NLP For Nurses
You probably say that yourself every day, right?
You don’t? Well, you should according to Briana Binion who is a neurolinguistic programming (NLP) practitioner. I had the pleasure of interviewing Briana to tell me about this interesting program.
NLP is “the number one technology” says Briana, and it is the study of the mind; what we do and why we do what it is that we do. She says it’s the best way for successful communication and behavior. It creates tools for people to use when it comes to navigating a new route in life or a new experience.
“Nurses take care of everyone else,” Briana says, “but they don’t take care of themselves.” With conflicts facing nurses in everyday life, there is the potential to bring it with them when they go to work. But she says there are things that can help us improve our communications with coworkers, supervisors and even families and friends.
Briana recommends nurses to use NLP to improve those communications. There are 18 presuppositions in the NLP, of which she focused on two. First is the ability to change the process by which we experience reality. Undoubtedly, it is far easier to change with our reality own reality and inner world than it is to change the content of the “outer world.”
To help with change, I was surprised to learn that Briana uses NURSE as an acronym to help the frustrated nurse understand.
First is to NOTICE. You really need to notice what is going on inside you first. When you feel you’re most frustrated, feel the most pain, anxiety … you need to notice when that is coming on. Does it come on when you arrive at work, when you deal with a coworker or a patient?
The U is for UNCOVERING. You need to stop hiding and put words to the emotions you feel. That’s a hard one because we know we’re reacting to all the anger, pain and frustrations that are inside of us. That’s right. It’s inside us; it doesn’t really live in our environment.
Once we can uncover what is on the inside and from where it is coming, we can move ahead. Briana says that while some get sick to their stomach when frustrated or angry, she is aware of “a lot of visual thoughts running through my head.” When she is at that point, see strives to take notice of what it is and what is it saying to her.
Then we can turn to the “R” to REFLECT and RESPOND accordingly. “Once we reflect on what we are feeling, who am I feeling it with, when does it happen … then we can take a look at it.”
She says there is something you may have seen before: E+R=O. Put simply, whatever the EVENT is, we have a pattern of how we’re going to RESPOND which leads straight to OUTCOME. So, notice the event, then reflect on it perhaps in a different way so we can choose an outcome.
What I love about NLP is that it enables you choose 3 or 4 ways to respond in the future that actually feel almost as natural as the one you’ve always been responding to. That brings us to SEE which provides for the letter “S.”
You need to see yourself in that future circumstances. Whatever you’re experiencing in your environment will likely happen again and again. As you see yourself in that future predicament, Briana wants you to think of 3 alternative responses that actually feel good to you. She suggests 3 because in any given moment, if you just have one in mind, the chances of you actually taking that route would be very slim. But when you have 3 alternatives, your subconscious is conditioned to act on those new ideas versus the past pattern that holds you back in a simmering of mental frustration.
So, finding three ways is relatively simple, it just takes a little bit of thought.
“E” is to EXPECT positive results! We want to expect that things can change, that whatever we’re going to do is definitely going to work.
“Sometimes our mind is trained to figure out what doesn’t work and then we need to figure out what does. Try to figure out what does instead of what does not work. … We have to look at the event and really dissect it to figure out where was the anger coming from. Sometimes we have these feelings and we think we know where they’re coming from when actually we haven’t bothered with identifying the source. Once the source is figured out, you want to reflect. Sometimes when we’re going through our turmoil, we forget about how we got through something similar in the past.
Briana can be reached at brianabinion.com and has videos available on youtube.com which can be found there by entering her name “Briana Binion” in the search window.
