A pattern I have long since noticed with therapists is a generally over-rated sense of self-importance.
Too many therapists seem to proclaim how they are busy changing the world, making the world better, and so forth. Some might be actually doing this, of course, but most are not.
In the world of the hypnotherapy and NLP “communities”, this is well demonstrated by the ever-growing trend of incestuously bestowing upon one another grandiose titles and “qualifications” that imply greatness and status.
While the titles “Practitioner,” “Master Practitioner,” and “Trainer” have developed a clear hierarchy of authority, I am increasingly hearing people say they have completed their Practitioner training and then gone on to do their “masters” in NLP, as if the week or two of training is equivalent to a university degree.
NLPers seem to have taken the term “Trainer” and claimed it as an NLP title and seem to have forgotten that trainers existed long before NLP came about and that the term “trainer” is a reference to function and role, not status.
At social gatherings, NLPers tend to be ever keen to show off their incredible NLP-ness (sic) and impress upon people their own “state” and skills at anchoring, swishing, and so forth.
There appears to be a need to “spread the message” of NLP/EFT/TFT or whatnot, and the evangelical fervour runs high.
Now, this is no bad thing in and of itself. NLP has proved immensely useful in so many applications and has been used to provide hope and ability to improve so many lives – mine included – where previously hope and ability may not have existed.
Here’s the rub though: for all the talk of changing the world, feeling great, being great, etc., when I enquire as to what many of these evangelists actually do, I meet a brick wall.
Despite possessing websites proclaiming that they have trained with the best mystical masters and trainers in the world, travelled long and far in search of ancient and secret knowledge, and have a hefty fee advertised for services that promise to fulfil your every dream, it seems that too many of those individuals waving their NLP-ness in the faces of the profane don’t actually do a great deal.
It is a charade.
Many have no experience with their tools anywhere except among the excitable mass of bodies that makes up the NLP/EFT/TFT/etc. “community.” Everyone else seems to stay away from them, prospective clients included.
In a community so obsessed with perfecting the map, it seems that all too often, the territory simply gets forgotten.
In the words of comedian Bob Monkhouse, “No one on his deathbed has actually said, ‘I think the end is near; send for a comedian.” No airline pilot has ever told his passengers, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to tell you, but the engines are out. We’re about to crash into the ocean, but thank God, we have a comedian on board.” I don’t think you’ll ever hear a government minister on Question Time saying, “The Middle East crisis deadlock must be tolerated no longer – send in the clowns!”