Promoting Some Basic IdeasIn this section we provide you with some basic ideas of how to deal with and help you resolve, psychological and emotional problems that you may be having. Pantomime:Pantomime is an illustration of how Drama can help you identify roles that we can play within different relationships. I have provided some particular examples but you can well draw on many personal illustrations from Drama, Films and TV programs you have viewed. These often reflect many experiences in life and can help us identify how we see ourselves, others and how others may see us (or, perhaps, how we think that they see us). This does not mean that roles you observe are you and these others in your life, but they can give a good idea of how you 'see' yourself and others and how they may see you. That is a good basis to start understand where you are coming from. You can then use other drama roles and scenarios to give a sense of where you want to go to. It is even possible to 'model' on some character, building you own persona around the character, incorporating and making it yours I would hope that you choose the 'positive' features of the character. Drama, Poetry/Song and Literature have a powerful influenced upon culture and in its turn, culture has a reciprocal effect upon Drama, Poetry/Song and Literature. There can be strong influences both ways. The roles played out can be cathartic, healing, therapeutic, educational, illustrative, role models, propaganda, social challenges to how we are and warnings of personal and social dangers. Its is what we do with the insights that determines the outcome of this persistent resource of approachable characters, or role models. In the privacy of your own home and thoughts, it may be possible to acknowledge things that you find difficult to express to others, even with their and your own, best of intentions. Here you can get to test out ideas and techniques in private, anonymously request further information, in response to any difficulties you find, and then adjust what your perspective on that basis. You can be confidence that other people, on mass, mentally play with these characters and scenarios that are depicted. Once you get some confidence you may feel more inclined to seek help from others and have some better idea of what you want from them. This is what we describe as 'empowerment'. The relationship becomes more equal. Get a better knowledge of yourself and what you want to achieve, then the dialogue with professionals can be more equal. The relationship with your counsellor, therapist, or support worker, etc., can be recognised as a legitimate role that takes up only part of your life, even if, hopefully, an important one. Guided Fantasy:Guided fantasies are precisely what you may expect. They are waking dreams, using the creative side of ourselves to reflect upon positive experiences we have had and incorporating them into a mental and emotional journey. They can serve many purposes but the main benefits can be their use in physical and mental relaxing, distracting from distressing thoughts, cultivating positive thoughts and raising mood. With practiced use, some personal variation and in tandem with other techniques, they can be used to overcome inhibitions, face our fears and phobias, advance our personal confidence, improve our self image, cultivate our style of social interaction and to develop our personality. They can be a good method for testing out new roles and situations that we expect to have to face at some point: interviews, getting married, getting divorced, facing the magistrate and doing an exam. We can practice how we may respond to different situations that may arise. We need to be aware of our natural and irrational fears when we engage in this process. To start with you will best to avoid daydreaming about situations that have a fearful, or have an otherwise stimulating element. If you can start off by 'letting go' of thoughts and feelings all to the good. If you find this difficult then a simple physical exercise can help as a precursor. Light physical exercise can actually make you feel better on its own. If it is purposeful, then all the better. The initial stage of the relaxation process can then usefully begin with the tensioning and relaxation of muscles throughout the various parts of the body, working up the arms and legs and progressing throughout your body and eventually up through the face and out the top of your head. This is a physical process but it should also be the mental process of taking the tensions and fears up and out of your body as you do the physical exercise. The tensioning and then releasing experience gives you the contrast, which helps you identify the more relaxed state. If you feel you have left something, some tension, or discomfort behind, go back to that point and start that part of the process again. Make a note of where you tend to get stuck and come back to this later. You can then think about why this may have happened. It may be a physical thing, or an emotional thing. If we think about why something has happened, then sometimes the idea pops into our head and we feel confident that we have identified the nature of the problem. In the privacy of your own thoughts it may be possible to acknowledge things that may be difficult to tell others. Here you can get to test out techniques on your own and then anonymously request further information, in response to any difficulties you find, adjusting what you then do. Once you get some confidence you may feel more inclined to get help from others, perhaps within a group, and have some better idea of what you want from the support you ask for. This is what we describe as 'empowerment'. The relationship becomes more equal. If you get a better, wider knowledge of yourself and the techniques, then the dialogue with others can be more equal. The relationship with you counsellor, therapist, support worker, group worker, etc., can be recognised as a legitimate role that takes up only part of your life, even if (hopefully) an important one. Try the suggested exercises out, perhaps with a partner or friend who thinks like yourself. By doing so you then have informed choice. Cognitive Therapy:How we become affected by simple learned associations:How we feel about ourselves is largely determined by our experiences but we often mentally perpetuate our bad experiences and this may reflected in how we 'feel' about ourselves. We are not always aware of this and sometimes others are not either. The start point may have been in the distant past, as a small child, but it may also be from some important event, or relationship, more recently. Strangely enough, it can also be partially due to the jokes that friends make about us, especially those we perpetuate for ourselves. As a child, parents sometimes have the habit of picking up on some trait that we have and repeatedly referring to it. This can a 'fun' thing, or a resentment, a jealousy, or just a projection on the parent's part. This did not have to be conscious, or malicious and you may have even enjoyed the comments in some way, at the time. These are often presented as a joke, at least in part. Friends and relations may also join in. If the relationships are generally constructive this will do little harm and may help 'harden us off' to the more spiteful comments. However, once we have become sensitised in this way we may later encounter 'bullying' by others and the same traits may be picked upon in a more negative, or destructive way. These 'negative' comments could even have been laughed off, but the underlying comments and destructive behaviours may still have a demeaning effect on how we feel about and see ourselves. This inclination differs from individual to individual, according to their underlying, otherwise 'positive' traits and previous negative experiences. Everyone is susceptible at some level though, although the outcomes may be quite different. Sometimes the obviously vindictive things are more apparent and we can more easily identify and tackle them when we get older. It is the subtle things that sometimes give us the greatest difficulty, especially if we learned to laugh about them, as part of the childhood joke. Laughing off some character, or feature can be a good thing, of course, but it can, non-the-less, also incorporate negative feeling about ourselves. This is how negative images of ourselves and defensive responses to events and circumstances can arise. You may not even have understood the meanings at the time, but picked up on the 'feeling' towards you, and this became associated with some words (or other expressions, or behaviour) used. The association between the feeling and the words, facial expressions (or any other non-verbal behaviour) is learned through this repetition. Your behaviour will in turn be affected and peoples subsequent responses to your behaviour can reinforce the established simple 'association' of words, thoughts, expressions and feelings. Some of these associations can become quite unconscious, a bit like hypnotic suggestion. You may have seen a hypnotist entertainers at work. It is also possible that the words, expressions and superficial feelings (humour, etc.) feel quite positive but there can also be some sad, negative feelings underneath, that you have become less conscious of. Stronger negative feelings may pop up from time to time. You should look out for them and seek to change the learned associations to your future benefit. Sometimes these associations of feeling, words and behaviour are so strong that they affect our emotional responses and behaviour to great personal disadvantage. Again, this can happen by a subtle process and we may have become unaware of our responses and the effect of these on others people's behaviour towards us. Our behaviour may be seen and/or felt as fearful, aggressive, shy, defensive, paranoid, or obsessive. Often our reaction is misunderstood, causing us even greater distress, and reinforcing the problem. You may find that people describe you as over-sensitive and you may feel defensive about this. In fact 'sensitised' is a better word for understanding what they may be saying, in their inexpert way. In the same way you can be frightened of spiders, or mice, you can become frightened of words and the expression of feelings, yours, or others. From previous, often early negative experiences, you may have learned to stand up against 'any' criticism, or even react badly to quite positive comments. These automatic reactions often start as an 'emergency response', which gets perpetuated and then laid down as a habit, an automatic response to feeling hurt and undermined in some way, whatever the intention of others. Any comment that has any feature of the earlier negative criticism, is taken as negative and we have learned to respond defensively and sometimes apparently aggressively to peoples comments and natural responses to us. In essence, it is often a miss communication. You may even find yourself feeling hurt by what was meant to be constructive criticism, where someone has identified that you respond negatively towards their attempts to help you. This is again the consequence of learning in early childhood, or at other critical times of changes in your life. It may be that you did have a 'learned' trait that irritated, or upset others but someone important in you life pointed this out in negative, or destructive ways. This how we get to develop generalised defensive responses which work against us. If what you are doing is not giving you what you want (without some serious consequences), then here is a chance to change it. If what others are doing and saying is affecting how you feel, here is a chance to check out what bits may be true and what bits are their problem. Be kind to yourself and seek, through this process to understand why you feel and respond the way your do. There is usually some subtle learning in the past that started this all off. The Therapy itself:Cognitive Therapy is a relatively simple technique that allows us to become more aware of the negative feelings that we have, and their association with words, expressions, non-verbal behaviour and specific kinds of events and encounters. Feelings can become associated with just about any other kind of experience, including simple observations, or sightings. This therapy is a means to identify and change these feelings and associations. Cognitive Therapy is a structured process whereby we are able to first make these associations more conscious and thereby get to understand them better. As I describe else where, it is a bit like doing an advanced driving course. Here we become aware of bad habits we have picked up and then think through our actions until a new, more safe, or effective pattern is established. Sometimes we may even get someone else (an instructor) to point our errors out and advise a different approach to the tasks. Once we have established a new pattern of responses and gained more positive 'feelings' in respect our own and others actions, we can pretty well 'forget' what we are doing once more and let out new intuition take over. Where the association between words, thoughts and feeling are simple, this can be resolved quite quickly and can even help with simple phobias. It is a method for stopping 'automatic', negative responses and feelings and replacing them with positive and usually more accurate and beneficial ones. In the privacy of your own home and thoughts it may be possible to acknowledge things that may be difficult to express to others, even with their best of intentions. Here you can get to test out ideas and techniques on your own and anonymously request further information, in response to any difficulties you encounter and adjusting what you do on that basis. Once you get some confidence you may feel more inclined to get help from others and have a better idea of what you want from them. This is what we describe as 'empowerment'. The relationship becomes more equal. What is described in this section is the technique and the 'props' needed, to make this work to your benefit. There is no reason why you should not undertake these exercises in combination with other techniques; like guided fantasy, or role play. It is important to do all the suggested actions and consistently record your observations and feelings. It is only by doing this that you will get a real sense of achieving a positive benefit. You need to have some faith in the process and some clear outcome that you wish to achieve; feeling and responding better to experiences you encounter. Role Play & Psychodrama:Role play does require at least one other person to work well. You can, however, play out a role with others, who you do not know you so well. I am not suggesting that you be dishonest here. It may be that you can plan to act out a role that you have always fancied doing, or being. Provided you are behaving in an honest way there is no reason that you can not present as a more confident, or knowledgeable person. You may choose to present as shy, when you are confident, or confident when you are naturally shy. Reversing you role, or 'mask', can help you get some sense of how others (who do not know you) will react to you differently. One classic role reversal is to play a bit inexperienced and uncertain, when you are actually quite clever at something. Another role is to play the tourist in a town which you know quite well. This gives you the opportunity to engage with people in order to get directions. It is a useful way to gain confidence with strangers and is relatively safe, as you will know when they are trying to trick you. You are best to identify a constructive purpose in undertaking a role play and to do so in a way which you can 'carry off'. Then think of a role that will enable you to learn something new, or gain more confidence. If you play the role in a situation that is not too important to you, this will be good practice for engaging in a similar activity that is more critical, or important to you. You can even go to the extent where you apply for jobs that you do not want, in order to gain confidence in applying for and going to interviews that you really want. Again, this is a creative process that allows you to gain insight and new perspectives, into yourself, others and new situations. There is no reason why a role play can't be 'real' in some way, but in situations that are less threatening, or less important to you than the ones you are planning to engage later. For instance; If you are shy, or inexperienced at engaging people, you could go to a bar, restaurant, cafe, or theatre on your own, with the expressed intention to just enjoy your own company, reading a book, or seeing the sights. If you do this, with no expectations other than this, you can gradually become comfortable with your own company. This takes the pressure off of you and, eventually, in your more relaxed state, you will find that people will engage in conversations with you. This may start with just asking the way, or for the time but could develop into a real conversation. Once you have gained this confidence, you can include, in the role play, the intention to ask directions, or for the time, or any other mild excuse to make social contact. It is important though, to genuinely start with the minimum of expectations, and pretend to be someone who you are not quite like; but which may be a facet of you that you would like to express. In this way you remove some of the fear and add a safe challenge to how you usually present yourself. In doing this you are extending normal role play towards a technique called psychodrama. Psychodrama does need other 'actors' to work properly but there can be blends of technique. There is no reason that you have to be 'purist' about this. It should be fun and beneficial. You could also do this with a friend. Psychodrama proper needs to be done with other 'actors' who know the 'game'. Otherwise this would be dishonest. The objective here is to play out a role with strong, or exaggerated feelings and thoughts that are not typical of you, or are quite alien to you. In doing this, to this extent, it is important that the others, with whom you engage, understand what you are doing and know the 'rules' that you are playing by. It is also important to have a 'referee' in the form of an uninvolved group leader, who can intervene if things get too 'real', which they can. I have used this technique in a common social situations, where a group play out a scene as real people in a real situation but with a directed purpose, drawing other people into the drama. We would usually start a heated debate among ourselves, on a 'hot' topic and entice people in by asking their opinions. We gradually brining them into the group and then entice other to join in the debate, trying to see if we can get nearly everyone in the area involved. It is a great way to get social confidence, with fun and for a constructive purpose. There is no problems playing the role of someone who is well off and dressing up for the occasion, perhaps going to an expensive restaurant for a light meal, or staying in a posh hotel for one night. If you are not entirely satisfied with something, try making a gentle complaint, especially if this is something you would not normally do. It is fun if you do this with someone but it can be a real experience to do it on your own. It is not deceitful to do this, as it is not done with the intention of defrauding, or duping anyone. People here are paid to serve you, however you wish present to them, provided it is not excessively rude. In some ways this is how we gradually advance ourselves anyway, but perhaps in smaller steps. You should change your presentation a little but still keep it true to yourself. Stretch the role a little each time you practice. If the role-play has a particular benefit in improving confidence and adjusting how you see yourself then you can develop the role to make it yours. Contrary to popular thinking, we do learn beyond 25 and we can significantly change, one step at a time. There are lots of other possibilities that are suggested in the Role Play section (to the left) but feel free to extend these and report back to us. What is described in this section is the technique and some of the 'props' needed, to make this work to your benefit. There is no reason why you should not undertake these exercises in combination with other techniques; like guided fantasy and cognitive therapy . It is important to make moderate role changes and consistently record your observations and feelings. It is only by doing this that you will get a real sense of achieving a positive benefit. You need to have some faith in the process and some clear outcome that you wish to achieve; feeling and responding better to the new experiences you encounter. Co-counselling:Co-counselling is a technique that has been used in Professional Groups, Therapeutic Communities and other organised group situations. As with formal counselling, there are some important things to watch out for. Given this, it can be a good way to get friends and colleagues to support each other. Formalising the arrangement a little helps to avoid falling into the trap of projecting our wishes and beliefs onto each other, or making summary judgments. It takes a bit of practice and it is good to write down the rules and review them regularly. Some will find this more natural than others but practice and feedback will help, along with some basic training, if you feel it will help. As friends and colleagues, we operate by a loose set of unspoken rules and social conventions. These enable us to engage with each other in ways that are, hopefully, mutually beneficial to us. There are usually some taboo areas that are avoided and there are expectations we have of each other, either to do our work, or to enjoy our social lives. From time to time we (individually and sometimes collectively), meet difficult problems where these relationships can be put under strain, or for which the usual relationship arrangement are not secure enough, or adequate. Co-counselling is a method for 'contracting' to support each other trough a difficult problem, issue or time. The 'contract' is for each to agree to listen to the other, to be there for each other, to try and avoid judging each other and to offer alternative suggestions rather than giving advice. It is our natural inclination to give advice and this is sometimes quite appropriate. Advice, however, can sometimes be misplaced and misunderstood, so, for the sake of friendship, it should be avoided when there are particularly strong pressures and significant distress. Suggesting alternatives is better. Co-counselling is one of these special situations and it can be a way of helping each other, while continuing to take ultimate responsibility for our own decisions. This is the bit that is most important. Without this agreement there is often problems about who's responsibility it was for the outcomes of advice, etc. This then can have a damaging effect upon the relationship in general and is often not much help to the person who has a problem to resolve. You may have found yourself in the situation where you fall out with family, or friends, when you have tried to be reasonable and helpful to them. It is usually simple errors that cause this massive effect. It is quite natural, when people are in distress, to become slightly self centred and defensive. Feelings of frustration, disappointment, guilt and anger can get 'projected' onto those close to them. Often people feel helpless and negative when in trauma and distress. Guilt and anger are not uncommon in distressing situations. The feelings of guilt are often misplaced and the feelings of anger get projected onto the rest of us, because the real focus of the anger is not available to us. Co-counselling arrangements can help protect the helper side of the relationship, in these situations. Counselling is actually quite a natural skill that we can developed through trial-and-error experience and through the bits of advice from those who have made the mistakes already. Some people are naturally more disposed to it, but this is how most advanced social skills are developed. They are rarely invented, but are mostly discovered. Like gravity, they were there already, tangled up with our own stuff. Formal research can pull out the essence of these skills and describe them logically, but to be useful they have to be put back in with our general social skills and made human again, or else they are often rejected. The most important skill is knowing when not to say something, or not to say anything. Another important guideline is; to agree to say 'what we feel' the person is saying, or doing, rather than being accusative; i.e. telling them what they are doing. This issue needs to be carefully considered from both sides, so the rule is very important. Not only do we need to be careful to express what we feel is happening, it is also necessary to hear what is being said in terms of how the other person feels you are being. Telling the person the impression you get rather than telling them what they are doing, can be more useful to them. This way we can also try and avoid feeling and being 'judged' by each other. The information imparted in this form of support is important. People need suggestions and feedback on the problems and feelings they are dealing with. We have to try to ensure that the communication represents the true 'meaning' and the 'effects' of the shared information, on each person. We need to avoid having, or assuming, there are any negative, or controlling intentions. If there is an intention to 'tell', 'hurt', or 'misguide' someone, or inclination on the listener to seek out the criticisms, then there is no protection within the relationship and the technique will definitely fail. There needs to be a good basis for trust and a constructive purpose. There also needs to be some kind equality in this relationship. A relationship where both have the same status, but are at liberty to reverse and change roles by mutual agreement, provides the best basis for co-counselling (or any counselling for that matter). The relationship needs to be forgiving, because it is very likely that mistakes will be made. With practice, a simple acknowledgement that the other person 'feels' aggrieved is usually enough. The general rule is to help the other person help themselves, without judging them. I have said, here and else where, that most people who have the ability to develop sound basic social skills are capable of refining these for the purpose of helping others. It is within general human nature to cooperate in supportive ways, but some of us are more disposed to helping than others. This is partly due to our genetic make up and partly to do with the accidents of our experience and partly due to social and interpersonal politics. This basic disposition is essential, the ability to learn technique is all very good but it has little significance and little long term effect, unless there is a basic caring disposition. This is what we understand of Doctors 'bedside manner' and the 'placebo effect', and possibly 'spiritual, or self healing'. If we attend to someone in supportive, non-judgmental, caring manner, empathetic without making the person dependent, there is a therapeutic effect in spite of any clinical treatment, or formal therapy. This effect has been well known by enlightened people and has been evident in many cultures, over centuries. It is the effect that is obtained by engaging without fear, or prejudice, having faith and trust in the process and the person's ability to respond appropriately in their own time scale. The belief systems differ but the effects remain essentially the same. This means that just being there with the person, while they express themselves in words and actions, showing mild acknowledgment of what they have to say, feeling comfortable with silences and responding minimally, honestly, without judgment, while attending to their basic needs, has a substantial beneficial effect in itself. Having a positive disposition and confidence in the process, is conveyed in your disposition and the person will tend to 'mirror' your confidence and trust. This then opens the gate for further therapeutic effect, including the beneficial effects of drugs and formal talking treatments. What is described in this section is the technique and some of the 'rules' needed, to make this work to your mutual benefit. There is no reason why you should not undertake this exercise in combination with other techniques; like guided fantasy and cognitive therapy. It is important to review your rules and progress and record your observations and feelings. It is only by doing this that you will get a real sense of achieving a positive benefit. You need to have some faith in the process and some clear outcome that you wish to achieve; feeling and responding better to the new experiences you encounter. | |
