Victiming – do you do it?

Triple amputee Corporal Matt Webb in the grounds of Headley Court. People here aren’t allowed to do ‘victiming’ for long.

You know how it happens. Someone does something that hurts you and sometimes really badly – whether accidentally or deliberately doesn’t really matter – and you ‘victim’.  I mean ‘victim’ as a verb not a noun and it means to play the victim role to ‘do’ victiming.  Here are some clear signs that you (or someone you know) is ‘victiming’ …

1. Refusal to accept any responsibility for the accident (though it is rarely just one person’s fault)
2. Practicing all your blame skills, hunting high and low for evidence that this was negligence on someone else’s part
3. Self pity – feeling sorry for yourself and isolating yourself if possible
4. Phoning a personal injury claims line or trying to get some other sort of compensation
5. Taking unnecessary time off work on medical grounds
6. Going to the doctor for stress medication
7. Focusing your thoughts on the evident rewards of ‘being a victim’

Of course I’m not excusing bad behaviour towards others, but I AM suggesting that victiming is VERY bad for your health. Here are some reasons and an example.

1.  It keeps you psychologically weak. To stay a ‘victim’ you must constantly remember that you could and can do nothing about it. Don’t whatever you do, accept the faintest possibility that you’ll be fine.

2.  It closes down the potential new information a challenging or painful experience offers.  The vast majority of traumatic and challenging experiences can be turned into highly useful education opportunities. The person who has taken the good learning from a ‘bad’ experience will often tell you that they are truly glad it happened to them.  GLAD!  They wouldn’t want to NOT have had that bad experience.  They will offer all sorts of good things  -  it helped them mature, they learnt about themselves, they discovered strength and courage, they learnt about others, they became more aware of the world   …. loads.

3. Other people treat you with compassion and pity.  You are showing them how – by treating yourself like it.  And pity, particularly self-pity, is the last thing you need.  It is subtly demeaning just when you need the very opposite.

Here is an example.  In my role as a Powerchange coach, I once saw a woman on the TV who had had her face badly burnt – I believe it was from acid. Her face was healing and she had it protected by a piece of transparent plastic. She was clearly going through emotional hell – and had every reason to feel terrible. Eventually I got through to her personally and explained that I could reduce the emotional traumatic effect of the injury so that she would not be in such emotional pain and would be able to live a much more normal and healthy life.  She thought about this and a few days later got back to me:  She had talked to her counsellor and her lawyers, both of whom had said that her payout would be much less if she appeared in Court feeling better and less traumatised.  (Both her lawyers and counsellors of course had a vested financial interest in her staying as a victim.) The money said she must stay emotionally in pain at all costs.  At least until after the claim was finalised. Hopefully she has gone on to live a fulfilling and happy life. At the time I spoke to her she was ‘victiming’.

Last month someone else decided to wait for coaching for a similar reason.

Pain, both physical and emotional, is an important part of maturing as a person. The evidence is clear – those who renounce any ‘victiming’ behaviour and accept their circumstances as an initially unwelcome but powerful platform from which they can launch their new and different future do remarkably well, living emotionally strong, successful and satisfying lives.

Good on them.  If you’re victiming about something and want out, call me.

There is only one person who can do it.

Just had a call from a quiet, caring and loving dad and husband, who is doing his level best at supporting his family in every way he can.  Is he perfect?  Of course not.  Will he always get it ‘right’ (whatever that is)?  not a chance – though it depends on your version of Right.

There is only one Dad in that family, only one husband, and he is it. I told him on the phone what an amazing man he is, choosing to steer and love his family through a pretty dark time, picking up the pieces that have fallen off in the storm, carrying them until he is able to fit them back together again – and no doubt praying for better days.  Well done, Phil. (his real name.)

Some of you who read this may be familiar with the letters WWJD.  They stand for ‘What Would Jesus Do?” and are quoted to encourage us to go for the best, the highest standards of behaviour and response to the difficulties of life and that’s fine of course –  but in the more challenging moments WWJD can seem trite, idealistic and thin.  When I’m going through the mill I generally have little idea of what Jesus might do, and as I’m not the Son of God I suspect the comparison may be a little odious.   

My guess is that in Phil’s current environment, with crises beginning to layer themselves on top of each other like some sort of crude toxic lasagne, and no easy answers, WWJD doesn’t instantly spring to mind. What I chose to remind him of was that no matter how difficult the road, his current determination to do the best for his family, his determination to be strong, his obvious and willing commitment to love and support each of them in the way they need and are currently able to handle, deserves a massive ‘Well Done’ from those of us on the sidelines who, though able to help them all a little here and there (and of course doing so) are not walking in Phil’s shoes.

Phil, I think you are a living example of what Jesus would do. You are an amazing dad and husband.  How can any of us do other than commend and honour you, and let you know that regardless of what outcomes there may be from this tough road, you have lived as a powerful example of grace and goodness to us all.

Only Phil can be Phil. And only you can be you. You could do worse than follow Phil’s example, let alone Jesus’. Faithful, loving, humble determined commitment to keep walking, though the road may be marked by significant injustice, deliberate misunderstanding, and a handful other other undeserved wrongs.

That’s called Getting It Right.

 

What I do when I am DESPERATE.

Know the feeling?

From time to time life takes a turn for the more challenging, and I face a situation that I don’t have an obvious answer to.  I am a ‘natural’ at living on the edge and that is when the unexpected makes me either ‘jump’ or tempts me to ‘blind panic’.  The first is OK, but the second can make matters a lot worse.
At these moments, and I’ve had a good few of them, I’ve learnt a simple procedure that definitely makes a difference…

1. PRAY.

This is not about running away, but taking one step back for a few minutes and opening myself to higher things.  Personally I believe that God is, and likes to be, involved in my life, but evidence shows that even if you don’t believe, prayer and meditation (often called ‘mindfulness’) still has a substantial calming effect on you and will reduce the damaging sense of panic that can ensue from difficult situations. Negative trauma damages your brain, pressuring you to basic fight-or-flight ‘limbic’ behaviour.

Prayer and meditation have been shown to have real and measurable benefits in times of stress.  It is handy for me to have some favourite quotes in my memory ready to lean on and recall as I pray. One reason I’ve meditated on verses and stories in the Bible over the years is so that I’m resourced with ancient, proven, calming, wisdom when things go belly up. It’s “in there” and and the bits I have taken onboard come to the surface when needed. It has also provided me with a reliable guide to what I believe to be fundamentally important for us humans, helping me to prioritise action.

2. SMILE.

Right. Now you’ve prayed, you can smile. You are not your crisis, but the one person who can initiate change within it, so smile – not least at the irony!   Smiling, and even laughter, changes the chemistry of your body for the better, stimulating the release of empowering hormones to help you deal with the difficulty.  A good reason to smile is that as you look back on this situation in the future you will find all sorts of good in it. The biggest threats to us have within them the biggest lessons – of courage, self-control, and humility. People who look back on some of the most difficult times say they would not swap them for an easier life.

3. PHYSICALLY ACT.

Act towards a solution.  In fact ANY action is better than no action. Your sense of panic has been taken out of circulation, and you’re smiling. The next stage involves PHYSICAL ACTION (mental action will not do), for instance, phoning or emailing someone, going to the bank or supermarket, getting your stepladder out of the garage, or going to the hospital, doctor, head teacher or boss. Act towards a solution.  Start the invasion and watch what happens.

If you’re facing a serious situation alone, or simply want to move beyond the irritating or confining status quo, that’s what I’m here for. Call me.  I’ve got space in my diary for you. We can work on it (in confidence) together.

Andrew

0777 163 1945

andrew@powerchange.com

A New Coach asked for advice today. Here is what I wrote to her…

Andrew Sercombe • Ok, Charlene, here’s my ‘two-penny-worth’ as we say over here in the UK.

1. Care less and trust yourself. Life is too short to do it everyone else’s way. Only you can be you, and you’re a gift to the world. How much better to do it the way you like and learn than do it the way other people think you should do it and live slightly out of your own skin. Operate from WITHIN your comfort zone. There will be enough challenges without you having to bully yourself into discomfort. (Wear your favourite clothes.)

2. Show other people how to like you by YOU liking you. Live in a way that you’re proud to own.

3. Love your clients, and prospective clients because they are worth it not because they have client potential – and don’t try to make them be clients! I’m constantly surprised that clients come from everywhere BUT my marketing activities, but somehow my marketing activities are important for ME. They keep me ‘other’ focussed. I only work with people I like – or maybe I help them to become people I like!

4. Yes, I know I’m only supposed to have three points, and this is the fourth and there is five and six yet … feel free to break the rules. They were only made up by someone else to control us! I remember reading that professionals built Titanic and amateurs built the Ark. I’m still an amateur, that way I can keep playing. (I like playing – have you noticed?!)

5. As Richard Branson says,’Never do it for the money’ and don’t try too hard. Me, I’m sick of ‘try harder’. So is everyone else after a while if they’re honest.

6. My definition of Success: The inevitable result of being human. How many small successes have you had just today, and not noticed?

Love to you!  Enjoy your new adventure.

Andrew.

Popping the Neuroscience Bubble.

Yes, that’s what I said. The bubble.

So much more than a brain.

For those of us in the psychology/coaching industry, ‘Neuroscience’ is a great word to use if you want to flag up to the world that you’re ‘up there’ with the best, your particular training is authentic or you just want to sound good. You won’t find a self-respecting learning and development company that hasn’t slotted the word into some paragraph or other in their marketing, indicating that they are ‘neuroscience based’.  And as expected, all the current psychology programmes on the radio and TV here in the UK are climbing onto the band-wagon, with the media chanting the NS mantra day in, day out. If you check out our site, www.powerchange.com, we do it too. For how much longer I’m not sure, and here’s the reason…

Words and phrases become devalued by over-use. Stick ‘neuroscience’ on everything and just like printing money against finite resources, each note becomes worth less. Even the word ‘science’ has lost its meaning today, with so called discoveries being reported in hyped language and headlines that bear little resemblance to the down-to-earth, unspectacular slog of the reality. Science has come to mean something other than pure ‘knowledge’, and whilst I love the energy and intrigue of current explorations in human behaviour and its links with our brains, I’m growing nervous about how it is misused – sometimes with the deliberate intention to deceive.

DH Lawrence has a character who talks of “ready-made words and phrases sucking all the life-blood out of living things”, and here we have a similar thing happening. Outrageous claims for what neuroscience ‘proves’ might grab headlines and find their way onto the news channels, but bear little resemblance to the reality. Often they are simply verbal garbage, unwarranted speculative statements that at the best entertain and at the worst are deliberately misleading. Lawrence was no neuroscientist, but he knew that living things bear no comparison to the words and phrases used to describe them – even when the intention is well-meaning.

‘Scientists’ involved in brain research are men and women just like you and me.  They have their philosophical positions, have secret motivators that drive their behaviour that even they don’t know about. They have their bosses to please, their academic peers to impress and their children to feed. The temptation to over-egg the cake can for some be irresistible, especially when departmental funding worth millions is at stake. And that applies to the media too. Their jobs depend on oversimplification for easy assimilation by their readers and attention-grabbing headlines (which incidentally, are usually written by someone else) so they sell more papers for their advertisers.

So what about Powerchange’s ‘take’ on brain science and the like? Well, I’m currently thinking and reading on how the neural networks in the brain detect integrity; how the connections between all our little brains with their untold myriads of connections – all 100,000 billion billion of them across the world – work as one brain (see my blog on Community Brain Theory); how the molecule-sized proteins that trigger the opening and closing of billions of ion channels can ‘tell’ the difference between miniscule various micro-indicators signalled by someone else’s neural networks on Skype in real time, and in a tiny fraction of a second cause you to change your mind (whatever that is), and as a result, your entire future.

In other words the more I learn about neuroscience through reading papers, books and articles and observing what goes on in the evident transformations of my clients (and I have no illusions about how little that is) the more chillingly humbled I’ve felt. We can only stand in awed silence and with our heads bowed as we examine ‘through a glass darkly’ the tiniest scrap of the undiscovered vast immeasurable universe within each of our skulls.

As I consider the whole body of knowledge contributed by hundreds of thousands of neuroscientists across the world over the last century or so, I am coming to realise it doesn’t even equate to the dust on the scales.  The truth is, when it comes to neuroscience we have barely even started. It’s worth remembering that.

I love real science and discovering new things, but all too often the speculative ready-made words and phrases of the tens of the thousands of research papers are doing no more than sucking the life-blood out of an incomprehendably beautiful and very living thing.  Your brain.

Look after it.

‘C’ stands for Control

The ‘C’ for Saturday is CONTROL

– number five in thePowerchange ‘SEVEN’ course we are running at Bethany Cottage on Saturday’s once a month.  For most of us control is a BIG DEAL.

This is a MASSIVELY important thing to consider, as it impacts of so much of our lives and thinking.

Are we really in Control – do we want to be?

• What about ‘luck’, chance, predestination, God, freewill, and mathematical randomness – where and how do they fit in?
• What about the responsibilities I have?  If I have children or a job that involves 100s of other people’s lives – how do those responsibilities ‘dictate’ my life?
• Or maybe it is  believing that I CAN be in control (or that I actually am in some way) that really matters?
• Needless to say, what YOU think matters – or should that read: What you THINK matters?!  Of course it does.
• When I feel such a small cog in such a big wheel, am I just deluding myself when I want to be in control – or it it wiser to give up – and how would that affect my life?
• By the end of Saturday it will be nice to have some fresh perspectives (or whatever) that we can use to calm, reassure and inspire us.

There will, of course, be the gentle atmosphere of Bethany Cottage, the laughter, chatter, good food, and good company of the others in the group. If you’ve never been to one of these days and would like to join us on one in the future, let me know – or sign up on the front page of Powerchange.com (right hand column!) and we’ll keep you in touch.

And while we are on the subject, what about people who want to control US? And how do we get back into control of things that have now taken us over – or are ‘beyond our control’?  How do we control other people?  Discipline? Punishment? Rules and Laws? Prison?  And then there is SELF-control. Do any of us have it?

And what about those of us who are born nonconformist?  

Maybe the need or desire to be in control is overrated, or control is a delusion and we can just give up and ‘go home’?  Then what?  

Well, I suspect that people WILL ‘go home’ at the end of the day (we’ve only so many beds!) but with some clearer thoughts, some peace of mind, and a more mature view of what Control might be about. Three ‘Top Truths’ about Control that can guide us, perhaps. Might be particularly useful in this pretty foundation-less and insecure world.

You could send me a quick comment on a time when you felt very out of control – and how you got BACK into control again.  Or didn’t.

Andrew

Ever made an error?

Yes, I just did – the classic result of struggling with technology and hitting a ‘Publish’ button before time! However it will act as a little taster of what is to come on Powerchange in the next few weeks – if I can’t get it to you sooner.

The nice thing is that my friends are people who are real, gently amused at my humanity, forgiving, kind, not easily irritated.  A bit like the Kind Stranger I guess.

By the way, have you seen the Powerbubbles video? Its now on Vimeo uploaded by Merv Wyeth who lives just up the road from me.

Remind yourself about how valuable you are today, and if you haven’t done our Self Worth programme, you’ve not much longer to wait!

Warmest as always

Andrew