Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and How I've Been Using It To Heal

To recap, this is week two of the journey of a therapist in self-administered therapy. I am going through this process because I have been under a lot of work and life pressures which have left me feeling, not only exhausted, but irritable and snappy at every small interruption and frustrated by (and vocal about) the mistakes of others - behaviours I don't feel are kind, or aligned to the person I want to be. Last week we talked about CFT and the impact it had in soothing my mind, ready to take the next step in this six-week therapeutic programme, to improve my overall mental health. In the second week of this self-led therapeutic journey, I turned to Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). So, today we are talking about NLP, what it is, how and why to use it and what effect it has had for me.

What Is NLP?

NLP is often misunderstood as a tool for motivation or confidence, and even though its early conception back in the 70's was marketed as a tool for driving success by, essentially, mapping and copying the habits and thought patterns of already successful individuals, at its core it’s a far more revealing therapeutic technique, which helps to identify the internal rules we live by.

NLP asks questions like:

• What does my system believe must happen in order for me to be safe?

• What meaning am I attaching to this moment?

• What future am I trying to avoid?

Most simplistically Neuro-Linguistic Programming is "the practice of understanding how people organise their thinking, feeling, language and behaviour to produce the results they do." (NLP Academy)

The name is made up of three parts:

Neuro (short for neurological) - representing our internal images, sounds and feelings, including all sensations that come from our senses, such as taste and smell;

Linguistic (a term for the branch of study of language) - the conscious descriptions we give to those neuro elements;

Programming - our behavioural responses to those sensations and descriptions within the neurological and language components.

Despite it's early development being born from a desire to replicate the excellence of successful people, presently it is a more broadly used method not just for personal development and achieving goals, but can also be prescribed for improving wellbeing through the reduction of anxiety, alleviating phobias, treating conditions such as depression or PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and has even been trialled in the reduction of more physical conditions such as allergies and asthma.

So, Why Does It Feature In My 6-Week Plan?

Week 1 was intended to help me speak more kindly to myself about the issues I'm facing. The compassion-focused therapy technique gave me an anchor to help me reduce my stress about overwork. It doesn't change the amount of work I have, it just changes how I speak to myself about it, which was a surprisingly effective technique to feel like the load was already lightening.

Week 2 of utilising NLP then builds on this to establish my underlying thought processes and why I get into these knots and stresses between work and life, why I feel the weight of every new ask and every interruption. It's to help me recognise where I may have adopted unhelpful thought patterns. 

These two initial phases in the first two weeks are also groundwork to set myself up for week 3, ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).

What Have I Learned From The NLP Week?

I came into this work feeling frustrated, snappy, and constantly irritated by interruptions. On the surface, it looked like stress, workload, or a lack of boundaries. But when I slowed down and followed the thread properly, a very different picture emerged.

Let me set the scene and then peel back my thoughts for you, like layers of an onion...

At the very outermost layer, the visible one, I am at my desk, I am concentrating on something. I'm in a flow, I finally feel motivated and capable of getting to the end of the task I'm working on (whatever that may be) and I'm feeling confident that this thing is going to be important and meaningful when I've finished it, even if I have to sit here for 13 hours without a break to do it. The world is quiet. All is working in my favour.

Right when I'm at my flowiest, the door knocks, the phone rings, something interrupts my hyperfocus and I am forced to snap out of my focus and into this new situation or task.

Initial interpretation: “Interruptions ruin my focus.”

Layer two. I feel I have to answer but I do so begrudgingly. I radiate frustration and irritability to the person who has interrupted, despite knowing that their intentions are absolutely not to be harmful and most likely the opposite. They are probably looking to enjoy time with me or take me out to dinner - a lovely thing. But now is not a good time for me. Now I've answered, I know they will talk to me until my moment of flow state has passed. For most people this would just mean picking up again with the stupidly long task later or tomorrow, but I know I have a finite amount of attention for tasks like this and it will be hard to get back into the frame of mind needed to make good progress.

Emerging interpretation: “If I lose focus, I may not be able to continue - maybe for days, or maybe for weeks.”

Layer three. Why does it matter if I don't get back to this particular task later or tomorrow? So what? Well, it's very important, every task is very important. Every single thing I do is important and meaningful and if I don't finish this thing, that will have a knock on effect to the next thing and overall the plan pushes back further.

New interpretation: "The present moment is carrying future consequences" and "Every present task matters equally for that future."

This brings us to layer four. What plan? Did I even know I had a plan? Well no, I don't have a plan exactly, but because everything I am working towards is in the hope of changing everything about the future, it all plays some part in an ambiguous grand plan of sorts. Whether it's a work task (aiming to create a strong and capable team so that I can leave knowing I have not failed) or a personal one (create a small wellbeing empire which allows me to write and travel while supporting people to get stronger and more resilient in their own mental health).

This moment hit me the hardest, because the work and personal rules I am living by are: “I must earn the right to leave.” and “If I lose access to my time and focus, I may lose my chance at a different future.”

So, I learned that I wasn’t reacting to interruptions as they were, I was reacting to what they meant. At an unconscious level, my system was operating on a rule that suggested that every single task I do is of equal importance to the future I have been trying to build, and that every interruption then poses a threat to that future. This was a surprisingly emotional realisation.

It explained why even small disruptions felt disproportionately threatening. They weren’t just interruptions — they felt like threats to possibility, escape, and choice.

This realisation alone taught me plenty! Just being aware of this can help me to make some better judgements about what tasks I prioritise and which ones I can walk away from mid-flow, without fearing for my entire future. But this isn't the end of the excavation... The mind-cracking work continued...

To get to a place of understanding what about this big, vague future plan seemed so important, I imagined what I would move towards if I didn’t need to prove anything at all to myself or to anyone else, and if everything were to flow without interruptions.

My body didn’t lean toward a job title, a financial milestone or a perfectly planned future. It leaned toward something much simpler:

Sun. Warmth. Movement. Learning. Lightness.

This, on its own doesn't surprise me particularly, but what I did come to recognise is that I have always treated these needs as if they are a particular place. Somewhere that geographically I need to place myself to experience those things. But when I dig into why I want to be there rather than here, it quickly became clear that I crave that not as a place, but as a state. A lifestyle I align to, that I find it difficult to visualise and recreate in a cold and wet country.

“What does ‘sun’ represent for me emotionally?” My answer:

• Warmth

• Love

• Relaxation

• Gentle joy

• A version of myself that wants to move, eat well, and care for my body

• Health driven by desire, not by force

That’s when another important insight landed:

I’m not motivated by outcomes — I’m motivated by energy.

The outcome I'm trying to reach, is not the physical destination, but a particular type of energy. I’d been trying to force behaviour (work harder, push through, stay disciplined) in order to get to a warmer climate so that I can feel better. But for me, it actually works the other way around. When I feel warm, alive, and resourced, healthier behaviour and joyful habits follow naturally, so I would need to create them here to give myself that motivation anyway - A real catch-22! 

🔁 SUMMARY

“Interruptions ruin my focus”
→ “Losing focus threatens progress”
→ “Stalled progress threatens my future”
→ “I must protect time to avoid regret”
→ “I must earn the right to leave”
→ “What I’m actually moving toward is warmth and aliveness”
→ “If I can create that state now, the pressure eases.”

The Shift That Sets Up the Next Phase

By the end of Week 2, I wasn’t left with a grand plan or a big decision.
Instead, I was left with an anchor statement which might help me keep this new understanding at the forefront of my actions:

“I move better when I feel warm inside.”

This isn’t about pretending the British weather is sunny, or bypassing difficult realities. It’s about recognising that my nervous system doesn’t respond well to threat or pressure, it responds better to felt safety and vitality.

That insight doesn’t solve everything, but it loosens the grip of urgency just enough to create space. And that space is exactly what the next phase of this journey needs.

In Week 3, I’ll be exploring Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — a method that doesn’t aim to remove difficult thoughts or feelings, but helps us live meaningfully alongside them.

For now, Week 2 has helped me understand why the pressure was there — and what it was trying, clumsily, to protect me from. As actions to support me in my new understanding, I have been focusing on bringing that 'warmth' into my everyday. Sitting with a coffee and peaceful music without multitasking for a few moments, reading my book instead of scrolling my social media, exploring more meaningful interactions rather than rushing each conversation.

How Can You Employ This Technique?

If you’d like to explore your own patterns using NLP, you can do so through gentle self-reflection or journaling. The aim isn’t to fix yourself, but to understand how your mind is linking situations, meaning, and outcomes.

You could try working through questions like these:

1. What’s the situation that keeps triggering a strong reaction for me?
   (Be specific — an interruption, a request, a feeling, a person.)

2. What do I notice myself feeling, thinking, or doing when this happens?
   (Emotion, body response, behaviour, inner dialogue.)

3. What does my mind tell me this situation means?
   (About me, others, my competence, safety, or worth.)

4. If that meaning were true, what does my system believe would happen next?
   (This might be immediate or long-term — there’s no right answer.)

5. What rule seems to be operating underneath this reaction?
   (“If X happens, then Y will occur.”)

6. What is this rule trying to protect me from experiencing?
   (Disappointment, failure, rejection, overwhelm, regret, loss of control.)

7. If I didn’t need this rule in this moment, what would change inside me?
   (Not what you’d do, but how you might feel.)

You don’t need to answer all of these in one sitting. Often, insight comes simply from noticing how reasonable your reactions are once their logic is made visible.

But of course, I won't leave you with just journal prompts alone... If journaling feels hard to do alone, NLP Zenny can guide you through the same questions, one layer at a time and help reflect back what’s emerging.

As with the previous week, I have developed an upgrade to Zenny, the Happy Citta Virtual Therapist, who can help by working through this process with you, reflecting back what you answer to each question in the process as a summary, offering a mirror that can help you put words to your inner processes - the rules you're essentially living by, and offering a potential anchor statement that you can embed in your mind for those difficult moments, to help remind you of how to find ease or a healthy pathway through the situation you're experiencing.

NLP Zenny is available now and is completely free for Happy Citta Members (Membership is also free) for the duration of my six-week therapeutic intervention.

If you're interested in following along on this journey, you can sign up to get the latest news on the journey and be notified of the ongoing releases and upgrades the Zenny, here: