Many people know NLP as a bag of techniques, but it began as a way of modelling what brilliant therapists actually did. This article explores where NLP came from, how it lost some of its trance depth, and how it can still be a practical, flexible way to create change in therapy, business and everyday life.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) has been many different things to many different people: a way of understanding how we “run” our experiences, a set of tools for communication and influence, a coaching approach, a way of making therapy more precise and efficient.

For me, it’s a practical, accessible way of noticing how people create their inner worlds and then helping them change those patterns in ways that actually show up in real life.

In this article I’ll walk through where NLP came from, what it’s good for, where it went off track, and how I now combine it with hypnosis and other approaches in my work.

A brief history of NLP: modelling what works

NLP began in the 1970s with Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who were fascinated by a simple question:

“Why do some therapists consistently get extraordinary results, and what exactly are they doing differently?”

Instead of starting with theory, they started with modelling: watching and listening very closely to exceptional practitioners and trying to capture the patterns in what they did so that others could learn them.

Three of their main models were:

• Milton H. Erickson, the psychiatrist and hypnotherapist whose indirect, story rich way of working helped people change in ways that often looked effortless from the outside.
• Virginia Satir, a pioneering family therapist whose communication and systemic awareness could shift entrenched family patterns.
• Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, known for his directness, focus on present moment experience and knack for bringing vague issues into sharp, embodied awareness.

By analysing their language, tone, body language, attention, and the structure of their questions, Bandler and Grinder tried to make implicit expertise explicit.

From there, NLP grew into a body of models and patterns:

• How people represent experience in images, sounds, sensations and inner dialogue.
• How beliefs and meanings are coded.
• How language can open up or close down possibilities.
• How to help people change the structure of a problem rather than arguing with the content.

At its best, NLP is still about that original impulse: learning from what works and turning it into something teachable.

How the hypnosis and trance got stripped out

If you read the early NLP books or watch footage of Erickson, Satir and Perls, one thing is obvious: they didn’t just talk to people; they worked with state and attention.

• Erickson used hypnosis and trance very deliberately.
• Satir shifted people’s posture, position and emotional state as part of changing communication.
• Perls constantly brought people back to what they were feeling right now, a kind of naturalistic trance in itself.

Over time, as NLP spread into business training, coaching and self-help, a lot of the hypnosis and deep trance elements were quietly dropped or watered down. There were reasons for that:

• Corporate audiences were (understandably) wary of the word “hypnosis”.
• Many trainers had little or no direct experience of Ericksonian work.
• It was easier to teach language patterns and techniques than to teach the underlying art of working with trance.

The result is that many people learn NLP as a purely cognitive or conversational toolkit, useful, but missing some of the depth and ease that’s available when you can also work with focused states, inner imagery and unconscious processes.

That’s one of the reasons I now offer my four weekend Ericksonian and NLP training for practitioners: it helps people who already know NLP learn how to put the trance and experiential depth back in, so they’re not stuck trying to do everything with conscious mind techniques alone.

What NLP actually does in practice

People often ask, “But what is NLP, really? Is it therapy, coaching, persuasion?”

The honest answer is: it’s a way of noticing and influencing patterns.

Some examples:

• Someone who always feels anxious in meetings might, internally, see a huge mental image of everyone staring at them while they hear a harsh inner commentary. Changing how those internal pictures and sounds work can change the feeling.
• Someone who puts everyone else first might run a particular inner sequence of images and meanings whenever they try to set a boundary. If you change the sequence, you change the behaviour.
• A team that’s stuck in conflict might be locked into a set of unconscious assumptions and language patterns (“you always…”, “you never…”) that keep the problem alive. Shifting the language can open up options neither side had considered.

NLP gives you lenses and tools for:

• Understanding how a person is doing a problem, not just what the problem is about.
• Adjusting the structure of experience (timelines, perspectives, internal movies, internal voices) so it becomes easier to feel and act differently.
• Using language more cleanly and precisely, so you’re not accidentally reinforcing stuck patterns.

Benefits in therapy and coaching

Used well, NLP can make therapeutic work:

• More precise because you’re paying close attention to the exact way someone organises their inner world, rather than relying on generic techniques.
• More experiential you’re not only talking about change, you’re creating change right there in the session by shifting images, sounds, feelings and meanings.
• Often faster not in a “quick fix” sense, but in the sense that you can sometimes avoid years of circling when you find the key leverage points in someone’s internal code.

Examples of where I find NLP especially useful in therapy:

• Anxiety and panic mapping and changing the chains of triggers, internal movies and predictions that drive the anxious response.
• Trauma related patterns (carefully, alongside trauma informed work) helping people touch resources and possibilities that were previously “out of reach” of the trauma pattern.
• Habits and compulsions changing the sequence and state that leads up to the behaviour, rather than just will powering against it.
• Self criticism and shame working directly with the internal voice and images so they become less harsh, more supportive, or simply less compelling.

When you combine NLP with Ericksonian hypnosis and good therapeutic relationship, you can often help people make felt changes that talking alone might struggle to reach.

Benefits in business and everyday communication

You don’t have to be in therapy to benefit from NLP. Many of the original applications were actually in business, teaching and negotiation.

Some practical pay-offs:

• Clearer communication noticing whether someone responds more to visual, auditory or feelin based language, and matching your language so they actually get what you mean.
• Better listening tracking not just the content of what someone says, but the structure and assumptions underneath it.
• Presentations and training using stories, examples and stat changes deliberately, so people don’t just understand an idea but feel it and remember it.
• Conflict resolution spotting and loosening rigid “maps of the world” so people can find overlap and possibility instead of staying locked in either/or positions.
• Self-management shifting your own state before an important conversation, meeting or performance, instead of waiting for confidence or calm to magically appear.

At its simplest level, learning NLP makes you more aware of how minds and communication work including your own. That awareness alone often reduces friction and misunderstanding.

How I use NLP now

In my own work, NLP is one of several strands woven together:

• Ericksonian hypnosis and trance using focused states, imagery and indirect approaches to give your system room to discover new options.
• NLP to map the structure of problems and resources, and to design interventions that actually match you, not a theoretical client.
• Other brief-therapy and embodied approaches to make sure change lands not just in your thinking but in your nervous system and daily life.

That might look like:

• Using NLP to unpack exactly how your anxiety “runs”, then using hypnosis to invite your system into different ways of responding.
• Combining timeline/structural work with gentle trance to help you experience your history and future from a more resourced perspective.
• Using NLP language patterns alongside ordinary human conversation, so the session feels natural rather than “techniquey”.

My aim is never to impress you with jargon, but to help you feel and live a difference.

Is NLP right for you?

NLP isn’t a belief system you have to sign up to. You don’t need to understand all the jargon or models for it to help. What matters is:

• Whether you’re curious about how your own mind works.
• Whether you’re open to trying small, precise experiments in how you imagine, feel and respond.
• Whether it makes sense to you that how you represent things internally has a real impact on your experience.

If you’d like to explore how NLP, hypnosis and related approaches might support you in therapy, you can read more about my 1:1 hypnotherapy sessions in Blackpool and the Fylde Coast and anxiety and panic hypnotherapy in Blackpool (add your own links), or you’re welcome to contact me with any questions.

If you’re already an NLP practitioner who suspects that some of the depth of Ericksonian hypnosis got lost along the way and you’d like to bring that back into your work, you can read about my Ericksonian and NLP training for practitioners and the graduate practice group.