Does NLP work for anxiety

by John Nolan
8th January 2025

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is presented as a method to address anxiety by helping people understand how they create the experience of anxiety. It suggests that individuals can learn to manage negative thought patterns and rewrite associations to be more positive.

Some of the key ideas of NLP for anxiety include:

Understanding personal filters: NLP emphasizes that each person has a unique way of seeing the world based on their experiences and memories. This affects how individuals interpret information, which can lead to anxiety in some situations and not others.
Identifying thought patterns: NLP works to understand the way people organize their mental processes and thoughts. It suggests people often think in a specific mode, such as kinesthetic, auditory, or visual. Determining how someone processes information can be helpful for addressing their anxiety.
Addressing maladaptive coping strategies: NLP can help people recognise and end avoidance and rewrite negative associations. These strategies may worsen anxiety over time, so NLP techniques help people view associations and memories in a more positive way.
Using techniques: NLP uses techniques like identifying anxiety triggers, reframing these triggers, accessing solutions, and setting relaxation anchors. NLP also uses the “swish technique” which is aimed at altering submodalities, and timeline therapy.

NLP suggests that people with anxiety may feel powerless to achieve their goals due to a fear of failure, and this can lead to avoidance of situations that trigger anxiety. NLP aims to empower individuals to manage negative thoughts by changing their mindset and enhancing their healing ability. It is presented as a method for people to become the ruler of their own minds, choosing which state of mind to embody.

The approach of NLP is that the human mind can be re-programmed and its responses and feelings towards different situations improved. It is presented as a way to quickly alter anxiety, using assumptions people have about themselves based on past experiences. Since these experiences are subconsciously stored, NLP can be a more effective approach, working on the subconscious, than traditional methods of addressing anxiety.

Summary: NLP is a method that aims to help people manage their anxiety by understanding how they create the experience of anxiety and then learning how to manage their mental processes and thoughts, to rewrite negative associations. NLP includes techniques like identifying triggers, reframing thoughts, setting anchors, and timeline therapy, and it focuses on helping individuals take control of their mental state. NLP works with the idea that each individual processes the world through a unique filter based on their experiences and memories.

Tags:Anxiety NLP

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