What Happens When You Combine EFT & NLP?

After I had incorporated EFT, the “tapping” business, into my practice, I received many queries. “Do you not use NLP anymore?” “How do the two disciplines compare?” “Has one replaced the other?” EFT and NLP makes for a perfect marriage, each complimenting the other, beautifully. Aspects of NLP training allow for gathering information, that is achieving a much clearer understanding of the presented problem. Also, NLP teaches techniques to speed up change work, that is, allowing for less effort and time spent to “program in” preferred responses to various things.

The Swish Pattern for instance, used properly, allows the person using it to teach the brain “When I’m in the particular situation, I no longer want this old response, I want this new response.” The elegance of the Swish Pattern is that it utilizes the “trigger” (a signal from the environment) that evoked the unwanted response, and “hooks up” a preferred way of responding to that same trigger.

Allow me to borrow a statement from a client I had taught the Swish to – “Whenever ‘X’ happened at work, I’d be devastated. If it happened one or two more times in the same week, I’d end up spending most of the weekend hiding in bed. My mind would repeat the scene(s) over and over again.” After we “swished” the problem, she stated, “The very same situation would put me in a resourceful state, rather than ruin my week!”

So, NLP provides tools to change mental states, to change unwanted reactions, to generate new responses, behaviours and attitudes about things. Every once in a while a physical reaction (a kinesthetic, in the world of psychology; kinesthetics also includes emotional responses) is so overwhelming that the person experiencing it ... well, to borrow once again from a client – “When he acts that way, it’s like I blow a fuse. I can’t think properly, I can’t react. Later, I beat myself up for letting him get to me like that.” We had done the Swish, and applied several other techniques, all to no avail. It was around the time I had learned EFT, so I said, “When we experience such an overwhelming feeling like you do, it can stop changework cold. I’ve just learned a new technique whose sole purpose is to reduce or remove, unwanted feelings. Let’s give it a go.”

I then tapped her, and very quickly, the emotional response was down 80+%. This allowed her to concentrate on programming in a better way of responding. Interestingly, because she reacted differently to her 17 year old son, he too began to make changes, which in turn reenforced her new way of dealing with him – a win-win!

So NLP training has not been replaced by EFT, nor does it compete. Each supplements and compliments the other in such a way that more can be done in less time, and both can be learned by the individual, should they so desire. I have now applied the combination on allergies, phobias, compulsions, fear ‘ofs,’ procrastination, motivation, self esteem issues and a further list far too long for this article. Both the clients and I will attest to the pleasure derived from achieving a satisfactory outcome even more easily.

Dr. Alexander R. Lees