Neuro-Linguistic Programming in San francisco East Bay

Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, was started in the early 1970s by John Grinder, a linguistics professor, and Richard Bandler, a mathematics & information research student, at the University of Santa Cruz, California. Referencing the works of Noam Chomsky, Alfred Korzybski, Gregory Bateson, Fritz Pearls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson, they desired to understand the shared secrets of successful people and determine if duplicating these patterns of behavior and thinking would build success. They, too, believed in the theory of Neuroplasticity and sought out an approach to enable people to change their current limiting behaviors and beliefs to positive and healthy patterns of behavior promoting positive physical and emotional effects. Handler and Grinder identified a practical approach to self-exploration through connecting specific and direct links between our verbal & non-verbal language, our internal processing (neurology), and behaviors (programming). 

Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy: A Client-Centered Approach

The process of our Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy in the San Francisco area leaves the client in charge – from initiating to concluding the therapy. Each session, along with the overall therapeutic direction, is determined by the outcomes set by the client. The client can have a desired outcome that forms the focus for the overall therapy with individual desired outcomes for each session. As these outcomes can shift during the process of therapy, nothing can be assumed until the end of each session.

Indeed, this type of therapy is like exploring, not knowing how each session is going to emerge and allowing it to unfold as it needs to. Neuro-Linguistic Programming in San Francisco has the premise that the client already has the answers and solutions within their own system. Our job is to reveal them and collaboratively put them to use for the client. Our skills lie in our ability to enable the client to discover the inner structure that is generating the presenting problem(s) so that the client can then have a clear idea of choosing a restructuring that would better serve them. 

Working with visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and cognitive channels of information, Neuro-Linguistic Psychotherapy enables tapping into the client’s deep structure, stored at an unconscious level, enabling the client to express this information somatically using physiology, symbolically with metaphors and other representations, and cognitively using the wide range of language patterns.

Neuro-linguistic psychotherapy's ability to work incisively with language means that determining the source of the problem is reached quickly, without dwelling too much on peripheral history, while creating the utmost sense of safety.  Depending on the presenting issue and, more significantly, the desired outcome, the therapy can be short-term – or long-term. The therapy may be structured or flexible depending on the needs of individual clients.