What is an Integrated NLP and CBT Therapy Model?
An integrated NLP & CBT Psychotherapy Model first builds on the foundational work of CBT. CBT was developed by Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis, Donald Meichenbaum and many others during the early 1970s.
CBT is based on the cognitive model that suggests that an individual’s current cognitions (i.e., thoughts, beliefs, self-talk, perceptions) about an activating-adverse event strongly influence how the individual feels and behaves. When an individual is taught to critically examine and to adjust the way he/she thinks (through the use of CBT techniques), his/her feelings and behaviors change as well.
CBT is a present oriented, problem focused therapy that seeks to relieve the dysfunctional emotional and behavioral experiences that interfere with effective problem solving and healthy adaptive living. Over the last forty years, CBT has created many cognitive behavioral techniques geared toward helping counseling clients restructure their distorted cognitions, which has lead to clinical results that are often superior to medication. CBT has also thoroughly mapped the basic cognitive patterns for all the major psychopathologies (i.e., Depression, Anxiety, OCD, Addiction, etc.,), which help guide the CBT therapist’s choice of interventions as he/she goes about the work of psychotherapy.
How does NLP fit into CBT?
Where CBT is a formal psychotherapy model, NLP is a communication-training model that offers therapeutic benefits. NLP was originally developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the early 1970’s by modeling the actual language patterns of Milton Erickson (a world renown therapeutic hypnotherapist), Fritz Perls (the creator of Gestalt Psychotherapy), and Virginia Satir (a famous Family Therapist).
Bandler and Grinder were interested in learning how to replicate the verbal and nonverbal interactional patterns that these famous “change makers” used while they worked with their clients. The results of these early modeling experiences became the foundational work of NLP.
NLP’s communication and change techniques have since been applied to the fields of psychotherapy, education, law, medicine, acting, and sports.
NLP offers techniques and processes that are congruent with CBT as well as techniques and insights that go beyond the basic techniques offered by CBT. There are many similarities between CBT and NLP, but one way to distinguish CBT from NLP is that where CBT techniques tend to focus on the client’s “conscious efforts” to cause change, NLP techniques tend to focus more on the client’s “unconscious efforts.” For example, most cognitive restructuring techniques offered in CBT require critical thinking “conscious” or active concentration on the part of the client. Where as many NLP techniques require the client to relax and become opened to guided trance techniques (influenced by Milton Erickson and Fritz Perls’s) where the client’s unconscious mind is being called upon to do the work while their conscious mind is instructed “not to try” or “not to work at the technique,” during the actual implementation of the NLP technique.
Most NLP techniques used in therapy invite the client to close their eyes and to explore their experience using their internal visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems. This focus on working with the clients internal sights, sounds, images, feelings, etc. and his/her unconscious mind serves multiple functions. First, it helps to by-pass the client’s natural resistance to change, and second, it allows the individual to experience a deeper, often more fulfilling experience of the change they are seeking to make.
Ultimately, it is recommended that both CBT and NLP techniques be used throughout the course of therapy to help clients make more efficient and effective changes.
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