Working with addictions using NLP, Hypnosis & Provocative Change Works

In private practice I am seeing more and more people for addictions. Many of these are drug related and especially cocaine and crack cocaine. Last year I did some work with the Leeds Community Drugs Treatment Services working with the practitioners who had a tough task seeing an apparantly endless stream of demanding clients.

In 2008 I am exploring some new opportunities for working in this arena and am especially interested in the perceived "lost causes" who are seen to have little or no chance of improvement. There is a whole world of difference between "working in the trenches" in such situations and the theory of working with clients. In fact after a decade of working among NLPers I could probably name just 10 really skilled individuals whom I would refer clients to! The challenge for many of them is that they simply have not had a great deal of expeience with real life clients and instead spend most time discussing their "understanding of NLP". There is IMO no substitute for experience and in 2006 when I appeared on BBC Radio for 26 weeks although it was unpaid, the true payment was having to work very quickly live on the air resolving a whole range of client phobias. I only realised later just how much this pressure and working to time constraints had upped my skill levels in this area.

Provocative Change Works for Addictions

Most clients who come to see me privately have never heard of NLP and simply want a solution to their problem. Many of these are literally at their wit's end and stuck in an emotional spiral of experiencing the same behavioural patterns over and over again. Later this year I am pleased to be invited to the IASH Conference in the USA, where I would present on the Provocative Change Works approach which I find works best with really "stuck states"

I describe this approach as

“... the process I use to provoke useful change in clients, allowing the client to easily move from an unhelpful stuck state, to a greater state of personal freedom. This process can work both conversationally and through relaxation, using humour and the pointing out many of the absurdities and contradictions in society’s stereotypical views on life. Provocative Change Works always focussing on the here and now with each client, rather than on past events. This is often done in an irreverent and good humoured manner, to produce accelerated change.
Crucially Provocative Change Works demonstrates that the client’s ability to discover this change is not time based, but rather the manner in which each of us pays attention and what it is that each of us pays attention to, in any given moment.”

With many drug addictions, the addictive element manifests in two distinct ways, which are the actual addiction to the drug and also the habitual addiction. The latter is created by how the person pays attention and what they pay attention to, that then maintains the unhelpful behaviour. At present the plan is for me to work with three groups who have these type of problems with a different degrees of difficulty.I also intend to write up the results and see if the patterns that appear with these client groups are the same as those that appear in private practice.

For more info on Provocative Change Works see
http://www.provocativechangeworks.com/
For details of my private practice see http://www.nickkemp.com/