This really has been a question for me for some time now. I have been on this forum for some time (and user of paraliminals) and have for a long time been a believer of the cogitive perspective of well beeing and change. Change your beliefs and change yourself. I was always the paraliminal-user who wanted all change by the tapes (now paraliminal cds) alone and nothing from me. I was afraid of a lot of things and some fears I keep still.
Anyway... Thanks to the paraliminals, in some amount (conscious creating is always the weapon of choice...
), I'm now studying to become a psychologist. In Sweden it's one of the most sough after educations and hardest to get. My grades were so so but my intent was 100%.
Now I find myself in quite a rift between my experience with the paraliminals on the one hand and the discoveries of hard science. Cognitive therapy (not NLP or the derrivative products from LSC) is implied to have no greater value than using only behavior experiments. In studies with depressed patients getting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and also only behavior therapy and waiting-list, the best results we're for behavior therapy (BT). What BT equates is trying to do the things you don't want (be social and try it even though you have a social fobia) and get exposure to it.
So the results have had some effect already. Behavior therapy which was dead is revived, certainly with the aid of some new BTs like Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and Dialectic behavior therapy (DBT). The cognitive sciences which was supposed to let us know that the mind works like a computer has had extremely little relevance for therapy. LSC isn't doing therapy but is still dependent on the notion that change is an affair of beliefs.
Some studies with CBT through the internet (therapy through the internet with mostly written text and no contact with a therapist) that a fellow student in Linköping, Sweden has done indicates that people who have done only cognitive changework, and not the behavioral part, has only come a step on the way away from an anxiety disorder.
NLP isn't the same as CBT but still works with the same assumption. I just wonder if that can explain that I've mostly only had temporary effects with the paraliminals. Yes, the neural pathways does stay in place but I think that the non-temporary change was delivered when I was out there and testing my new beliefs. Paraliminals without an environment to test it out with leaves little change.
I've had mindboggling experiences with the paraliminals but honestly, a lot of it has been temporary. I'm not back here to say that the paraliminals are not "the [deleted]". They are!
But perhaps studies from therapy shows that changing beliefs are only the first half of lasting change. Paraliminal technology is more than that, but how much more than that?
Seeing that NLP hasn't advanced more than it has (yeah, how do I know how far it has come), I guess there's some things that haven't been finished. I do remember that Whispering in the wind by Grinder & co-author says that you should do behavioral experiments to have a lasting chagnge.
If Paul and Alex would like to comment, I would really like to read it!
