Can NLP Help Improve Your Relationships?

Martin

Aug 27, 2013 — 4 min read

Mind Games That Can Work

**NLP can certainly help relationship problems**

The road to love and maintaining relationships isn’t always a smooth ride.

Relationships can easily break down, have issues, get stuck in a rut or just simply go through a bit of a rocky patch.

The things that you never used to notice suddenly grate on you, bad habits become impossible to live with yet you desperately want to hold onto the amazing love you had for each other at the beginning.

It can be easier than you think to get through any glitches with the help of NLP.

An unsung hero of love and relationships, it helps you understand what is really making your relationship not work, and simple ways to deal with it. NLP and love go hand in hand.

NLP Background

So what is NLP anyway?

NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming is how our thoughts, emotions and actions are connected.

NLP works by teaching you new skills and behaviours and is a powerful tool to help you improve your life.

One client described NLP as “opening her eyes and mind to a whole new world”. It not only allows you to see and think things differently, it allows you to manage your emotions and be in control of how you feel.

It’s often that couples argue over the little things, which then escalate and lead into bigger issues. NLP doesn’t immediately help you change your partner from leaving the laundry ‘outside’ the basket, but it can help you see it differently and not let it annoy you.

NLP can also teach you how to make your partner WANT to put their clothes IN the basket without asking – sounds magical doesn’t it?

**Are you prepared to change your own design?**

We All Have Our Own Stories

We go through life and pick up emotions and habits that may not be obvious to start with but could be damaging our relationships.

We tend to assume our way of thinking is the only correct way of thinking, but NLP teaches you to recognise other views of the world are different to yours.

Once we look deeper into our way of thinking using NLP techniques, it becomes easier to see other people’s behaviours and understand them before jumping in and potentially causing more problems.

NLP helps you find the real reasons why you have negative emotions in your relationships, and teaches you about better communication.

It sounds so simple, yet how often do you take a step back and think of what you’re saying and ‘how’ you’re saying it.

Before jumping in to moan about the socks on the floor – wouldn’t it be nice to change your negative reaction to a positive one?

**Be the positive light and change yourself**

An Example NLP Helping

Our client, Katie, found that she was always arguing with her husband, Mike, who in turn began to feel like he couldn’t do anything right in her eyes.

It was soon clear that they both needed to resolve negative reactions that had become habitual.

There was a pattern of arguing in the evening.

As soon as dinner was finished, Mike would want to load the dishwasher, whereas Katie would want to relax and talk about her day. A few times Katie had asked that they left it but Mike continued. This left Katie feeling unimportant, ignored and eventually as time passed started to irritate her. After each meal, Katie would automatically feel annoyed when Mike got up.

This is when arguments started to take place.

Mike would feel frustrated at not being understood, and for both, they wanted to stop arguing over the unimportant stuff, but didn’t know how.

NLP helped them delve to the bottom of why both wanted to do things differently and what it meant to each other (they agreed to alternate the washing up!), and used NLP techniques to get rid of negative emotions that had inadvertently built up over history that neither of them wanted.

It might sound a simple thing to resolve, but with a lot of relationships, it’s the small things that build up and turn into bigger problems.

**Change some of those little negative words**

NLP Can Help With Families Too

It isn’t just about helping your relationships with partners either.

NLP can help in the love we have for our families.

A recent client said “practical NLP techniques do work, and more importantly I now have the confidence to use them. The interesting thing is that not only have I stopped getting angry and arguing so much with my children – they are not arguing so much with each other either, so home life is much more peaceful for everyone.”

NLP can help you improve the way you relate to others, your listening skills, the way you empathise with others and how to really respect other points of view. You will, of course, both need to have the drive to improve your relationship and really work towards a happier future together, but if you’re willing to put in the hard work to improve and ensure better communications with your partner, this will in turn lead to a healthier, happier relationship.