by  Beverly  Martin Gorley

This story is about my experience using NLBeverly Martin Gorley P with Madeline, the sixty-eight year old mother of a friend and former roommate. Madeline raised five children and was married three times. Counting another live-in relationship, she had been involved with four alcoholic men. She was extremely successful in business, holding positions at the corporate level of large corporations and later running an organization called "Get High on Yourself," where kids taught other kids how to be high on themselves not drugs.

While attending the Health Certification in June, 1996, I received word that Madeline had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. A few days had passed between the time I was called and the time I finally reached her by phone. By then, Madeline had chosen to undergo chemotherapy and I was frustrated to have not been able to speak to her to at least offer some hypnotic suggestions for how she could better incorporate this treatment into her system. Her daughter Janie, my former roommate, and I talked daily while I completed my weeks’ stay in Salt Lake City and after I returned home to San Francisco, I made the first of what turned out to be many plane trips to visit Madeline and Janie in Los Angeles.

There was never a hesitation or question in my mind about using my NLP skills to assist Madeline; the only question I had was could I make it work? And what, exactly was my outcome? Was this about life and death? Was my outcome to keep her alive? With the assistance of my husband, friends, teachers and coaches, I came to realize that my outcome was to offer her the opportunity to remove the barriers to her own self-healing, to use NLP to enhance the quality of whatever life she had left, and leave the choice of life or death up to her. With this in mind, I began to prepare myself for my first visit with Madeline.

Before going, my husband (also an NLP master practitioner) guided me in releasing an enmeshment I might have with either Jane or Madeline since we have been friends for over twenty years. I gathered every note about every NLP pattern I had ever heard of and thought might be useful and went off to L.A.

During my first visit, Madeline was hospitalized and in isolation as the side effects of the chemotherapy treatment were already compromising her immune system. Madeline thought she knew nothing, really and had become a person who, in general, adopted the beliefs of whoever she trusted who was with her at the moment. When I arrived, the doctors had enumerated all the possible side effects she could have. And, being as suggestible as she was, Madeline was busy following their instructions. I began using language patterns and hypnosis to remind her that she had more resources than she was aware of and suggested she might like to be curious about how HER body would respond to chemotherapy rather than to just accept someone else’s word about how she would respond.

I had great expectations about the deep NLP work we would do and how far-reaching the results would be. But over the next several months, we spent most of the time easing the awful side effects of the chemo. It was dramatic at times, since she would be emotionally defeated upon my arrival, and two hours later she would have shifted from BEING her symptoms to HAVING her symptoms and be up puttering around the house or even going for a swim!

During the next three or four months, we did well-formed TOTE’s, talked to parts, released enmeshments with various people, aligned perceptual positions, reimprinted, used metaphors, auditory swishes, mapping across, you name it.

It became even more apparent that she had almost no internal authority whatsoever. We worked on boundaries and communicating with her long-ignored internal guidance system, with only marginal success. At one point, I was eliciting her decision strategy (trying to find some inner authority somewhere) and, I used what I thought to be the simplest example. "When you are in a restaurant, how do you choose what to eat?" She replied that she looked at the menu, talked to herself to rule out the things she couldn’t have, and imagined tasting the choices that were left. I asked, "What do you do next?" She said, "I ask someone else what they’re having and have that!" Next I asked, "When you’re in a restaurant alone, how do you decide?" And she repeated the process by looking at the menu, ruling out what she couldn’t have, and tasting what was left. "What do you do then?" I asked. At this point I was sure she couldn’t help but reveal a useful final step in her decision strategy. And she did. "I ask the waiter!" she replied. We had many hearty laughs about this great strategy, and I noted again how completely she had given her authority to others.

As with most people undergoing chemotherapy, Madeline found very few things palatable to eat. On one occasion as we discussed what she would select for lunch, she mentioned that she was so obsessed (my word) about germs that she wished people would wear sterile gloves while preparing her food. She watched me as I processed that statement for a few beats, and then I said, "So, you think . . . and mirrored her statement back to her. The statement had a profound effect on her, and she started to laugh and couldn’t stop. She hooted and rocked in the chair until tears rolled down her face and, finally turned to me and said, "Well, I guess that’s enough of that!" She continued to burst into laughter for days afterwards, every time the subject of making her food came up. Shortly thereafter we did a belief change from, "Food can be dangerous and other people know more about what to eat than I do, to "I know how to choose what is going to go into my body." And, from that moment on, she did.

Many of the imprints we worked on (some more than others) were about times in her childhood when Madeline had either wet her pants or was afraid she would and was afraid to disturb her parents by asking to go to or by getting up to go to the bathroom. In light of this, it was interesting that in addition to the lymphoma in her whole system, Madeline had a mass on the ureter (the tube that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder).

Many times during my work with Madeline she had expressed her conviction that she was an unwanted child, an intrusion. Her parents were very much in love, her mother was an entertainer, and they had not wanted children. She expressed her shock, fear and sadness at coming home from school to find money left on the table for dinner (she was very young). As her son put it, she was a latch-key kid before the term was invented. We did extensive work around that issue, with marginal results. I felt there was a part of her that would rather die than change and guessed it was again a result of her identity being in conflict with the changes I was suggesting.

As closely as she kept track of her physical symptoms, she was so dissociated from her own internal emotional experience, it was extraordinarily difficult to work with her. Her lack of internal authority made her look for answers that she thought I would approve of, rather than what she actually felt. We continued to have good results in easing the discomfort from the side effects of the chemotherapy, but otherwise I felt like I was putting out a fire with an eye dropper.

Between my visits we talked by telephone when I did language work, hypnosis, and even auditory swishes to help her just get from one day to the next. She said the nights were the terrible part, because she was so afraid. That ultimately became much easier to her after altering the statements she was making internally.

Of course, this relationship was vastly different than the one I usually have with my clients. Normally, they come to me looking for a specific outcome and usually I am able to help them get it. But Madeline had no idea what to work on beyond the scary nights, so I would just listen to her talk, try to identify problem areas, and begin to do some form of NLP.

She was always delighted to see me and I seemed to be a resource anchor for her. After awhile, I only had to show up and she’d feel better. We laughed a lot, like the time we discussed the family traditions she might be setting by having rice and peanut butter on the Fourth of July. Or the time she was having so much difficulty remembering to do all the things everyone told her she should be doing like drinking enough water, taking her medication, exercising, reading, listening to tapes, keeping in touch with people, etc. I thought I could help her chunk this into more manageable tasks and in an effort to find out how much time she had available to do all these chores, asked, "How many hours a day are you awake?" There was a measurable silence while she thought, and finally, she answered ... "All of them." Every time I think of that, it makes me smile and I am reminded how ambiguous language can be.

As I look back on this entire piece of NLP work, I realize how much Madeline’s illness paralleled her mental outlook and other behaviors. One day I observed her in the distance scuttling furtively across the room in a posture I had seen before her illness. Her body moved like it was saying, "Maybe no one will notice me," or "No one can see me if I move like this." Later in her illness, after the doctors had said the mass on the ureter was gone, they finally realized it had simply moved around out of sight of the everyday tests they were running.

By September, Madeline was experiencing what she’d been told were the cumulative effects of the chemotherapy to such a great extent that she was hesitant to have any more. The doctors conferred and decided to change the treatment, hoping it would be more tailored to her body and easier on her. We talked by phone just before the treatment and did the following meditation I had designed for her, incorporating her frequently expressed desire for her own little home with a garden.

Get into a comfortable position . . . relax . . .take a deep breath. Notice with each breath you take that you feel more relaxed and comfortable. While in this relaxed state let your mind visit some special place that you enjoy being (Hawaii for her). This is the place you enjoy visiting that you can always reach within your mind’s eye at any time you choose to go there. You might feel the breeze on your skin, hear the birds or sounds of the ocean or smell the flowers and see the other beauty which surrounds you in this wonderful place. While you are there, I am going to talk to your unconscious mind and you can continue to relax in your special place.

Relax. Relax. That’s right. Your mind is like a special, safe home and your body the garden that surrounds it. Your body was born with the natural ability to heal and regenerate itself and continues to have that ability now. This is a natural, in-built healing that is unconscious and automatic. And since your body is a self-healing mechanism, you can relax during this treatment and allow your unconscious mind to balance your system in such a way that it accommodates the chemotherapy to the greatest benefit for your body and in a manner that is most comfortable to your system.Knowing this treatment is tailor-made for you, as the treatment enters your system your body will use it in the most beneficial way to mend the system so that healing occurs both during and after this treatment. You will remain comfortable while your body receives the benefits this treatment can provide and uses this time as an opportunity to support your sytem, reorganizing if necessary in a way that maximizes healing and comfort.

Your unconscious mind will use this treatment like the gardener uses his chemicals to balance the soil where mother nature grows her flowers so that your system can again support the flowering of healthy cells and tissue and your body returns to its natural growing cycles and rhythm in partnership with the mothering of your own true nature.

Let your body become the garden that your unconscious mind waters and feeds, not only by using this treatment to nurture the healthy functioning of your entire system, but also by accessing all of your personal resources and continued learnings to support your complete healing and well-being. Your body’s ability to self-heal will blossom and flower even more now that you are so aware of its true nature, and you can relax and let your natural healing begin now, while you enjoy that special place you visit in your mind, knowing that any time you want you can return to this special place to relax and accelerate the healing that is already occurring. In a minute I am going to ask you to come fully awake, etc.

And she went to have her last chemotherapy treatment.

Madeline began to notice that she felt like she was drifting away from people who came to see her or was getting annoyed by some callers. So we worked some more on boundaries, with pretty good results. She visualized her own energy field and, with practice learned to see it in place as well as to work the controls. Afterward, she frequently told me about changing her experience with people by using this process.

Late in September, Madeline contracted cellulitis and was hospitalized with her white count so low that doctors couldn’t tell where the infection was coming from. They removed a suspect prot-o-cath from her chest and in the process, punctured her lung. The lung collapsed within 24 hours and she lay at death’s door. Her son, William, told her he had heard of people who were dying uttering brilliant and wise statements and asked if she had any wisdom for those she might leave behind. She replied, "Keep your legs crossed and don’t lose touch with the nuns." This saying became famous all over the hospital, and after Madeline began to recover slightly, the woman in charge of the hospital’s volunteers made a sign repeating Madeline’s words, and hung it on the wall.

Madeline was in isolation for a very long time and I didn’t talk to her again until October. She was very weak and our work together was limited, although I continued to use language and hypnosis to give her positive suggestions for healing. She had been fairly frightened throughout the treatment, and at this point, it really escalated. She was released from the hospital and although more chemotherapy treatment was suggested, she refused. She then found out about alternative treatments available in Mexico and on Thanksgiving Day went there seeking help. She seemed to do well there, beginning to get up and around again. The focus was more on the mind and her emotional well-being, along with other treatment.

After her return, she continued to struggle to get well, moving in and out of the hospital, until they discovered that the chemotherapy had destroyed her bone marrow and she couldn’t manufacture the platelets she needed for healthy blood. She had many transfusions and platelets, but ultimately nothing worked and she began to slip. I was with her at Christmas and then again in early January. Everyone, including her, held out great hope that some miracle would save her. But I knew she was dying and, on some level, so did she. During our last visit she perked up for one last amusing conversation (even before the illness, I had always been dedicated to making her laugh). She thanked me for all the times I had come to her, saying, "Why it was almost . . . fun!" And when we said goodbye, we looked into each other's eyes for a long time and really said goodbye. She died three days later, surrounded by family, and friends who had become family.

Because of Madeline’s natural marketing expertise, I now have a small practice in Los Angeles and many new friends. I also have the experience of having helped someone be more comfortable and happy on the journey toward death. It is one of my greatest learning experiences so far and one of my most cherished possessions. Much healing occurred in this situation, and as my friend Ibrahim pointed out, it is important as practitioners that we make the distinction between "healing" and "cure." Now that she’s gone, her family and friends continue the healing and so do I.

If you want to know exactly what NLP techniques I used in my work with Madeline, I’ll answer the same way she did . . . ALL OF THEM. 

Beverly Martin Gorley lives in Los Altos, California. She can be reached at 240 Marich Way, Los Altos, CA 94022. Phone: (415) 941-8359. E-mail: nlpbev@earthlink.net.