15/5/2017 #mondayoverexposure
#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.
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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. 29/3/2017 Positivity Or Denial?There comes a point when you have to take stock and say, “Things are bad.” The beginning of the economic downturn saw a tedious increase in ‘experts’ telling us that positivity would make everything better. Thinking about what is good rather than bad and focusing on the good stuff really can build new neural pathways and change your attitude for the better. But it won't help if you want to walk across the road with your eyes shut. Very quickly the suggestion that positivity can be helpful has turned into a demand. We live in a country where therapists are working with the DWP to make unemployed people go back to paid employment and where paid employment is suddenly perceived as a ‘positive health outcome.’ If you think that’s wonderful then you don’t care about evidence. It is unethical, counterproductive and has no basis in fact. It speaks volumes about the desperation that many therapists are feeling. Because you’re reading this it’s probable that you’re all too aware that things have been falling apart for some time. Many businesses can’t afford the materials and staff they need and so existing staff are working at the edges of their ability and capacity. Public services - the services we all use when we travel, get ill, expect an educated population or want our elderly relatives to have some kind of dignity – have been amputated. Things are falling apart. The most vulnerable amongst us have been telling us this for years. And now ordinary people who are not vulnerable are feeling it.
Cognitive dissonance is “the mental stress experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values; when performing an action that contradicts existing beliefs, ideas, or values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts existing beliefs, ideas, and values.” We all experience it from time to time but many of us are finding a home in this unbearable environment. Demands for positivity have become authoritarian, insisting that we cut a smile into our face and do little dances of joy to demonstrate team spirit or something. Anyone saying, “My life is hard” is a shirker. Anyone suggesting that motivational speeches don’t put food on the table is dismissed as unenthusiastic. People who want to care for a sick child are told that they must ‘arrange alternative childcare.’ How do you discern whether positivity indicates confidence or stupidity? Intelligence, good business strategy and the ability to avoid danger involves knowing when to cut our losses. The alternative is to continue staring at the sun, borrow unsustainable amounts of money, time and good will and crash disastrously. Things are bad for most of us right now and, as adults, we need to look at facts rather than allow our prejudices and desires to rule us. Sterling is falling and the trend is downward. A 60-hour week is no longer unusual. (If you don’t work a 60 hour week that’s a good thing not an indication that you’re lazy.) Anxiety is twice as prevalent as depression. Our children are becoming more and more distressed. If you’ve read my blog for a while you know I don’t like inspirational quotes and the pretence that everything will improve if we all just pull together and think happy thoughts. Now I’m saying that if you’re an ordinary person and you’re not feeling a bit crap that it’s likely that you’re ignoring something. Avatar was on the television again this evening and I was reminded of the phenomenon of Avatar Blues
"One can say my depression was twofold: I was depressed because I really wanted to live in Pandora, which seemed like such a perfect place, but I was also depressed and disgusted with the sight of our world, what we have done to Earth. I so much wanted to escape reality," Hill said. We’re living through extraordinary times. As I write this people are being held at American airports and sent to any old country. In the UK the temptation is to say: “That will never happen here.” Yet we have had a British MP murdered by a member of a legal organisation. Within a day of the Brexit vote hate crimes began and within two weeks had increased by 58%. If you’ve spent any amount of time online you’ll be aware of newly emboldened commentary from people sneering, bullying, spilling over with contempt. So if you have an ounce of sensitivity a film like Avatar can be very painful. We know that indigenous people have been destroyed whenever they come into contact with our civilisation. We know that animals and people do not connect in the way the film shows us, and that we have made the purpose of the natural world to be industrialised for our use. We know that the untamed world has never risen up against an enemy that is destroying it, and who can bear the destruction of the helplessness and innocent? It is incredibly rare to be born blunted and callous. We have to close large parts of our hearts and minds because to keep them open and vulnerable is too painful. Sometimes, because we are not exposed to pain happening in front of us, we ignore it. Fascism doesn’t arrive wearing jackboots. Of course, if any group were forced to wear an identifying badge a great many of us would also wear that badge in solidarity. But would you identify as ‘Unemployed’? Or ‘Poor’? The UK poor have been dying decades before their more prosperous neighbours for centuries. It’s quite normal for adverts at bus stops to tell us to anonymously inform on anyone we think may be defrauding the benefits system even though benefit fraud is such a minute issue that it’s not counted separately from errors in benefit distribution: combined they account for around 1% of the benefits bill. You know that unemployment benefits are 1% of the total benefits bill. And you know that pensions account for 42% of benefits. If we can allow one group to suffer, to be identified as worthy of contempt and vilification, then we can allow it to happen to anyone. In our hearts we know that. There are three ways we can respond to it: Resist it. Accept it. Join in with it. Resistance is painful and exhausting. Acceptance can feel like a relief but it gnaws away at you because you know it’s wrong. Joining in with it can be wonderful. You’re amongst friends. They support you and you gain entrance to a genuine community with a narrative about the world that makes you feel justified and safe. Very often there is no downside to this, people do not wake up and say “I was wrong,” we go to our graves believing in things that are deeply, demonstrably wrong with no regrets. For people who are unsure about what the hell is happening and what to do about it, it can feel best to keep it simple, to know the enemy and turn a blind eye. If you know the historical futility of resistance life can become unbearable. Low-grade suicidality is not at all unusual, it’s so common that many people don’t recognise it until it’s identified in their behaviours or in the casualness of their language. Pain becomes normal. How to remain on an even keel in times like this? Identify the parts of you, without judgement, that hate. We all have them. The part that says, “The Jews have put the house prices up there,” or “Trump’s mad but he’s got a point about Muslims,” or “If the poor worked harder they wouldn’t be poor.” Non-judgement is absolutely critical. It’s not about being good or bad, it’s about knowing what’s going on. Treat that part of yourself with respect; listen to what it has to say. Listen. Don’t tell it what to do. When we’re better able to hear ourselves, in all our aspects, we gain a better understanding of the world. When we’re able to be gentle with our own flaws we can accept them more gracefully in others. And at a time when grace is sorely lacking that’s becoming an urgent interpersonal and political need. ![]() Last weekend I went to a workshop run by Mick Cooper, Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton, author, researcher, therapist and Chartered Counselling Psychologist. During the day Prof Cooper told us about his schedule which, apart from university work, included extra academic research, preparing and running workshops and conferences, an arduous commute, family life, physical exercise and writing 2,000 words a day. The workshop was an introduction to Existential counselling, a form of counselling that I trained in and use a great deal in my own work, and which I see interpreted in ways that I find increasingly concerning. Therapists, not just those actually trained in existentialism, often quote Viktor Frankl the founder of a form of existential analysis, as a way of saying 'Pull yourself together' something I've written about often, especially here. Strangely, absolutely no one is saying that one must be immersed in rabbinical and Talmudic texts, as Frankl (and so many other therapists) was or that one must establish a kind of monomania about ones spouse, which Frankl did, an obsession he credited for keeping him alive. His work is only used as a way to tell people they're not good enough. It's always been very popular to tell people they're not good enough and to pull themselves together. When we do it we place ourselves directly opposite losers, people who can't (or more likely, the lazy pigs, just won't) get their act together. The contrast makes us feel successful and positive, consistent, resilient, focused, leaning in - whatever other buzzwords are being thrown around today. And so my invitation to you is to just get a grip and reproduce Mick Coopers' schedule. He has children so that's no excuse for you not to. Prepare and educate yourself, reject chaos, double down, strive for excellence. Get on with it. What are you waiting for? Why are you procrastinating? What the hell is wrong with you? I don't know Prof Cooper but I can tell you two things about him:
And whilst energy can be cultivated there is only so much that a person can do. Mick Cooper can do all these things and you can't. I can't. Most people can't. Which is the single best reason why you and I and the huge majority of people aren't a professor and the author of 10 books. There are some people who are consistently incredibly productive, often for decades. They get cancer and they work through it and fight it and beat it. Their child dies and they produce their magnum opus. They're exiled for 14 years and return to become the leader of a nation and Time's Man of the Year. Good for them. So because they can do it, people who die from cancer are losers? Selfish, too, for not fighting hard enough and burdening their families? Bereaved parents who can't move on from this catastrophe, they're just workshy or weakminded? I know a number of people who are disabled and who run successful businesses - other disabled people have no excuse? Viktor Frankl survived concentration camps so all those lazy arses who died have only themselves to blame? All of my clients are, by anyone's standards, very successful. When they feel that they're not doing as well as they have done in the past ask for help. And the ones who excel? They're authentic. They're competitive but not vicious or scared. They work to their strengths whilst valuing and respecting aspects of their personality that aren't geared towards making money. They know that status within their employment is just another facet of personal success because they know endless numbers of peers who are rich and exhausted, cynical, addicted, burning out, psychopathic and phoney. Ultimately, they are concerned with what is meaningful for them and don't try to be what they're not. Frankl, like the other Existentialists, understood that meaning gives flavour and satisfaction to life. Here's one of his quotes that is plundered much less often: “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning Just by being themselves they're being (not doing) what the Harvard Business Review recognises as resilient. Not fighting anything. Not surviving a terrorist attack. They're taking the time to discover what is important for them and doing just that. This well-meaning attempt at positive psychology really sums up my mistrust of it. I’m sure that the person who created it is rightly proud of their post-trauma achievements in the world and wanted to demonstrate that although they have experienced many more wounds since childhood they are now an adult, strong and capable and no longer felled by suffering. But look at what is actually there. A puppy has been shot with an arrow. S/he is nearly killed and certainly horrifically injured by it. Imagine a puppy being shot. Next to the puppy is an adult wolf. There are 22 arrows in her back. Her tail is between her legs and there is blood pooling beneath her. The caption is the equivalent of “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.” What that puppy and the adult wolf need is emergency expert care. A lot of time, money and attention need to be spent on both of them. They need to be removed from danger, forever. In the UK that’s what animal shelters do: we don’t offer that to traumatised children or to many adults. Apart from the obvious skill of the artist, the only thing I find useful in this image is that the wolf is looking at the unconscious puppy with something like compassion. As adults, that’s what we need to try to emulate for ourselves. Often in therapy a person will try to look on the bright side, comparing themselves to starving children in Africa or drowning refugees and say, “Well, at least my life is better than theirs.” Perhaps. We can go on for many months saying, “Things aren’t so bad. I don't know why I'm getting these panic attacks/ feel so unhappy/ get so angry.” When the relationship between us is trusting enough and deep enough a client might remember a childhood trauma or relive it beyond their cognition – beyond it all being a memory – and really feel it again. They become vulnerable. At this point a person can feel desperate for me to solve their problem, a problem that responsible adults did not treat with the respect or attention that was as necessary as food at that time. It can be heart-breaking to help the client understand that I cannot stand in the place of those adults from the past. My aim is to help the client find their own resources, from a place of vulnerability rather than from steel in the spine, to offer the love, care and comfort to their younger selves. It is painful. It is painful to acknowledge that we have been waiting all our lives for someone to do the right thing 50 years ago. It is painful to give up on that hope. It can be god-awful to know that we will never be rescued. It seems necessary to go through a period of protective cynicism, to say “Well fuck the world, then. What a bunch of shits everyone is.” And whilst this may have an element of truth to it we also need to move beyond cynicism and into a place of deep self-care. Some clients will have spent time already speaking with their younger selves and found it beneficial. But when that speaking becomes listening, when it becomes a relationship of compassion between a frightened, injured little child and an empathic, loving, gentle adult then real healing can begin. What doesn’t kill us can weaken us nearly to death and sometimes beyond it. Nietzsche, who coined the original phrase, spent the last years of his life in a catatonic state collapsing after witnessing a horse being thrashed almost to death. Nietzsche was a sensitive human being who, in addition to suffering widely debated medical conditions, experienced maddening horror when he witnessed cruelty. You don’t have to turn into a wolf or become psychotic after trauma though there’s no blame if you do. Remaining fully human takes incredible bravery and hard work. Sadly, this kind of hard work doesn’t make you respectable. It just makes you a decent, loving, thoughtful, whole human being. |
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July 2020
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |