Sunday, May 24, 2009
"The Tyranny of Shoulds" and how to release yourself from it
www.charlottehinksman.com for therapy, coaching and training services in Wellington.
It's one short word, just seven little letters long. It doesn't seem that bad on face value really. So, what's the big deal about the word SHOULD?
It's an auxiliary verb i.e. a "helping" verb ( a verb used in conjunction with another verb i.e. I should (aux. verb) run (verb) faster). It is defined by the dictionary as follows:
aux.v. Past tense of shall
- Used to express obligation or duty: You should send her a note.
- Used to express probability or expectation: They should arrive at noon.
- Used to express conditionality or contingency: If she should fall, then so would I.
- Used to moderate the directness or bluntness of a statement:I should think he would like to go.
In NLP terms it is what we call a Modal Operator. This means a word that kind of drives our experience. There are Modal Operators of necessity (should, shouldn't) and of possibility or impossibility (can, can't). It may seem like pointless analytics of semantics but when communicating with ourselves inside our heads or listening to our client's language when they come to a session, changing these "semantics" can actually make a huge difference to our experience inside our heads and consequently the results we get in our lives.
Not all uses of the word little word "should" cause a problem. For example commenting on someone's arrival "they should arrive at noon" is pretty benign. However when we are continuously "shoulding" all over OURSELVES it causes US problems (it is also useful also to be aware of how we use the word should when communicating to others in our lives although that won't be explicitly discussed here). Let me explain more:
Consider the following statements / comments we might (hypothetically speaking) say to ourselves:
"I should know better"
"I shouldn't be feeling like this"
"I should be asleep by now"
"I should be able to sort this out by myself"
"I should be able to do it like them"
"I should understand it by now"
"I shouldn't be struggling with this"
Do any of these press a button for you? Any of us having been through the western education system the way that it is (with a huge focus on "doing well" and high achievement) will undoubtedly have grown up "shoulding" on ourslves like this. Growing up with parents wanting us to achieve simply fires the drive to prove ourselves and the shoulding continues. Then enter higher education, our first job, a new country, training in a new field or discipline, anything that challenges us and drives our desire to DO or BE something MORE than we are right now will cause us to should on ourselves.
The very nature of using the word in this kind of context is:
a) a judgment
b) non-acceptance of the way things currently are
c) results in a conflict within you
d) holds you in the problem (i.e. not solution focussed)
The general underlying theme is therefore:
what is right now is not acceptable therefore something different (usually something BETTER) is much more acceptable thank you very much.
It is either more acceptable to YOU or more acceptable to the PERSON or PEOPLE whose expectations you want to meet (so that they have a favourable opinion of you) or indeed wanting to measure up to the various expectations of the SOCIETY you are part of (you should be more successful, earning more money, a better father, you should be more relaxed after all those years of yoga etc.). Even it it feels like you are interested only in living up to your own expectations, these are likely to have come from someone else's expectations of you. Yes I know, that's a very "therapist" like thing to say, and I stand by it! We are usually not born with such expectations of ourselves that we "should" live up to every minute of every day for the rest of our lives. It doesn't mean they are bad, it is just worth noticing where those expectations come from.
The thing about having these expectations that we SHOULD be living up to is that, in any given moment, life is NOT perfect all the time and they therefore might be quite unrealistic expectations. And, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you are NOT perfect and neither am I! Not in the way the "expectations" want you to be to be "perfect" i.e. perfect job, perfect house, perfect family, perfect ability to cope with life's challenges at any given moment, perfect ability to "do well" at anything new, perfect ability to relax at will, perfect weight and body shape, a perfect new mother, father, perfect children who never make mistakes, perfect.....need I go on?
These expectations of perfection ARE impossible to live up to and sustain over any reasonable period of time. And as long as you are expecting to, you are going to experience negative feelings about yourself and about life. Life will never stay static - there will always be changes. Just when you think it's all going "perfectly" a change will occur and it could be challenging. That's life. It's the same for all of us. If you have expectations that are different, it will be hard to meet them over any reasonable period of time. Learning how to respond to life's challenges in a useful way is what this article is really about.
Of course, life is perfect in its imperfection - but we are not brought up in western societies celebrating life's imperfections are we? A successful life should be a a certain way and therefore so should we. And when we start to fall short of that, we SHOULD all over ourselves and start to panic and that's when people stop sleeping well, get lower self-esteem and come to see someone like me so I can help them love and accept themselves more and move through the rest of their lives being peaceful and happy whilst responding to challenges usefully and achieving new things.
The good news is, you are not alone, and it can all change for the better.
Some of you may have detected what may seem initially like a contradiction in what I am saying. You might be thinking that when we notice something is NOT as we desire it in our lives and we want it to be better, that surely that's a good thing, and surely that it what people hire me for - as a therapist and a coach - to help people CHANGE for the better? And if the word SHOULD helps us realise this then why is she disputing the validity of it? What's going on here?!
So, to answer you; YES - experiencing the CONTRAST in life that offers us the opportunity to identify what we do not want so we can start identifying what we do want is VERY useful indeed. AND as a human being, you will always be growing and expanding if you allow yourselves to (for that is what I believe you are on this planet to do) and you realise then, that you will never stop PREFERRING. You will always want something to be better than now - because that IS growth! So, great - no problem there.
However, it is the nature in which you NOTICE and THINK ABOUT what it is you do not want that I am challenging here. And whether the things you think you want are actually YOUR own preferences or come from the EXPECTATIONS from others or society and whether they are (a) realistic or (b) useful.
Consider this. You notice there's something going on in your life which you don't want. You start thinking:
"hey I am not very relaxed and after these years in yoga I should really know better by now"
which is VERY different from thinking;
"I am not very relaxed in my life right now, I would like to get better at relaxing while I go about my work"
Or consider the contrast between:
"I am struggling with this new information, after all those years of education I should know this by now!"
and;
"I am struggling with all this new information, I would like to find ways of learning more easily"
And let's have one more example, because I know that our brains like to do things in threes:
"I often get asked questions in my job that I don't immediately know the answer to and I should be able to answer them straight away"
and;
"I often get asked questions in my job that I don't immediately know the answer to and I'd like to get better at handling those tricky situations to help people more effectively".
Are you realising the difference now? Well you SHOULD be (just kidding - sorry, I couldn't resist the humour in that one..). One is a self-judgement and creates an internal conflict (what is happening right now is NOT as good as I want it to be) and holds you in the problem pattern and just feeling bad about it (i.e. not solution focussed at all). You could easiy just go about your day judging yourself for the problems you are having and feeling really bad about the conflct you've created between what IS and what SHOULD BE and then NOT finding any kind of WORKABLE solutions for them. That's exactly what SHOULDING on YOURSELF does to you!
OR, you can enjoy noticing the CONTRAST between what currently IS going on right now and what you would PREFER. Whatever currently IS, IS! So you may as well ACCEPT it. You won't change it by being harsh with yourself about it. However you CAN identify that you PREFER something DIFFERENT or BETTER and then you can start enjoying the many opportunities that life will offer you to notice this contrast which is the natural scope for GROWTH and begin to set REALISTIC and VIABLE outcomes for yourself that actually ALLOW you to GROW and EXPAND in a SOLUTION FOCUSSED way and you may even, in the process perhps ADJUST the expectations you have of yourself to be more in line with what YOU prefer, and NOT what OTHERS or SOCIETY would prefer OF you. Then you can MOVE FORWARD in your life enjoying GROWTH and EXPANSION in a KIND TO YOURSELF way that helps you practice ACCEPTANCE of SELF and ACCEPTANCE OF WHAT IS and allows HAPPINESS and PEACE and CONTENTMENT with yourself and your life AS IT IS whilst PREFERRING and GROWING AND EXPANDING because you are PREFFERING something different from now and can now ACHEIVE much more from this preferable way of thinking about "problems" and solutions.
So, here's my strategy for helping you do the above (if that is what you choose to pefer):
1) Acknowledge the "problem" - what it is that could be better and say to yourself:
"I acknowledge that I am not relaxed right now"
2) Set your outcome in a positive and solution focussed way:
"I would like to be more relaxed in my day to day life"
3) Find solutions to help you meet your own outcome. You can brainstorm a list:
Sign up to that mediation class
Listen to that relaxation CD
Listen to that music I like
Take the time to unwind after my working day
Give myself permission to relax in the evening
Read that inspiring book that reminds me to chill out
Go and see xxxx who always makes me feel better
You may wish to keep a notebook or a diary for just these POSITIVE outcomes, so you can refer back to your identifyed solutions at a later time if necessary. Your unconscious mind wil resond so much more positively and favourable when you communicate with yourself in this way as opppse to the self-judgement, conflict creating, feel bad, no solutions way. You can begin to eliminate that little damaging word from your vocabluary and release yourself from "The Tyranny of the Shoulds". Life will be much more enjoyable as you enjoy your expansion in this more positive way- you can really trust me on that one.
A beautuful quote I found recently is fitting here:
"When you realise how perfect
everything is
you will tilt your head back
and laugh at the sky".
- Siddhārtha Gautama (Buddha)
Comments as always, are welcome.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
What does it really mean to be trusting ourselves?
It is a really interesting word - TRUST. What does it mean, really? How do we do it and what are the benefits in our lives if we are more trusting? And how many of us actually trust OURSELVES? How many of us trust ourselves to be: doing our best at any given moment, sleeping well enough, performing tasks and living up to expectations, achieving our goals, doing what we said we were going to do....? So many problems arise when we are not trusting ourselves. I am not talking about trusting others, as that deserves a whole new article to itself - I am talking about trusting ourselves - you, trusting you.
I have been doing some interesting personal work on this topic recently and although we have talked about the topic of trust in other newsletters - it deserves to be discussed again as it is such a fundamentally important part of our lives and when we learn to be trusting ourselves, can make life a lot more enjoyable and successful.
In answer to the above questions, you trust yourself every single day. I know - a radical thing to say. You also know this to be true - if you look a little more closely:
- Did you have to remind yourself to breathe today? No, of course you did not.
- Did you remind your brain how to walk today? How to put one foot in front of the other and stride forward, like you've been doing since you were a tiny child? Unless you've had some kind of accident where you would've had to re-learn walking, again, of course you did not remind yourself.
- How about your food digesting? Did you tell your body exactly which nutrients to keep hold of and absorb, and exactly which ones to excrete? How many inches to grow your hair? No, of course not!
- And for those of us that drive a car, or ride a bike, did you remind yourselves how you do it, or did it seem almost natural to you, as if you were almost doing it without quite being aware how? Do you even forget you're doing it sometimes, where you can be casually chatting away, and before you know it you're at your destination, and can't even remember how you got there!
- Did you mentally rehearse everything that came out of your mouth today, before it came out? Or did you just seem to magically open your mouth and speak something perfectly viable and sensible? Of course you did - and you do it every single day.
These are all examples of you, without being consciously aware, are trusting yourselves and your unconscious mind. It operates these deeply ingrained functional skills and abilities which are integrated on such a significantly deep level and large scale and we take it all for granted! Yet, they are highly skillful, dynamic operations that take a myriad of specific and complex neurotransmitter connections to fire successfully in sequence in less than a micro-second to achieve them!
The truth is, to have any of these things operating without you being aware consciously, means that you ARE trusting yourself, all the time, every single second of every single day of your whole lives. You are trusting your brain and your body to know what it's doing. And it likes to be trusted! Look what it does for you every day in return for being trusted by you! Imagine if you tried consciously to breathe, walk, speak, drive; imagine you tried to be consciously aware and consciously controlling each and every action, telling yourself "right, place your hand on the steering wheel at a right angle, and then, when you slow down, place your right foot (or is it the left?) on the break pedal...not too much, just about 20% pressure......" You'd be completely worn out and you wouldn't have time for anything else!
With this amazing unconsciously ability to we have and trust every day, when and why do we learn to doubt ourselves and our abilities? Why do we question whether we can do something or not, whether we will be successful at something or not, or whether our body can or can't do something for us (like sleep for example)? Who knows, and I am not about to try and analyse it, as that could take approximately 10 years or so and we still wouldn't know how to change it.
What's even more important and impactful, is just to work out how to change it and do something different. Because you can trust yourself, much more than you may have realised.
The first thing we need to do, is throw a bucket of water over the Wicked Witch of the East and get her to melt! We need to stop referring to trust as a "thing" that has a shape and a form. Why? Because it DOESN'T have a shape and a form. "Trust" DOES NOT EXIST! You will never have it, and you will never not have it, you can't see it, you can't lose it, and you can't forget to take it out with you or put it in in the mornings!
We do this with lots of words in the English language (this is not true of all languages however) - we talk about what's actually a process as a "thing" that exists inside of you somewhere, e.g. anxiety, depression, pain, confidence, self-esteem, insomnia, happiness. It is called a nominalisation. It creates the illusion that these things have a solid shape and form, like an object i.e. a glass. If that was true, you could show me where they are and I can take them out for you, polish them up and put them back in; show me where your "depression" is, and let's take it out!
These nominalisations are misleading, as they are not things you will ever have, not have, lose, forget, put in your bag and take to work with you, leave them behind at your friend's place or forget to put them in in the morning, because they simply DO NOT EXIST that way. You do not have insomnia, you do it. You do not have happiness, you do it. You do not have trust inside of you somewhere, you do it. And what that means is, if you haven't had the experience of sleep or happiness or trust recently, it just means you have forgotten how to do it, or just haven't done it in a while. I know it sounds radical, especially when we are talking about serious things like depression and insomnia, and what I am saying is true. Like all nominalisations, we don't have these "things" like the word implies, we DO the process of them. If we don't like what we are doing and the result we are getting, we can do something different, then.
We need to de-nominalise these nominalisations and turn them back into what they really are - a PROCESS. Trust = trustING. Please do note the capital, illatic ___ING on the end, it is intentional. So we need to start the process and start practising trusting.
My suggestions about how to do this:
1) Choose an area you have had difficulty trusting yourself in in the past. For example, sleep (will I be able to sleep tonight?), your current role at work (can I really do this, am I any good?), a goal, or a new challenge coming up i.e. a presentation at work, a sporting event, or any event that you had felt uncomfortable in (will I really be able to do this? Can I do it? What if xyz happens...?) or any other area where you notice you are not trusting yourself, and doubting yourself or worrying instead. You will know when you are worrying and doubting because you will likely get anxious feelings of when you think of it.
2) Set yourself an outcome; firstly a positve statement. Think about how you WANT to feel about this area (specifically in regards to trust) i.e. "I want to be trusting myself to deliver a well thought-out presentation" or "I want to be trusting myself to sleep appropriately tonight" Make sure the word trusting is in your outcome, not "trust"!
3) Think very closely about how you would know if you were TRUSTING yourself. We are going to get detailed here, and let me say now, it's hard work to do this next part, and also totally worth it. Try as much as possible to be thinking about what it WILL be like, as oppose to what it has been like (i.e. solution as opposed to problem). We are going to add as many ____INGs as we can:
Where would the feeling of trusting be in the body? Chest, heart, head etc?
If you were to guess, what temperature would it have? Warm, cool, hot, cold?
What colour would it be?
What shape would it be?
Would it be a still feeling or a moving feeling?
Are there any other ways in which you would know you were having this feeling of trusting?
What kind of thinking, in any given moment, would support a feeling of trusting like that? I.e. what would be the actual words you would be saying to yourself when you're trusting yourself like that?
It will usually be something like: I can do this, I've done this before and it was fine, I am doing the best I can, I will do it, I can trust myself.
What will you be doing differently when you are trusting yourself like that - i.e. what are the actual actions or behaviours that will change when you are trusting yourself in this area?
What are you focusing on, or paying attention to, when you are trusting yourself like that? I.e. you certainly won't be focusing on worrying or creating anxiety, so what WILL you be paying attention to, when you are trusting yourself in the way you have in mind?
Write this all down. Make a picture of yourself doing all the things you have described. Remind yourself to focus on this trusting of yourself at least once a day, if you can do it more (really, whenever you think of it!) then that would be super-useful. Remember, you can't forget it or lose it, you just need to practise DOING it. So, whenever you notice yourself not trusting, come back to what you have written here and start doing it again.
And notice the difference it makes.
Happy trusting; we are all practising it with you!
I would like to dedicate this article to my supervisor and trusted (!) mentor, Lynn Timpany, for all of her expert help and support, and whom I am very grateful for having in my career and my life. Thank you Lynn! Go to www.lynntimpany.co.nz for more.
With love and positive, trusting thoughts, Charlotte.
www.charlottehinksman.com for NLP services in Wellington.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
How can we be loving, accepting and forgiving of OURSELVES unconditionally?
When I first read that I truly thought "yeah right, she obviously hasn't trained in NLP she doesn't know what she's on about!" and now, having had several years experience working with clients one on one, I am beginning to partially agree with her theory; and I can relate to it personally as well. I have done significant self-development work on myself over the years and it seems that a lot of it comes down to me being able to love myself unconditionally. This is not meant in a vain way, or a narcissistic way, it simply means providing myself with love and approval, the kind of love I give those closest to me in my life. This means: forgiving myself when I f*%k up (a technical term) and accepting myself for who I am; this means that I support and encourage myself with my own internal voice (as oppose to judge and criticising myself), I do those behaviours which are self-nurturing and self-preserving, I have clear boundaries in my professional and personal relationships, I give myself permission to be a good state of mind; happy, content, peaceful, and I provide financially for myself and continue to create a life of abundance (and not just financial abundance), I believe in myself and my abilities and set goals and enjoy challenging myself and support myself moving forward, I trust myself to be learning, continually, and I give myself feedback for improvement and make sure I notice all the bits I am doing WELL, as well as those things worthy of attention for improvement. I praise myself for all I have achieved in my life and the difference I continue to make in the world. I feel worthy of self-acknowledgement self-praise. I have a positive self-image and practise good self-esteem through the messages I give myself and the way I talk to myself.
Is this always natural, effortless and easy?
The simple answer is no, it takes awareness and work. I believe that loving oneself where we can give ourselves love, accept love from others, accept ourselves for exactly who we are and forgive ourselves when we f*%k up (technical term) is one of the highest human achievements, it is quite spiritually evolved in my view, and when we can practise this as a way of life, life flows easily and comfortably and true inner-happiness ensues. It is, in my personal opinion, a continual process and therefore takes awareness and dedication to keep practising (that's where I am at personally right now anyway, I know that the more and more I have this as an intention and continuous practice in my life, it will of course over time, become easy and simply a way of being in the world).
Prime opportunities to practise of this process of loving and accepting and forgiving oneself unconditionally, comes in those times when we (technical term coming up) f*% up, i.e. something goes wrong, we make a mistake, a blunder, things didn't turn out as we had planned, we ate something we planned not to, we accidentally offend someone, we make a decision that didn't turn out as expected, etc.
I had an interesting experience of this quite recently, and I learnt an incredible amount form the whole experience - let me tell you! I had, without knowing it at the time, offended a friend by making an off-hand, flippant comment one evening (I am an expressive person and this was an example of me saying something that had obviously not been well thought out!) I had no idea at the time that my comment had quite significantly, offended my good friend, and I discovered so a few days later when talking on the phone to another friend. This came as a surprise to me and I knew I had to remedy the situation straight away and did so by sincerely apologising. I was, friends being friends, forgiven straight away by this person and then arranged for them to come over for dinner so I could make it up to them. This happened a few weeks later and needless to say, everything is totally fine and dandy between us.
Did I forget about it and move on straight away? I wish I could say yes; and to be honest it took effort to get it clear in my own head. I went straight into self-judgement, guilt, and beating my self up for being so 'thoughtless" and wondered what other people must think about it all. Now, if I hadn't been a skilled NLP master practitioner, I imagine I could have easily tortured myself for weeks on end! Fortunately for me, I instead decided to interrupt this process and ask myself 'what can I learn from this?' thus turning it all around for myself.
I remember sitting on the sofa, immediately after the telephone call where I had cleared things up with my friend, and feeling pleased the situation had been remedied. However I was still doing some self-judgment and some less than useful thinking in my head. My very affectionate cat at this point jumped up and sat on my lap and started purring loudly like a little tractor. I remember thinking "at least she still loves me!" and then I realised: that's what I had to do for myself! I had to love me, and forgive me, and accept me, and to do so in the face of a f*%k up (technical term) meant that it was unconditional!
With a little more focus and work I was able to do this for myself. And wow - what an amazing learning experience and an opportunity to learn about self-love, self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. And I knew it would be a great learning experience for others reading my blog too.
We've all had this experience at some point in our lives when we've perceived that we've done something "wrong" (and I say perceived - as often, what we think we have done that's so terrible, turns out the other people that we were so worried about didn't even notice!) and we've looked upon the experience and cringed, judged ourselves harshly, felt guilty, beat ourselves up black and blue and laid awake worrying about the implications of our mistake.
I went through this with a client recently and we came up with what I think is a very cool strategy to prevent wasted negative thought energy. The thing to know first of all, is that these bad feelings we get is because we are doing them - guilt and disapproval don't just fall from the sky, we do them with the thoughts we are generate in our head. It is undoubtedly an old pattern which got set up long ago, probably resulting from an internalisation of judgement and disapproval from another (usually care-giver, parent, teacher, someone else significant). If we wish to get a different result, be easier and more forgiving of ourselves, treat ourselves the way we treat a loved one, a friend, we need to do something different now; and in any given moment we can choose to do that, even if it takes a little effort. After all, why should we continue to talk to ourselves disapprovingly, just because someone did it to us when were young? We are adults now, and we can make choices about how to respond to events in our lives! Choices that allow us to balance social responsibility and politeness with being good and kind to ourselves too.
Here's a simple strategy which will save you heaps of time and energy;
Staying in Reality
(1) Check reality
As yourself: what has actually happened? What is actually the problem? Has anything actually happened here?
(2) Do I need to do anything to remedy it?
If NO: go straight to (4)
If YES: go straight to (3)
(3) Do whatever needs to be done; apologising, finding out more, making a phone call to follow up etc.
Then ask yourself: Have I done everything I need to?
If NO: Do whatever needs to be done next! Or plan to do it, and then go to (4)
IF YES: go straight to (4)
(4) When nothing further can be done - tell yourself "it's OK to let go of this now" and let it go. If it comes back into your mind again, go through this strategy again so you can really convince yourself that nothing else can be done. If it is still difficult, focus on "what can I learn from this?"
(5) Focus on a future goal
This is effective when it's repeated again and again, just like any new skill, so it becomes a new habit. It is also effective when you realise can come back to it at any given 'now' moment. That means, that if you forget to do it and accidentaly remember to spend time worrying instead, don't beat yourselves up for that, just make that choice in the now to do something differentt, and then come back to it, no problem! You can make any choice in the 'now' moment.
Have fun practising and praise yourselves for giving it a go.
Wishing you a lot of love in your lives (and lots of it coming from you). Before you go to sleep at night, say to yourselves:
I love me, I forgive me, I accept me.
Love from,
Charlotte.
www.charlottehinksman.com for NLP services in Wellington, New Zealand.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
When are we too emotionally involved to help someone we really care about?
It's a good question to ask in my view, for two reasons; from a practitioner perspective helping people change and from a personal perspective; dealing with my own family and friends and loved ones.
We have a saying in NLP when we are considering our roles as "helpers" (people with a bunch of skills and abilities that can help people) which is to "get hired". It is metaphorical of course and therefore doesn't always mean you need to get paid, but it does mean that there needs to be some degree of the person having asked for your help, or a contract you have with them that you will play the helping role for them, or of course a formal arrangement like coming to see someone like me as a paying client.
When I first did my practitioner training I was so enthusiastic having left this training with all these life-changing skills and wanting to take them out into the world as soon as possible. I tried to do a lot of "helping" without actually "getting hired"! I was going around offering my skills left right and centre and seeing opportunities to help everywhere and anywhere I went. Was is effective? No! Seeing as at that time no one had actually asked me for my good ideas and help. I learnt a valuable lesson back then - wait until you get hired and have a clear understanding of boundaries between your professional and personal life. A balance I feel I practise relatively well these days.
So, how easy is it for most of us to blur those boundaries and automatically play a helping role to someone in our lives? And I am not just talking about those of us that work in the health system - it happens to us all. Someone we love is having an issue, a problem, is upset, confused, depressed, worried. It is very easy because we care about and love that person, to jump in and try and "fix" their problem for them - to take their pain away and make it all better again. The questions are:
How good is it for our personal well-being?
We have a saying in NLP when we are considering our roles as "helpers" (people with a bunch of skills and abilities that can help people) which is to "get hired". It is metaphorical of course and therefore doesn't always mean you need to get paid, but it does mean that there needs to be some degree of the person having asked for your help, or a contract you have with them that you will play the helping role for them, or of course a formal arrangement like coming to see someone like me as a paying client.
When I first did my practitioner training I was so enthusiastic having left this training with all these life-changing skills and wanting to take them out into the world as soon as possible. I tried to do a lot of "helping" without actually "getting hired"! I was going around offering my skills left right and centre and seeing opportunities to help everywhere and anywhere I went. Was is effective? No! Seeing as at that time no one had actually asked me for my good ideas and help. I learnt a valuable lesson back then - wait until you get hired and have a clear understanding of boundaries between your professional and personal life. A balance I feel I practise relatively well these days.
So, how easy is it for most of us to blur those boundaries and automatically play a helping role to someone in our lives? And I am not just talking about those of us that work in the health system - it happens to us all. Someone we love is having an issue, a problem, is upset, confused, depressed, worried. It is very easy because we care about and love that person, to jump in and try and "fix" their problem for them - to take their pain away and make it all better again. The questions are:
How good is it for our personal well-being?
And how empowering is it actually for them?
Let me give you a personal example. My mother, whom I obviously care about deeply and love with all my heart and always will. She is also the one person on this planet who can initiate an emotion in me that I don't feel very often - frustration! Way back when I was lost teenager and attempting to forge my path in life I decided to study A-level psychology when I left school - having absolutely no idea what it was - it just seemed like an obvious choice when I had lived with my mum's depression for a number of years - feeling helpless and ill-equipped to deal with it and her. My mum got really good at doing her depressive episodes when my grandmother (her mum) died and then even better at it when she divorced my father. By the time I was studying psychology at University, she was still a huge worry to me and I was still desperately trying to understand the human mind and find some answers for her. I know now that she was my main motivating factor back then, something which we can joke about now.
Mostly these days she does OK - she has been able to reach a level of satisfaction with her life most of the time and has developed a more well-rounded lifestyle. I wouldn't say she was happy - far from it - she is still very good at doing depressive thoughts and feelings. Most of the time she's OK I think, I hope. Or up until recently when she has got herself really depressed again - a result of some current circumstances in her life which are not entirely satisfactory to her. I talk to my mum (who is in England) often, 2 or 3 times a week sometimes, and we had a conversation recently which upset me so.
You may be surprised to read this - that a professional therapist like myself (a) still gets upset about things and (b) has a depressed mother. To me it is part of being a human-being and part of what I am going to explain next. We are also always learning in life and will continue to do so:
Problem Ownership & "Getting Hired"
The reason I think I was able to get upset when we were talking the other day when she was describing her depressed feelings to me, was that I immediately wanted to jump in and "fix" her problems for her - desperately I did. I felt frustrated that I can help so many people successfully every week, and I can't even help my own flesh and blood! I was taking on her feelings and feeling them, feeling her pain, and wanting to fix it all for her. I was thinking "why is this woman so bloody stubborn? Why can't she just see things the way I see them?!" The result - I got emotional, she got emotional, and I hung up the phone with a feeling that if my supervisor had been a witness to that conversation, she would wanted to give me a stern word! The real problem was, that I momentarily got confused about problem ownership. Something which I am teaching to more and more of my clients these days, especially couples. In a nutshell, understanding problem ownership is about asking - in this given moment, who is it that is not feeling OK? If it is me, effectively, I own that problem. That is a piece of jargon by the way. It doesn't mean it's my fault, or I am to blame, or even that the other person needn't change, it simply means that if I am looking through my window of life and not feeling OK a that given moment, it is me who owns that problem.
If it is the other person in my life who is not OK in that given moment, effectively they own that problem. It doesn't mean it needn't change, or even that it's their fault, or my fault or that I don't need to do anything, it just means that they can take ownership of that problem and stand up and say - "I own a problem right now - it is me who is not feeling OK".
The key difference in understanding this distinction is knowing which communication skills to use at that time. This will make all the difference. If I own a problem about something, I can use my assertiveness and problem solving skills to do something about it. That might be communicating it to someone who is involved, or choosing to solve it myself, or maybe if necessary engage in some useful conflict resolution skills.
If the other person owns that problem - I can help by using my helping skills. This could include good listening skills, and generally offering to help them solve their OWN problem. It means I may just listen in a constructive way, or offer suggestions.
If I use my helping skills in this way - I need to know of course that they are welcome at that given moment. Here is where "get hired" comes into it. If my mum phones me from England to talk about a problem, it is a fairly safe assumption that she wants my help in some way, and I can assume for that point in time, I have been "hired" to offer help.
If I phone her and start offering all my good ideas about how she needs to change her life and solve her problems - it is high risk - and anything I may say will probably not be heard if she doesn't want to hear it. So, not very empowering for either of us and a waste of time and energy. There really is little point trying to help if you are not "hired".
What I actually did in this particular conversation however, was take her problem and bring it over to myself and make it MY problem - and effectively I ended up owning her problem for her. And then I tried to fix it! And then I got frustrated that I couldn't fix it! I wonder why - where is she in all of this while I busy myself with hiring myself to fix her problem? It's hardly helping her practise her own problem solving skills is it?!
It is an easy trap for us to fall into when we love someone and care about their well-being and future. The fact is, it felt terrible for me, and probably not that pleasant for her either.
I realised later that probably all she needed at that time was someone to listen sympathetically, and help her know that someone understands where she's coming from. If I had reminded myself of good problem ownership boundaries at that time, I think I would have hung up the phone and felt OK about our conversation. It was only much later on when I acknowledged how bad I was feeling that I realised what had happened and had to remind myself that in actual fact, I did not need to own her problem. I felt OK at the time - I didn't own any problems of my own, and I could do the best I could to offer my helping skills to her to assist her in solving her own problem - and the reality is that my role stops there. No matter what kind of relationship it is whether personal or professional, it's all you can do. A harsh reality sometimes and true.
The difficulty is the emotional side. It's hard when you are so emotionally involved with someone to stand back and take that objective perspective. We all think sometimes we know best for someone else and sometimes when we take this role of the helper without "getting hired" it simply puts pressure on the relationship and the boundaries become blurred. It is up to us to decide in any relationship, whether we WANT to play the role of the "helper" within that relationship, or whether it is more appropriate for someone else to play that role in that person's life.
Our Loved Ones
They are usually the ones we want to help the most - because we care about them the most. Sometimes this innate need we have creates pressure on ourselves that need not be there. I was mentoring an NLP practitioner recently and in our session she was describing an issue she'd faced recently. Her child had had a minor accident and was in pain. This practitioner wanted to use her NLP skills to help her child manage the pain, and when attempted to had what she described as a "block" - she wanted to help using her skills but couldn't find a way of doing so. And later she began to judge herself and gave herself a really hard time - something in the realm of "what's the point of having these skills if I can't even help my family?". The result? She felt bad and her child hadn't even noticed! He was too absorbed in his mother helping him feel relaxed and soothing him as mothers do to notice she wasn't using her fancy NLP skills!
I get a lot of women phoning me up wanting to make appointments for their husbands. I will always suggest that the husband calls me himself if he wants to come and see me. Often I don't hear from them at all (I don't wish to generalise gender stereotypes here - it is just a very common pattern). It is our want and need to seek help for those we care about - and to a certain extent believing that WE know what's best for them that can get us in to trouble. If that person's issues are creating a problem for us personally and our own well-being, effectively it is us that owns the problem and therefore our responsibility to seek help for our problem. This may of course involve making the decision to not share our lives with that person any more.
One thing I have learnt through my relationship with my mum over the years is to accept her the way she is and the choices she makes in her life. Yes, I have a lot of bright ideas about what's better for her, and being a professional therapist myself I can see quite clearly what her issues are and what a little professional help could do for her. I have learnt however, over time, that forcing these ideas on her has made her quite resistant to them overall. I feel helpless sometimes, and as I have written about, frustrated, that I cannot do more for her and her situation. Where my peace of mind comes from however is knowing that I can only offer so much; the way she lives is not really my responsibility and that ultimately she will make her own choices. All I can do is be a friend and offer support when "hired" to do so - and as I have learnt the hard way, listen and assist her to find solutions for her own problems. It is out of love for her and myself that I can have peace of mind with that now. I hope you can find that peace in your relationships too.
NB: The Problem Ownership Model comes from a communication skills training - Transforming Communication - which Charlotte is a certified instructor of. To find out more about these courses go to http://www.charlottehinksman.com/
Let me give you a personal example. My mother, whom I obviously care about deeply and love with all my heart and always will. She is also the one person on this planet who can initiate an emotion in me that I don't feel very often - frustration! Way back when I was lost teenager and attempting to forge my path in life I decided to study A-level psychology when I left school - having absolutely no idea what it was - it just seemed like an obvious choice when I had lived with my mum's depression for a number of years - feeling helpless and ill-equipped to deal with it and her. My mum got really good at doing her depressive episodes when my grandmother (her mum) died and then even better at it when she divorced my father. By the time I was studying psychology at University, she was still a huge worry to me and I was still desperately trying to understand the human mind and find some answers for her. I know now that she was my main motivating factor back then, something which we can joke about now.
Mostly these days she does OK - she has been able to reach a level of satisfaction with her life most of the time and has developed a more well-rounded lifestyle. I wouldn't say she was happy - far from it - she is still very good at doing depressive thoughts and feelings. Most of the time she's OK I think, I hope. Or up until recently when she has got herself really depressed again - a result of some current circumstances in her life which are not entirely satisfactory to her. I talk to my mum (who is in England) often, 2 or 3 times a week sometimes, and we had a conversation recently which upset me so.
You may be surprised to read this - that a professional therapist like myself (a) still gets upset about things and (b) has a depressed mother. To me it is part of being a human-being and part of what I am going to explain next. We are also always learning in life and will continue to do so:
Problem Ownership & "Getting Hired"
The reason I think I was able to get upset when we were talking the other day when she was describing her depressed feelings to me, was that I immediately wanted to jump in and "fix" her problems for her - desperately I did. I felt frustrated that I can help so many people successfully every week, and I can't even help my own flesh and blood! I was taking on her feelings and feeling them, feeling her pain, and wanting to fix it all for her. I was thinking "why is this woman so bloody stubborn? Why can't she just see things the way I see them?!" The result - I got emotional, she got emotional, and I hung up the phone with a feeling that if my supervisor had been a witness to that conversation, she would wanted to give me a stern word! The real problem was, that I momentarily got confused about problem ownership. Something which I am teaching to more and more of my clients these days, especially couples. In a nutshell, understanding problem ownership is about asking - in this given moment, who is it that is not feeling OK? If it is me, effectively, I own that problem. That is a piece of jargon by the way. It doesn't mean it's my fault, or I am to blame, or even that the other person needn't change, it simply means that if I am looking through my window of life and not feeling OK a that given moment, it is me who owns that problem.
If it is the other person in my life who is not OK in that given moment, effectively they own that problem. It doesn't mean it needn't change, or even that it's their fault, or my fault or that I don't need to do anything, it just means that they can take ownership of that problem and stand up and say - "I own a problem right now - it is me who is not feeling OK".
The key difference in understanding this distinction is knowing which communication skills to use at that time. This will make all the difference. If I own a problem about something, I can use my assertiveness and problem solving skills to do something about it. That might be communicating it to someone who is involved, or choosing to solve it myself, or maybe if necessary engage in some useful conflict resolution skills.
If the other person owns that problem - I can help by using my helping skills. This could include good listening skills, and generally offering to help them solve their OWN problem. It means I may just listen in a constructive way, or offer suggestions.
If I use my helping skills in this way - I need to know of course that they are welcome at that given moment. Here is where "get hired" comes into it. If my mum phones me from England to talk about a problem, it is a fairly safe assumption that she wants my help in some way, and I can assume for that point in time, I have been "hired" to offer help.
If I phone her and start offering all my good ideas about how she needs to change her life and solve her problems - it is high risk - and anything I may say will probably not be heard if she doesn't want to hear it. So, not very empowering for either of us and a waste of time and energy. There really is little point trying to help if you are not "hired".
What I actually did in this particular conversation however, was take her problem and bring it over to myself and make it MY problem - and effectively I ended up owning her problem for her. And then I tried to fix it! And then I got frustrated that I couldn't fix it! I wonder why - where is she in all of this while I busy myself with hiring myself to fix her problem? It's hardly helping her practise her own problem solving skills is it?!
It is an easy trap for us to fall into when we love someone and care about their well-being and future. The fact is, it felt terrible for me, and probably not that pleasant for her either.
I realised later that probably all she needed at that time was someone to listen sympathetically, and help her know that someone understands where she's coming from. If I had reminded myself of good problem ownership boundaries at that time, I think I would have hung up the phone and felt OK about our conversation. It was only much later on when I acknowledged how bad I was feeling that I realised what had happened and had to remind myself that in actual fact, I did not need to own her problem. I felt OK at the time - I didn't own any problems of my own, and I could do the best I could to offer my helping skills to her to assist her in solving her own problem - and the reality is that my role stops there. No matter what kind of relationship it is whether personal or professional, it's all you can do. A harsh reality sometimes and true.
The difficulty is the emotional side. It's hard when you are so emotionally involved with someone to stand back and take that objective perspective. We all think sometimes we know best for someone else and sometimes when we take this role of the helper without "getting hired" it simply puts pressure on the relationship and the boundaries become blurred. It is up to us to decide in any relationship, whether we WANT to play the role of the "helper" within that relationship, or whether it is more appropriate for someone else to play that role in that person's life.
Our Loved Ones
They are usually the ones we want to help the most - because we care about them the most. Sometimes this innate need we have creates pressure on ourselves that need not be there. I was mentoring an NLP practitioner recently and in our session she was describing an issue she'd faced recently. Her child had had a minor accident and was in pain. This practitioner wanted to use her NLP skills to help her child manage the pain, and when attempted to had what she described as a "block" - she wanted to help using her skills but couldn't find a way of doing so. And later she began to judge herself and gave herself a really hard time - something in the realm of "what's the point of having these skills if I can't even help my family?". The result? She felt bad and her child hadn't even noticed! He was too absorbed in his mother helping him feel relaxed and soothing him as mothers do to notice she wasn't using her fancy NLP skills!
I get a lot of women phoning me up wanting to make appointments for their husbands. I will always suggest that the husband calls me himself if he wants to come and see me. Often I don't hear from them at all (I don't wish to generalise gender stereotypes here - it is just a very common pattern). It is our want and need to seek help for those we care about - and to a certain extent believing that WE know what's best for them that can get us in to trouble. If that person's issues are creating a problem for us personally and our own well-being, effectively it is us that owns the problem and therefore our responsibility to seek help for our problem. This may of course involve making the decision to not share our lives with that person any more.
One thing I have learnt through my relationship with my mum over the years is to accept her the way she is and the choices she makes in her life. Yes, I have a lot of bright ideas about what's better for her, and being a professional therapist myself I can see quite clearly what her issues are and what a little professional help could do for her. I have learnt however, over time, that forcing these ideas on her has made her quite resistant to them overall. I feel helpless sometimes, and as I have written about, frustrated, that I cannot do more for her and her situation. Where my peace of mind comes from however is knowing that I can only offer so much; the way she lives is not really my responsibility and that ultimately she will make her own choices. All I can do is be a friend and offer support when "hired" to do so - and as I have learnt the hard way, listen and assist her to find solutions for her own problems. It is out of love for her and myself that I can have peace of mind with that now. I hope you can find that peace in your relationships too.
NB: The Problem Ownership Model comes from a communication skills training - Transforming Communication - which Charlotte is a certified instructor of. To find out more about these courses go to http://www.charlottehinksman.com/
Sunday, July 20, 2008
"Don't Believe Everything You Think"
.........that was actually a car bumper sticker - one of my clients told me about it and we had a bit of a laugh - it's like "don't believe everything you read"! Of course most of us these days know not to believe everything we read - if we did, not only would we be largely gullible but also in a state of real confusion most of the time with all the conflicting research and opinions in the media these days. So, we decide whether to believe what we read based on our existing interests, values, personalities. How the idea is presented and researched and what facts it is based on would be a basis for whether we "believe" the ideas or opinions presented. We may choose to believe something if it works for us, makes us feel good or improves our life in some way. Or we may choose not to believe it if it doesn't quite sit right with our existing beliefs, or if it is simply an outlandish claim not based on any factual evidence at all! We may dismiss it and not give it a second thought.
So, why is it that so many of us believe the thoughts that we can conjure up in our heads, even when those thoughts are perhaps outlandish, based on little or no factual evidence as such, and don't make us feel good at all? I am referring to what we call in NLP "internal dialogue" or "auditory digital" - or as most of us know it -as - Self Talk. The unique and special ability we have as human beings to think in the words of our language. Or quite simply - to talk to ourselves inside our own head.
Hands up those of you who DON'T talk to yourself....?
No - I didn't think so.
As we all do. Some of us more than others depending on how our brain has become wired over the years. And now I would like to share with you something quite alarming. You may already be aware of this, or it may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but here it goes:
It is extremely rare to come across someone who has good, positive functioning, supportive internal dialogue. For the majority of people - unless you have done a lot of work on yourself through reading, therapy, counselling, mental skills training etc - have very negative internal dialogue; translation: we talk to ourselves like shit. We criticise ourselves, beat ourselves up, doubt ourselves, tell ourselves we can't do something when we know we can. This is the little voice in your head that says one or more of the following:
- You could've done better
- You're not good enough
- You're such a loser
- I can't believe you did that
- I can't believe you didn't know that!
- I look terrible
- Here we go again I can't even get that right!
- She wouldn't like someone like me
- Am I going to sleep tonight?
- There must be something wrong with me
- You're so ugly
- You're so fat
- I should've done it better
- I should get it done today
- You'll never get it done
- Why can't I be as good as them?
- He's much better at this than me
- Oh my God there's something wrong with me - I'm going to die
Need I go on? It's a pretty toxic list isn't it? This is no exaggeration either - this is the stuff I elicit from my clients and the kind of stuff I used to tell myself. Did you know - I spent many years studying for a psychology degree which I passed with high honours, and years working as an assistant psychologist to some of the most influential psychologists in the UK at the time, those who had done ground breaking research in various areas and were held in high regard in their respective fields. People who supposedly knew about the brain and about human change. Not once, in all of those years, did anyone mention the most significant reason people have next to no self-esteem and no confidence, the main reason people keep themselves in a severely depressed state, the main instigator in a panic attack and an eating disorder, and the easiest way of holding yourself back and not reaching your potential. I now know it to be, through my own personal experiences and through helping many, many people change it - negative self talk. It has a lot to answer for. And again, no exaggeration.
All those years in the psychology field and I didn't even realise I talked to myself inside my head! No one ever mentioned it, let alone the damage it can do and how responsible it is for some severe psychological issues. It was only when I started to learn NLP that I learnt about it and learnt a process to change it. You have to practise NLP processes you see, as part of your training. If you didn't, you wouldn't be very good at helping other people. So, I changed my internal dialogue and it was only AFTER I'd changed it for the better that I was able to look back and in retrospect, was able to identify how terribly I used to talk to myself. I mean, I was good at talking to myself badly! I was REALLY critical and really hard on myself - quite a lot of the time. I would tell myself all kinds of horrible things, and believe them! Once I experienced the change, and the absence of this negative self talk, I was able to see what it had been like for me and how much I had really been holding myself back in my life. Once I began to learn how to talk to myself better - it was like a pathway had opened up before me, a pathway of amazing possibility. What a difference it has made to me! I would never have achieved so much over the past 3.5 years if I talked to myself the way I used to - absolutely no way it would've been possible. Now I know how to talk to myself in an encouraging, supportive, affirming way, it makes my life so enjoyable and I am now achieving all that I ever dreamed of. And again, no exaggeration.
Let me ask you a question. Consider it carefully;
If you talked to a close friend the way you talk to yourself sometimes, would that person still want to be your friend?
The chances are, no, they would not. Imagine if every time a friend came to you with a problem, something they felt they hadn't done as well as they'd hoped or a worry they had, a "mistake" they'd made.... and you said to them "here we go again! You can't even get that right can you?" Imagine the affect it would have on them? Especially if you said it to them time and time again.
Let me ask you another question then. Again, consider it carefully;
If your internal self talk, at its most negative, was a radio station, would you choose to tune into it?
The chances are again, is no, you would not. Why would anyone listen to a constant stream of dialogue telling us off and criticising what we hadn't done well. You'd soon get sick of listening would you not? You would turn it over, turn it down or turn it off after a while and quite rightly so!
Yet, somehow, it is acceptable for us to be constantly tuning in to this radio station inside our heads and paying attention to it! Not only that, but BELIEVING it! This stream of dialogue that we wouldn't deem good enough to say to a good friend, yet it is acceptable to tell ourselves those things!
I am not sure how our unique human skill became mostly negative. How did it evolve this way? Do we internalise the way our parents spoke to us as a young child? Our teachers? Our hard task masters at school? Bullies in the playground? To be honest I am not sure how it gets to be such an ingrained habit and mostly one that we are largely unaware of. I feel as a health practitioner wanting to make a difference in the world that it is my responsibility to get more people aware what they are doing inside their head and more aware of how to change it if it doesn't feel good.
The point is is that you can change it and you can become your OWN best friend, your OWN internal coach, your OWN support person. You can be trusting yourself and supporting yourself to be learning and doing well, to recognise all those things that you have done well and all those things you can learn from in an encouraging supportive way, just like you would for a very close friend. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you, too.
Next time you notice yourself doing it - remember the bumper sticker - Don't Believe Everything You Think! Practise interrupting those thoughts with a little phrase like "Stop!" or "Hang on!" or "Not gonna go there!" and practise turning down the dial on your radio control. It's hard to listen to it if there is no volume. And remember, above everything else, this is YOUR brain, these are YOUR neurons connecting, these are YOUR thoughts. YOU and no one else but YOU have complete control over what you do in YOUR head. Begin to recognise this by practising the above. It is hard work sometimes and in my view something which although needs continuous practise throughout life, will get easier. You will find yourself needing to interrupt your thoughts less frequently. You will feel better about yourself and you will enjoy your life more. I encourage you to be aware and to begin to cancel out those old thoughts. They are just thoughts. You can choose to tell yourself something much more supportive, now.
I thoroughly recommend a book I have found insightful which is a good reminder of this; Stop Thinking Start Living by Richard Carlson - author of Don't Sweat The Small Stuff.
Wishing you all the best, as always, with loving (and supportive, encouraging) thoughts,
Charlotte.
http://www.charlottehinksman.com/ for NLP services in Wellington.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Magic Wands do not exist - oh, and neither does Insomnia by the way...
.......does that seem like good news or bad news? Actually it's good news and it's good news. Let me explain why.
Since my article on my One Hour Sleep Solution came out in NEXT magazine in New Zealand and my appearance on TV One's Breakfast show as a sleep therapist - I have seen, and continue to see, a large number of people presenting "insomnia" - which is according to the Sleep / Wake Research centre at Massey is characterised in 4 main ways; difficulty falling asleep, difficulty getting back to sleep after waking, waking more than 3 times in the night, and awaking unrefreshed. I had helped quite a few people resolve this issue before all the media attention (hence my 2 client case studies featured in the article who solved their longstanding sleep problems in just one session with me) and have since seen many more. I have noticed several recurring obstacles with people trying to resolve this issue.
I tell you about them here as it is my passion to help people create a life for themselves that they are satisfied with, it's my life's work, my mission on this planet if you will, and I do it with love and admiration and these obstacles are seriously getting in the way. I would like to help you overcome them - starting right now!
The Limitations of a One Session Cure Expectation
As my case study ladies and many of my other clients have solved their sleep problems in just a singular, one hour session, it seems that the expectation has now been set - everyone wants the same result. I can understand that - I probably would too if I had read an article like that - it would certainly open my eyes to what's possible. So, Charlotte, what is the problem then?? Well, the limitation is this - what happens if you don't get life changing transformational results in a singular, one hour session? Typically the following:
1. Disappointment in oneself, usually an emotional response and also punctuated by bouts of.....
2. .....beating oneself up for not doing it 'right' i.e. "here we go again, can't you get anything right?"
3. Telling yourself 'nothing works' and giving up on the process all together.
4. Focussing on the negatives as oppose to what has changed and what has been good/different since the session. I had such a classic example of this the other day it is worth sharing with you:
I have a lovely client who had been having problems sleeping since her children were first born (they are teenagers and young adults now, so a very long time) - her problem was a double whammy of difficulty falling asleep AND waking up for long stretches in the middle of the night 'solving the problems of the world'. She was subsequently tired and low on energy during the day, which was seriously impeding on her happiness and overall quality of life.
In the first session we gathered a detailed, specific, solution focussed outcome with all the ways she would know if this changed. There were some very common things included; to be waking up only when the alarm went off, more energised during the day, wake up feeling ready to start the day, feel more positive, have better personal relationships i.e. less grumpy and irritable with people and more tolerant and easy with people, do more things that are enjoyable and generally enjoying life more.
We did some straight forward NLP change techniques in the first session and I taught her how to relax and calm her mind, and we scheduled in some problem solving time during the day - so her brain didn't think it necessary to do it in the middle of the night. Things definitely shifted for her when we tested it in the session, and I knew she had changed and was interested to know how much.
When she came in one week later for session number 2, I asked her, as I do all clients "so, what's been different for you since last week? No matter how small it might seem, what has changed?". She replied "oh, you know, it's been OK, it's not as good as I'd like it to be though...". Now, I know a little bit about how the brain works, and I know that people have a habit of deleting the positives in their lives and simply remembering the negatives, so I checked again, and got a little bit more information this time - she was in fact, now sleeping through the night!! She now slept 6 hours straight, once she'd fallen asleep, and was therefore no longer waking up for long stretches in the twilight zone 'solving the problems of the world'. I was like "wow - how are you doing that?!" as to me that sounds like something I want people to aware of as it's incredibly resourceful. I also then re-read her positively stated, detailed outcome we had shaped the week before to check further, to which she listened to and then replied "well, when you put it like that! ...A lot of those things have actually happened!" and so we acknowledged the progress and celebrated it.
So what happened there? It wasn't that she didn't get results, it wasn't that she didn't achieve her outcome, it was that she was so used to focussing on the parts of her life that are not going well, she had forgotten to acknowledge her own progress and her own achievements. Something, it seems, as human beings, we have become very good at doing. She still isn't falling asleep straight away, and is a work in progress. However, that result after a one hour session for a problem she's had for over 15 years, is very positive indeed. She's certainly heading in the right direction very quickly.
How to Overcome These Limitations
These are such common obstacles for people wanting to change their sleep patterns, I really hope that by sharing this it will help you achieve your results with sleep. I feel so passionate about getting the message across I can't quite find the words to be as emphatic as I want to be! Sleep can change, it will change, you have read about people who have changed it easily, it is the most natural, unconscious process in the whole world and every single person on this planet knows how to do it - we've ALL had the experience of falling asleep. It's simply about learning how to run your own brain - so you can learn, once more, how to do this amazingly natural process again. You can, and you will, we all have, we all can, it's just about re-learning it, it's about learning how your brain and your body works, and they do work, perfectly. Some things that may help your practitioner help you:
1) Invest in yourself, in your life. NLP therapy is the most effective, efficient therapy that exists and if it is possible to transform sleep in ONE session, then it's totally possible in two, three, four, five or even 10. If it does take 10 sessions to transform your sleep that's a little over 10 hours. In the context of a lifetime that equates to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50+ years of good quality sleep to follow - that's not a bad ratio is it? How much is that really worth to you?
2) Commit to doing what it takes. Make a decision that this is going to work for you - because you are 100% responsible for what happens in your own mind, no one can reach inside your head, press a button and get you to have a thought or a feeling - you do that part, and therefore you can change what you're doing to get the result you want. If you've had years of doing the old pattern, it may take a while to get that consistent progression that you're after. If you give up on yourself, then how can someone help you? Commitment to your own progress is the name of the game. If one is committed and has that will and determination - you seem to get your results faster anyway - it just seems to be the way it goes!
3) Recognise and celebrate your achievements, no matter how small, along the way. Sleeping for 6 hours straight after over 15 years of waking up constantly for long stretches in the middle of the night is HUGE progress- as well as the numerous benefits of more energy during the day and the improvement in mood and temperament and therefore personal relationships. It is such a shame if this goes unacknowledged - your own magic unnoticed! Please, look out for and remember those positive changes (they will be there) and celebrate, it will help you achieve more, and more, and more. If you don't acknowledge your achievements - how will you know when you've got what you want? It's worth getting into this positive habit right at the start of your journey.
4) Go easy on yourself. I know it's such a common pattern to stop worrying about what you were worrying about before and instead start worrying about the NLP processes your practitioner has given you to practice. They become your concern, as oppose to the 'problems of the world' and this then keeps you awake at night instead. Worrying and being hard on yourself is a large part of how you are creating your sleep problem and therefore this is unlikely to be an overnight change - because you're an expert at it! You've probably been doing it most of your life. The thing is, you have the ability to be an expert at something - great! We just need to transform that into being an expert at running your own brain and getting it to do what you want it to do. Be patient with this process and allow yourself to be learning along the way. You didn't learn to drive a car in an hour and you didn't drive flawlessly the first time you got behind a car. What did you have to do to learn to drive? What did you not have to do to learn to do it? And now you do it without even thinking about it! It's so not about 'getting it right' it's about learning new ways of being yourself, which you will, if you're willing to learn and be patient with yourself learning.
4) Be honest with your practitioner. I believe people know their own truth, whether they know it consciously or not. If something doesn't feel right - by sharing it your practitioner can help you. Sometimes NLP is a very new concept for people and it can feel a little 'out there' at first. That's OK. We're all in this together - see the process as collaborative - help your practitioner help you discover your own magic. Insomnia is not a thing that exists inside of you. If you do something different - you will get a different result. That's the most empowering thing to know about yourself. Honesty with yourself and your support person works magic.
I recently had a client who resolved a really significant issue and changed his whole perspective on life after just two sessions say to me in all seriousness; "I know you say on your website that you don't have a magic wand, but I am beginning to think that you do". I replied "ah, but you're the one with the magic wand, so get used to enjoying your own magic."
And I meant it.
With the utmost faith in the human mind and all the love and best wishes possible,
Charlotte.
www.charlottehinksman.com/ for NLP services in and around Wellington.
Since my article on my One Hour Sleep Solution came out in NEXT magazine in New Zealand and my appearance on TV One's Breakfast show as a sleep therapist - I have seen, and continue to see, a large number of people presenting "insomnia" - which is according to the Sleep / Wake Research centre at Massey is characterised in 4 main ways; difficulty falling asleep, difficulty getting back to sleep after waking, waking more than 3 times in the night, and awaking unrefreshed. I had helped quite a few people resolve this issue before all the media attention (hence my 2 client case studies featured in the article who solved their longstanding sleep problems in just one session with me) and have since seen many more. I have noticed several recurring obstacles with people trying to resolve this issue.
I tell you about them here as it is my passion to help people create a life for themselves that they are satisfied with, it's my life's work, my mission on this planet if you will, and I do it with love and admiration and these obstacles are seriously getting in the way. I would like to help you overcome them - starting right now!
The Limitations of a One Session Cure Expectation
As my case study ladies and many of my other clients have solved their sleep problems in just a singular, one hour session, it seems that the expectation has now been set - everyone wants the same result. I can understand that - I probably would too if I had read an article like that - it would certainly open my eyes to what's possible. So, Charlotte, what is the problem then?? Well, the limitation is this - what happens if you don't get life changing transformational results in a singular, one hour session? Typically the following:
1. Disappointment in oneself, usually an emotional response and also punctuated by bouts of.....
2. .....beating oneself up for not doing it 'right' i.e. "here we go again, can't you get anything right?"
3. Telling yourself 'nothing works' and giving up on the process all together.
4. Focussing on the negatives as oppose to what has changed and what has been good/different since the session. I had such a classic example of this the other day it is worth sharing with you:
I have a lovely client who had been having problems sleeping since her children were first born (they are teenagers and young adults now, so a very long time) - her problem was a double whammy of difficulty falling asleep AND waking up for long stretches in the middle of the night 'solving the problems of the world'. She was subsequently tired and low on energy during the day, which was seriously impeding on her happiness and overall quality of life.
In the first session we gathered a detailed, specific, solution focussed outcome with all the ways she would know if this changed. There were some very common things included; to be waking up only when the alarm went off, more energised during the day, wake up feeling ready to start the day, feel more positive, have better personal relationships i.e. less grumpy and irritable with people and more tolerant and easy with people, do more things that are enjoyable and generally enjoying life more.
We did some straight forward NLP change techniques in the first session and I taught her how to relax and calm her mind, and we scheduled in some problem solving time during the day - so her brain didn't think it necessary to do it in the middle of the night. Things definitely shifted for her when we tested it in the session, and I knew she had changed and was interested to know how much.
When she came in one week later for session number 2, I asked her, as I do all clients "so, what's been different for you since last week? No matter how small it might seem, what has changed?". She replied "oh, you know, it's been OK, it's not as good as I'd like it to be though...". Now, I know a little bit about how the brain works, and I know that people have a habit of deleting the positives in their lives and simply remembering the negatives, so I checked again, and got a little bit more information this time - she was in fact, now sleeping through the night!! She now slept 6 hours straight, once she'd fallen asleep, and was therefore no longer waking up for long stretches in the twilight zone 'solving the problems of the world'. I was like "wow - how are you doing that?!" as to me that sounds like something I want people to aware of as it's incredibly resourceful. I also then re-read her positively stated, detailed outcome we had shaped the week before to check further, to which she listened to and then replied "well, when you put it like that! ...A lot of those things have actually happened!" and so we acknowledged the progress and celebrated it.
So what happened there? It wasn't that she didn't get results, it wasn't that she didn't achieve her outcome, it was that she was so used to focussing on the parts of her life that are not going well, she had forgotten to acknowledge her own progress and her own achievements. Something, it seems, as human beings, we have become very good at doing. She still isn't falling asleep straight away, and is a work in progress. However, that result after a one hour session for a problem she's had for over 15 years, is very positive indeed. She's certainly heading in the right direction very quickly.
How to Overcome These Limitations
These are such common obstacles for people wanting to change their sleep patterns, I really hope that by sharing this it will help you achieve your results with sleep. I feel so passionate about getting the message across I can't quite find the words to be as emphatic as I want to be! Sleep can change, it will change, you have read about people who have changed it easily, it is the most natural, unconscious process in the whole world and every single person on this planet knows how to do it - we've ALL had the experience of falling asleep. It's simply about learning how to run your own brain - so you can learn, once more, how to do this amazingly natural process again. You can, and you will, we all have, we all can, it's just about re-learning it, it's about learning how your brain and your body works, and they do work, perfectly. Some things that may help your practitioner help you:
1) Invest in yourself, in your life. NLP therapy is the most effective, efficient therapy that exists and if it is possible to transform sleep in ONE session, then it's totally possible in two, three, four, five or even 10. If it does take 10 sessions to transform your sleep that's a little over 10 hours. In the context of a lifetime that equates to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50+ years of good quality sleep to follow - that's not a bad ratio is it? How much is that really worth to you?
2) Commit to doing what it takes. Make a decision that this is going to work for you - because you are 100% responsible for what happens in your own mind, no one can reach inside your head, press a button and get you to have a thought or a feeling - you do that part, and therefore you can change what you're doing to get the result you want. If you've had years of doing the old pattern, it may take a while to get that consistent progression that you're after. If you give up on yourself, then how can someone help you? Commitment to your own progress is the name of the game. If one is committed and has that will and determination - you seem to get your results faster anyway - it just seems to be the way it goes!
3) Recognise and celebrate your achievements, no matter how small, along the way. Sleeping for 6 hours straight after over 15 years of waking up constantly for long stretches in the middle of the night is HUGE progress- as well as the numerous benefits of more energy during the day and the improvement in mood and temperament and therefore personal relationships. It is such a shame if this goes unacknowledged - your own magic unnoticed! Please, look out for and remember those positive changes (they will be there) and celebrate, it will help you achieve more, and more, and more. If you don't acknowledge your achievements - how will you know when you've got what you want? It's worth getting into this positive habit right at the start of your journey.
4) Go easy on yourself. I know it's such a common pattern to stop worrying about what you were worrying about before and instead start worrying about the NLP processes your practitioner has given you to practice. They become your concern, as oppose to the 'problems of the world' and this then keeps you awake at night instead. Worrying and being hard on yourself is a large part of how you are creating your sleep problem and therefore this is unlikely to be an overnight change - because you're an expert at it! You've probably been doing it most of your life. The thing is, you have the ability to be an expert at something - great! We just need to transform that into being an expert at running your own brain and getting it to do what you want it to do. Be patient with this process and allow yourself to be learning along the way. You didn't learn to drive a car in an hour and you didn't drive flawlessly the first time you got behind a car. What did you have to do to learn to drive? What did you not have to do to learn to do it? And now you do it without even thinking about it! It's so not about 'getting it right' it's about learning new ways of being yourself, which you will, if you're willing to learn and be patient with yourself learning.
4) Be honest with your practitioner. I believe people know their own truth, whether they know it consciously or not. If something doesn't feel right - by sharing it your practitioner can help you. Sometimes NLP is a very new concept for people and it can feel a little 'out there' at first. That's OK. We're all in this together - see the process as collaborative - help your practitioner help you discover your own magic. Insomnia is not a thing that exists inside of you. If you do something different - you will get a different result. That's the most empowering thing to know about yourself. Honesty with yourself and your support person works magic.
I recently had a client who resolved a really significant issue and changed his whole perspective on life after just two sessions say to me in all seriousness; "I know you say on your website that you don't have a magic wand, but I am beginning to think that you do". I replied "ah, but you're the one with the magic wand, so get used to enjoying your own magic."
And I meant it.
With the utmost faith in the human mind and all the love and best wishes possible,
Charlotte.
www.charlottehinksman.com/ for NLP services in and around Wellington.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
The Benefit of Hugs
http://www.charlottehinksman.com/ for NLP services in Wellington.
A colleague of mine recently asked me if I hug my clients. It was an interesting question to me as a person who works therapeutically with so many people every week. The answer is no, unless they want to, which happens very occasionally.
The question got me thinking about a lot of stuff, the concept of hugging in particular. As I sit here and write this my 6 month old Kitten, Bandler, sits next to me and purrs loudly and enthusiastically (like a little Harley Davidson). Why? It's not because I've just fed her (as I haven't), it might be because I've just got home and she is happy to be in my company, and it's mainly because I've been stroking her. I imagine she'd be a very different little Kitty if I denied her frequent offers and requests for cuddles and strokes. As you already know, our household pets thrive on such physical attention as do animals in the wild which each other - cuddling and huddling together. And animals are not the only species who thrive on it.
Virginia Satir, the grandmother of Family Therapy and one of the key 3 people that NLP was modelled and developed from, firmly believed in the power of touch in therapy. In fact, in most of the footage you see of Virgina working with people/families she was connected with one or more of them physically by holding their hand or touching their arm. She was a staunch believer that to truly help someone change, you needed to connect with them, and that doing it through touch was the strongest way. She is famously quoted as saying:
I had the experience recently of looking after my friend's 15 month old little girl by myself. It was the first time I had been solely responsible for a child that young - and it was quite a responsibility! There were a few interesting things about it, and one of them I noticed was that when she was grumpy and wanted something she'd point to it, and if I didn't get it straight away there was crying and screaming, and sometimes she'd get upset about something else and I'd try my best to distract her with entertainment - larking around, dancing etc (which she'd always copy - reliable evidence of our Mirror Neurons for sure!) And other times she would simply throw herself at me for a good old fashioned cuddle! This surprised me at first - as I'd never been on my own with her I hadn't even noticed her need for cuddles before, as a parent was always around to take care of that. There have been a number of longitudinal studies conducted about the intellectual and social development of children and the correlation of this to how much they were cuddled as a baby. Quite simply - the more they were cuddled, the more they develop.
Animals and human beings seem to have an innate need for physical touch - as a way of showing comfort, to demonstrate love, to bond, or to just feel normal again! Hugging seems to feed something and it's an innate method of expression. We've all had the experience before of 'one of those days' at work - and coming home and the first thing you want to do is hug it out with a family member, friend or partner. It seems to bring us home to ourselves again, and provides a strong sense of comfort and healing. And yet, in modern western society at least, we seem to have buried this innate need in layers of "social appropriacy" and the rules about when and who we should or should not hug have become complex. Of course, a lot of these rules are there for our own and our children's protection which are necessary. It is the simple every-day stuff that I'm talking about.
For example, I remember when I first arrived in New Zealand almost 3 1/2 years ago. I arrived bright eyed and hopeful about a relationship I'd started with someone, only to get my heart broken 1 week after my touch-down. As a matter of survival - I made friends very quickly and was very lucky with the people who came into my life then and are still in it now, who offered the hand of friendship and helped me recover. I did notice though, in contrast to the highly tactile nature of my female friendships of back home, that Kiwi-women didn't seem to hug as much as their English counterparts. Perhaps it was because I'd only just met these people and that I was also, being newly heartbroken, quite needy for this kind of comfort. I do remember a number of embarrassing moments when I seemingly lurched at my new friends expecting a greeting hug as would've been appropriate back home, and instead have it ending in an awkward embrace - descending into mutual back-patting or a misplaced kiss on the earlobe instead of the intended cheek! It took me a while to work out that the culture may be different here, and, that perhaps I needed to wait until I knew people better before moving in for the hug. In any case - I remember for quite some time, feeling decidedly hug-starved! It was quite a noticeable feeling and one of an important need going unfulfilled.
My family growing up were not a particularly tactile family I remember, my mum more so than my father or brother. As a result, I seem to have gone the opposite way and developed into a very tactile person indeed - and truly enjoy the benefits of a good old-fashioned hug with my friends and loved ones. It's my way of giving and receiving loving feelings and appreciation and in my opinion - the healing benefits of it you just can't beat.
So how many have you had to today? Enough for Survival? Maintenance? Or even Growth? Perhaps a few more wouldn't go a miss? Who would appreciate a hug from you today? It's worth thinking about isn't it?. Don't be hug-starved, make the most of the people in your lives by communicating with this innate expression we all have. Go for Growth if you can.
Charlotte.
A colleague of mine recently asked me if I hug my clients. It was an interesting question to me as a person who works therapeutically with so many people every week. The answer is no, unless they want to, which happens very occasionally.
The question got me thinking about a lot of stuff, the concept of hugging in particular. As I sit here and write this my 6 month old Kitten, Bandler, sits next to me and purrs loudly and enthusiastically (like a little Harley Davidson). Why? It's not because I've just fed her (as I haven't), it might be because I've just got home and she is happy to be in my company, and it's mainly because I've been stroking her. I imagine she'd be a very different little Kitty if I denied her frequent offers and requests for cuddles and strokes. As you already know, our household pets thrive on such physical attention as do animals in the wild which each other - cuddling and huddling together. And animals are not the only species who thrive on it.
Virginia Satir, the grandmother of Family Therapy and one of the key 3 people that NLP was modelled and developed from, firmly believed in the power of touch in therapy. In fact, in most of the footage you see of Virgina working with people/families she was connected with one or more of them physically by holding their hand or touching their arm. She was a staunch believer that to truly help someone change, you needed to connect with them, and that doing it through touch was the strongest way. She is famously quoted as saying:
“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.” - Virgina Satir.
I had the experience recently of looking after my friend's 15 month old little girl by myself. It was the first time I had been solely responsible for a child that young - and it was quite a responsibility! There were a few interesting things about it, and one of them I noticed was that when she was grumpy and wanted something she'd point to it, and if I didn't get it straight away there was crying and screaming, and sometimes she'd get upset about something else and I'd try my best to distract her with entertainment - larking around, dancing etc (which she'd always copy - reliable evidence of our Mirror Neurons for sure!) And other times she would simply throw herself at me for a good old fashioned cuddle! This surprised me at first - as I'd never been on my own with her I hadn't even noticed her need for cuddles before, as a parent was always around to take care of that. There have been a number of longitudinal studies conducted about the intellectual and social development of children and the correlation of this to how much they were cuddled as a baby. Quite simply - the more they were cuddled, the more they develop.
Animals and human beings seem to have an innate need for physical touch - as a way of showing comfort, to demonstrate love, to bond, or to just feel normal again! Hugging seems to feed something and it's an innate method of expression. We've all had the experience before of 'one of those days' at work - and coming home and the first thing you want to do is hug it out with a family member, friend or partner. It seems to bring us home to ourselves again, and provides a strong sense of comfort and healing. And yet, in modern western society at least, we seem to have buried this innate need in layers of "social appropriacy" and the rules about when and who we should or should not hug have become complex. Of course, a lot of these rules are there for our own and our children's protection which are necessary. It is the simple every-day stuff that I'm talking about.
For example, I remember when I first arrived in New Zealand almost 3 1/2 years ago. I arrived bright eyed and hopeful about a relationship I'd started with someone, only to get my heart broken 1 week after my touch-down. As a matter of survival - I made friends very quickly and was very lucky with the people who came into my life then and are still in it now, who offered the hand of friendship and helped me recover. I did notice though, in contrast to the highly tactile nature of my female friendships of back home, that Kiwi-women didn't seem to hug as much as their English counterparts. Perhaps it was because I'd only just met these people and that I was also, being newly heartbroken, quite needy for this kind of comfort. I do remember a number of embarrassing moments when I seemingly lurched at my new friends expecting a greeting hug as would've been appropriate back home, and instead have it ending in an awkward embrace - descending into mutual back-patting or a misplaced kiss on the earlobe instead of the intended cheek! It took me a while to work out that the culture may be different here, and, that perhaps I needed to wait until I knew people better before moving in for the hug. In any case - I remember for quite some time, feeling decidedly hug-starved! It was quite a noticeable feeling and one of an important need going unfulfilled.
My family growing up were not a particularly tactile family I remember, my mum more so than my father or brother. As a result, I seem to have gone the opposite way and developed into a very tactile person indeed - and truly enjoy the benefits of a good old-fashioned hug with my friends and loved ones. It's my way of giving and receiving loving feelings and appreciation and in my opinion - the healing benefits of it you just can't beat.
So how many have you had to today? Enough for Survival? Maintenance? Or even Growth? Perhaps a few more wouldn't go a miss? Who would appreciate a hug from you today? It's worth thinking about isn't it?. Don't be hug-starved, make the most of the people in your lives by communicating with this innate expression we all have. Go for Growth if you can.
Charlotte.
Labels: Something to think about (or feel about)
