interesting game: Delusions of grandeur. Delusions of grandeur are often thought of as being in the positive, i.e., the person may believe he is the king of the world, a grand duke, Jesus, or some God-like figure, and so on. But delusions of grandeur can also be negative, i.e., the depressive who believes “everything is my fault!”, “everyone hates me”, “they are all out to get me” and so on. It is rather grandiose to assume that people care all that much about them.

Victims often think this way too. It is quite understandable, of course. The victim may well be quite preoccupied with morbid thoughts of their aggressor and, of course, assume that the aggressor is equally preoccupied with thoughts of the victim. But, of course, this isn’t always the case.

Many therapists think the same way about their clients and patients. Yet so many clients and patients don’t give their therapist a second thought in between sessions. “But I never hear from them again” is a lament I hear so often from therapists when discussing client follow-up. I have a particular problem when clients call me up on the phone for follow-up. I often have to frantically type in their details to pull up the summary to remind me who they are. I have often thought about asking clients to send me a recent photo of themselves along with the assessment form to make my life easier, but I think this might be seen as a bit odd. I know I would if I were a potential client.

Here’s the game of Delusions of Grandeur. Just do a Google search to see it played out on the internet.

Clients/Patients:

“My whole life is ruined”
“I might as well be dead”
“I’d be better off dead”
“My whole world has collapsed”
“I’ve reached the end of the road”
“I’ve wasted my life”
“I have no future”

…and so on.

Therapists:

“Get the life you want”
“You can have unlimited freedom”
“Be the best you can be”
“Apply the law of attraction to change your world”
“Make a world of difference”
“Set your self free and live the life you choose”
“Have unlimited power”

…and so on.

And somewhere in the middle of no-man’s land, the place I so often find myself in my line of work, I hope there is some reality that I can actually work with.

I’ve been asked a few times recently what the positive influences on my work and philosophy have been and what things I recommend. Here are some of those things, people, workshops, books, etc. This list is in no particular order and is by no means exhaustive.

R.D. Laing. Basically, everything written by R.D. Laing. I devoured his work in my late teens, and his work still influences much of what I do today.

Charles Faulkner. His work on metaphors of movement is the single biggest influence on my client’s work.

Thomas Szasz. In his early work, before his involvement with the CCHR, Szasz presented an excellent argument against the accepted principles and practices of psychiatry.

Frank Farrelly. I was lucky to have read Frank’s book, “Provocative Therapy”, before I had ever heard of NLP. So many NLPers I meet seem to think that Frank Farrelly’s PT work evolved out of NLP rather than the other way around.

Joseph Riggio‘s “Mythoself” work. When I first attended a Mythoself programme, my reaction was less than positive. I think I might have been “the problem child” of the group – I didn’t get it. Then, three days later, whilst working with a client, it “clicked”. I’ve been an advocate ever since.

Geoff Burch. Regarding self-employment and Going It Alone, Geoff is a realist, funny and the real deal when it comes to self-employment advice. Buy all of Geoff Burch’s books. Just do it.

John La Valle. John La Valle‘s “Sales and Marketing” workshop was so good that I did it twice.

Bandler and Grinder. Pretty much everything they co-wrote.

Gregory Bateson. “Steps to an Ecology of Mind” is easily one of my favourite ever books. I think I have read it 4 or 5 times now.

Pretty much everything by Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, the Subgenius group, and John C. Lilly.

Paul McKenna. McKenna’s CD, DVD, and book products are consistently of an exceptional standard, and it is clear to see why in the UK he is the market leader in hypnotherapy products and training.

Steve and Connirae Andreas. Pretty much everything they wrote, as well as Connirae and Tamara Andreas’ “Core Transformation” work.

V.S. Ramachandran. Ramachandran’s work in neurology is groundbreaking, especially with regard to his work in treating phantom limb pain. Also, on a neurological theme, Oliver Sacks, Harold Klawans, and Joseph LeDoux.

Milton Erickson. I was lucky in that Southampton University used to have a lot of Erickson’s “monographs” and transcripts of his small group seminars. Brilliant.

Aleister Crowley. I was part of a number of Qabalistic groups for a few years throughout my 20’s and studied and practised pretty much all of Crowley’s work, along with Israel Regardie, Dion Fortune, and other Golden Dawn writers. Later, I found the work of the “Chaos Magicians,” including Peter Carroll and Phil Hine.

Jack Trout and Al Ries. Their work on marketing and branding is without equal.

More to follow…

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.

Whilst I know of a number of life coaches who are most excellent and are very successful in life and in their field, I’m getting a bit tired of receiving emails from “life coaches” making grandiose claims about their skills at coaching people to be successful, yet they want me to advise them 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 get rich by encouraging other people to 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 on their websites’ services for up to £5000 per session (yes, really). How they get the idea that this price 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 are easily parted, although it seems not nearly often enough for some struggling life coaches.

However, one can only wonder what sort of problematic life a person actually has in the first place to have £5000 ready to hand over for some “life coaching”. Five grand could actually be quite a good investment, though, but 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 a number of business courses.

If you needed 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 any 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 clients who are suffering from 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” 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 mental change was impossible. Things such as the FPC changed all that, of course, and for that, I am truly grateful.

The innovations and initiatives started by Bandler and Grinder are remarkable and have led to a significant evolutionary leap in enhancing the human experience for many people whose lives would otherwise have been less than desirable. It created a field that enabled a number of 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 is the chasm between the practice and so many practitioners? Yet it seems that it is “NLP” that gets slammed by the viewing lay-public, 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, whilst the technology is one thing, some of the 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 amongst psychotherapists who compete to gain status by seeing what they believe to be the most serious client group. Some will fixate on child sexual abuse, others on PTSD, others on personality disorders, multiple personalities, and so on. Stories get exchanged about how extreme the “cases” are, and the “interesting cases” get brought into the 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 really agree on whether neurosurgery was more or less superior to cardiology. The paediatric nurses weren’t really regarded as nurses, just like 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 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 lives. 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, and as a discipline, NLP is rapidly losing that trust. I doubt that this phenomenon is because of any inherent weakness in the NLP models (plural) themselves, but more likely it is a direct result of the collective behaviour 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 such people and asked what actual experience they were writing from. All too often, I was told that, although they had no personal experience of such things, they knew enough about them to advise others. Quite how, I can only speculate and imagine. Anyway, I got 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.

There seems to have been a new work ethic lurching about in recent years. It looks something like this: “If it seems difficult, or if it seems like hard work, then you are doing it wrong.” The Law of Attraction people really seized the day with this one – formulate your desire, set your intention, and you are ready to go, go, go! As I have mentioned before, the fabric of the universe will bend and mould itself to your will in an effortless fashion that just demonstrates that the One, the Almighty, and the only God is on your side.

You too can be the chosen one if you just open yourself to the universal power and luscious goodness that courses through this abundant universe.

But it might be best to ignore the deformed, the deranged, the Africans, the war refugees, the earthquakes, the just plain ugly, and all those damned IEDs. These sorts of things can undermine a perfectly good theory. Just attract the good stuff. That’s right, just the good stuff.

And let’s invoke the power of Einstein to support us on this quest. After all, did he not proclaim the universe to be a friendly one? So, if we just mention quantum physics and mirror neurones, we have the supporting scientific proof, don’t we?

Now, I suspect that a lot of this ideology can probably be traced back to the corporate buzz of a few years ago. “Work smarter, not harder,” those men in crisp suits and lavender shirts advised us. It was their desire to decrease costs and decrease expenditures and thus increase the profit margins. It’s not a bad idea, but as with all things, when costs are decreased and expenditures reigned in, the recipients of those former costs and expenditures don’t get paid. But it might be best to ignore that part of the equation too. Just focus on the good stuff. That’s right, just the good stuff.

But then the personal development industry got ahold of this blue-sky thinking too. Ever wondered about those corporate lifestyle dropouts who themselves seem so keen to repackage Office Newspeak? They sell it back to the wage slaves as a gospel of liberation, complete with promises of personal and financial freedom to boot. Thus, what the collared workers listen to in corporate meetings this week will become your rehashed self-development workshop programme in a few years’ time.

But with an added component. In the personal development game, everything must be “effortless”, “easy” and “instant”. Overnight success is the name of the game.

So, think outside that box, downshift, and clear your mind of clutter. Reach for the sky and fill yourself with blue-sky thinking. Synergise and catch that low-hanging fruit. It’s easy in this game, and everyone can be a guru. It is all about getting what you want, fulfilling your potential, being true to yourself, and aligning yourself with the universe.

The thing with this effortless and overnight success concept is that so many, many people are chasing it, and that worries me. And it worries me greatly. In personal development and alphabet therapies, there are so, so many people who have websites that create the illusion of great success and affluence, yet they are in fact broke, getting poorer, and are anything but successful in that business. Whilst I understand the advertising and marketing thing, I get that the effect is that a certain illusion gets created. No one wants to say, “Actually, I have no money and no clients, so please, please come and see me.” Of course, such behaviours will not lead to success.

As many therapists and coaches find, the obvious solution to this, of course, is to become a trainer and train other people in the stuff. It passes the buck and passes the burden.

Collectively, this leads many struggling alphabet therapists and personal development coaches to believe they are the only ones facing challenges, prompting them to attend more training sessions in an attempt to solve their issues. Trainings that offer success effortlessly. If this is you, you are not the exception to the rule. I honestly believe that you are the norm.

Go to Companies House and see just how many personal development and training companies have failed to submit tax returns or other financial documents, are struck off, or have gone bust. You may be surprised at what you find. Read those documents carefully, then go back and read their websites carefully. See if you can see the mismatch.

Now, back to that “last week’s corporate bullshit is next week’s instant success training course” thing.

Remember that all too often, the people promoting such things are usually known as “former employees”.

Theo trained back in 1988; he has more status than Bill, who trained last year, because Theo was there back in the early days and has been in the game a lot longer than Bill.

But Bill is more up to date than Theo and isn’t stuck at the level of someone else’s development. Bill is newer, hip and more up to date. So he actually has more status than Theo.

But Sally once had a one-to-one session on stage with her celebrity trainer, so she has more status than anyone. She has been anointed personally, and with that, no one disagrees.

Michael has only attended a two-day diploma course with a trainer that no one else has heard of, so he isn’t relevant at all. But he hopes to save up enough money to attend the practitioner course one day; for now, he thinks the course is a bit too expensive.

Theo asks him how much the course is actually worth to him and tries to investigate Michael’s limiting beliefs about money by asking empowering questions. Michael tries to duck this interrogation and is quickly diagnosed as a mismatcher who deliberately avoids rapport.

Sally suggests that Michael comes and does the training with her personal celebrity trainer, as the course is a bit cheaper, but Theo tells her that this particular trainer isn’t actually authentic. He’s in the wrong lineage, and besides, Theo’s own personal celebrity trainer had a bust-up with this allegedly non-authentic trainer a few years ago, so we shouldn’t like him at all.

Andrew says he has read a few books on the subject and has tried a few techniques out on his friends with mixed success. Everyone agrees that he is a pitiable fool and should attend a live training, or he will be damned for his ignorance. These are powerful techniques, you see, and live training is always the name of the game in this business. No other substitute will do. The others all nod knowingly.

Claire plays her trump card and says that she has done her “masters” course. Not a postgraduate degree, of course, just the essential few days of “live training”, but she gets demoted as soon as Barry announces that he did the same master’s course not once, but twice, once each with two trainers from “opposing camps” to get a balanced view, apparently.

John, Paul, and Luke all eye each other suspiciously. Each is a certified trainer of the subject matter. Whilst apparently on the same side and part of the same lineage, they are still competing with each other nonetheless. Each of them smiles as they inflate the stories of their own personal and business successes to intimidate the others, whilst the novices listen in a passive and believing awe.

Peter attended the practitioner, then did his “masters” and then “trainers” in rapid succession. He hopes to quit his day job and teach people like Michael, but Michael is nowhere to be found. He’s busy in the other room having a positive belief anchored to his upper arm by Theo. Theo hopes to cure him of that mismatch too.

Luke is an assistant to some celebrity trainers and has been for years. He cryptically only ever uses first names when talking about them. He’s on first-name terms and makes sure everyone else knows it.

Rachel went on a course where she learned to read minds like Derren Brown. By looking at their eyes, apparently. John protests that Derren Brown does nothing of the sort, but everyone ignores him. Rachel quietly tells Luke that she has seen the pictures John creates in his imagination, and that those pictures are obscene, indecent, sexual, and just wrong. Luke starts to avoid Rachel afterwards. Soon after, Rachel then says something similar about Luke’s mental pictures to Claire. Claire smiles and nods enthusiastically and says that she too hopes to do that course one day.

Kathy fondles her crystals; they have a powerful energy, and with that, everyone agrees. Sally tells everyone how she has to be careful when she enters crystal shops because she is unusually sensitive and sometimes is overcome with the conflicting energies. She has to see her Reiki therapist to get herself rebalanced. Nick has some purifying teabags that were sold to him by his own celebrity trainer. “You put them into your water and they purify it,” he explains to the others. He hands out some leaflets that provide further explanation. The leaflets also explain how everyone can become an MLM franchisee for the product. Everyone starts to avoid Nick after that.

Charles arrives and is demonstrably quite angry. A few of the others start chanting, “State control, state control!” He ignores them and rants about how some idiot workshop attendee has just asked him, “If this technology is so good, then why is Charles so noticeably overweight?” The chanting quickly stops, and the others cautiously delay responding to Charles’s outburst as the appropriate party line is unclear. “Don’t they understand about personal choice?” says Luke, breaking the tension. Ahh, yes, personal choice. Everyone is relieved, and the conversation quickly moves on to how stupid some of these workshop attendees are these days. On this point, everyone agrees that workshop attendees are definitely pretty dumb these days.

“They don’t even know how to swish properly,” says Matthew. “One guy even thought it was called the ‘switch’ pattern.” The whole group laughs at the comment as a couple nod sagely. The nodding couple also make a mental note to stop calling it “the switch” pattern.

“What happened to Catherine?” Paul asks the group. There is a pause, as a few glances exchange between them. “Oh, we don’t talk about Catherine anymore,” Richard says, breaking the tension that reared up again. “Why not?” asks Paul. Why not, indeed. “It’s dangerous to do so,” explains Theo. “She’s a persona non-grata. The trainer stopped liking her sometime last year, so we don’t talk to her anymore.“

I am continually amazed at how much healers, therapists, and personal development gurus attribute to beliefs. It is as if they have found that the act of belief literally shapes the universe, and if your universe isn’t shaped right, then you need to change your beliefs and everything will be fine.

I keep reading about how good beliefs can heal and bad beliefs can cause cancer and bad AIDS. They may inhibit recovery, cause poverty and shape your destiny. Belief is where the action is, not cold, hard reality. For years, churches got rich and cashed in on peddling belief. Some still do, but for many, God got boring. Beliefs needed to be organised and systematised, and the emergent doctrines were just too limiting.

And besides, God simply wasn’t scientific enough and lacked sufficient antiquity. In the self-help industry, the training manual became the new bible, and quantum physics became the new gospel. What’s in it for me? became the new lament, and I deeply and completely accept myself, becoming the new affirmation. Future saints line up to await beatification, and in a field where false prophets abound, the ever-faithful squabble amongst themselves whilst praying for confirmation.

To those that demand evidence of this new faith, they point to the placebo response, to quantum physics, to Einstein, to the Tao, to Buddhism, and all manner of miraculous proofs. ‘You just need to believe,’ they say.

If you suffer, then it is your fault. If you get ill and die, then you have had limiting beliefs. You must have faith or you will be damned. There is hope and redemption in the sacraments, as well as joss sticks, flower remedies, filtered water, and herbal teas. Penance and forgiveness can be found by the correct observance of the rituals: the tapping, the whoop whoop, the happy clapping, the attitude, and, of course, the search for those elusive toxins. There is only one law, and that is the attraction. It keeps things simple.

Now, I wonder what these poor fools believed in order to demise in such an appalling manner:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/12/crimesider/entry5378668.shtml

“The participants had fasted for 36 hours as part of a personal and spiritual quest in the wilderness, then ate a breakfast buffet Thursday morning. After various seminars, they entered the sweat lodge lightly dressed at 3 p.m.

Two hours later, a woman dialled 911 to say that two people, whom Waugh identified as 38-year old New Yorker Kirby Brown and 40-year-old James Shore of Milwaukee, did not have a pulse and weren’t breathing.

According to a family spokesperson, Brown was an avid surfer and hiker who was “in top shape,” before the mysterious sweat lodge death…

…Sheriff’s Lt. David Rhodes said authorities were checking whether there was a lag time between the first signs of medical distress and the emergency call…“

At the root of this is a self-help industry that promotes “me, me, me, me, me!” – no matter how dysfunctional you feel, you are special, you are important, you are worthy, and you will be accepted and loved – at the price of the entrance fee. Pay the fee, and you will be admitted entry into the mysterious sanctum. Get others to sign up and pay the fee, and then you can come again at a discount. Sign up as an assistant and you can come again and again for free in an orgy of hope, happiness, and adulation. A shepherd leading the flock, a fisher for men, and the person serving the Kool-Aid.

The industry promises that yes, you can be rich! Yes, you can have the life you choose! Yes, you can break free of life’s burdens! Yes, you can be free! Yes, you can heal yourself and learn to heal others! You are special, you are valuable, and the universe revolves around you, you, you! This soft and malleable universe will bend to your will, mould to fit your beliefs, and adjust itself to suit your aspirations. The universe is weak, but the attraction is strong, and God has lost the monopoly on omnipotence.

The thing is… so much of it is all smoke and mirrors. Scratch beneath the surface of this industry and you will find stories of drug addiction, bankruptcy, and personal disasters – not rags-to-riches style or bad man-made good types of things, but self-promoted success gurus who themselves are broke and claiming unemployment benefits; personal development coaches and mind control experts who take psychiatric drugs or cocaine or are alcohol dependent; business consultants who have never consulted and trainers who themselves are unemployed and struggling; divorced relationship coaches who rely on hookers; life coaches who are so dysfunctional they have no life to speak of; and on and on. All this lies behind the veil of self-proclaimed success and fine promises of hope, affluence, and secrets; the veil of illusion of opulence, happiness, and brilliance; but it is a lie, designed to get that cash from the naive punters hoping for a better life for themselves.

The medicine show never went away. The snake oil just got repackaged, refined, and much, much more expensive.

As a sceptic and rationalist, I am not surprised at how much spite gets aimed in my direction. I am a disbeliever, and in the self-help business, the refusal to believe is tantamount to heresy. It is a betrayal, and such heresy is not at all tolerated. ‘We want action taken,’ they write on their forums. What makes you so special? they ask in their emails. It’s all about being special.

It is time to start blowing the whistle on the industry that I find myself flirting with on a regular basis. The romance died out long ago. I saw the man behind the curtain. He was bloated; he had serious personal issues, but he had a good agent. Know this: this is an industry that lies to you. Not by accident either, but in a cynical and deliberate manner designed to exploit and cash in on the desperation and unhappiness of people who want a better life.

What I know, what I have seen, is that all the positive thinking and all the self-belief in the world doesn’t make a single bit of difference to so many of these people, or possibly to you. Many of these gurus are as dysfunctional today as they were yesterday, and I don’t see that changing at all. In fact, it seems to be getting worse.

All that “self-development” and “Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!” seem to reduce people’s income, career prospects, familial relationships, friendships, etc. It gets ugly.

I’ll tell you more in a future blog entry, beginning with the personal development industry’s obsession with “status”.