TSHP177: How to beat the bullies

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What’s Coming This Episode?

300x250_1We’re taught at an early age about bullies; either through direct experience or via classic tv and film portraits – think Bif from Back to the Future or Nelson from The Simpsons. In reality though, a bully won’t disappear when you switch off the television or even when you go home from school or work. They follow you everywhere. So how do you combat them?

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

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Resource of the Week

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How to beat the bullies

The requests for podcasts have been rolling in from listeners, and long may it continue. This week we were asked to discuss bullying. This is a subject near to my heart because, as you may know, my father was a bully and I was effected by his dysfunctional personality.

As a young child my father taught me to be a victim and that meant I was ideal material for the bullies at both infant and primary schools. By the time I got to the age of eleven I had, had enough. I began to fight back with my father, a strategy that led to me leaving home at the age of fifteen. From a school point of view I made the decision that when I entered secondary school I would no longer be bullied.

On my first day at secondary school a boy took my school cap and ran off. He was a couple of years older than me but I thought it is now or never. When I finally caught up with him I hit him so hard across the head with my brief case that he needed to go to hospital to be stitched. I received six strokes of the cane from the deputy head, which turned out to be no bad thing because no one ever bullied me again.

Throughout my working life in occupational health departments I have had to deal with bullies and the results of bullying. As you can imagine I get highly energised in such cases. Sadly, my experience is that from the Thatcherian era onwards bullying in the workplace has increased and in many organisations bullying by managers and colleagues can be common place, despite organisational bullying policies. Also those people that deal with the public directly will be aware that abuse and bullying by members of the public seems to be on the increase.

Often bullying behaviour is learned by the bully in childhood. A learned bully can change their behaviour and often do once they get beyond the playground. Change, after all, only takes time and willingness. However, the bullies that we have to be careful of are those on the psychopathic spectrum. Remember that a psychopath is someone who lacks empathic insight and therefore any conscience or inhibition.

In general we, the majority, are only bullied with our permission. The population decided to remove their leaders, the dictators Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, who ran the country through martial law. The entire population took to the streets and peacefully asked them to leave. It took some time and despite the army and police force, in the end, that had to leave. In the UK we have the example of the population refusing to pay Thatcher’s poll tax. So many people stood up against this new law that parliament had to repeal the act.

In many ways we get the politicians, leaders, bosses and so on that we choose to put up with. In the end it comes down to the fact that you can’t be bullied without your permission. It may not feel like that when you are feeling like a victim. But that is why we have police, unions, human resources and even occupational health services.

Bullying should never be tolerated whether it is in the home, school or workplace. We need to all stand up to bullies.

Take care and be happy.

Sean x

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TSHP176: Getting on with siblings and close family

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Many are fortunate enough to be blessed with close a close family – one that sticks together through thick and thin. But what about those that don’t share that closeness? Are we stuck with these relationships? Can we change them or should we ever cut our ties?

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

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Sibling Rivalry

Thanks to a listener who wanted some advice about getting on with siblings Ed and I found ourselves talking about our own brothers and sisters. It made me realise the stark contrast between my own upbringing and that experienced by both Ed and Rie. My own young life I described as being ‘thrown in a snake pit that needed to be survived’ while Ed and Rie had a good modicum of love and support that nurtured their early years. Even now they have good relationships with their siblings. I on the other hand have not seen my siblings for many years. The rivalries in my childhood were that I was the scapegoat and the kicking post. Rivalry was strong.

We do not choose our relations
Some spiritualist tell us that we do choose our family. I have this sneaky feeling that if I had to choose it would not have been what I got. The issue that we all have to face is, are we prepared to maintain this relationship even if they are people that we do not like. Maybe we do not really want anything to do with then. Then duty, tradition and expectation step in and we learn to put up with and tolerate the worst of relationships. I see people tolerate the most awful situation because it is ‘family’.

Do we have to make them work?
Is blood thicker than water? Well, I would say not. Family relationships are no different to any other relationship that we choose. In non-family relationships we choose who we spend time with and there is no rule that says it should be any different.

Place in the family
Each child that enters the family, at the point of birth, has a place in the family hierarchy that can potentially create rivalry. In psycho speak we talk about ‘oldest child syndrome’, ‘middle child syndrome’ youngest child syndrome’.

Oldest child
The oldest child is the first born. For them there is a disadvantage of their parents learning their skills. This child is a learning experiment that suffers all of their parent’s mistakes. There is also an advantage in that the first child will always be special as the first child and the first grand child. They may also be the first nephew or niece.

Middle child
The middle child has all the advantages of not having to face the same mistakes and lessons that the parents learned from the eldest child. In the beginning they have it easy and may be in a privileged position, that is until the next child comes along. At this point the middle child does not have the special status of the first born or the novel status of the youngest. Many middle children feel abandoned and less important than their siblings.

Youngest child
The youngest child is special. They have the equivalent of many parents as their elder siblings look after them as well as their parents, grandparents and other relatives.

The eldest child may develop the need to look after other people and take responsibility. The middle child may develop a withdrawn stance and perhaps lacking the confidence of their elder and younger siblings. The younger sibling may develop an expectation that others will always look after them and some never learn to take responsibility for themselves.

Like attracts like
Often you will find that adults are attracted to other adults who had the same familial status as themselves. That is older childen create relationships with other older children, middle with middle and younger with younger.
It seems that our position in the family affects the rest of our life. However, we know that we can change any habit that we learn as children. Some deeply embedded habits are more difficult than others to change.

Habit or choice
Over all family relationships may be seen as either habit or choice. The important thing to realise is that we do always have a choice.

Button box
We use this tool when working with clients, of any age, to understand their family relationship. I have a box within a collection of items, mainly buttons, of all different sizes and colours. We ask the client to pick an object to represent each person. They then place them on a white sheet of paper. The insight gained from understanding why each person is a certain size and colour and, most importantly why they are placed where on the paper. The story begins to emerge of the nature of the relationships in the family. The way that they are grouped and who is left out is the story, the rivalries in the family between both the siblings and the parents.

So, are you an older, middle or young sibling and how has it effected your adult life and your relationships?

Take care

Sean x

TSHP175: When do you reveal the skeletons in your closet?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

History can often follow us around but sometimes we get to start afresh in a new place or with a new person. Still, we’re left with the question of when, if ever, do we bring up our past. If it’s a dark past, then that question becomes far more serious…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

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Do you have any skeletons in your closet

Thanks to a listener this week we are looking into our cupboards to see if there are any skeletons. The answer is that of course there are. We all have a past and we all have secrets, that is the normal state of humanity. No one will ever be completely honest and transparent. After all does your partner know about all the detentions that your served when you were at school? Of course they don’t. The only way you can truly know and understand a life is to have lived it

One issues raised by Ed is if you have done something that has led to a criminal record, or to you being put on one register or another, at what point do you tell your partner. I guess the answer to that has to be fairly early on. This is for two reasons one is that your new partner can make an informed choice about whether or not to have a relationship with you. The second is that if you leave it too late to reveal what may be seen as a hidden secret your new partner may feel that you have tried to dupe them in some way.

It is certainly true that many employees are required to undergo checks into their criminal or financial history before they can gain employment. Some employers will now do online searches in social media to check out potential employees before they are given a job.

It has become common place in the media to see celebrities undergoing investigation for their hidden skeletons and being charged or imprisoned as the contents of their cupboard is revealed. Even those that have nothing in their cupboard can be damaged by the ‘no smoke without fire’ philosophy that pervades society.

When you are honest there is now need to run
My teacher would always suggest that being honest was the stressless way to live. In honesty there is nothing to hide and nothing to worry about or to give you sleepless night. In honesty there is no need to run and no need to hide.

Can we forgive?
If people are honest about their wrong doing should that keep them tarred forever or should we be able to forgive them? This has an important impact on people’s willingness to be honest with us. Fear that people will be continually penalised for their past behaviour may lead them to hold back from being completely honest. The deal in our society is supposed to be that wrong doers or sinners pay the price for what they do which, should in theory, lead to forgiveness and if they are repentant lead to some level of redemption. This, from a mindful perspective would lead to self development.

The example below is about Leslie Grantham, the actor who played Dirty Den in the soap opera ‘East Enders’.

According to Wikipedia…

…on 3 December 1966, Grantham attempted to rob a taxi driver, Felix Reese, in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, West Germany. A struggle between Grantham and the driver followed, and Reese died from a gunshot wound to the head. In his statement to the police following his arrest, Grantham claimed that he did not know the gun was loaded and it had gone off during the struggle, which would have resulted in a conviction for manslaughter if a jury believed this version of events. However, at his trial in 1967 he was subsequently convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Although he had committed the murder in West Germany, he served the entirety of his imprisonment in various British prisons. This was because soldiers and officers convicted of any criminal offence that warrants a sentence of over two years are automatically transferred to Her Majesty’s Prison Service, they are also automatically dishonourably discharged…

The British public were able to allow him to move beyond his act to become a well known family star. This is a rarity in British society.

The main requirement of honesty is to be honest with yourself
Whoever you decide to be honest with, in the end, the only person who you really need to be honest with is yourself. In self honesty we can grow and develop. In mindfulness the observation of self leads to a level of honesty as we get to know who we really are.

The are some things to look out for
You can only be truly honest with others when they are first, open minded and are able to hear what you are saying or revealing without judgement, something that in psychotherapy would be described as ‘unconditional positive regard’ coned by Carl Rogers and second, those that are forgiving if forgiveness is what you require or need.

My resource of the week is, if you are suffering from skeletons to do step two of the Live In The Present Ten Steps. This is the step that deals with self forgiveness. You can find this step in the podcast archive episode 103.

Take care, be happy and be as honest as you can be to keep yourself safe. However, always be 100% honest with yourself.

Sean x

TSHP174: Dealing with the Naysayers

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Sometimes you wake up and you just feel right. Let’s go! Let’s do this! Then you bump into that person… that individual that sucks the life out of you. A naysayer! Bam, your energy drops and you’re back where you started…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean says it’s time to revisit The Secret
  • Ed is keen to recommend fizzle.co once again – start something cool, Fizzle will help you stay on track

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

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How to Deal with the Naysayers

Definition:..
…a person who habitually expresses negative or pessimistic views
despite a general feeling that things were going well..

You must know them, you might even be one, Naysayers are everywhere. If the sun is shinning it is too hot, if not it is too cold, too wet, too dry, whatever it is, it is never right and it never will be. The role of the Naysayer is to tell you how bad it all is and to reinforce this negative message at every opportunity.

Who is doing it?
Try this one, go to three different places, maybe cafes, waiting rooms, bus stops, or wherever, and listen to the conversation being carried on by those around you, what do you hear? Are the people around you sharing positive or negative things? Are they counting their blessing or bemoaning their woes? Are they sharing how good their life’s are or reciting the badness in their everyday?

Are you positively or negatively dominated?
Current research suggests that for most people the average negative dominance of their thoughts and conversation is about 70%. That means that for most of us we spend about 70% of our time thinking, feeling and talking about negative things.

What are we doing this for?
If we could track back in evolutionary time we could probably find a point where it became good for our development to be negative. Perhaps it was an obsession with danger that kept us safe. Or maybe the fear of starvation made us critical of others that wasted precious resources. However it began and however it developed it is with us today and maybe is developing. It is certainly true that every person who develops and maintains the habit of negative dominance becomes a drop in the ocean of negative consciousness that affects us all.

Does it have to be this way?
We know that we are each the sum total of all that we have learned since our birth, this is our paradigm or all of the habits that we have developed throughout our life. As we learn our habits from observation we can assume that the habit of negative dominance has been passed down the generations to the point where the habit is now accepted as normal behaviour. Remember; a habit is something that requires no effort and no will power to enact, we simply just do it. It becomes who we are, how we see ourselves, it becomes normal behaviour.

Be informed not inundated
Having listened to others talking try the news broadcasts, list the positive stories and the negative stories. What is the dominance, negative or positive? Just think about it. If this is the diet of information that we are receiving every day then it is little wonder that we have negative thoughts and feelings. We need to be aware of the news, we need to be informed but we do not need to be inundated by a sea of negativity. We begin to realise that with all this negative recitation and rumination how can we ever have a positive dominance in our thoughts and feelings.

Time to change
To change you need to do two main things, 1: Stop listening to the sources of negativity and 2: start listening to the sources of positivity. This means stop listening to ever repeated news broadcasts and move away from people that you know who keep reciting negative messages.

Do you really know yourself?
Ok, last task, spend the rest of today listening to yourself. Listen to what comes out of your mouth but also to your inner thoughts and feelings. As you become aware of what is happening inside you begin to observe how your system responds to negative messages. These may be news items or come from what other people are saying.

What do you do with them? Do you grab them and play with them, reject them, get angry, sad? Just observe what you are doing and how you are handling it. Be aware of how your body responds. You might react to negative news/information with an in take of breath, with a flutter in your tummy, with a surge of anger or sadness. Whatever it is become aware of it.

As you observe, watch what you do. Do you let negativity go? Do you challenge it? How does it make you feel?

The point is that like all things positivity and negativity is a choice. Only you can decide how you respond and react to all the things that happen around you.

So back to the question at the beginning, the reason that we listen to Naysayers is because that is the habit that we have developed. In listening to negative messages we feed the Naysayer and encourage their bad behaviour. It is another case of what we feed grows and what we starve dies. If we stop giving it attention, it eventually goes away.

Take care be happy and practise being a Yaysayer rather that a Naysayer.

Sean x