What Is Self-Sabotage

What Is Self-Sabotage? How NLP Can Help

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Have you been frustrated by your ability to sabotage yourself? If you have, you are like many others. Recovering from addiction is a difficult journey, and the path to recovery contains many obstacles.

Since the beginning of humankind, people have struggled with doing what they want to do and what they actually do. Within the context of an addiction, you might want to recover and to live a healthier, happier life. However, the pull of your addiction might lead you to continue using your substance of choice. Neuro-linguistic programming may help you to overcome your addiction so that you can begin a healthier, happier life much faster than you might have anticipated.

What is neuro-linguistic programming?

Neuro-linguistic programming or NLP is a process that combines elements of communication with counseling strategies and elements of therapy. The objective of NLP is to bring together aspects of the self that conflict with each other so that you can heal and change.

NLP operates with the presupposition that everyone has numerous distinct aspects to their personalities. When your aspects are in conflict with each other, you may struggle with unhealthy and dysfunctional behaviors. When you can resolve your inner conflicts, you can change your presence in the world.

The three parts of neuro-linguistic programming might help you to clarify what it means. Neuro means that it relates to your neurology and your brain. Linguistic means that it relates to the speech and language choices that you make. The programming aspect relates to how your components simultaneously function. When you learn NLP, you will be able to learn the language of your mind.

Created in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, NLP weaves together some elements of psychological modeling and Gestalt psychology. It has helped countless people because it offers a method to facilitate communication between your subconscious and conscious minds.

Neuro-linguistic programming and addiction treatment

There is a lot that we still have to discover about the brain, including whether it is possible to rewire it from addiction. However, the mind-body connection has been shown to help in rehab and recovery.

When you think positive thoughts, your brain produces neuropeptides that can strengthen the functioning of your immune system, organs, and overall health. NLP offers a powerful way to tap into the power of your mind and help to heal all types of addictions. Rather than disowning the aspect of yourself that is an addict, you instead can identify it and incorporate it into yourself. By contrast, many people who are in recovery either end up over-identifying with their addict aspects or they try to banish them completely.

For instance, some people will define their entire senses of self by repeating statements that limit them such as introducing themselves as addicts. Others might instead try to destroy the parts of themselves that want to use. Neither approach is a healing approach to addiction, however.

A holistic model for treating addiction allows you to become stronger by integrating all of the parts of yourself. You will not try to eliminate the part of your psyche that is addicted. Instead, you will try to get to know it and to understand it. As you work with the addict aspect of yourself, you will try to uncover the positive purpose that it has so that you can find a new role for it as you move forward with your life.

NLP and how it works

To understand how NLP techniques might work for treating your addiction, here is a brief description of what you might expect. You can begin by going to a quiet, safe place with a life coach who can guide you through the process. Start by centering yourself in compassion.

Next, you will try to connect with your addict aspect. Invite that part of yourself to converse with you. As you begin a dialogue, thank the addict aspect for connecting with you. Begin asking some questions, including the following:

  • How old were you when the addict aspect was created?
  • What was happening in your life at that time?
  • What are some of the strengths that your addict aspect has?

Listen to the answers that you obtain when you ask these questions. Once you are able to identify its original positive purpose, you can work with that aspect of yourself to figure out what role it will play as you move forward.

The dialogue should be reciprocal in nature, and the focus should be on problem-solving. As you end the dialogue, thank that aspect of yourself for allowing you to talk to it.

Recovery with neuro-linguistic programming

NLP is a tool that can help you along your path to connectedness and healing. You are able to rewrite the code and renew your mind. With the help of the professionals at Premier NLP Life Coaching, you may be able to recover and to move forward with a happier and healthier life. Contact us today to schedule a consultation by completing our online contact form.

What Is Health And Wellbeing

What Is Health And Wellbeing?

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Many people are unaware of the state of their emotional health. When people are aware of their emotional health, they might default to trying to be resilient. While resiliency can help people, it may not work in the long-term because people’s bodies and minds are not as able to tolerate stress as people grow older. At Premier Life Coaching, we can help people to become aware of their emotional states and to take proactive measures to achieve greater health outcomes without stress.

Understanding the changing needs of emotional health

People tend to do things the same way over and over. Eventually, however, they might need to adjust their approaches. In order to attain positive emotional wellbeing, you must constantly adapt to gain the best outcomes. There are a few approaches that you can take to increase your awareness and to develop long-term strategies that can help you to grow both personally and professionally.

Complete a personal wellbeing audit

A good starting place for developing your awareness is to complete a personal wellbeing audit. Once you have done this, you can move to identify the negative triggers that create some of your stress. Before you will be able to effectively use strategies to increase your wellbeing, you must first understand the bigger picture of what constitutes it.

Identify your protective factors

Your protective factors are the foundational components on which you can build a greater sense of wellbeing. These include things such as emotional confidence and positive self-esteem. Once you have these foundations, you can then build the framework from them. For purposes of your wellbeing, your framework might include the following things:

  • Healthy diet
  • Regular exercise
  • Restful sleep
  • Connectedness
  • Support systems

Your sense of wellbeing begins with learning to value yourself. You then work to continuously build your sense of self-worth. One way to recognize this is for you to write down your positive qualities and achievements in a personal wellbeing journal. If you take time to recognize your positive aspects every week, you will find that it is transformational and can help you to understand your strengths and the positive impacts that they have. When you make keeping your journal a habit, you can turn it into a positive prophecy for your future outcomes. You can also take some time every night to identify three things that were positive during the day. You can then think about at least two things that you believe will go well the following day.

Breathing techniques

A great way to challenge stress head-on is by using some breathing techniques. There are three techniques that can help you to lessen the stress that you feel. These include belly breathing, box breathing, and the three-six-five breathing techniques.
More simple and quick stress-busting strategies revolve around breathing. Here are three breathing techniques:

When you are feeling stressed, cortisol is released by your body. Too much cortisol can make you feel stressed. If you use neuro-linguistic programming, it can help you to combine a positive visualization with your breathing. With practice, NLP can give you a powerful way to reduce the stress that you experience.

Begin by inhaling deeply and holding your breath for a moment. As you begin to exhale, squeeze the index fingers of both of your hands together with your thumbs while imagining that your cortisol levels are decreasing. You can visualize it like the mercury going down in a thermometer.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness provides another group of nearly universally accepted strategies. Mindfulness is when you try and clear your mind of all of its thoughts to produce the ability to refocus. When you aim to be present in the moment, you can stop dwelling on things that occurred in the past. Mindfulness can also help you to stop anticipating what might happen in the future so that you can remain in the present.

Taking care of yourself

When you use these and other strategies and combine them with an awareness of your personal wellbeing, you can obtain outcomes that are consistently positive. If you are experiencing a bad day, you can think about the triggers that are causing your emotional reactions. Identifying the triggers can help you to change them so that they are not able to negatively impact your feelings and behaviors.

Learn more with Premier NLP Life Coaching

Learning to become more aware of your personal wellbeing and developing strategies to improve it can help you in both your personal life and in your career. The life coach at Premier Life Coaching can help you to learn some neuro-linguistic programming techniques that you can use to achieve the outcomes that you desire. Contact us today by filling out our online contact form to learn more.

Fear of Talking on the Phone

Could Your Fear of Talking on the Phone be Social Anxiety?

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Many people have an intense dislike of talking on the telephone, and some have a true fear of doing so. Having a fear of talking on the phone is called telephone or phone phobia. There are a number of different reasons why people might be scared to make or receive phone calls. For instance, some people develop telephone phobia after they have received bad news over the phone. In many other cases, the phobia is rooted in social anxiety disorder.

Relationship between social anxiety and telephone phobia

Social anxiety disorder is characterized by overwhelming anxiety about social situations that is disproportionate to the events that happen. It affects people in various ways. Some people might be anxious about social situations in general while others have fears of specific types of social situations, including talking on the telephone. However, making and receiving calls are important in our daily lives. If you often try to do everything possible to avoid telephone calls, you may have social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety involves worrying about the judgments of others so much that it interferes with some of the important things in your life. Social anxiety is more than a feeling. It includes physical sensations, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. If your telephone phobia is caused by social anxiety, you may experience several symptoms and signs.

You may have negative thoughts about what the person on the other line thinks about you or about how you sound on a phone call. You might also experience negative feelings like panic or dread, which may be prompted by simply thinking about making a phone call. Physical symptoms of telephone phobia that arises from social anxiety include such things as feeling nausea, having sweaty palms, and experiencing a racing heart. You might find that you take behavioral steps to avoid phone calls. For example, you might always let incoming calls go to your voice mail or ask others to answer your phone for you.

Why some people fear phone calls

Talking on the telephone can sometimes be more daunting than having a conversation in person. When you are having a conversation directly with another person, you can read nonverbal cues that might encourage you such as a smile. You might also worry about the way in which you sound over a phone. People who have social anxiety commonly worry that others can hear how nervous they are in their voices.

With the increasing popularity of sending text messages, people may also worry about not having time to create their messages when they are talking on the telephone. Some people may also be worried about disturbing others by calling them since phone calls are becoming less common.

Overcoming fear of talking on the telephone

There are several strategies that you can use to overcome your fear of talking on the phone. Remind yourself that pauses in conversation are normal. You should not worry about pauses. If you count in your head during a pause, you will likely find that it only lasts a couple of seconds even if it feels like it is much longer.

Remember that businesses want people to call them. You are not bothering anyone when you call a business to schedule an appointment or to talk to customer service. You also should remind yourself that no one expects you to be perfect. You do not need to feel that you should know the answer to everything that is asked of you instantly. An advantage of talking on the phone versus texting or emailing is that you are able to ask questions for clarification during your conversation.

Think about phone calls that you have had in the past that were successful. Before you make a phone call, think about times in the past when you have placed similar calls that went well.

Set goals for yourself and take small actions to confront the fear that you feel. You can start small by making calls that make you just a little nervous. You can then work your way up gradually to making calls that are scarier for you. By doing this, each successive call will become easier for you to make or receive.

Contact Premier NLP Life Coaching

Having telephone phobia can cause you to lose out on opportunities that you might otherwise enjoy such as getting a great job. It can also harm the relationships that you have with your family members and your friends. If you have a fear of talking on the phone, neuro-linguistic programming can help you to address it. Fill out the online contact form to schedule a consultation with Premier Life Coaching today.

What's The Difference Between Social Anxiety and Asperger's Syndrome

What’s The Difference Between Social Anxiety and Asperger’s Syndrome?

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People who have autism are said to be on the autism spectrum. People on the higher end of the spectrum used to be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, but that term is no longer used. Instead, all people who are diagnosed with autism of any type are now diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which is an umbrella term that covers all of the variants of autism. There is little difference between people who have Asperger’s syndrome and those who have high-functioning autism. However, people who have Asperger’s syndrome have better language acquisition skills in early childhood than people who were previously diagnosed with high-functioning autism. At Premier Life Coaching, we are sometimes asked about the difference between ASD and social anxiety. Here is what you need to know about these two different conditions.

How ASD and social anxiety relate to each other

People who have autism spectrum disorder commonly have problems with social anxiety. However, while people who have ASD diagnoses often struggle socially, not all of them will also be diagnosed with social anxiety disorder. People who are on the higher end of the spectrum and who are bright may develop social anxiety disorder as a co-occurring diagnosis.

People with autism struggle with social interactions because of the manner in which their brains are wired. They have trouble understanding nonverbal cues that neurotypical people are able to read. When most people reach adolescence, their communication skills become sophisticated. They are not as literal as they were as children.

People who have autism have trouble understanding how communication changes as they and their peers grow older. This leads to difficulties in communication because they rely on what is being verbally communicated instead of including body language, tone, and other nonverbal indicators of meaning. Often, people who have autism are unable to understand rhetorical questions and sarcasm. Because of this problem, people who have autism may have issues when they try to interact with the people around them.

Some people who are on the autism spectrum will create their own rules by which to live. However, this can still create social conflicts. For young people who do this, they might press forward each day regardless of the conflicts that they encountered. However, they may be unable to handle conflicts that may carry serious consequences. People who have autism and who are sensitive may become avoidant and develop anxiety.

People with autism who also have anxiety are more likely to seek therapy even when they are not facing a crisis. People with autism who tend to press forward and ignore the strife around them are unlikely to seek therapy unless there is a crisis. The key is to help people who have autism to develop an awareness of their social problems and how they manifest in their lives. They must then be taught effective strategies to compensate for their social deficits.

People with autism who work actively to improve their ability to comprehend nonverbal communication can make substantial progress. When they work on it, their brains begin to rewire in a manner that helps them to change.

Contact Premier NLP Life Coaching

If you have autism spectrum disorder and would like to improve your communication abilities, neuro-linguistic programming might be an effective way for you to accomplish your goals. Neuro-linguistic programming is a set of tools and models that can be used to improve your communication skills by providing you with an understanding of the interplay of the language that you choose, your actions, and your unconscious mind. To learn more, contact Premier Life Coaching today by completing our online contact form.

What Is Social Anxiety

What Is Social Anxiety?

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Many Americans suffer from social anxiety, which can be debilitating. While there are anti-anxiety medications available, they only mask the symptoms and do not cure anxiety. Choosing to treat the underlying causes may be a better choice. Neuro-linguistic programming from a life coach at Premier Life Coaching can help you to conquer the anxious feelings that you experience so that you can enjoy a more rewarding life.

What is social anxiety?

People who have social anxiety have an irrational fear of being negatively judged by others. This fear can lead to feeling inadequate, self-conscious, inferior, embarrassed, humiliated, and depressed. If you tend to become overly anxious when you are in social situations but are better when you are by yourself, you may have social anxiety. Researchers have found that social anxiety is the third most common psychological disorder in the U.S.

Specific vs. generalized social anxiety

People who have specific social anxiety have irrational fears about a single activity. For example, if you are fine in most social situations but have a fear of public speaking, this would be considered to be specific social anxiety.

Most people who suffer from social anxiety disorder have a generalized form of the disorder. When your anxiety affects most of your life events, your social anxiety is generalized rather than specific.

Physiological symptoms of social anxiety

Social anxiety often includes a number of physiological symptoms, including the following:

  • Intense fear
  • Racing heart
  • Blushing
  • Dry mouth and throat
  • Muscle twitches
  • Excessive sweating
  • Difficulty swallowing

People who have social anxiety often understand that the anxiety that they feel is irrational. However, understanding something does not translate into believing it. The feelings and thoughts of anxiety may be ongoing without appropriate treatment.

Treating social anxiety disorder

People who are diagnosed with social anxiety disorder may be prescribed benzodiazepines. The problem with these anti-anxiety medications is that they become less effective over time, and they may also lead to addiction. Benzodiazepines also simply mask the symptoms of your anxiety rather than addressing the disorder itself.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is often used to treat anxiety. However, seeing a psychologist for cognitive-behavioral therapy may require an ongoing commitment and take many months or years to be effective.

Some other strategies may also be helpful in treating your social anxiety. Meditation can help you to calm and recenter yourself. Meditating every day can allow you to get in touch with your emotions so that you can become better at identifying what you are feeling.

Several techniques that are used in neuro-linguistic programming can also be very helpful in treating your social anxiety disorder quickly and effectively. NLP is an approach that allows you to identify your unconscious thought processes so that you can change the way that you think and feel.

Anchoring is a very helpful NLP technique that helps many people with social anxiety disorder. Anchoring helps you to replace negative emotions that you experience to feelings that are more useful to you. It is a type of associative conditioning in which you create anchors that help to recreate a positive feeling that you want to have.

You can create an anchor by thinking back to a time when you felt happy and confident. As you visualize how you felt at that time, perform a simple movement such as touching your thumb and forefinger together. Relive the memory multiple times, using the same movement each time. When you are preparing to enter a social situation that would normally make you anxious, using an anchor that you have created can help you to feel more confident and can lessen your anxious feelings.

Other NLP techniques such as reframing and storytelling may also be beneficial for treating your social anxiety disorder. Meeting with a life coach who uses neuro-linguistic programming techniques might help you to learn the approaches that work the best for you.

Contact Premier NLP Life Coaching

If you struggle with anxiety in social situations, it is possible for you to treat your anxiety so that you can improve the quality of your life. Contact Premier Life Coaching today by filling out our contact form.

NLP Ways to Train Your Brain

Ways to Train Your Brain

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Neuro-linguistic programming allows you to understand the way in which your mind establishes its neural routes based on the ways in which you behave from day to day. This process can be understood with an analogy to water. Water may flow into slight depressions in the ground. Over time, more water will deepen the depression, creating a ditch and then a canyon. The water will continue to flow in the same direction after the ditch or canyon has been formed. Even though you might have a similar path established in your mind, it is possible to change it with NLP techniques. The life coach at Premier Life Coaching can use different methods to help you to change your own neural paths in more positive directions.

While most people understand, getting rid of bad habits can take a long time because it is done unconsciously. NLP allows you to take control so that your bad habits can be eradicated in as few as 10 minutes. Some of these techniques include changing your submodalities, anchoring, swish techniques, and Time Line Therapy®. Here are seven ways that you can start to train your brain to act differently to work towards reaching your goals and taking your life in a more positive direction.

1. Identify the habit that you would like to change.

In order to truly get rid of a bad habit, it is important for you to recognize what it is that you would personally like to change. It is common for people to state that they would like to make changes based on feedback from others that they have a problematic habit. When your motivation is only internal, it will be difficult for you to change. Internally, you might simply not care. However, if you truly want to rid yourself of your bad habit both consciously and unconsciously, you are likelier to succeed.

2. To eliminate a bad habit, you first need to discover what you are getting out of it.

People continue in their bad habits because they get something in return from engaging in them. Neuro-linguistic programming refers to this as a secondary gain. Think about what your bad habit is providing to you. For example, people who have food addictions are often substituting foods for something else in their lives that they lack. To help you with this step, write down whatever it is that you are feeling right before you eat non-nutritious foods or before you engage in some other type of bad habit. This helps you to bring it into your consciousness.

3. Identify the mental picture.

When you are experiencing a craving for a certain food, a cigarette, or something else that is bad for you, ask yourself a simple question. You should question what picture you have in your mind when you think about the food or another thing that you crave. Close your eyes and observe the picture closely. Look at whether it is close up or far away as well as where it is positioned on your inner screen.

4. Change the mental picture.

After you have identified your mental picture, take it and move it to various distances away from you in your mind. Make it very small or black it out. After you have moved it far away from you and blackened it, leave it there, and do not recall it to its former position.

5. Focus on doing something different other than your bad habit.

Think about something that you also like doing but that is a more positive and healthy choice. Create a mental picture of it and examine it closely. Make changes to the picture so that it becomes more attractive, using beautiful colors. Bring it closer in focus on your inner screen so that it predominates.

6. Choose Time Line Therapy® to rid yourself of the need to engage in your bad habit.

Time Line Therapy® is a newer NLP technique that helps you by using your internal timeline to change your bad habits so that you no longer need them. If you know how to use this therapeutic technique, complete the limiting decisions process with your memory of the very first time when you engaged in your bad habit.

7. Think of what type of behavior you will engage in instead of your bad habit.

Think forward into the future about what you will do instead of engaging in your bad habit. Be specific, visualizing yourself actively engaging in the positive behavior. For example, if you quit smoking, picture yourself being more active, drawing in the air more deeply, and being cough-free. See yourself going for a morning jog with a new focus on health.

At Premier Life Coaching, we help people to conquer bad habits quickly so that they can live healthier and more fulfilling lives. To learn more, fill out our online contact form today.