Can Neuro-Linguistic Programming Mitigate Autism?

The Autistic Spectrum: Where Are YOU?

As is becoming ever-better known, autism is a phenomenon with a wide-ranging spectrum of characteristic symptoms and severities of those symptoms. Some cases are cripplingly severe, exhibiting many of the characteristics of the syndrome, while other cases are quite mild, allowing those individuals to escape detection and function almost completely normally in the world. Many diagnosed cases are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and the combination of symptoms can vary widely. If you have autism in your family, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The truth be known, most “normal” people find themselves behaving in an autistic manner at one time or another. How many times do we ignore the needs of others under certain moods, or under time pressures?Daniel Goleman also pointed out that “Social Autism” is increasing all around us as immersion in electronic media such as video games, and iPods is increasingly replacing normal social interaction that prevailed only a decade or two ago when TV was the only kind of media competing for our attention. In other words, these days many “normal” people find it easier to retreat into the safety of their games or music, rather than mastering the complexities of real human interaction… and in human interaction as in other skills, what we don’t use, you lose.

The Time for Marriage of NLP and Autism is Ripening

And so as clinical autism rate surpasses 1 in 150 births, and as social autism also increases due to social factors, the opportunity for Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) to play a moderating role in autism is ever increasing. I argue that the time is ripening for a marriage between NLP and clinical or social autism, and hopefully the result will be the birth of effective therapies and strategies, to complement research in genetics, pharmaceuticals, diet, environmental factors, etc.

Until a preventive cure is available, our best option is to work directly with the individuals and families with autism, to help moderate it, and teach them not only to cope, but to excel in their niches, and in their lifetimes.

Can Effective Strategies be Modeled?

Before the idea of NLP as an effective means for mitigating existing autism can gain traction, however, we must put forth a theory that invites debate and precipitates exploration of successful NLP models, and apply NLP modeling strategies to the problem. The theory is this… like any other human endeavor, mitigating and overcoming autism, and producing excellence in affected individuals can be modeled.

Here’s how NLP modeling works:

1. Identify individuals diagnosed with autistic symptoms as children, who have learned to successfully cope with or completely overcome those symptoms in a variety of real-life adolescent and adult contexts. These are the models. (Temple Grandin is one famous example who has found her public voice, but there are many, many more out there yet to share their strategies).
2. Study the learning and coping strategies of those individuals to in terms of their phenomenal constituents and sequencing.
3. Teach those learning and coping strategies to other autistic individuals by installing the same phenomenal constituents and sequencing, tailored to the internal map of the individual and using alternate sensory communication channels.
4. Apply other NLP presuppositions to the programs to ensure ecology from the beginning. That is, start with the ecological end in mind, and teach learning and coping strategies which move the individual nearer to that end.

Who’s Gonna Do It?

If we are to be effective in this lifetime, I feel we cannot wait for a top-down solution (though that would be nice). Instead, we need to go where the pain and motivation are… to the families impacted by autism, and and to motivated NLP modelers. When these two groups join forces, there is no reason why those with strategies that work and those in need of working strategies cannot be brought together.

Oh, by the way, in a grass roots model, the work does not pay! Nobody gets rich, which helps the results speak for themselves. The contributors for this work should be those who also stand to gain from a better life, namely those with autism, and their families.

If you feel you can contribute to this movement in any way. Do contact us!

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