Someone whose name I don’t recall told me the following quote by someone whose name he didn’t recall: “Don’t judge a field by the people who comprise it.” So true in the bizarre world of NLP.
NLP is something that started out with some very clever observations about communication that then lent itself to a number of techniques and methods that can be brilliantly deployed to improve the clarity and intent of one’s thinking and communication.
It rapidly became a cornerstone in the personal development world and then rapidly became perceived as therapy. But as Bandler and LaValle point out, therapy (or more correctly, therapeutic change) is an application of NLP but not NLP itself. In much the same way that NLP can be applied to sales, marketing, analysis of political discourse, and so on.
Bandler, Grinder, et al. define NLP as the “study of the structure of subjective experience”. It is certainly that, and undoubtedly, over the years, it has expanded to be other things as well.
In short, the original NLP work presented an enormous leap in our ability to understand humans. I really respect the work and the originators; it’s just the people from the second-generation NLPer downwards that I loathe.
How then did the NLP world, the NLP “community”, if there is such a thing, become such a hotbed of narcissism, nastiness, grandiosity, deception, and outright lies as it has become today?
In exactly the same way that religion did. For example, it still never ceases to amaze me that people raise their children to be Catholics. The Catholic Church is the largest and most well-established pedophilic organisation on the planet, with a long history of convent/monastic schools run on a diet of sadism, child exploitation and infanticide, and wholesale brutality and slaughter around the world that would make ISIS look like amateurs.
This is an organisation that has as its central text a homophobic and misogynistic book that the church leaders insist is to be interpreted literally and represents an accurate historical document. At its core is the rite of the Catholic Mass, where the faithful queue up each week to re-enact the eating of a dead Jew who’d been tortured to death.
They are told to believe in the miracle of transubstantiation, the literal conversion of the Eucharistic elements into the literal body and literal blood of Christ, which is, as far as I can tell, clearly a religious cannibalistic ritual. Why am I the seemingly only one who finds this sort of stuff really, really strange?
Yet people will still believe and defend this horrific organisation. I could say something similar about the BBC, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and numerous other organisations that all share the same central tenet: they are Custodians of The Truth.
Each of these organisations proclaims to be the custodians of the truth and, as a function of their organisation, requires the faithful to be compliant, unquestioning, silent, and just a little bit fearful of what might happen if they break ranks and speak out.
It is starting to sound familiar, yet? It certainly should do.
What all religions also have in common is the issue of subjectivity. Everything takes place in the mind of the group. With this very notion built into the heart of NLP, nothing can ever be proven or disproven. It is all just ideology.
When compared with things like nuclear physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and some aspects of medicine, amongst others, there is an objective reality against which to measure. Though misconceptions and mistakes do happen, over time, everything claimed within those fields can be accurately and objectively judged to be correct or incorrect.
When it comes to religion, nothing ever can or indeed ever needs to be proved. Even today, in some regions of the world, disbelief will cost you your life. The religious leaders hold the power and the wealth, and they employ psychopaths and sycophants to do their bidding lest their power base built on ideology gets debased.
When a member of the church loses their faith and begins to wonder if they have been lied to and perhaps even brainwashed, there are numerous mechanisms built into the organisations to either bring the person back to faith or punish those who refuse. Many of these dropouts suffer enormously from psychological, psychiatric, and emotional consequences and may find themselves shunned by former friends and acquaintances, and in some instances, even by their families.
The more cult-like religions are most likely to additionally engage in harassment and smear campaigns against their apostates. It can get very ugly indeed, as numerous TV documentaries and court cases can attest to.
So, back to the “NLP community”. How did it get so bad? Well, simply because everything is subjective and nothing can be proven. Therefore, the people trying to peddle “NLP services” are free to make whatever claims they wish about their art. NLP can be applied to other people, whether it be through therapy, marketing, management, training, and so on. It is readily learned in just a few days (it only takes a few days of sitting in a room to be issued with a certificate), and now the newly raised practitioner is free to go out into the world and do things to other people with their newfangled skills.
So, I have to ask myself, just what sort of person is drawn to this enough to invest their hearts and minds into the “NLP community”?
From experience, just as with religion, there are three common types.
Type 1. The seeker. This is the person looking for some meaning in their life, to make life better for themselves, to make new friends and social connections, and to learn something new for self-improvement.
Type 2. The damaged person who is mentally vulnerable, naive, and quite gullible. They are looking for a group to join.
Type 3. The narcissist. Grandiose, superficial, controlling, deceptive, self-entitled, and self-important.
And they are drawn in droves. Especially the third type. This is the type who is most likely to go on to advance through the initiations that exist within NLP.
For a few thousand dollars more, they can “qualify” as a “master practitioner”—again, all they need to do is pay the cash and sit in the room for a few days. For a few more thousand dollars and a few more days sitting in the classroom, they can acquire a trainer’s certification (or not even bother if they are so fancy) and immediately set themselves up as a trainer of the art themselves. If they pay enough money, kiss enough asses, and hang around the right people, they may even be invited into the <gasp> inner circle. Well, the sycophants that hang around the trainer and follow them around the world at their own expense and assist unpaid on every course. This is on courses that usually charge thousands of pounds/dollars and squeeze in hundreds of people. But these sycophants believe that they are getting close to acquiring the Keys to the Kingdom, an invitation to the Sanctum Sanctorum, and a personal meeting with God himself.
But it’s unlikely to be tea at the Vatican; it’s more likely to be hookers and a line of coke in a hotel room somewhere.
And now, with that shiny new trainer’s certificate, the world is their oyster. They can unleash themselves onto the next wave of hopefuls looking to cure themselves of life’s worries and emotional concerns.
Now by this point, our newly created NLP trainer will be familiar with the central cultural tenets of the community. All these are largely communicated verbally by allegory, myth, and story, all masquerading as truth.
These stories take the following forms:
- the story of the person who was in the inner circle but is now “persona non-grata”. They have been shunned, threatened, and outcast by one and all.
- the amazing stories of incredible healings: brain cancers, Parkinson’s, paralysis, aphasia, and so on. No one ever asks for evidence, copies of medical reports, or any form of proof. This would be a mistake. See the first entry in this list. All these unnamed people were cured by the miraculous application of the magic words of NLP and had nothing to do with orthodox medical treatment whatsoever. In fact, all doctors are useless because they don’t bother to learn NLP.
- lots of stories of covert operations by NLP trainers in world intelligence agencies, major court cases, and politics.
- how rejections of any of the incredulous claims are evidence of limiting beliefs, a closed mind, and generally, a questionable person who risks joining the ranks of a persona non grata.
- no one needs to understand how electricity works to know how to switch on the light. This story is important to cite at least once during the break times of every training.
- disturbingly obese, chain-smoking NLP trainers? It’s all about choice.
- all diseases are created in the mind and are the product of negativist thinking. NLP will bolster the immune system, balance your chakras, and heal all diseases that are now either caused by past traumas or by your negativistic mindset. Yeah, the causes of your diseases will change according to the mood of your trainer, but no one will notice or care about this.
- as NLPers, you are superior to everyone else who doesn’t know NLP. No other education comes close in terms of importance.
- if people cannot afford your fees, which must be necessarily high to reflect how important you are, then this is because the person without the cash is suffering from limiting beliefs about money. If it is important to them, they will find the money.
- stories must be circulated about the trainee who is now charging six figures for coaching sessions.
- specific past training events must be eulogised as though they were a world-changing, life-changing, one-of-a-kind event that was so incredible that it will live on in history. New ground was broken, new discoveries were made, and it was incredible. Give this event a name like “Warsaw ’93” or something. Through inference only, the trainers must remind everyone periodically that they weren’t there, and so they can never be as important as the trainer who was there.
NLP trainings have several additional essential features too. The photos are most important. Everyone should be encouraged to pose for a photo with the trainer as though they are some rock star or other celebrity. This, of course, helps build the legions of the faithful as well as ensure social media posts about the event. A group photo is also vital at the end of the training. The trainer must always show how happy everyone looks and demonstrate to everyone how successful they are.
Fucking trainees is entirely optional but generally appears to be quite the norm.
Next, the NLP trainer needs to learn how to behave on social media. There are key themes here. A combination of grandiose and suspicious/paranoid/accusatory is important.
For grandiosity, there are just a few things the trainer must engage in:
- They must refer to themselves as the “founder” of something. Whether it is a system (“my proven seven-step system”), a process, or a “model”. It also helps to give oneself a weird title that makes one stand out from the rest: Neuropreneur, Nexialist, Philosopher, Alchemist, Warrior, and so on.
- Everything about them is always successful; they are always happy and positive; they are living the dream; etc. It is necessary to show the wealth, whether it is an expensive car with a personalised plate, a big house in the posh end of town, expensive holidays, or whatever. None of it needs to be actually true.
- Everything about their past employment must be exaggerated and described in a more grandiose fashion than actual reality necessitates. Have you worked on a film set once as an “extra”? Well, now you can claim to have worked extensively in the film industry. Did you wave once at Madonna as she was leaving in her convoy? Well, now you have celebrity clients and so on.
- Don’t forget the virtue signalling. You must always support the latest thing and be very publicly “woke” in your politics while accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being “right-wing”. Don’t worry about evidence, because no one else will either.
When dealing with any form of criticism, the following format is employed: the trainer must play the shocked victim. No matter what the criticism is, they must adopt a victim orientation. What counts is disarming the critic. This is done by ignoring what was actually communicated and by ignoring any context. Classic vague-posting is important where no actual detail is given and the critic is identified by innuendo and heavy inference. The actual identification of the critic will be performed by the minions, or the narcissist’s flying monkeys, who, sensing drama, will all dogpile in. The trainer must play the wise-victim role.
They cannot ever portray themselves as loser victims. Bursts of emotional outrage won’t work too well with their audience, so they must be wise victims, taking a philosophical approach, denigrating their critic without appearing to be actually upset. This is necessary not only to maintain the faith of the minions but also to allow them to play their part too.
The criticism must be ignored in favour of a full character assassination of the critic. Lots of implications can be used here; “He is the sort of person who would…<and then insert slur of your choosing>” or simply make something up. Nothing is off-limits – I have witnessed NLP trainers falsely accuse their critics of paedophilia (yes, really), racism, and homophobia, amongst other things, all without any evidence whatsoever. What happens next is always entertaining to watch; out come the flying monkeys, each with their own take on the critic, even if they don’t know who the critic is. It doesn’t matter. Everyone gets to join in the witch burning.
But what absolutely no one will ever do is ask the trainer for any form of evidence. They are all too well trained (well, indoctrinated) for that.
“What’s going on?”
– “They are burning someone!”
“Why?”
– “Someone accused them of being a witch.”
“BURN THE WITCH!!”
The person who comes along and asks for evidence of the witch actually being a witch and also dares to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t burn witches invariably gets called a witch themselves and is then thrown on the pyre too. Asking for evidence and questioning the response is not permitted.
And so the “NLP community” is self-selecting. After a while, normal people will pull away, having learned the skills and knowledge (or not) that they wanted, and move on with their lives. Others will engage with the NLP community and then get out fast when they see what really goes on. But for those who are either too narcissistic or too foolish to see what is going on, they will stay and enjoy the ride. The “community” becomes self-selecting and, after a while, ends up in the state that it currently is in.
Never being one to miss out on a crisis when there is money to be made, the more grandiose narcissistic NLPer will create an NLP organisation where virtue signalling is strong. They are trying to reform the field, they will claim. They are “raising standards”, improving regulation, and so on. What you will never see is evidence of how they are doing this other than signing up more people to their organisation (for a fee) and issuing certificates of approval for courses run by trainers who sign up as well. New standards “organisations” crop up every month, but few will ever manage to replicate the legendary “The British Board of NLP.” But that is a story for another day.
Can NLP be saved? Well, the ridiculous question, I guess, would be like saying, “Can mathematics be saved?” I agree with Sam Vaknin when he says that the personal development movement has been hijacked and overrun by narcissists; the world of NLP, especially so. They can hide in plain sight, assured of a sufficient supply of attention, adulation and money. Like High Priests of a weird religious cult, there are no claims too grandiose or too extreme. After all, the Catholics have been doing this for nearly 2000 years, and still the faithful flock to them in search of salvation from the pain of living, and that is in the face of numerous shocking scandals and exposes.