I'm not sure whether belief in NLP is a matter of taste : The techniques are basically a distillation of what therapists (notably Erickson) have uncovered durin

I'm not sure whether belief in NLP is a matter of taste : The techniques are basically a distillation of what therapists (notably Erickson) have uncovered during hypnosis. To further amplify your point, the unconscious mind doesn't seem to be any good at parsing logical statements - so things that one 'says to oneself' should be cast straightforwardly. At its most basic, the command "Don't think of a pink unicorn" brings to the surface exactly what you don't want. Drilling yourself to process 'bad stuff' unconsciously is (as you said) counterproductive.