#mondaymotivation is a twitter routine where people and organisations get all whoop whoop about how GREAT the beginning of the working week is. I work with small organisations to help create their social media strategy and know it can be useful to schedule a guaranteed-to-trend hashtag but unless it's truthful it's more than wasteful, it invites criticism.

My local college has been serving the community for a century offering excellent education in a Ward that is the joint first most deprived in London. It was recently sold to the Council in fairly strange circumstances - who are now going to demolish it to build houses. We have been promised that the College is simply relocating - and no doubt it will.

Many locals have been incensed by this and their detailed research has uncovered some alarming information about what looks like financial mismanagement of some description.  

All this is happening at a very high level and the day to day running of the College continues. Banners have been put up outside telling us to prepare for something wonderful and the social media is always good. But their #mondaymotivation post this morning was too revealing.

Another local organisation picked up on it and, to my joy, referenced an article debunking positive psychology. Then they referenced a blog that has been digging into the Colleges finances. 

“The Management Accounts up to 31 December 2016 indicate that the College will fall significantly short of its income target for the current year. The overall shortfall is expected to be in the region of £1.7 million.

Governors expressed concern at the dramatic change in financial forecasts compared to what was reported to the Board in October, where the then Management Accounts forecast a year-end surplus of £256k.”​ 

Oh dear.

I have no idea about what's really going on at the College but, from a psychological stance, this tweet exposes rather too much about the uncertainty and anxiety that college staff may be feeling.

The image seems based on purposefully alarming carnival entrances designed to let you know that you're entering a world where the usual rules don't apply. It's menacing and sinister and if you walk through the gaping mouth you are consenting to enter a world that you have been blatantly warned about. You give your consent for anything to occur, especially things that are frightening and disturbing, like being eaten up. The features are based on something that is human but horrifically distorted. Clowns are ambiguous: they're supposed to be hilarious and they're notoriously creepy. They say one thing and mean the opposite. The origin of clowning is in satire, where the Fool was able to tell hard truths to powerful people as long as he kept entertaining them. And everyone knows the narrative of the deeply unhappy clown.

I'm not going to say much about the nose on the gif other than that Freud would have a field day with it, and that my more analytical colleagues would have something to say about an unconscious reference to being conned. 

Positive thinking is clearly linked to denial. (Do a search for 'positive thinking denial'. The second image is of a clown with his fingers in his ears and his eyes tight shut.) Denial is a coping mechanism that allows us breathing space in which to adapt to new, unpleasant information, but refusing to accept that something is very wrong means that the world slips out of your control - like entering into a sinister carnival world. Cognitive dissonance makes the world seem confusing and threatening and, as any recovering addict will tell you, denial traps and isolates you, preventing change.

Positive thinking can result in the polar opposite of what we're told it's supposed to do, as it did today for the College. Their maniacally upbeat, ambivalently simple tweet has drawn some very serious attention that is way beyond what a social media team can be expected to deal with.

Organisationally, we always have to spin things to our advantage but this is a skilled and delicate job, one that requires complete awareness of reality and the avoidance of being seen to be misleading. Individually, attempting this kind of spin is more often than not denial at best, narcissism at worst. One way or another the truth shows itself, whether we know it or not. 




*I've not addressed the spelling mistake because it may be that the person who wrote the tweet doesn't speak English as a first language. And it adds to the post's incongruence.

I am entranced by this video

The song is about the singers relationship with her father, but it elegantly describes some of the processes that some people – by no means a particularly damaged or miniscule proportion – go through in order to discover more about their problems.

Michael * came to therapy with acute symptoms of stress. His workplace was stultifying, his boss out of his depth and another member of the team was a bully. The workload was too heavy for everyone and Michael had become the earthing rod for the offices collective unhappiness. We worked together to identify the shock and shame of being stressed, addressed the office dynamics and considered why Michael might have become a scapegoat. Michael felt much better prepared to deal with the complexities of his toxic work environment and decided to remain in therapy to explore the other matters that had begun to unfold during our time together.

Most of us have lost the innate power of our imaginations by our mid teens. Our heads are stuffed with factoids that will help us become hard working taxpayers and tremendous machine parts. You don’t have to write poetry or wear a rainbow jumper to be something other than a component: part of being a whole human being is about knowing what you feel and why you feel it, and therapy is a good way of kick-starting that process.

Michael found it straightforward to remember his past but realised that he couldn’t recall how he felt about events. His memory had become almost entirely cognitive. I wondered what his younger self looked like and we began thinking about Michael as a child of around 9 – how did he dress, what did he eat, did he have a nickname, what he liked and disliked, and so on. In a short period of time this younger Michael regained his own voice and began speaking with older Michael reminding him how he felt in some detail.

Like most people who come to therapy there was nothing poisonous or horrific in Michael's past. Part of growing up is, as well has having good times, experiencing disappointments, shocks, fears, loss, unhappiness, the usual stuff of an ordinary childhood and dealing with them. For all of us there are events that stand out usually because the adults around us behaved in ways that were unhelpful.

In therapy this work is never about blame. Circumstances make people behave in certain ways, no one is perfect, and it’s useful just to consider how things happened so that we, as adults, can make better sense of them.

Remembering the difficult feelings – betrayal, abandonment, shock, bereavement, resentment, terror – can be much more difficult and so we tend to say, “Well, that happened, it’s over. Let’s move on.” In fact, those feelings remain, unacknowledged and hidden away. 

But they’re alive. And if we ignore them they begin to run us. 




I'll be writing more on this subject in my next post.

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.” 
― Matsuo Bashō 

The cherry blossom is at its absolute peak. For centuries, Japanese people have made a special event of hanami, of going to view the blossom and contemplate their ephemeral beauty. 

I invite you to take the time to stand - better still, sit - under a cherry tree and just observe this ravishing event. Not for an embarrassed 5 seconds but a luxurious 10 minutes or more, allowing your mind to wander all over this sensuous and pleasing tree as bees, grateful for nectar, browse all over the flowers. Listen: can you hear their wings? Smell the fresh, clean perfume of the flowers. Feel the polished bark and know that a gigantic industrial process is occurring under your hand, sap rising, nutrients moving from root and leaf to stamen and stigma, anther and ovule. 

This happens without anyone demanding a unique 9 character password or the permission of a funder or a position statement. It does not require a level 5 qualification or a DBS certificate and you will not receive a CPD certificate after fulfilling this experiential practice. All that you will gain is the reminder that you are a human being, whether you're professional, high status and lavishly remunerated or unqualified in anything and on the dole. You can both experience this extraordinary event as equals.

The point is, make the time. 

Mindful In May begins in 7 days. Register now, and catch up on the very positive effects of being still for 10 minutes a day.