NLP or rather... BS?

For full disclosure, I am not an expert in this matter, I have been seeing a therapist for some time in the past (who hasn't?) and psychiatrist for some pharmacological help (I like to call it "happy candy"). I am a big supporter of therapy, psychoanalysis, as I know from my experience, it helped me. I will not say it will definitely be the best way to help everyone, people work in different ways. But there is one thing that I will always say is a big stack of BS: NLP. 

Neuro linguistic programming to me is nothing more than just wishful thinking. How do you expect to change your life and behavior, truly, for long term, simply by telling yourself what you want and what you should do to accomplish your goal? Let's not forget that most of the people have some limitations which are a direct result of their underlying emotional trauma, their defense mechanisms. They might not even be aware of it but in certain situations, the defense mechanism kicks in and without knowing it, you cannot truly change it. Here comes the difference between psychotherapy and NLP: psychotherapy helps one to discover the issue, understand it and treat it accordingly. NLP on the other hand, finds the behavior, doesn't look for the cause and forces the correction of said behavior, which really looks to me like slapping a band-aid on open wound and saying "walk it off". "NLP tries to detect and modify unconscious biases or limitations of an individual's map of the world. NLP is not hypnotherapy. Instead, it operates through the conscious use of language to bring about changes in someone's thoughts and behavior." - December 20th 2017 by Medical News Today. 

To be honest, if NLP has been established in the 1970's (Richard Bandler and John Grinder in California, United States - courtesy of the Wikipedia page), it is not a very new concept. And if it's not, why isn't it broadly used by therapists? Again, because it is not a science. It is a tool mostly used by life coaches to artificially create behaviors, just like drawing on a clean page of paper, but let's not forget that nobody is a clean page of paper, we all have a history that cannot be just erased.

"Researchers and qualified psychologists are mostly damning about NLP. In a 2019 paper published in International Coaching Psychology Review, a group of experts wrote that: “there are many critics of NLP who view NLP as variably a pseudoscience, pop psychology or even a cult, with no evidence base for its effectiveness.” " 

In fact, there are no proof whatsoever that NLP really works. The argument is that it has not been submitted to the same evaluation criteria as other types of therapy such as CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). My question is why? It's been here for 50 years, isn't that enough time to study it and find something to support its claim for legitimacy? Or maybe there's simply nothing to prove? 

In fact, neuro linguistic programming has been discredited as pseudoscience already some time ago and yet, there are still many people who blindly follow it which can be fairly dangerous. Let's take an example: we have a woman, let's say Elisabeth (name completely made up, I don't even know any Elisabeths in real life). Elisabeth has a strong fear of intimacy and men in general which makes it impossible for her to find someone with whom she might have a very nice life, marriage, children, tiny house with white picked fence. Now the NLP will identify the problem as her being afraid and avoidant so according to the theory, she should try more to go out, maybe get out of her comfort zone, be open to new possibilities. But it doesn't try to find the reason for her behavior. Now let's try psychotherapy: Betty goes to her therapist (or even tries to untangle the mystery by herself, at home) and realizes that her past relationship with an alcoholic and abusive boyfriend has left her with a deep fear and mistrust. She's afraid the future hypothetical boyfriend might seem okay at first, but will beat her up like the previous one did. Now we see her fear is a flight response to previous trauma. It's only natural to avoid dangerous situations, it's deeply rooted in the brains of all creatures, it's a fool-proof tactic for survival. In this case surpressing this behavior in Betty might result in further abuse. But we know, and Betty does too, that not all men are abusive alcoholics, so a proper therapy is a very delicate operation. Once we have identified the underlying problem, we can start to adapt the new behavior patterns: it is very wise for Betty to be wary of the dangers, but for her to be able to build a stable and loving relationship with someone, she has to be aware of the possible red flags abusers display, she has to rebuild her self confidence and know her worth. 

And this is how one can implement long lasting, genuine changes in life. It's not enough to say "get your shit together", first you need to know why your shit is all over the place.