Happy New Year - findng joy through understanding Human Needs Psychology

Happy New Year to you all.
Spending a quiet day on the sofa nursing a cold taking the opportunity to rest. Now, having a cold on the first day  of 2016 seems a bit unfortunate as I pride myself on keeping well - especially as I am in the business of helping others with their health issues! But I realise of course that I must rest and restore myself by not rushing around today but keeping warm, taking Echinacea (a powerful immune stimulus), and loosening my grip on my need to do something.

I have long struggled with this issue and I know that a lot of my clients do also - the need to be a Human Doing - where we get our self worth from our achievements in the external world - the 'doings' rather than making changes internally. Indeed if you want to achieve lasting change in your life (and New Year is a good time to commit to that - whether it be weight loss, a better relationship or a more satisfying work life for instance) then you need to look at what your current behaviours are doing for you in terms of satisfying the basic human needs.  Anthony Robbins and Chloe Madanes talk of the 6 Human Needs:

 

You can see that the most basic ones are lower down the triangle. I would maybe disagree with some of the terminology; I would call certainty safety for instance. We all need to feel safe and free from pain. Uncertainty I would call 'variety' and this one has led me to end relationships so is very key for me. Significance I have already talked about and led me to the work I now do I think. But some of these things are in competition with eachother - we cannot always have love and connection when we feel unsafe,  and certainty and uncertainty are in precarious balance usually. If we get our significance from our job or relationship and then we lose it, this can lead to much suffering until we find a way to generate this for ourselves again. For growth to occur we need to all these pillars in place in the right proportions for us. You see that it is a hierarchy (much like Maslow's triangle).

 

But most of us have never examined what our behaviours give us in these terms. For instance, does over-eating give us certainty? In many ways it does. Better than the difficulties of relating to others, as it is a reliable way of seeing comfort - even if it damages us in the process... When we see that what we are really seeking is to feel joy in our lives, but it is our behaviour based on an unconscious belief that is driving us, we can choose to do something differently. Our self-worth comes from our unspoken beliefs about ourselves - and mine was certainly unhealthy and led me to overwork  and ultimately illness.

 

So, today, I thank my illness for the insight it gave me and the will do it differently now . I will rest and restore today. Wishing you all the best for 2016.

 

p.s for more information about this work see the RobbinsMadanes website and also my other blogs on the theories of the Human Givens Institute which uses the Maslow hierarchy and has developed them.

Perpetual student of wellbeing

Well I said 2014 would be the year of consolidation in my life: i.e.I would do no more courses for a while and concentrate on building my business. This has happened but  I must be honest and say I haven't given up studying completely. I have been doing a trauma treatment course by Dr Janina Fisher which looks at various models of trauma and how to overcome it. It's monthly by webinar and has been very instructive as the other students seem to be mostly psychologists and have a particular language and terminology that I don't always follow (not having studied psychology formally at university). But I have begun to pick up some useful tips about operating within the 'window of tolerance' with neither hyper or hypoarousal and thus being able to function well in the world which is the goal of every person but sometimes goes awry in children subject to relational (and other) trauma

 

I am also looking at Shame and Vulnerability by doing a self-study course with my favourite shame researcher (are there others??) Brene Brown. She runs a video based course here I am, as you see, a perpetual student.

 

But finally 2015 has come around and I wish to increase my credibility with my clients by obtaining a PhD. This isn't an easy task as you might guess as the area I am working in is not that common and my approach is not strictly psychological or medical. I am instead in the 'no-man's land' of being in a holistic field which rigidly defends its position as being research-based and yet if the research does no fit the current paradigm it is not accepted. So, I am having to go a bit 'off-piste' and do my research privately via a PhD registered in India. my study is going to be looking a the common trauma of everyday childhood experiences which, in some sensitive children, causes them to develop symptoms akin to PTSD. We don't have a name for this yet although common PTSD has been mooted by psychiatrists. I believe I am a someone who has this in my history, and it would explain a lot about my reactions to events in my life and my physical symptoms of Chronic Fatigue and depression. I would like to investigate this link by creating a questionnaire to be given to volunteers who suffer from  any of the CFS style conditions including any sort of Chronic Pain (which has lasted for more than 3 months). I am developing the questionnaire at the moment. I am hoping to be ready to send this out to groups and individual by the end of May. I have set up a page on my website devoted to it to give potential respondents more information, If you know anyone who might be interested in taking part in the study please direct them to this page for more information.

So, at the end of the study I should have more information on what the common factors in the personal history of sufferers is. I will keep you updated as I develop this further.

The unspeakable Speakmans

Someone in the clinic where I worked asked me if I'd seen this TV show 'The Speakman's' yet.. I hadn't even heard of it (I don't watch live TV- takes up too much time) but am always interested in catching something that's been recommended. I was told 'they do amazing things like cure phobias' - really fast!' I was intrigued.

I watched the show on itvplayer - with my mouth open most of the time. The programme is very much in the shlock reality TV mould with frequent add breaks and reminders after of what you've just viewed (in case you've forgotten!). My first reaction, I'll admit was one of horror. These people look like your worst idea of celebrity chasers. He (the husband of the man and woman duo) looks like a middle aged man trying to look young - hideous haircut, and his wife is the blond bimbette type. They have a 'fabulous' house in Rochdale, several ridiculously expensive cars, surrounded by the obvious trappings of wealth, but with no taste. Never mind. I got that bit out the way and then I tried to concentrate on their methods...

Hard to decipher as in fact, the TV format doesn't really go into detail - they have a conversation, they isolate the causative event in the persons life and then they do basic NLP manoeuvres on those memories. They also aren't afraid to humiliate the client if that is what it takes. They call it 'schema reconditioning'. So, they use eye movements, sometimes body movements, freeze framing and running the story backwards, etc to break the link between the memory and the disabling beliefs that surround it.. Fascinating. Now, it's difficult to know exactly how much of what you see is edited out from what actually happened but, on the surface at least, it gets results.

And, in time I must admit I began to think well they're onto something here. So, then I began to think about how I run the 'fast phobia cure' which is an established hypnotherapy technique - it's not dissimilar. What, works for them I think is the expectation ('therapists to the stars!' is how they're billed). As we know, in treatment setting up a positive expectation is 3/4 of treatment. But as for the rest, I don't quite  know how to explain their success. He, certainly seems to know his stuff, she is probably the bubbly, bright eye candy component but you can't fail after a while to start to like them in all their exuberant awfulness. They LOVE their life as they keep telling you and want to spread their joy around. As Nik Speakman says - you're only born with 2 phobias naturally - fear of confined spaces and fear of loud noises (he's not quite right there there's a couple more) - everything else is learned behaviour and can therefore be unlearned.

So, that, my friends and followers concurs with my attitude to life. We deserve more than to be stuck. We deserve to live life in joy and health. I can't quite agree with his saying 'what do you want qualifications or results?' - because  ideally you'd have both. You'd want your therapist to be accredited, to really know their stuff, and to be effective. That's my aim anyhow. Go Speakmans!