Become a Therapist

If you are the type of person who people go to for help, can assist people to find their own solutions and you have a curiosity about people - then you would make a great NLP Therapist.

NLP Therapy is very different to traditional Counselling and Psychology - instead of being mainly problem centred and talk centric, NLP therapy is very Outcome Solution Based, meaning that as an NLP Therapist, you are focusing more on what a person want in their life versus what isn't working in life. NLP is in the category of Brief Therapy, generally an NLP Therapist will work with clients for between 4-12 one hour sessions as opposed to month or even years of more traditional counselling and psychology.

If you are already working in this field, NLP is an exceptional modality to add to your toolbox. Dr. Heidi Heron, PsyD, one of our Principal Trainers holds her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology yet only uses her NLP skills to work with clients. In fact, Heidi is one of the few NLPers in the world with this high level of education.

NLP Therapy can come in many shapes and forms - perhaps you have a niche area you would like to assist people with (depression, kids, career change, eating disorders, relationships, couples, etc.) or you might want to be a Generalist who can assist people with all kinds of issues.

Starting your journey to become an NLP Therapis or continuing to upskill yourself to be an even better coach has many personal and professional benefits. From a personal standpoint, your own personal communication, relationships, confidence and pathway will become clearer and more enriched. On a professional level, training as an NLP Therapist provides you a meaningful platform for providing service to others while providing you with personal, professional and financial success.

Our students and graduates use their NLP skills to start their own full-time or part-time Therapy practices, many use their skills in their profession or family life and for others it is more of a personal journey and a time for personal growth.

Psychotherapy with NLP

The tools and methodologies of NLP to assist clients in both a therapeutic and coaching aspect. NLP is a very outcome specific tool that encompass skills for identifiying interferences, , creating motivation, clearing barriers for success and creating a clear pathway to helping a client get to their desired state or goal.

We differentiate therapy and coaching in the following way:

Therapy: assisting a person to achieve and maintain a new state of emotional, psychological or behavioural awareness. An NLP Therapist may help someone with a fear, anxiety, depression, stuckness, feelings of worthlessness, unwanted behaviours, etc.

Coaching: assisting a person to achieve a specific goal through cognitive and behavioural encouragement, motivation, enhancement and change. An NLP Coach may help someone with goals such as weight loss, career change, starting a business, creating wealth, life transition, etc. (see more information on becoming an NLP Coach)

Ultimately your role as a coach will be determined by the clients that you are seeing. Some coaches choose to specialise in a specific area (ie. relationships, executives, men, etc), while others become more 'generalist' coaches and adapt their style to the topic of the client. The versitality of NLP skills easily allows for a generalist approach.

Here is a general overview of how NLP works as a Psychotherapy Modality:

More and more, people are realising that they don't have to be stuck or live a mediocre life. People are knowing more now than before that they can truly be the change they want to see in the world, and they are seeking the assistance of professionals to get them to where they want to be.

NLP as a psychotherapy modality works with the unconscious mind to change, clear and transform barriers, blocks and limitations that might be holding someone back while accessing resources to build a strong platform within a persons psyche to keep the change. For example, a person who is presenting with depression may need help to change beliefs, habits, values, thoughts and behaviours and might also require assistance to boost confidence, self belief and trust. NLP contains tools to help with all of this.

Traditional counsellors and therapists do not have the tools to work directly with the unconscious mind to change the programs of emotion, behaviour and thought. A lot of time a counsellor or psychologist will be helping their client to have coping strategies to deal with a problem, or there is a belief that if a person talks enough about an issue it will eventually disolve. As an NLP Therapist, you are working with the intereferences that get in the way of a person being at their desired state. This might be an emotion, a behaviour, a belief, a past event or even an imagined event in the future (anxiety).

This is where NLP Therapy comes in.

An NLP Therapist, has the skills necessary to identify two key concepts: 1) what interferences (beliefs, behaviours, emotions, etc.) might be standing in the way from moving from PS to DS and 2) what resources (skills, attitudes, attributes, etc.) are required to bridge the gap. More importantly, once this information has been elicited, the NLP Therapist has the knowledge and skills needed to change or clear interferences and access and build resources. Some of these tools and processes include:

Tools for Clearing Interferences		Tools for Accessing Resources
Belief Change Unconscious Pattern Change Reimprinting Change Personal History Parts Integration		New Behaviour Generator Resources Anchor Circle of Excellence Integrating Anchors Perceptual Positions