Every rose has a thorn.
10 Ways to Protect Yourself From NLP Mind Control
JASON LOUV
NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming is one of the world’s
most prevalent methods of mind control, used by everyone from sales callers to
politicians to media pundits, and it’s nasty to the core.
Here’s ten ways to make sure nobody uses it on you… ever.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a method for controlling people’s
minds
that was invented by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in
the 1970s,
became popular in the psychoanalytic, occult and New Age
worlds in the 1980s,
and advertising, marketing and politics in the 1990s and
2000s.
It’s become so interwoven with how people are
communicated to and marketed at
that its use is largely invisible. It’s also somewhat of
a pernicious, devilish force in the world—nearly everybody in the business of influencing people
has studied at least some of its techniques. Masters of it are notorious for
having a Rasputin-like ability to trick people in incredible ways
—most of all themselves.
After explaining a bit about what NLP is
and where it came from,
I’m going to break down 10 ways to inoculate yourself
against its use.
You’ll likely be spotting it left, right and center in
the media with a few tips on what to look for.
Full disclosure: During my 20s, I spent years studying
New Age, magical and religious systems
for changing consciousness. One of them was NLP. I’ve
been on both ends of the spectrum:
I’ve had people ruthlessly use NLP to attempt to control
me, and I’ve also trained in it
and even used it in the advertising world. Despite early
fascination, by 2008 or so
I had largely come to the conclusion that it’s next to
useless—a way of manipulating language
that greatly overestimates its own effectiveness as a
discipline,
really doesn’t achieve much in the way of any kind of
lasting change,
and contains no real core of respect for people or even
true understanding of how people work.
After throwing it to the wayside, however,
I became convinced that understanding NLP is crucial
simply so that people can resist its use.
It’s kind of like the whole PUA thing that was popular in the mid-00s—a
group of a few techniques that worked for a few unscrupulous people until the
public figured out what was going on
and rejected it, like the body identifying and rejecting
foreign material.
What is NLP, and where did it come from?
“Neuro-linguistic programming” is a marketing term for a
“science” that two Californians—
Richard Bandler and John Grinder—came up with in the
1970s.
Bandler was a stoner student at UC Santa Cruz (just like
I later was in the 00s),
then a mecca for psychedelics, hippies and radical
thinking (now a mecca for Silicon Valley hopefuls). Grinder was at the time an
associate professor in linguistics at the university
(he had previously served as a Captain in the US Special
Forces and in the intelligence community, *ahem* not that this, you know, is
important… aheh…).
Together, they
worked at modeling the techniques of Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt therapy),
family therapist Virginia Satir and, most importantly, the
preternaturally gifted hypnotherapist
Milton Erickson. Bandler and
Grinder sought to reject much of what they saw as the ineffectiveness of talk
therapy and cut straight to the heart of what techniques actually worked
to produce behavioral change.
Inspired by the computer revolution—Bandler was a
computer science major—
they also sought to develop a psychological programming
language for human beings.
What they came up with was a kind of evolution of
hypnotherapy—while classical hypnosis
depends on techniques for putting patients into
suggestive trances
(even to the point of losing consciousness on command),
NLP is much less heavy-handed:
it’s a technique of layering
subtle meaning into
spoken or written language
so that you can implant suggestions into a person’s
unconscious mind without them knowing
what you’re doing.
Though mainstream therapists rejected NLP as
pseudoscientific nonsense
(it has been officially peer reviewed and discredited as
an intervention technique
—lots more on that here), it nonetheless caught on.
It was still the 1970s, and the Human Potential Movement
was in full swing
—and NLP was the new darling. Immediately building a
publishing, speaking and training empire,
by 1980 Bandler had made over $800,000 from his
creation—he was even being called on
to train corporate leaders, the army and the CIA.
Self-help gurus like Tony Robbins used NLP techniques to become
millionaires in the 1980s
(Robbins now has an estimated net worth of $480 million).
By the middle of the decade, NLP was such big business
that lawsuits and wars
had erupted over who had the rights to teach it, or even
to use the term “NLP.”
But by that time, Bandler had bigger problems than
copyright disputes:
he was on trial for the alleged murder of prostitute
Corine Christensen in November 1986.
The prosecution claimed that Bandler had shot
Christensen, 34, point-blank in the face with a .357 Magnum in a drug deal gone
bad. According to the press at the time,
Bandler had discovered an even better way to get people
to like him than NLP—cocaine
—and become embroiled in a far darker game, even, than
mind control.
A much-recommended investigation into the case
published by Mother Jones in 1989 opens with these chilling lines:
In the morning Corine
Christensen last snorted cocaine, she found herself, straw in hand,
looking down the barrel of a
.357 Magnum revolver.
When the gun exploded,
momentarily piercing the autumn stillness,
it sent a single bullet on a
diagonal path through her left nostril and into her brain.
Christensen slumped over her
round oak dining table, bleeding onto its glass top,
a loose-leaf notebook, and a
slip of yellow memo paper on which she had scrawled, in red ink,
DON’T KILL US ALL. Choking,
she spit blood onto a wine goblet, a tequila bottle,
and the shirt of the man who
would be accused of her murder,
then slid sideways off the chair and fell on
her back. Within minutes she lay still.
As Christensen lay dying, two
men left her rented town house in a working-class section
of Santa Cruz, California.
One was her former boyfriend, James Marino, an admitted cocaine dealer and
convicted burglar. The other, Richard Bandler, was known internationally as the
cofounder
of Neuro-Linguistic
Programming (NLP), a controversial approach to psychology and communication
About 12 hours later, on the evening of November 3, 1986,
Richard Bandler was arrested
and charged with the murder.
Bandler’s defense was, simply, that Marino had killed
Christensen, not him.
Many at the time alleged he used NLP techniques on the
stand to escape conviction.
Yet Bandler was also alleged to actually use a gun in NLP
sessions in order to produce
dramatic psychological changes in clients—a technique
that was later mirrored by Hollywood
in the movie Fight Club, in which Brad Pitt’s
character pulls a gun on a gas station attendant
and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t pursue his dreams
in life. That was, many said, Bandler’s MO.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Bandler was indeed let
off, and the story was quickly buried
—I’ve never spoken to a student of NLP who’s ever heard
of the murder case,
I’ll note, and I’ve spoken to a lot. The case hardly impeded
the growing popularity of NLP,
however, which was now big business, working its way not
only into the toolkit of psychotherapists but also into nearly every corner of
the political and advertising worlds,
having grown far beyond the single personage of Richard
Bandler,
though he continued (and continues) to command outrageous
prices for NLP trainings
throughout the world.
Today, the techniques of NLP and Ericksonian-style
hypnotic writing can be readily seen
in the world of Internet marketing, online get-rich-quick
schemes and scams.
(For more on this, see the excellent article Scamworld:
‘Get rich quick’ schemes mutate into an online monster by
my friend Joseph Flatley, one of the best articles I’ve ever read on the Web.)
Their most prominent public usage has likely been by
Barack Obama, whose 2008
“Change” campaign was a masterpiece of Ericksonian
permissive hypnosis.
The celebrity hypnotist and illusionist Derren Brown also
demonstrates NLP techniques
in his routine.
How exactly does this thing work?
NLP is taught in a pyramid structure, with the more
advanced techniques
reserved for multi-thousand-dollar seminars. To
oversimplify an overcomplicated subject,
it more or less works like this: first, the user (or
“NLPer,” as NLP people often refer to themselves—and I should note here that
the large majority of NLP people, especially those
who are primarily therapists, are likely well-meaning) of
NLP pays very, very close attention
to the person they’re working with. By watching subtle
cues like eye movement, skin flush,
pupil dilation and nervous tics, a skilled NLP person can
quickly determine:
a) What side of the brain a person is predominantly
using;
b) What sense (sight, smell, etc.) is most predominant in
their brain;
c) How their brain stores and utilizes information (ALL
of this can be gleaned from eye movements);
d) When they’re lying or making information up.
After this initial round of information gathering, the
“NLPer” begins to slowly and subtly mimic
the client, taking on not only their body language but
also their speech mannerisms,
and will begin speaking with language patterns designed
to target the client’s primary sense.
An NLP person essentially carefully fakes the social cues that
cause a person to drop their guard
and enter a state of openness and suggestibility.
For instance, a person predominantly focused on sight
will be spoken to in language
using visual metaphors—”Do you see what I’m saying?”
“Look at it this way”
—while a person for which hearing is the dominant sense
will be spoken to in auditory language—”Hear me out,” “I’m listening to you
closely.”
By mirroring body language and linguistic patterns, the
NLPer is attempting to achieve
one very specific response: rapport. Rapport is the mental and
physiological state
that a human enters when they let their social guard
down, and it is generally achieved
when a person comes to the conclusion that the person
they’re talking to is just like them.
See how that works, broadly? An NLP person essentially
carefully fakes the social cues
that cause a person to drop their guard and enter a state
of openness and suggestibility.
Once rapport is achieved, the NLPer will then begin subtly
leading the interaction.
Having mirrored the other person, they can now make
subtle changes to actually influence
the other person’s behavior. Combined with subtle
language patterns, leading questions
and a whole slew of other techniques, a skilled NLPer can
at this point steer the other person wherever they like, as long as the other person isn’t aware of what’s
happening
and thinks everything is arising organically, or has given consent.
That means it’s actually fairly hard to use NLP to get
people to act out-of-character,
but it can be used for engineering responses within a
person’s normal range of behaviour
—like donating to a cause, making a decision they were
putting off,
or going home with you for the night if they might have
considered it anyway.
From this point, the NLPer will seek to do two things—elicit and anchor.
Eliciting happens when an NLPer uses leading and
language to engineer an emotional state
—for instance, hunger. Once a state has been elicited,
the NLPer can then anchor it with a physical cue—for instance,
touching your shoulder.
In theory, if done right, the NLPer can then call up the hungry state
any time they touch your shoulder in the same way. It’s
conditioning, plain and simple.
How can I make
sure nobody pulls this horseshit on me?
I’ve had all kinds of people attempt to “NLP” me into
submission, including multiple people
I’ve worked for over extended periods of time, and even
people I’ve been in relationships with. Consequently, I’ve developed a pretty
keen immune response to it. I’ve also studied its mechanics very closely,
largely to resist the nonsense of said people. Here’s a few key methods I’ve
picked up.
1. Be extremely wary of people copying your body
language.
If you’re talking to somebody who may be into NLP, and
you notice that they’re sitting in exactly
the same way as you, or mirroring the way you have your
hands,
test them by making a few movements and seeing if they do
the same thing.
Skilled NLPers will be better at masking this than newer
ones, but newer ones will always immediately copy the same movement. This is a
good time to call people on their shit.
2. Move your eyes in random and unpredictable patterns.
Such NLP. So sociopathy. Wow.
This is freaking hilarious to
do to troll NLPers. Especially in the initial stages of rapport induction,
an NLP user will be paying incredibly close attention to
your eyes. You may think it’s because
they’re intensely
interested in what you’re saying. They are, but not because they actually care
about your thoughts: They’re watching your eye movements to see how you store
and access information. In a few minutes, they’ll not
only be able to tell when you’re lying
or making something up, they’ll also be able to figure
out what parts of your brain you’re using
when you’re speaking, which can then lead them to be so
clued in to what you’re thinking
that they almost come across as having some kind of
psychic insight into your innermost thoughts.
A clever hack for this is just to randomly dart your eyes
around—look up to the right, to the left,
side to side, down… make it seem natural, but do it
randomly and with no pattern.
This will drive an NLP person *utterly nuts* because
you’ll be throwing off their calibration.
3. Do not let anybody touch you.
This is pretty obvious and kind of goes without saying in
general.
But let’s say you’re having a conversation with somebody
you know is into NLP,
and you find yourself in a heightened emotional
state—maybe you start laughing really hard,
or get really angry, or something similar—and the person
you’re talking to touches you
while you’re in that state. They might, for instance, tap
you on the shoulder. What just happened? They anchored
you so that later, if they want to put you back into the state you
were just in,
they can (or so the wayward logic of NLP dictates) touch
you in the same place.
Just be like, oh hell no you did not.
4. Be wary of vague language.
One of the primary techniques that NLP took from Milton Erickson is the use of vague language
to induce hypnotic trance. Erickson found that the more
vague language is,
the more it leads people into trance, because there is
less that a person is liable to disagree with
or react to. Alternately, more specific language will
take a person out of trance.
(Note Obama’s use of this specific technique in the
“Change” campaign,
a word so vague that anybody could read anything into it.)
5. Be wary of permissive language.
“Feel free to relax.” “You’re welcome to test drive this
car if you like.” “You can enjoy this as much
as you like.” Watch the f*k out for this. This was a
major insight of pre-NLP hypnotists like Erickson: the best way to get somebody
to do something, including going into a trance, is by allowing them
to give you permission to do so. Because of this, skilled
hypnotists will NEVER command you outright to do something—i.e. “Go into a
trance.”
They WILL say things like “Feel free to become as relaxed
as you like.”
6. Be wary of gibberish.
Nonsense phrases like “As you release this feeling more
and more you will find yourself
moving into present alignment with the sound of your
success more and more.”
This kind of gibberish is the bread and butter of the
pacing-and-leading phase of NLP;
the hypnotist isn’t actually saying anything, they’re
just trying to program
your internal emotional states and move you towards where
they want you to go.
ALWAYS say “Can you be more specific about that” or “Can
you explain exactly what you mean?” This does two things: it interrupts this
whole technique, and it also forces the conversation
into specific language, breaking the trance-inducing use
of vague language we discussed in #4.
7. Read between the lines.
NLP people will consistently use language with hidden or
layered meanings.
For instance “Diet, nutrition and sleep with me are the
most important things, don’t you think?”
On the surface, if you heard this sentence quickly, it
would seem like an obvious statement
that you would probably agree with without much thought.
Yes, of course diet, nutrition and sleep are important things, sure, and this
person’s really into being healthy, that’s great.
But what’s the layered-in message? “Diet, nutrition and sleep with me are the most important things, don’t
you think?” Yep, and you just unconsciously agreed to it.
Skilled NLPers can be incredibly subtle with this.
8. Watch your attention.
Be very careful about zoning out around NLP people—it’s
an invitation to leap in
with an unconscious cue. Here’s an example: An NLP user
who was attempting to get me to write
for his blog for free noticed I appeared not to be paying
attention and was looking into the distance, and then started using the
technique listed in #7 by talking about how he never has to pay for anything
because media outlets send him review copies of books and albums for free.
“Everything for free,” he began hissing at me. “I get everything. For. Free.”
Obvious, no?
9. Don’t agree to anything.
If you find yourself being led to make a quick decision
on something, and feel you’re being steered, leave the situation. Wait 24 hours
before making any decisions, especially financial ones.
Do NOT let yourself get swept up into making an emotional
decision in the spur of the moment. Sales people are armed with NLP techniques
specifically for engineering impulse buys. Don’t do it. Leave, and use your
rational mind.
10. Trust your intuition.
And the foremost and primary rule: If your gut tells you
somebody is fucking with you,
or you feel uneasy around them, trust it. NLP people
almost always seem “off,” dodgy,
or like used car salesmen. Flee, or request they show you
the respect of not applying NLP techniques when interacting with you.
Hopefully this short guide will be of assistance to you
in resisting this annoying
and pernicious modern form of black magic. Take it with
you on your phone or a printout
next time you’re at a used car sales lot, getting signed
up for a gym membership,
or watching a politician speak on TV. You’ll easily find
yourself surprised how you allow yourself
to notice more and more NLP techniques… more and more… don’t you
think?
(For more on NLP, check out the book Introducing NLP by Joseph O’Connor
or the immensely useful Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies.
As a bonus, here’s a great video breaking down the use of
NLP techniques by media outlets
on both sides of the political spectrum, from FOX News to
Stephen Colbert.
It gets a bit into Christian conspiracy thinking, but is
VERY good information.)
http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/01/16/nlp-10-ways-protect-mind-control/
Emotions when
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