A Coach’s View of CBT and NLP

First of all let me begin by saying that these experiences address a personal opinion of mine and do not reflect the values of Ridhima Dua or other people associated with her.

And I would also get it out right in the beginning that I am extremely grateful to Aaron T Beck and every CBT coach in my life for creating and using this wonderful technique to pull me out from a bad place where I want to be able to enjoy and love life due to the negative thinking patterns I had.

Coach’s Journey:

This was before I met Ridhima, and it was a trying time for me. I had just given birth and was suffering through what was later diagnosed as Postpartum depression. I myself held the belief at that time that mental health professionals are for those with “issues”. And that even though I had self destructive thoughts, I was “fine”.

Also, how will I know who is a good counselor and who isn’t. So I kept living in my mind and doing as much as I could.

Then one of my Facebook friends got himself certified in CBT and he announced it. Bigger part of his announcement was the case of a 16 year kid he knew ending his life because of bad grades in 10th. It was devastating news to all of us. Sitting on this side of making a career, we thought it was completely unreasonable and we all wished we could do something about it.

That is where my friend had posted,

“Don’t wait, talk to someone qualified today” and he had posted his credentials for being a mental health coach.

This person was a distant acquaintance, to be honest, so i thought, “what is the worst that could happen if i talk to him” and I told him my story.

NLP Processes:

This was my first brush with pure questioning as a style of coaching and I felt so relieved. I had no pressure to do what the counselor advised. My decisions were my own. My discoveries were my own. I knew I wanted to learn this to do it on my own.

I went and studied CBT for two months and joined practice groups so that my skill gets better everyday. I paid good money for just the practice, because I know I wanted to be the best coach I could ever become.

In one of these practice sessions, I met a lady, who is now a very dear friend of mine, and I was completely awe-inspired by her way of using the questioning techniques. She never spoke about the Cognitive Distortions, yet her disputation of what distortions were in play with the client, were bang on! She said she was trained in NLP and that’s what she uses.

NLP Exercise:

For the next two months, I went into a frenzy of reading every NLP post and watching every NLP video I could lay my hands on! I tried whatever new I learnt from the videos and tried out with my practice group. But something wasn’t clicking. There was a gap I couldn’t understand. Finally I decided to follow Ridhima Dua, who my friend had trained with and see what Ridhima did. I was sold on the fact that Ridhima is the Best NLP Coach and NLP Trainer in India. In one small anchoring technique in her online webinar, I got breakthroughs with two issues I was facing.

I sent her a message and signed up.

Every session in my class was a breakthrough for me, and I was taking deeper and deeper in love with NLP. I was the first to volunteer in every session. I flooded Ridhima with messages about how to do this better. I signed up every friend I have to be my practice client.

And then we met Kathy Pedro. They have created such a burst of energy in the training room, it is impossible to be low there!

They introduced some commonly used language patterns and challenges to those patterns and I felt something aligning within me. They called it the Meta Model. I realized they are talking about Cognitive Distortions, but on a level that was so fundamental.

Later, when we practiced and practiced and became so good at it, I could see both CBT and NLP in a beautiful confluence.

And here I am going to attempt to bring the students of both CBT and NLP together by comparing Cognitive Distortions, Language Fallacies and Meta Model Patterns together.

I would love to be challenged in my understanding of either of them, so that we have a healthy discussion and grow together as coaches.

NLP Techniques:

So here they are:

• All-or-nothing thinking/ Black and White Mentality
• Overgeneralizing
• Negative Filtering
• Disqualifying the positive
• Magnification and minimization/ Snowball effect/ catastrophization
• Emotional reasoning/ cause-effect
• Making “must” or “should” statements
• Gratitude Traps
• Personalization and blaming
• Jumping to conclusions/ Fortune telling/ Mind reading
• Always being right
• Fallacy of change/ control fallacies
• Fallacy of fairness
• Labeling and mislabeling
• Heaven’s reward fallacy/ for honor

Conclusion:

Another issue I was facing was that, as a coach, I could uncover the patterns my client was stuck in. But I did not know any technique to free the client from that stuck place. And after a while, my disputation of the cognitive distortions started feeling like unwanted provocation.

I wanted to be able to guide my clients in a step by step, tried and tested way, to leave those patterns behind. And also have provocation as a choice. It should work when I need it to work.

Glad to say that both my aims were fulfilled with Ridhima and her NLP. I frequently use provocative therapy with my clients, but now it is a calculated approach, so it works. Ridhima is a master of that as well, and it is quite freeing to work without walking on eggshells around my clients now.

You can also learn NLP & CBT with us. Inquire by writing to connect@i-flame.in