Embrace Your Fear. Don't Freeze It!

I believe fear must have been the first emotion that I have learnt to master. Growing up I feared many things. The first ever fear that I consciously remember experiencing was fear of taking the lift. I was stuck in a lift once as a child and found the experience extremely frightening and distressing. I refused to go into a lift after that and always took the stairs no matter how high I needed to go. It kept me fit but I hated the feeling of being afraid. At some point in my early teens I started to challenge myself and go in the lift for a short distance, a kind of exposure self-therapy and in time I managed to overcome it.

 The next fear on my list was fear of the deep. I was afraid of swimming at the deep end of a swimming pool or in the deep end in the sea. An incident when I was a teenager of jumping into the deep end of a pool by mistake and nearly drowning did not help matters. Movies about sharks that were popular in the eighties fuelled my imagination and only served to make this fear grow. My fear of the deep comes and goes depending on my level of exposure.

 Next was my fear of flying which is now a thing of the past. Neuro-Linguistic Programming concepts really helped me to overcome this particular fear because I became aware of the pictures and movies I was creating in my head that were contributing to my fear. Once I played around with those images my fear diminished considerably. Also reading and gathering knowledge about aviation risks helped me also realise the absurdity of that particular fear. 

 However my biggest fear to date I would say was or is fear of public speaking. So how have I learnt to manage this fear and speak in public? 

 Fear, like sadness, anger and joy is an important emotion. It signals danger and propels us to take action towards safety. However in some cases it can be experienced out of context and out of proportion to the situation. That is when it is important to delve into it and start exploring it. 

“Most of us experience fear as a kind of stop sign or flashing red light that warns: “Danger! Do not enter!” But we may need to decide that signal and consider what it’s trying to convey. What is the actual nature of the danger? Is it past or present, real or imagined? Are we feeling anxious because we are boldly charting new territory, or because we’re about to do something stupid?”

     - Harriet Learner, Ph.D., The Dance Of Fear

 

Fear is a misunderstood emotion. Experiencing fear is unpleasant and so we rush to block it, suppress it, ignore it or avoid the situations that cause it to arise in us. In the right context it is important to take measures for safety, however when it is out of context then we need to pay more attention to fear instead of blocking or ignoring it. That is because fear carries important messages about our past experiences and clues to understanding our behaviours in the present.

 Dr Pippa Grange writes that there are two types of fear: the one that is appropriate in the right context of a crisis which she calls in-the-moment fear, and the other type of fear that is out of sync with the situation and rules our lives, affects our choices and leaves us unfulfilled. She refers to this type as the not-good-enough fear. She echoes what Harriet Lerner wrote and adds that the not-good-enough fear is mixed up with what happened in the past and what might happen in the future.  Something that was true with my fear of public speaking. 

 I realised I had a fear of public speaking in my early twenties when I started university in the UK. Not only did I discover that I was terrified to stand in front of an audience and speak, I was also ashamed about having such a fear and so did not want anyone to know about it. This added to my stress as it meant that in addition to fear of public speaking, I was afraid of being exposed as having fear of public speaking. I believed that I would be laughed at and ridiculed if others found out. It meant that every time I needed to stand up and speak before an audience I was using lots of energy to block and also disguise my fear. I can tell you that it was exhausting and left me drained and unable to enjoy the experience. 

 My way of managing this fear at first was to avoid speaking in public. However there were times when I couldn’t avoid it as my grades depended on it. In those situations I suffered tremendously before, during and after the event. 

 Yet at the same time I wanted to share important thoughts and ideas with people. I felt often that I had meaningful things to talk about that can make a positive difference in people’s lives and perhaps offer them clarity or alleviate their pain. This drove me to explore more deeply my fear by first allowing myself to be exposed to it, which meant doing the very thing I feared doing, stand in front of an audience and speak through joining clubs like Toastmasters of The Hague.

 More recently during my Transactional Analysis studies I explored further my fear using the tools and concepts the course offered and also during therapy and supervision. The most transforming thing that I learnt on this emotional journey was to withstand the discomfort that engulfed my being when I experienced the fear. To sit with the fear for a bit and listen to what was happening in my body and to the possible messages and information that this fear was trying to convey. 

 I discovered that my fear was associated with childhood traumas. The fear of public speaking was a disguise to a bigger fear. Fear of being abandoned, unloved and rejected. Fear of being shamed and humiliated. Although my mind could not pinpoint specific events, my body somehow remembered and kept the score. So whenever I was in a situation that put me at the centre of attention, like speaking in public, my body reacted and signalled to me that I was in danger. Gaining that self-awareness was extremely helpful in managing my fear. I realised that my fear was a thing from the past and did not belong to the present moment. I felt gratitude and compassion towards my body and it’s attempts to protect me from what it perceived as dangerous due to past traumatic experiences. I realised that the present is different and that I am no longer facing that danger. Furthermore it is okay to be afraid sometimes. There is no shame in that and no need to hide this fact. In fact in the first speech I gave at Toastmasters I started my talk by acknowledging my fear and anxiety. This resonated with many people who later came and shared their own fears with me. These insights were also helpful in my work as a coach and counsellor as many of my clients also struggle with fears and anxieties. 

 Have I stopped being afraid of public speaking? No. However nowadays it no longer silences my authentic voice. It no longer stops me from acting with compassion and courage. By embracing my fear I was able to manage it better.

 Dr Pippa Grange, a sports psychologist, writes in her book, Fear Less, that facing our fears is a kind of growing up and is about shedding our parents’, generational and social fears. She adds that facing our fears will free us to explore our true ambitions and allow us to look at the world with a new perspective. 

“The best thing we can do with fear is to befriend it. That is, we can learn to expect, allow, and accept fear, observe it, watch it rise and fall, attend to how it feels in the body, watch it mindfully, and understand that fear will always reappear. Fear is a physiological process that cavorts and careens through our bodies and makes us miserable. Eventually it subsides — only, of course to return. The real culprits are our knee-jerk responses to fear, and the ways we try to avoid fear, anxiety, and shame.”

- Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., The Dance Of Fear

I invite you to also embrace your fear rather than freeze it. Learn to sit with the discomfort for a bit and find out what you can learn. Perhaps you might find that befriending your fear yields better results than avoiding it.

A Simple Approach To Improve Your Communication

Miscommunication issues commonly arise when we can only see our own perspective and when we make wrong assumptions about the perspectives of others.

I am reminded of an incident years ago during my first couple of years living in the Netherlands when I used to take my daughters to swimming lessons. The cafe in the building formed a waiting area where all parents and children converged and waited in between lessons. One waiter served the entire cafe and everyone complained about how rude and unfriendly he was. I had recently finished my NLP studies and was starting to view the world differently. It was true that the waiter’s behaviour was rude and unfriendly however I was curious to explore beyond the surface impression so I took my focus from him and onto the surroundings.

The environment was that of total chaos. Noisy children running riot and school bags strewed everywhere. I thought to myself that if I had his job I would probably also be grumpy and possibly rude. That shift in perspective affected my behaviour such that when I went to order coffee and snacks I spoke to him from a place of compassion instead of animosity. Before I made my order that day I acknowledged the difficulty he faced regularly in managing such a crowd. His body immediately changed. He softened and agreed that yes it was difficult. He felt seen and heard. His situation was acknowledged. He then sweetly told me to take a seat and, to the astonishment of all the other parents, he brought my order to my table. On many future occasions he even helped my daughters with their Dutch homework which they did while waiting for their swimming lesson. The grumpy waiter was a nice person after all.

The reality is that we have no control over the behaviour of others but we have total control over our own. Often you can have an influence on the behaviour of others by starting with changing your own. Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. By changing the action you can ultimately change the reaction. 

I changed my focus and perspective in order to view the world from the waiter’s perspective. That produced a shift in my thinking, feeling and therefore behaviour, which in turn impacted the waiter’s thinking, feeling and therefore his behaviour. Our communication was much improved because it came from a place of compassion, understanding and a wider frame of reference. We were able to really see each other as we were in that moment in time. I could see his viewpoint as a waiter managing a difficult crowd and he could see me as a parent navigating children between home, school and after school activities. We empathised with each other instead of taking out our frustrations on each other. 

Many of my clients tell me about their communication issues. They often feel hurt that they get negative responses when their intentions were positive. They tend to put their focus on blaming others and wanting to change them. In our work together I bring them back to themselves. What can they change in their thinking, feeling and behaviour in order to get a different outcome? How can they change their actions in order to bring out a different reaction? Are they able, for a moment, to embody the other person and view the world from their perspective? That often, on its own, brings positive results.

Of course there are other aspects that influence our communication that are connected with regressing into our past where we use present people and situations to resolve past issues. Transactional Analysis offers many concepts that can help process and resolve those issues. However the simple approach I mention above can on its own bring profound change. 

Please get in touch if you are experiencing communication issues and would like to explore resourceful ways of enhancing your interactions with others.

What Influences Your Communication?

I first came face to face with Transactional Analysis about 6 years ago at a networking event where Jacqueline van Gent from TA denhaag, gave a short talk about the topic. I remember sitting amongst the audience listening to her talk about ego states and life script and something just clicked into place. What I heard her say made so much sense in my world, and it was there and then that I decided I wanted to learn more about TA.

The opportunity to start learning TA finally came round last October when I attended an Introduction to a TA workshop in Oxford, TA101, given by Rosemary Napper from TA Works. During that long weekend, I started my journey of learning about Eric Berne’s theories relating to human behaviour and became more and more intrigued.

So what is Transactional Analysis (TA)?

Transactional Analysis, like NLP, is a model for understanding human personality, relationships and communication. It was first developed by the late Eric Berne, MD. To put it more simply, Transactional Analysis is a method for studying interactions between human beings.

In his book Games People Play, Eric Berne described a transaction as “A unit of social intercourse. If two or more people encounter each other . . . sooner or later, one of them will speak, or give an indication of acknowledging the presence of the others. This is called transactional stimulus. Another person will then say or do something which is in some way related to the stimulus, and that is called the transactional response.”

Like NLP, which rests on a set of presuppositions, TA rests upon certain philosophical assumptions. These assumptions are:

• People are OK.
  This is the most fundamental assumption of TA. It means that you and I both have worth, value and dignity. I may not like your behaviour but will always accept who you are. Your essence as a human being is OK with me even though your behaviour may not be acceptable to me. This is very similar to the presupposition in NLP which says that you are not your behaviour; you must accept the person even though you may reject their behaviour.

• Everyone has the capacity to think.
  Again, this relates to another NLP presupposition which states that, each person has the resources they need available to them at the time. TA states that it is the responsibility of each of us to decide what we want from life and we will each ultimately live with the consequences of those decisions.

• People decide their own destiny, and these decisions can be changed.
  In other words, if we have been following strategies or acting on decisions that we have taken in the past that no longer serve us then we are not stuck, and we can change those decisions at any moment in our lives. TA, like NLP, believes that people can change. If at some point in our lives we realise that the decisions we made about ourselves in the past no longer represent who we are or what we want from life then we can make some changes. These changes can be achieved by first, gaining insight (referred to as awareness in NLP) and then, taking actions to change those old patterns and adopt new ones. These changes can be real and lasting. In NLP we say that if you are doing something and it’s not yielding the results you want then it’s time to do things differently.

The Ego-State Model

In TA the analysis of transactions relies heavily on the use of the ego-state model. This model is used to help explain how communication takes place – or, sometimes, fails to take place.

Berne defined an ego-state as “a consistent pattern of feeling and experience directly related to a corresponding consistent pattern of behaviour.” In other words an ego-state is a set of related behaviours, thoughts and feelings that make up our personality at a given time. Berne devised this model after treating and observing hundreds of patients during his practice as a psychiatrist in California in the 1950’s.

Berne observed that a person could behave, think and feel in a way that is copied from their parent or parental figures. He referred to this as the Parent ego-state. Alternatively, a person could behave, think and feel as they did during their childhood. He called this the Child ego-state. He identified a third way of acting and that involves behaviours, thoughts and feelings from the here and now and this he called the Adult ego-state. Therefore we can behave from three different ego-states, The Parent, The Adult or The Child. In some literature, the ego-state model is referred to as the PAC model.

Transactional Analysis suggests that we shift between these three distinct ego states during our interactions with others. This shift is influenced by what is going on around us at the time, who we are communicating with and the ego state they happen to be in.

The purpose of using TA is to gain autonomy and to realise our full potential as grown-ups. To gain autonomy we need to update the old strategies and decisions that we made as infants or children and adopt new ones. In NLP, we say “reprogramming” ourselves so we can become the best that we can be. In TA, we say that we need to move out of script.

Needless to say, this introduction was enough to wet my appetite and so I am already booked to do the foundation course in February. Watch this space.

PHOTO CREDITS:
MATUS KOVACOVSKY/UNSPLASH
AARON BIRCH/UNSPLASH

Tagged as: change, Communication, Ego, Interaction, Model, NLP, Personality, Relationships, state,Stimulus, Transactional Analysis

The Meaning of Communication

People come from different backgrounds and hence use different languages, have different values, display different attitudes and have different perceptions of the world around them. With that in mind it is quite possible that as humans communicate with each other they often run into disagreements, misunderstandings or miscommunications.

Coming from a mixed cultural background and having lived and worked in different countries I have gained an insight into cross- cultural communication. In addition, through NLP I have learnt a number of things that have helped me personally interact better with others both in my personal and working life.

1- Have an awareness of cultural differences.   

I spent my childhood and most of my teenage years in The Lebanon. The Lebanese are very “touchy feely”. Direct eye contact with a lot of physical contact is the cornerstone of Lebanese communication. In another culture where eye contact is less direct and physical contact not so prevalent, the Lebanese style of communication can lead to misunderstandings as I quickly discovered when I moved to the UK at the age of 19. In Oman, being a Muslim country, sometimes a handshake with someone from the opposite sex could be deemed unacceptable. It was more appropriate to shake hands if a hand was proffered first. At times my ease and comfort with physical contact was misconstrued for being forward, my passion for aggression. Armed with a desire to learn and a sense of humour I inherited from my dad, I found a way to stay true to myself and yet adapt to the culture around me.

I do not aim here to list the endless differences between cultures but just to say that having an awareness of this can stop you from taking things personally or taking offence when communication fails. For more information on cross-cultural communication I suggest you read Subtle Differences, Big Faux Pas by Elizabeth Vennekens-Kelly.

 2-The meaning of your communication is the response you get.  

 Just think of a time when you said something to someone and you thought that you were crystal clear, but the person understood something completely different to what you intended. In most cases we tend to blame the other person for not understanding/misunderstanding what we said. It is their fault they didn’t get it. We accuse them of being stupid or unstable. The possibility that perhaps the problem lies in the manner with which we communicated that piece of information often escapes us.

If Instead of blaming the person, you ask yourself: “I wonder how else I can say it so they’ll get it?” This way you become more responsive to feedback and flexible by adapting to change.

Some schools of Communication say that each party in an exchange has 50% responsibility for the communication. In NLP, we aim a little higher, and take 100%.

If whenever you don’t get your intended message across, or feel misunderstood or unheard, you say, “it’s them, they just don’t understand me”, then you’ve learnt to communicate in one way: your way.

But if you take the stance that the success of your communication lies in the response you get, and assume responsibility, and are willing to be more flexible than your audience, then you are in a two-way communication: yours and theirs.

This is what sets great communicators, teachers, mentors, coaches, counsellors and speakers apart. They take responsibility for their communication and say things in as many different ways as necessary until they get their message across.

3-You cannot, not communicate.

 The words we say when we are communicating may count for a very small part of the impression we create, especially if we are saying one thing with our words and something different with our tone of voice or body language.

I came across an acquaintance the other day while walking home.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked cheerfully.

“Oh am fine”, he answered. However his shoulders were drooping, his face was listless, and his tone was exasperated.

“Are you sure you are ok?” I said. “You are saying one thing but your body language is saying another.”

“Actually, I am having problems with my boss at work” came his reply.

Research shows that when talking about feelings and attitudes, what you say has a very small impact compared to the tone you use and how you hold your body. The influences, in percentage terms, are as follows:

•  Verbal 7%

• Tonality 38%

• Physiology 55%

Paying attention to your own and other people’s body language will help your communication. It is widely recognised that matching body language voice and intonation can help build rapport with people. Culture also plays a role here.  In The Lebanon for example, non-verbal cues and body language are crucial to learn so you can more fully understand the responses you are given.

4- Start with the end in mind

 Have you ever been in a situation where you felt so angry, that you didn’t trust yourself to speak? Or said too much and regretted it afterwards? A situation where your sadness and hurt took away your ability to coherently express yourself? If you have, then you will know that your emotions affect your ability to communicate. In communicating well, it is important to be self aware, to know how your emotions are influencing your behaviour, to be aware of other people’s emotions so that you can empathise with them, and to manage your emotions so that you can say how you feel without the emotion overwhelming your ability to deal effectively with the situation. I have certainly needed to work hard on this, as I am an emotionally charged person. Being emotional can be helpful in situations where you want to show compassion, empathy or motivation, but it can be quite a hindrance in a conflict. Sometimes it is best to take time out and discuss the matter at hand later when everyone concerned is calmer.

One way of keeping your emotions in check is to start with the end in mind and stay focused on what it is that you want to achieve from the communication. This approach will be very helpful for you as a parent and as a professional dealing with conflict at the workplace.

I will end here with a quote from Anthony Robbins.

“ To effectively communicate, we must realise that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others”

Recommended reading: Subtle Differences, Big Faux Pas by Elizabeth Vennekens-Kelly