Anxiety, NLP and the Credit Crunch

Historically around one in five of the clients I see in private practice would be for anxiety related issues. In the last 12 months this has increased to one in two!

The Credit Crunch and Anxiety

I suspect that a raft of issues have contributed to this trend including fuel price increases, banking problems, increased food prices, house price increases and other elements that have all been generalised under the term "the credit crunch" As I write this I can see a caption on Sky TV that proclaims "Consumer confidence falls to its lowest level since 1974"

All of these occurances inevitably affect the financial status of people and cause a big upswing in anxiety levels

I am mindful of a famous line out of Blackadder where Edmund says the following to Baldrick

"I feel like a penguin, everywhere I look there is a bill in front of me"

Talking Therapy and the "How questions"

I work alongside many psychotherapists and other talking therapy individuals and all colleagues report a big increase in client enquiries, most of these being for stress related conditions.

One of the greatest mistakes in treating anxiety is to take the analytical approach, where the therapist relentlessley seeks to dig into the client's past in order to try and find the "root of the problem" My experience from having worked with literally hundreds of clients is that "the why questions" are not as crucial as "the how questions" The key question in working with clients is to consider "How do they do that?" Once the strategy has been elicited, then its far easier to to change the stuck state to one where the client experiences greater freedom.

Provocative Change Works

Many colleagues are surprised that often client conditions are resolved within 3 sessions, whereas with many approaches a client can see a therapist for months on end. I have found the Provocative Change Works approach (see http://www.provocativechangeworks.com/) to really accelerate great results, especially with anxiety related conditions. I was delighted to receive an e-mail from a colleague saying how he had great results using many of the Provocative Change Works techniques with a number of clients with anxiety related issues.

The value of peer group interactions

One of the reasons why I have so much success with clients and in developing new approaches to problems is that I have great contact with some of the best minds in change work. These include Frank Farrelly, Steve Andreas and Andrew T Austin. All these individuals are passionate about helping people and demonstrate a skill level that is uncommon in this day and age!

http://www.nickkemp.com/