Healing The Wounded Heart

If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend 6 sharpening my ax (Abraham Lincoln) Philosophy of HTWH The course HTWH was designed by Robert McDonald, and is about the "Destination Method," how you will become a Destination Therapist or Coach. This method has evolved from the "Brief NLP Therapy," indicating that this is a very effective way of providing therapy, where the issues of the client will be resolved in a minimum amount of sessions. Therefore we use NLP-techniques. Probably we all remember the basics: there is a present state and a desired state. If there's a problem, then there is apparently an interference that is the cause that we're not able to go from the present state to the desired state. The Destination Method involves a careful tracing of the state the client wants to reach, and then we find out what it is that stops the client from reaching this state. Then the therapist or coach is a kind of taxi driver, bringing the client from A to B. This will only work when the client is able to tell clearly where he or she wants to go! When I step in a taxi and I tell the driver where I don't want to go, then, no doubt, the driver will respond by asking me where I do want to go! If I ask him next to figure this out for me, then maybe he will bring me somewhere where I never wanted to be, or maybe he will bring me to the psychiatrist. And when I ask him just to drive around for a while, without a destination, then it depends on whether he wants to make money this way, or if he sees it as his job to bring people at their destination. Of course this seems very simple, but transmitting this metaphor to our office we see this happening very often. The client who is only telling how miserable life is, how bad his or her relationship is, telling us that he or she no longer wants it to be this way. The client who is sighing: "That's just what I wanted to ask you " Or the client who only wants a good conversation, and doesn't want to go anywhere. The Destination coach or therapist will not be able to work this way and he or she will kindly invite the client to reveal his or her destination, to begin the journey, or otherwise to find another taxi that is willing to drive around without an outcome. To be able to work with this method it's necessary that the description of the outcome is clear, so that we know when the client has arrived. In other words: GEO, Goal - Evidence - Operation. Necessary and unnecessary suffering We make a distinction between necessary and unnecessary suffering. Necessary suffering is suffering, where the client didn't yet receive the gift of the suffering, didn't find the positive meaning of it and/or there is no way to resolve the suffering. Unnecessary suffering is suffering, where the client already found the positive function that was hidden behind the suffering, while there is a method available to resolve the suffering. The Destination method directs especially to resolving of the unncessary suffering. Also it's the goal to recognize seemingly necessary suffering as unnecessary suffering, so that it can be resolved. The Heart and the Sword Besides the metaphor of the taxi driver there's another metaphor that is in the core of HTWH. That is the metaphor of the Heart and the Sword. The Heart symbolizes compassion, working with and from your heart. This means to have a maximum of rapport with your client at a very deep level. The Heart is not a technique. The Heart accepts the emotional pain that someone may experience with compassion, love and understanding, but this will not lead to a change. Maybe the client will feel fully understood, but then he or she will go home, without any change. Therefore we need the Sword. The Sword is a metaphor for action, for specific methods, techniques. For instance the techniques of NLP. The Heart itself has no power to change things. The Sword has this power, but it doesn't give any meaning to this change. Without love and compassion reaching an outcome is something empy, with no sense. Then the Sword is only a cold technique. But when the Heart and the Sword work together something very powerful emerges, Robert McDonald calls this "Empowered Compassion." This is the core of Destination Therapy and Coaching: the connection between these two points of view, process orientation (the Heart) and goal orientation (the Sword). For a real and deep healing a balance is needed between these two points of view. Method How to teach the participants all these things? This doesn't seem to be simple, it's possible to learn techniques, but how to learn compassion? First thing to learn is a list of 23 presuppositions, and not only learning them, but also challenging them, to chew on it, and chew on it again, in a word, to be deeply involved with them. Then there are often discussions about the philosophical backgrounds, the positive intentions behind everything, and the pathway to purpose in our lives. There is a lot of time for ecology, not only the ecology of the client, but also of the therapist or coach. First the therapist or coach must ask him- or herself if he or she wants to provide therapy. Next comes the question whether he or she wants to work with this client or not. Only then questions can arise like: do I have rapport, do I know the outcome of the client specifically? A very special part of this course is where Robert McDonald shows how he works with clients that were

never before in NLP therapy. Often in courses a technique will be demonstrated with a participant who knows everything about NLP matters like rapport, association, dissociation, perceptual positions, and so on. It's quite different to be confronted with a client in your office who has never heard of these things. These kind of demonstrations are part of the course, therefore people from outside come to the course, and because they are willing to be part of a demonstration they get a free session. This is often very clarifying for the participants. Often people regard the demonstrations of Robert McDonald as "magic," but the nice thing is that this magic is clarified, to a level that it can be transferred to other people and suddenly it becomes very simple. The Healing of Wounded Hearts Which wounded hearts are we talking about? And isn't it that you need an enormous amount of techniques for this? Often it is a surprise for people that they get in this course only 8-10 techniques, with which the main part of human suffering can be resolved! That means for instance the anxious heart, the depressed heart, the damaged heart (trauma), the broken heart (grief) and more issues that are often seen in the practice of a psychotherapist or coach. The philosophy is: "A minimum number of skills to produce a maximum amount of good!" Because we're not working with a lot of techniques we have the possibility to work at a deep level with each of the techniques, so that the deep structure can become clear. I remember when I was in California as a participant of this course, that we took more than one day for only the visual swish. First Robert McDonald demonstrated the technique, then he explained it, then we went on by practicing by ourselves, we came back and told what worked and what didn't work, Robert gave his feedback and explained even more, he gave another demonstration, we went on practicing again and found out about some more problems, again we got a lot of feedback and we went on practicing again. At the end of this day I had a deep feeling that no one would ever be able to tell me anything about the visual swish that I didn't know already. And since this time I often use it, playful with a lot of variations. Another moment in this course that I will not forget is the afternoon that we spent on outcome specification. After having done my practitioners and masterpractitioners course I had a feeling that I knew this. But I was completely wrong! Every outcome we mentioned was examined under the magnifier, or rather under the microscope. Every word was weighed, and only when everything was all right the outcome was approved. All the time with only three core questions: what is it exactly that you want, how will you know that you have it, and what stops you from having it now? Briefly: outcome - evidence and interference, specific and sensory based. No vague answers like "it's just a feeling that stops me." This

feeling must be specified, what kind of feeling, where exactly is this feeling, is there also an image or a sound with it, etc. Sometimes this seems to be extreme, but when we remind ourselves the taxi driver metaphor it's clear: being the driver you want to know exactly where the client wants to go. The taxi driver will not be satisfied when you only tell him the town, he wants to know the exact adress! Even a lot of experienced NLP people have had much benefit from this approach. For whom is this course? Robert McDonald was able to design this course because he is always travelling a lot, and so he can never provide a long term therapy for a client. Often there will be only time for one or two sessions. Therefore he developed skills to help his clients in a short period of time with a lot of problems. These are the skills that are taught during the course. That means that this course is only for therapists and coaches who want to work in an efficient way with their clients, and who also want to do this with the Heart. So, there will be a lot of professionals, like physicians, physical therapists, social workers, psychologists, coaches, nurses, etc. It's not that there are only some techniques taught, there's also discussion, challenging, crying and laughter. Long term vision The long term vision is that we will eventually create a centre in Holland for the Healing of Wounded Hearts. With this we want to create a network of therapists and coaches who are able to and who want to work with this method. This is part of an even bigger vision: "to create a world populated with healers!" So, to be continued Henk de Vos Vosjes.box@wanadoo.nl +31-186-662416