Case study help Lower Blood Pressure and Alleviate Stress
I was invited to Clients house for the NLP treatment. I arrived on time and she greeted me at the door and she wanted us to sit at her dining room table for note taking and talking. I met Client three years ago at a Crystal and Gem Show. I found her warm and strong in her energy and liked her immediately so I approached her and began talking to her about crystals. She then invited me to her women’s circle which is a monthly get together of like-minded women of which I enjoy going. Her medical history is: she has a painful right knee and she has recently been told she has High Blood Pressure due to stress in her life right now. Her Holistic MD has her on holistic medication for lowering her blood pressure and advised her to ride a stationary bike for 20 minutes or walk for 30 minutes and do meditation for 30 minutes after the exercise. She prefers to do the bike ONLY once a day and was annoyed to be told that she had to do it twice a day by her Holistic MD. We then filled out her treatment card.
Details of treatment: She wanted to alleviate the stress to lower her blood pressure
When I sat down with Client, I could see she was tired and not the usual energetic person she normally is. I asked her what was going on in her life that has her stressed. She told me she and her partner are building a house and the building permit is supposed to be approved any day and she was turned down for her loan. Client has been worried about the loan and had not slept fully for a few weeks. She said angrily that the bank loan person had told her she would get the loan and not to worry but then a few week later came back and said that he was not going to give her the loan after all and that she could easily get one somewhere else. Her question to him was, “why not?” I could see this was agitating her again so I thought to mention that there are ways to “work on stress relievers and was she interested. I asked her What do you want for yourself, in hearing this she said, “ I want my happiness and good health back!” and “Yes I am ready to learn and try this stuff out.” She immediately smiled and said yes please let’s do it. I asked her about the bike and meditation time she is currently doing.
She then told me that the stationary bike she rides is not the most fun so she watches TV while doing it and then listens to music after while doing her relaxed or meditation time. She said that between the TV and the music she was annoyed. I asked her what “triggers” the annoyance about the TV and then the music and she said the sounds are so different. Then what came about is that riding the bike is the annoyance she would rather be outside walking. I asked her if she could walk and she said yes but she would have to drive somewhere since the walk up her steep hill would aggravate her knee plus she would have to change her clothing in case someone saw her. I saw that this was not making her any happier so I thought of something different to move away from the complaining and move toward an outcome that would be a positive one for her, so I asked her about “What She Liked” about walking and asked where would she like to do her walk if she could. She said she loves the beach so she said she could drive the car to the beach and do her walk and she laughed and said, “ who cares what clothing I wear”, then drive home, do her meditation so she could enjoy both the music and the sounds of the ocean. This small step of change she made had her quite happy and she felt her stress levelling off. Again she was becoming more animated and her speech was coming out faster!
Another issue she has which raises her stress is that she does not like people telling her what to do about her health or money and she does not always desire the advice she is given. She has to process what she hears and let it roll around in her head awhile before she goes and does what she was told to do. She likes to make her own decisions but weighing them first. We discussed what tools she could use of the NLP to feel more at ease about people and decisions. She felt she was Dissociative and we discussed why. With the building of the house she has been busy and had less time to be happy and being in the flow of life since she has been keeping track of time and looking down at the ground always in a hurry instead of up at the sky. She has not wanted to be around a lot of people either. By not wanting to be negative around her friends, she was tuning herself out and missing the joy by denying herself days out doing lunches with friends. So she came to the conclusion that it was best to be in both “association and disassociation” enjoying being in the positive and stepping away from the negatives emotions when they come up instead of being caught up in the negative of anger. She then said she was going to remember those happy times on the beach or petting her little dog, or laughing with good friends instead of focusing on the bank loan and the building challenges that keep coming up. Client said that when she is positive and happy she does not feel stressed out.
Perceptions
We then started talking about Perceptual Positions and I explained what the three are. She then thought she was a Position 3 person, one who is objective in their decision making, because she puts things in perspective all the time and she said she is very rational and impartial. She said that she was not detached from the world, though, and is concerned about what is going on in the world. She does consider herself an observer, when she walks into a room filled with people she hesitates not wanting to immediately jump in to the conversation what comes to her mind is the question, “what is going on here?” Client then said that since she is very sensitive to energies from others that this is her “protection mode” and she did say that she would like to be a little of Position 1 for standing up for herself since she tends to not stand up for what she believes in. Client shared with me that a several years ago when her daughter was around 27 she would speak to Client in a very mean way and treated her like a door mat constantly wanting money and things and being disrespectful to her mother. One day Client had had it so she told her daughter to get out and not come back until she had respect for her mother. The daughter stayed a way for two years and then came back and they found that mutual respect for each other and are good friends. Client realised that was the day she went from the Position 2 person of being what she called the door mat to the Position 3 person of being an observer. This then lead into the discussion of Filtering and the 5 Senses that we use to filter out all that information that comes to us and would be overwhelming if we did not have filters which I explained to her taking baby steps or having smaller goals is ok to have as this is not overwhelming then and more manageable. She agreed and said that makes total sense. She said she would rather do the smaller steps now and this too would keep the stress level down!
Filters
When we were discussing filters and then I asked her if she wanted to write down an answer or feeling to this question, “what do you need to believe that someone trusts you?” she said that she has trust for herself and she did not care what others think about her and was not concerned if they trusted her or not. I found this interesting and wanted to delve into further but she did not want to at this time. She told me that recently her partner asked her this question, “Client what is your purpose in life, do you know it? She said this, “I am living my purpose that I came to this life to be a mother, to learn to love, to give love and to make love grow.” She said she is all about love. We then proceeded to talk about the 5 senses. Client said that she felt she was Kinaesthic as her dominant sense the feeling and touching. As an artist she does see the world in colourful pictures, and she gets information from her gut feelings too. She remembers experiences and how she felt at the time. She likes to learn best by “doing” to get the hang of it. We then discussed the set of tools that NLP has to offer for her to make those changes like in her daily routine of exercise making it more favourable and happy. Knowing the difference of the “what and the how”, what is that she needs to do for alleviating stress and lowering her blood pressure, and the then “how do I implement this in my daily life.” Being that she is also an artist and would like to make time again to paint as her passion is to create love and beauty. She mentioned that she has missed doing her painting since she got so busy planning the house and when she used to paint her blood pressure was normal. I asked her if she could make the time in the day to paint again. She said that she had forgotten about painting and how much pleasure this gives her, she smiled as she was having a happy memory of painting her brightly coloured rooster painting of which was hanging in the hallway. She said,”Oh yes I am going to paint again!” So she then talked about how her busy schedule was the stress raising her blood pressure and she is going to make those changes now! Her comment at the end of the session made me smile since she used to say this a lot and I had not heard this for a few months, “Everything will be OK and I am OK.”
My Assessment of my Client’s Session.
When I first enteredClienthome I felt her anger and saw that her eyes were very small and her face was red. I thought to myself, “oh boy angels we got some work to do.” When we sat down we went over her medical history of which stressed her more, she then asked for a summary of what NLP is all about so I gave her a brief summary and as I was talking about the various tools to use for those positive changes and thoughts she became quite interested. Her eyes became larger and bright and her colouring became more natural, her breathing was normal again and she leaned over the table like she wanted to hear more and more. I also got a sense that her energy was stronger and the annoyance and anger were gone. She talked about herself which normally she does not talk about herself that much, she became quite animated. I put myself in her shoes at one point when she was mentioning about walking into a room full of people and having that feeling of not fear but of why did I come here? She observes and waits to see what is going on here before speaking. I on the other hand walk up and start talking so I put myself in her shoes and saw through her eyes the situation. She said she never really thought about it and wondered if it was all about fear and rejection which I did feel when I saw myself in her shoes looking through her eyes feeling the energy in that room. I learned something about myself too and that I can see from other’s viewpoints and it feels good to put myself in their shoes so to speak. I enjoyed this “knowing”. Since I had no idea how this session, when I walked in her house, was going to work or be so I just went on pure faith, I feel we had a good rapport going. Both of us leaning over the table, feet on the floor, laughing and being serious too and she listened to my questions and I listened to her answers. I mentioned the various NLP tools which she was most interested in using and she said she would keep up the momentum and felt that the walking, painting and meditation were doable with her schedule to maintain a normal blood pressure for and her happiness again. We ended the session which lasted about 2 hours and I felt we made some good head way. I told her I appreciated her being my “test client” we both learned how valuable NLP tools are to use in our daily life.
Advice for the After Care
Client was going to follow through with walking or biking, painting and meditating and also meeting her Holistic MD like he had asked her to keep in touch with him. Since she had been annoyed and did not want to be keep in touch with him now she was changing that to wanting to see him. Her goal now is to stay healthy and meet with her Holistic MD every three months and maintain a positive attitude about herself as well as her Holistic MD trusting that he had her best interests at heart. She understood she was the resistance, not he and was willing to make those small changes to bring her blood pressure down and be happy again. I mentioned that we can always have a chat on the phone with her for those “pep talks.”
Client’s Comments about her session
I was very interested in what Mary was telling me about NLP, I felt I received a good education about Nuero Linguistics Programming and the tools Mary presented to me to make some healthy and positive changes in my life are doable. I appreciated her helping me to show me who I am, not who I thought I was. I have always known about being very sensitive to energies and people and held myself off from contact and now I know why and feel no guilt in being who I am. I can use pictures in my mind of happy “things” when I feel angry or annoyed which will help me not get that hot feeling of anger and my blood rushing in my ears. The suggestion of walking on the beach and change up my exercise program will help a great deal I like variety. I was able to say my mantra again, “Everything will be Ok and I am Ok.” Mary is a very warm and spiritual person and is a good listener, a good therapist and I am grateful for her help in seeing things in a new light and making changes that will give me the good health that I am wanting and now I know how to do this for me.
