Questions and practical exercise are used to establish how the patient thinks negatively and whether this is in terms of language or pictures.  Then, negative words or images will be replaced with positive ones.

Practitioners of this therapy style believe that most phobias are examples of one-trial learning - that only one negative experience is needed to generate the fear.  Thus they seek to link previous 'bad memories' and internal experiences with previous feelings of confidence, relaxation and calm.  Negative outlook and behaviour will be transferred into positivity. 

It is a method widely used by hypnotherapists and is said to work best with simple, specific phobias.

Gut Reaction is not aware of any studies assessing the effectiveness of NLP in treating emetophobia.

The National Association for Neuro-Linguistic Programming can be contacted at: 0870 870 4970.