Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) offers a variety of NLP techniques for managing anxiety by focusing on how people organise their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. NLP anxiety techniques aim to give people more control over their mental states, shifting away from feeling overwhelmed by anxiety and towards a sense of empowerment. Rather than viewing anxiety as a problem, NLP often reframes it as a learned response or even a skill that can be re-directed.
Here are some key NLP techniques used to address anxiety:
- Identifying Anxiety Triggers: The first step in tackling anxiety with NLP is to recognise the specific situations, thoughts, or feelings that trigger anxious responses. This awareness is crucial for interrupting the pattern of anxiety.
- Reframing Anxiety Triggers: Once triggers are identified, NLP techniques can help individuals reframe their perception of those triggers. This involves changing the meaning or interpretation of a situation from a negative or threatening one to a more positive or neutral one. For example, anxiety can be reframed as a sign of creativity or as an indication of the mind’s ability to adapt quickly.
- Accessing Solutions: Instead of focusing on the problem, NLP encourages people to shift their attention towards solutions. By envisioning ideal outcomes and asking solution-focused questions, individuals can redirect their mental energy from anxiety to constructive action.
- Setting Relaxation Anchors: Anchoring in NLP involves associating a specific feeling or state with a sensory experience, such as a touch or a sound. For example, a feeling of calm can be associated with a particular touch. By repeatedly linking a calming state to a specific anchor, individuals can quickly induce relaxation when experiencing anxiety.
- Altering Submodalities: Submodalities are the specific qualities of how we experience information, for example, the brightness, size, distance or colour of a mental image. By changing these qualities, the impact of a memory can be changed. The ‘swish’ technique involves quickly changing the submodalities of a negative image or memory to those of a positive one to change how it is experienced.
- Timeline Therapy: This technique addresses past experiences and memories that may contribute to anxiety. By altering the way past events are viewed or stored in the mind, NLP can help to disconnect negative emotions from these experiences.
- Dissociation: NLP uses dissociation to help individuals distance themselves from anxious thoughts and feelings, helping to observe them more objectively and less intensely. This involves changing the relationship with the anxiety, rather than trying to eliminate it. The ‘movie technique’ allows a person to view a distressing experience as a movie, rather than reliving it in the present.
- Rapport: Establishing rapport is a way to build trust and connection with another person. In the context of NLP and anxiety, establishing rapport with oneself, and the internal parts that create anxiety, can create space for self-compassion and reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by the experience of anxiety.
- “As If” Technique: This technique involves acting as if one is already calm, confident and in control. By behaving in this way the brain is tricked into believing it is true, and can therefore act as a positive influence.
Key Principles Underlying NLP Techniques for Anxiety
- Focus on the Structure of Experience: NLP recognises that every experience has an underlying structure that can be changed. By understanding how people process information and how they create anxiety, NLP provides ways to intervene and shift those patterns.
- Harnessing the Power of the Mind: Rather than fighting anxiety, NLP seeks to use the mind’s ability to adapt and learn new ways to respond to triggers. This means viewing anxiety as a skill that can be re-directed or a sign of intelligence that can be harnessed.
- Emphasis on Empowerment and Choice: NLP empowers individuals to take control of their mental states and choose how to respond to anxiety, rather than feeling at the mercy of their emotions. This involves shifting from a feeling of being taken over by anxiety to becoming the driver of one’s own mind.
- Change Through Language: NLP uses specific language to influence a person’s mental state. By consciously using language, people can start to see anxiety as a normal human response that can even be used as a skill.
- Adaptive vs Maladaptive Techniques: NLP seeks to replace maladaptive techniques with adaptive ones. Maladaptive techniques are those that provide short term relief but worsen anxiety in the long term, such as avoidance. Adaptive techniques encourage people to get to know their anxiety, rather than fight it.
In summary, NLP techniques provide a range of approaches to address anxiety by changing the way one thinks, feels and behaves. By reframing anxiety, understanding triggers and using tools such as anchoring and timeline therapy, individuals can take control of their responses and move towards a more resourceful state of mind.