From The Rainbow Machine: Tales from a Neurolinguist’s Journal by Andrew T. Austin.
There are situations in which the most comforting answer is not the kindest one. A dying person may know more about what is happening than the people around them are willing to acknowledge. When every serious question is met with reassurance that everything will be fine, the person can be left carrying the truth alone.
“A Case of Dying” is one of the shortest chapters in The Rainbow Machine. A child asked whether he was going to die. I answered yes. The account divides readers because it places honesty and reassurance in an uncomfortable relationship. The question is not whether we should become blunt. It is whether our response serves the person asking or protects us from the difficulty of answering.
A question deserves more than a reflex
My answer arose in a particular encounter with a child who was dying. It is not a script for every frightened child who asks about death. A question about dying may concern immediate danger, a symptom, something overheard, separation from family, or death in general. The answer needs to fit what the person means and what is actually known.
Honesty includes uncertainty. It also includes listening, choosing language the person can understand, and remaining present after difficult information has been given. It is possible to speak accurately while offering company, care and practical help. It is also possible to say technically accurate words in a way that abandons the listener.
For children with life-limiting conditions, NICE guidance calls for sensitive, honest and realistic communication, adapted to the child’s understanding and coordinated with the professionals involved. A brief personal story cannot replace that individual assessment.
The loneliness of compulsory reassurance
People often tell white lies from kindness. Families do not want to frighten someone they love. Friends may fear that acknowledging death will remove hope. Yet the person who is ill may already be aware of the situation and may be asking for permission to speak about it.
If that invitation is repeatedly refused, the relationship can become a performance. The patient reassures the family, the family reassures the patient, and everyone avoids the subject that matters. Expressions of closeness may continue while an important part of the person’s experience has become unspeakable.
The useful distinction is between hope and a promise about an outcome we cannot guarantee. Hope may concern relief of pain, time with someone, a conversation, or being cared for. It need not depend on insisting that death will not occur. Asking what matters now can open a conversation that automatic reassurance closes.
When therapeutic optimism denies limits
Some brief-therapy cultures encourage the belief that every problem can be solved if the practitioner finds the right intervention. Expressions such as “there is no failure, only feedback” can encourage persistence in learning. They become harmful when used to deny that a treatment has failed or that a disease may be incurable.
A terminal prognosis is not simply a limiting belief to be corrected through better language. Psychological support can help people with distress, relationships and decisions. Those benefits do not establish an ability to reverse the underlying illness. The distinction matters to patients and to practitioners who need an honest account of their competence.
I have met people whose belief in healing was sincere, generous and central to their lives. One practitioner I knew, committed to an approach associated with Louise Hay, later died of pancreatic cancer. I remember her warmly. Her sincerity did not make her immune to disease, and her death was not a verdict on the quality of her character or conviction.
The question that turned grief into blame
After the death of a close friend, I had an encounter that exposed the cruelty hidden inside some claims about unlimited therapeutic power. My friend had cancer, but his unexpected death followed complications around surgery, including pneumonia and sepsis. Those details mattered. The person who later offered an opinion knew none of them.
I was travelling by motorcycle in connection with a workshop around the time of the funeral. My luggage caught fire. I noticed smoke in the mirror, other drivers sounded their horns and flashed their lights, and I managed to reach a lay-by and get off the bike. Some of my clothes burned. I cannot be certain whether the fire began through overloaded luggage contacting the exhaust or through the laptop battery.
At the workshop, I had a practical problem to explain as well as a recent bereavement. An NLP trainer overheard that my friend had died after having cancer and asked whether NLP had been tried. The conversation reached the extraordinary question of why I had let my friend die.
The question assumed both that an available intervention could have saved him and that I was responsible for failing to provide it. It was offered without knowledge of his treatment or the circumstances of his death. What appeared to the speaker as confidence in NLP became an accusation directed at a grieving friend.
Illness is not a test of positive thinking
People with serious or chronic illness can receive an exhausting stream of suggestions from others who know very little about their condition. The suggestion may be well intended. The cumulative burden is that the person must repeatedly explain, refuse, reassure or defend choices while already dealing with illness.
Forced positivity adds another demand. A person may be frightened, angry, tired or sad without having chosen a bad outcome. Treating every difficult emotion as an obstacle to recovery can make the person responsible not only for being ill, but also for concealing the ordinary emotional consequences of illness.
A more useful offer is specific and responsive: listening when invited, helping with an ordinary task, or asking what kind of support is wanted. Advice becomes easier to assess when it includes an accurate description of its limits and respects a refusal. The relationship should not depend on accepting the helper’s preferred theory.
Working with cancer is not curing cancer
The phrase “working with cancer patients” can describe many legitimate activities, including support with anxiety, adjustment, communication or comfort. It does not, by itself, describe treatment of the cancer. That gap can disappear in promotional language, leaving audiences to infer a cure that has never been demonstrated.
Accounts of remarkable recovery also need to include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other treatment the person received. Leaving those out creates a misleading impression of what produced the outcome. Cancer Research UK distinguishes complementary support from alternative treatment and states that there is no scientific evidence that alternative therapies can control or cure cancer.
An invitation to demonstrate the claim
I have also encountered the claim that medical staff are too closed-minded to consider NLP. My own experience was more complicated. In hospital settings, I found opportunities for practitioners to present or demonstrate what they said they could do. While working around neuroscience services, I obtained permission to invite people claiming to retrain neural pathways to bring their work into that setting.
I put invitations to practitioners online. No one took them up. That is an account of my own attempts, not a survey of every hospital or practitioner. It nevertheless raised a reasonable question: if medical professionals are expected to learn from NLP, why should NLP practitioners be exempt from learning medicine, engaging with clinical standards, or showing what their claims amount to in practice?
A credible claim needs an outcome that can be examined, a clear description of what was done, and an honest account of what did not happen. The person who needs help should not be asked to substitute the practitioner’s confidence for that information.
More from The Rainbow Machine
Explore the Rainbow Machine article index for related discussions of therapeutic claims, communication and the responsibilities of helping.