People, including your patients or clients, can believe a lot of strange things. Some of the strange things they believe might preclude using complementary or integrative approaches to solving their health problems. They might truly believe that pharmaceutical products or surgery would be their best bet, or their only options, for maintaining or regaining their health. It is difficult—and perhaps impossible—to change firmly held beliefs directly, as people often refuse to be persuaded by the facts. In such cases, an indirect approach is best.
Start by asking about the person’s positive intent. It might not always be enough to know the individual’s general intent, which could be something like “good health” or “absence of pain.” One woman, for example, chose back surgery over massage for back pain that could have easily been alleviated by massage, because she believed that a massage therapist would be critical of her weight and also believed that a surgeon wouldn’t care. She decided that she would try massage when a surgeon told her she needed to lose weight before having the surgery.
Our natural inclination is to assume that others share our basic beliefs about what is good and useful, but that isn’t always the case. Because others will not agree automatically when you give them your reasons for holding a particular belief, so start by asking them about the reasons behind their belief and the evidence procedure they use to support it.
Fortunately, even thinking about the positive intent behind a belief can change the belief subtly. Then even at those times when others don’t immediately change their beliefs, you will learn more about how they had accepted and maintained beliefs that were not serving their long-term best interests and the kind of evidence they might require to change.
Send your questions about how other-than-conscious communication skills can hurt or help your patients and clients to Joel P. Bowman (Joel@SCS-Matters.com) or Debra Basham (Debra@SCS-Matters.com), co-developers of Subtle Communication Systems. We will provide answers to those for you. For more information about Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis or Hypnotherapy, or about the Imagine Healing Process, visit:http://ImagineHealing.info or http://SurgicalSupport.info.
Healing with Language: Your Key to Effective Mind-Body Communication is available for a limited time for $10 plus $5 shipping within the U.S. For volume orders and overseas shipping, check with Debra. See the Table of Contents and List of Exercises in PDF format for more information about this comprehensive text and training manual.