Richard Lindesay: The Worst and Best of Personal Development

Richard Lindesay: The Worst and Best of Personal Development: I remember when a friend of mine first got into personal development.  He had a new air about him, one of a different kind of conf...

The Robber in your child’s imagination

Recently, parents brought (actually more like dragged) their 8 year old child into my clinic in Beit Shemesh. The child had obviously not wanted to come to see me. All I knew from the initial phone conversation was that the boy had some fears at night. I met the parents outside and I told them in a loud enough voice that the child could hear, that it was okay if the child hung around just outside my office and that he could come in to either play with some toys, or if he was very curious about what his parents would be talking about him. We left the boy outside, of course after a couple of minutes he walked in. At this point I had just asked the parents what it was that their child was afraid of when he walked in…. Almost in a whisper, the father told me that the boy was afraid of robbers. I turned to the boy who was pretending to be busy but listening intently to what was going on, and said in a clear sounding voice.. ”So you are scared of robbers?” “Yes” the boy answered with a very affirmative nod as if he had been waiting his entire life for someone to ask him this question. “What does this robber that you are afraid of look like”? I asked “He is very short” he responded “Short? How come?” I asked “The robber can only fit through the window if he is short” “What kind of clothes does the robber wear?” I asked intrigued “…he wears big brown boots a purple suede jacket and he has lots of pimples on his face” At this point I took a look at the parents - they were sitting there with their mouths hanging open. Obviously, they had never considered that the robber in their child’s mind would look any different to the ones that they imagine. The child in the meantime was so excited that he was given the opportunity to speak out about what had been going on in his mind for all that time, that he couldn’t be stopped and he went on to tell us more and more. Too often parents do not feel like they are equipped enough to deal with their child’s fears, so they end up trying to convince the child that their fears are unfounded, that really “there are no robbers in this country only far far away”. The most important need for a child is to feel secure. A child who has a creative imagination will imagine scary things and begin to feel insecure, it does not make sense to attempt to convince the child that the fear does not exist, trying to placate them if you are not even fully aware of what the specific fear is or what it looks like and means to your child. Besides for the fact that once the parents realize that the robber the child had been imagining is straight out of a comic book, they can then automatically deal with it more confidently. And that is what matters more than anything in any attempt to cure any fears. The parent needs to come across to the child with fool proof confidence that it is going to be okay. This blog was taken from the link http://www.menachemschloss.com/2012/07/13/the-robber-in-your-childs-imagination/ I welcome comments below...

Life of the village mice

The scrawny village mice scattered all around searching for food, when suddenly, they came across a mouse that looked very well nourished, and he definitely did not seem to come from around their parts of the world. They asked “Where do you come from?” and “How come you are so well fed?” He replied “I am from the city, where there are big fancy houses and lots and lots of food, come along and I will show you”. So the village mice followed the city mouse into the city, where they found the big fancy house, they trailed the city mouse until the reached the destined little hole, which led them to just behind the wooden kitchen door. There they found a large group of mice scurrying about. They took a peek through the crack of the door, and observed with much delight the different foods laid out elegantly on the kitchen table. It was everything a mouse could possibly wish for. All of a sudden there was a loud noise of a door slamming, all the mice instantly panicked and hushed and quickly huddled together in the corner for fear of being caught by the home owner. Shortly after that everybody relaxed and got on with arranging and planning their meals. Soon enough there was another slamming of a door and again the same thin happened. The village mice carried on noting what seemed to be the life of these city mice and it didn’t take long for them to get together and decide that as much as there was plenty of food to be gained in the city, that did not compare to the life of tranquility they had back in the village . Adapted from an ancient book in Hebrew called 'parables of the foxes' by Rabbi Brakia Ben Natrunei Hanakdin.

Perfectionism - The ‘NOT’ so perfect life

Perfectionism can be a serious issue for people who desire to really succeed. People who are constantly seeking to be perfect find it difficult to be happy and fun loving since they are constantly focused on not failing and not looking bad. People who direct their lives trying to be perfect will often feel depressed and may suffer from different emotional or psychological symptoms. Amongst those affected are children and students constantly needing and trying to get the highest possible grades, and for getting 98% they will consider themselves a failure, as well as adults who are frequently checking out their physical appearance and people in the business arena who are forever not sure if they got it right. What can often complicate this issue is the fact that people within the environment of the perfectionist i.e. the teacher, parent, boss, etc, will often tend to encourage the perfectionist attitude. In a way it’s paradoxical that perfectionists will often not attempt to get help because they worry about losing the ability to be motivated to succeed, in reality having a more choice-full life means that they can do what they really desire with as much fervor and passion as they are ultimately connected to what they wish for of their life. Some of the things that are important for me when working with such clients are to help them in understanding that mistakes are not only unavoidable but are also useful to learn from. It is also useful to work with the client to change the patterns of their negative internal dialogue and of course work with them in changing their self-perception. Contact Menachem Schloss via email – MenachemSchloss1@gmail.com This blog is as written at http://www.menachemschloss.com/2012/04/29/perfectionism-the-not-so-perfect-life/

Basic idea of NLP

Many people learn NLP because of the powerful psychological ideas, tools and techniques that it offers. I'd certainly agree that NLP has some very powerful tools, and after having practiced NLP with many clients for a number of years, one of the things I have really found worth appreciating is the therapist towards client attitude that it encourages....

Allow me to expand on this a little...

One could say there are generally two types of people helpers, the 'diagnosers' and the 'fixers'.
The diagnoser is the type of person who is constantly seeking to evaluate within each interaction with a client in order to categorize the person with whom he is interacting i.e. are they confident, depressed, impulsive, etc. And also, to understand what are their real ‘issues’? Where did these issues come from? Etc...

The danger:
Such a person may get lost in the focus of their clients problem(s) and may not be able to leave much room to actually see the potential in the client, seeing beyond the problem.


The fixer on the other hand says, there is no such thing as "problems", only challenges. The fixer would love to let everyone know that there problems can and will be solved today.

And since the fixer has numerous powerful tools that they have mastered and have read so many ‘great positive psychology / self-help books’, it would be a very good idea not to get too close to them unless you are 100% committed to change (or not committed at all, since then you can simply pretend to go along with the fixers words and that will make the fixer happy enough).

The fixer does not have time to wait around for you until you get ‘want’ to change, in fact he cannot stand the fact that you have a problem (although he may never admit that).

The outcome of this is that many people with problems prefer the 'diagnosers' and end up not really getting solutions.

Working through the use of NLP methodologies can be useful.

NLP’s basic idea is to understand that people’s problems are their unhealthy patterned strategies. And usually a strategy has a structure. That strategy may involve the person’s thought, triggers of their emotional state (which they may not be aware of), as well as the sequencing of their behavior(s) etc...

Therefore, with practicing NLP it is rarely useful to think of the client as the problem.

Principally, it may be somewhat like a heart Doctor who is operating on a patient, at the moment when the problem needs fixing, the Doctor does not need to know how much physical exercising he’d been doing or what kind of emotional issues the patient has had with his parents etc… (Although later on, after the treatment the doctor may recommend that he change certain life style habits.)

Another useful analogy to describe NLP in practice, would be, if I baked a cake and it came out tasting awful to me, I do not need to bite in to it and taste it a number of times in order to change the cake, all I need to do is go back to the ingredients and work out what’s missing or what needs adding and then correct it. Naturally, that is if I ‘want’ to learn how to bake that cake again. Alternatively, I may just choose to bake a different cake altogether.


NLP believes in changing the ‘how’ people do problems, instead of the ‘why’. Naturally, when clients come to me and I am not judging them with their problems, rather, I am interested in what is keeping the problem from being resolved, the entire interaction can be different. I am facing a great potential of a person who for some reason has some unhealthy structured patterns in some area of their life which they may wish to decide to change, or not.

This blog is taken from http://www.menachemschloss.com/2012/04/22/basic-idea-of-nlp-therapy/ Menachem Schloss
NLP Therapist
& Educational Consultant
Menachemschloss1@gmail.com

The Psychology of smokers:
And what it really takes to quit:

There are essentially 2 types of smokers.

One type is the person that smokes purely for pleasure or fun, and do so because they enjoy(ed) doing daring activities as a teen, etc.


This type of smoker will often find it not too difficult to quit the cigarette as long as they have some sort of motivation. They could drop it just as easily as they started, from one day to the next.

Then there is the other type of smoker, who at the time when they were a teen, possibly thought that they were smoking for the same reason as the above, but really they started the habit because they were seeking independence.
Whether it would have been from their parents, teachers or the world, they were seeking to make a statement, “I am my own person now, and I can act as I wish”.


What happens with this type of smoker is that they do end up feeling this way, as in super independent (or 'cool').
That is until; they lose that status of independence to the cigarette. That is the stage when the ciggy begins to control their life and they know that, when they cannot do anything or go anywhere without the cigarette, otherwise they will go berserk (you will know that if you have ever been around a smoker who is out of smokes!).

So the smoker has gone from trying to gain their own independence from other people to now becoming totally dependent on cigarettes instead.

So, what do they do? They try to quit smoking because it feels horrible, but they can’t can they, because ‘smokers’ are who they are, after all it was smoking that made them independent.

And the biggest problem of all is that they are not aware that they are seeking independence. All they know is that every time somebody (especially a parent/authority figure) remotely suggests that they quit smoking they get agitated and reject it (and smoke even more).

The beauty of this understanding is that as soon as they can get into the awareness, that they are in truth seeking to feel a sense of self and to experience what they used to call as a teen growing up, or independence, then quitting smoking becomes easy. In fact they wouldn’t even need to bother much with quitting it would happen almost naturally.
It has also been common for me to hear from individuals who did this process (it usually takes about 3 weeks) that they hardly had any cravings after quitting (which makes sense since a large part of the cravings are the psychological subjection to the cigarette and once they have made the decision to gain REAL independence they are not subjected to the cigarette anymore).

For many people the issue they need help most with in quitting, is to reconnect with a positive sense of self and hence feel an empowerment to do what they really would like to do in life with a true sense of freedom.

Having worked successfully in the past with a number of smokers, I have found that using different techniques to stop cigarette smoking becomes a lot easier when....

1.
If the smoker is in an environment around where people allow them their space and they do not feel pressured to quit.
Therefore, I would often suggest that the one trying to quit make a statement to people in their environment, saying that ‘they may be quitting smoking sometime in a few weeks’ and to request of people not to make an issue of it in any way.
2.
As mentioned above. To have the main goal in this process to gain independence and freedom in life and let the smoking be a by the way thing.
The point is, If you are not aiming to quit then there is no need for resistance at all.
On my part, I don’t mind if a smoker carries on smoking as long as they have freedom to experience life the way every person desires to...which is in a full-choice way.

P.S I myself used to be a smoker and doing this process worked for me where no other system worked (including Allen Carr’s easy way). BTW, I can count on one hand the amount of times I craved a cigarette since then.

Please feel free to contact me via email at MenachemSchloss1@gmail.com

Kind regards,
Menachem Schloss
NLP Therapist &
Educational Consultant

Treating younger kid's fears effectively

The key to treating (younger) kid’s Fears

The other day I came home to find out that my four year old had been crying quite hysterically because she didn’t want to go to heaven (after 120 years).
Now, I could have come from a number of different approaches. For example, I could have discussed the idea of death and after life with her, or speak to her about the idea of heaven and what a nice place it is and that there really is no need to be scared etc.
But what I did was much more simple and effective, and this is the tool I would like to offer you:
At some point after she had calmed down a little (through some distraction), I asked her “what is it that you don’t like about heaven?”
She replied “There is no food there, what will I eat?”
I responded to her question, put her at ease until she was happy and content.
So with that simple and to the point question, I got to understand what is bothering her.
My point is that when working with a child’s fear or anxieties it is most important for a parent not to come up with their own assumptions of what is going on for the child in their mind, because most likely what the child is afraid of will be completely different than what you think it is.
Parents also need to be able to act with confidence and communicate clearly especially in a case when a child is feeling afraid and disorientated.
Here is another example:
Recently, parents came to see me along with their child, who was suffering from certain anxiety related issues.
The parents mentioned that the child was afraid of “something” and that that was probably the cause for the child’s anxiety symptoms.
After some probing I got to understand that the child was afraid of “robbers”.
The thing is, when a child is afraid of an imaginary fear (as in this case) they will usually have a particular image in their mind of how “it” looks and sounds.
So I inquired from the child “What does the robber look like? How tall is he? What kind of shoes does he wear?” etc.
We got to learn that the child’s imaginary robber was really a very small man, with brown boots and lots of pimples (very much like the ones in the kids’ books).
In the meantime the parents were sitting and listening to the child’s description, quite amazed and surprised by these new revelations. Obviously they had no idea what they were “up against”.
The parents had thought that the child was afraid of the normal kind of robber (the kind which they too are scared of) and for that they were afraid to even talk about it with their child. Now they know it’s the fictional robber out of a comic book and for that they can feel more equipped to deal with it.

This blog is taken from http://www.menachemschloss.com/2012/03/22/the-key-to-treating-younger-kids-fears/ Best regards,
Menachem Schloss
NLP Therapist & Education Consultant