[Neurons] Is NLP dangerous?

[Andrew Bryant]

>From Andrew Bryant 

Reproduced from www.selfleadership.com/blog
I was recently asked to comment on the statement, “NLP is dangerous as it 
pigeon holes people and their behaviour.” The author of the statement feels as 
NLP is based on models and assumptions and a certain set of conditions then the 
user of that model cannot understand its limitations and the assumptions made.
It is a truism that people fear what they don’t understand and the statement 
show little or no knowledge of Neurolinguistic Programming or NLP for short.
NLP evolved as a model of language. The conditions of that modeling were the 
observation of effective therapists such as Virginia Satir, Fritz Perls and 
Milton Erickson. These therapists were able to create transformations in the 
thinking, feeling and behaviours of their patients through just conversation. 
Richard Bandler (a student of computer science) and John Grinder ( a 
linguistics professor) were curious about how changing language creates change 
and came to the conclusion that language is the software of the mind.
The first model of NLP is the Meta Model, which is a series of challenging 
questions to ill-formed sentences. For example, if someone says, “She makes me 
angry!” we can ask, “Who is she?” “What is it that she does that causes you to 
choose to feel angry?” “Does this always happen?” “What if it didn’t always 
happen?” “What might you choose to do instead?”
Through the use of the Meta Model we are able to bring awareness to the 
individual about how they have re-presented reality and then languaged that 
representation. This last sentence highlights a principle of NLP that pre-dates 
its founders and goes back to Alfred Korzybski , who said “The map is not the 
territory.” More simply put we respond not to reality (the physical world) but 
to our mental map of reality or how we perceive the physical world. This is 
demonstrated when you interview two or more witnesses to an event such as a car 
crash, each witness represents the event through their own perception and 
creates their own representation of the event.
Building on this principle the founders of NLP discovered that different people 
had different preferences as to how they pay attention to the physical world. 
Some people pay more attention to visual information, some to auditory 
information, some to Kinethetic (sensation) information and some people 
emphasise their thinking about the information and so respond only rationally 
or logically (Auditory Digital response).
This information is useful in building rapport and increasing communication 
effectiveness. If someone prefers visual information and you spend your time 
telling them about your idea, you will be less effective than if you show them 
some pictures or charts.
How we filter and then respond to information is known as a Meta Program. The 
representational Meta Program I have just described is the first of sixty such 
cognitive filters that advanced students of NLP and its newest development, 
Neuro Semantics, have available to understand how people operate.
It has been my experience that when people are first introduced to NLP and the 
representation system, they may over generalise and make pidgeon holing 
statements such as, “oh he is a kinesthetic so that’s why he behaves like 
that.” I can fully appreciate how such a statement might lead to some 
incredulity on the validity of NLP, but to label NLP ineffective base on such a 
novice expression is akin to labelling Einstein Theory of relativity invalid on 
a high school student’s inability to explain a physics experiment.
In my last paragraph I just demonstrated two techniques of NLP, pacing and 
metaphor. Pacing is used to establish rapport by agreeing with some element of 
a person’s representation of the world and metaphor is used carry over meaning 
from one context to another to create a new meaning.
So is NLP dangerous and does it pidgeon hole people?
“Dangerous to who and how?”

NLP is a model of human thinking and communication; it is based on several 
principles that include: the map is not the territory, people are not broken – 
they work perfectly well (according to their maps) and that behind every 
behaviour is a positive intention.
Is it dangerous to want to understand how people are representing their 
reality, to acknowledge that they are not broken and therefore have the 
resources to see the world anew, or to want to understand intention so that 
behaviours create the result required?
I don’t think so.
Can NLP be misused and misrepresented by novices or by those bent on doing 
evil? Then the answer is yes. This is also true of money and power which can be 
forces for good and evil.  My personal belief is that ignorance breeds evil, 
ignorance of the outcome of our behaviours. In NLP we have a safeguard for such 
ignorance; it is known as the ecology frame. The ecology frame asks the 
question, “will this thought/action be useful, safe and beneficial for self and 
others, in the short and long term?”
What if our politicians were to ask such ecology questions? Now then the world 
would be a safer place :)
Cheers,
Andrew Bryant 
Director, Self Leadership International
P:+65 6887 4335
E:  andrew at selfleadership.com
W: www.selfleadership.com