Category: The Accidental Counsellor

Module 4 The Accidental Counsellor Model

Module 5 Wellbeing and Self Care

Module 6 Connection

The Accidental Counsellor Short Course Module 6: Connection

• October 28, 2020October 28, 2020 • The Accidental Counsellor

Connecting is getting into the pit with someone.

It includes acknowledging, validating, and normalising another person’s experience. Connection is the place where transformation happens because the person feels less alone. They feel that you get them. The emotional consequences of this feeling are that the person trusts you, feels safer, and begins to calm down. These emotional consequences provide space for new thinking and new awareness – a place for positive change to arise.

In that space of connection, the person speaking does not need to defend, justify, or explain because the person you’re talking to (who is listening) gets it.

Empathy versus Sympathy

In Brené Brown’s brief video titled “Empathy versus Sympathy”, she doesn’t use the phrase “getting in the pit”, but I think that’s what she’s talking about. I want to share her work with you because Brené Brown is a remarkable thought leader, and there are some really wonderful distinctions in this video. According to Brown, the difference between empathy and sympathy is that empathy fuels connection, while sympathy drives disconnection.

Theresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar who studied very diverse professions in which empathy is relevant, and from her studies, she came up with the following four qualities of empathy:

Perspective-taking, the ability to take the perspective of another person or recognize their perspective as their truth.
Staying out of judgment, which is not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do.
Recognizing emotion in other people and then communicating that.
Empathy is feeling with people.

Empathy is a choice, and it’s a vulnerable choice, because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling. An empathetic response rarely, if ever, begins with “at least”. Yeah, you know, that thing we all say all too often because – you know what? – someone just shared something with us that’s incredibly painful and we’re trying to silver-line it (I don’t think that’s a verb, but I’m using it as one).

A few examples:

Share: “So, I had a miscarriage.”

Response: “At least you know you can get pregnant.”

Share: “I think my marriage is falling apart.”

Response: “At least you have a marriage.”

Share: “John’s getting kicked out of school.”

Response: “At least Sarah is an A student.”

Too often, when faced with very difficult conversations, we try to make things better rather than simply recognizing and acknowledging them for what they are. If I share something with you that’s very difficult, I’d rather you say, “I don’t even know what to say right now, I’m just so glad you told me.” The truth is that “fix it” response rarely makes something better. What makes something better is connection. This is one of the key takeaways from Brown’s video.

Listening with attention and presence

Instead of trying to fix a problem, we need to connect with the person. We need to listen. When I talk about listening and reflective listening or active listening, I’m talking about listening with your heart, with your body. We need to have our entire focus and attention on the person to whom we’re listening. If you’re not present when you’re listening to someone, if you’ve got your own stories going on in your head (“What will I say?” “How am I going to help?”), if you’re thinking about other things, it doesn’t matter what you think you’re showing in your body, the person you’re supposed to be listening to will pick up on your lack of attention.

Listening, the art of listening, is about being fully attentive to the other person – with your mind, with your heart, with your body. Every part of your being needs to be completely there. The following quote from John Powell speaks to this:

“In true listening, we reach behind the words, we see through them to find the person who is being revealed. Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person, as revealed verbally and non-verbally.”

I think this is a critical point. I often hear things like “But they’re just not opening up”, and I have to remind people that non-verbal communication is a much greater part of communication than verbal communication. Powell says, “Be sure to pick up what the person is saying and not saying through their body language. There’s a semantic problem, of course, ” he says. “The words bear a different connotation for you than they do for me. Consequently, I can never tell you what you’ve said, but only what I’ve heard. I’ll have to rephrase what you’ve said, and check it out with you to make sure what left your mind and heart arrived in my mind and heart intact without distortion.”

I really love this description of listening from Powell, particularly how he describes distortions between sender and receiver. Because of these distortions, it’s important that I check and rephrase what you’ve said to make sure that our communication is clear – I have to connect with you.

The 3 components to listening and responding

As I understand it, there are three core things that Powell is talking about that we need to do when we’re listening well, and it’s not a linear process. As long as these three components are part of your listening process, I think you’re doing a good job.

We need to check that what we’re receiving what was said accurately without our own filters, perceptions, and assumptions.
We need to check the person’s feelings, their emotional state.
We need to connect their emotional state to the content of what they’re saying.

Remember, these aren’t linear. They don’t necessarily happen in that order. You can mix and match as each individual situation calls for.

Let me give you an example. A mother says, “When my daughter stops talking to me, then I know for sure that I’ve done something wrong. She doesn’t seem to be able to communicate with me anymore. Then I think that well, maybe it’s me.”

Based on the reflective listening formula as described by Powell, there are three things we need to do when responding to this mother. We need to check that what we’re hearing is accurate or reflects what the person is saying. We need to check for her emotions, and we need to connect her emotion to her content.

I repeat: it’s not linear.

The most important thing in this instance is to check that we’re accurately picking up on her emotional state.

So, look at her statement again and write down what you think about her emotional state. When we use this example in live workshops, people respond with a range of emotions, and they’re all true. Some say that she’s sad, and, of course, a mother would be sad in this situation. She’d be sad, worried, frustrated – all of those emotions are certainly there. However, we need to be able to reflect back the strongest emotion, the one she most identifies with. Think about it. Wouldn’t it sound odd if we responded to her by saying, “It sounds like you’re feeling worried, anxious, frustrated.” Which one is it? What needs to be addressed?

I think that the strongest emotion is guilt or doubt. If you reread what she said, notice the recurring theme.

She’s doubting herself, blaming herself, and feeling guilty that she’s doing something wrong. I think that’s the strongest emotion because she repeats it. Moreover, when she says, “I know for sure that I’ve done something wrong”, that’s a pretty direct and strong statement.

The trap here is that we might feel inclined to respond by saying, “Well, you’re doing the best you can” or “It’s not your fault”. That’s exactly how most people would respond to her statement because they want to reassure her and make her feel better. However, if we do that, we’re not hearing or listening to what she is saying. There are certainly some really strong statements here (i.e., “I know for sure that I’ve done something wrong” and I think that maybe it’s me”), and you might be thinking “but shouldn’t I challenge some of these thoughts and perceptions”? Absolutely, yes, but not yet. Remember that there are three stages in The Accidental Counsellor model, and influence is stage three. We’re not there yet. After we connect, we can start asking questions that can get her to think about the situation differently.

We need to connect first. So, how do we do that according to the three-part formula based on Powell’s quote? After identifying that her strongest emotion is guilt or doubt, I would respond as follows:

“The way you and your daughter are communicating is really upsetting you, and if I’m hearing you right, if I’m understanding where you’re coming from, it sounds like you’re blaming yourself or you’re doubting that you’re doing it right. I just wanted to check and make sure, am I hearing your right? Is that what it’s like for you?”

Notice that I actually have touched on emotion. I’ve checked more than once, including checking that I heard the content accurately. It doesn’t have to be in any order.

Of course, this is just one example of how you might respond and get in the pit by acknowledging, validating, and normalizing someone’s experience. Once she says, “Yeah, I am blaming myself”, then you can go on with the conversation from there, but you’ve got to get that first yes. If you don’t get that, nothing can come next. That’s the basic premise.

Read the previous Modules here:

Module 4 The Accidental Counsellor Model

Module 5 Wellbeing and Self Care

The Accidental Counsellor Short Course Module 5: Wellbeing and Selfcare

• September 28, 2020October 20, 2020 • The Accidental Counsellor

As you probably know if you’ve made it this far, the accidental counselor model is based on three core areas or themes: wellbeing, connection, and influence. In this post, we’re going to discuss wellbeing.

We’ll begin by exploring the concept of the The Healthy Mind Platter, which was created and first described by David Rock and Daniel Siegel in their book Brainstorm. While I would probably add diet and nutrition, I think the framework they’ve developed has a lot of handy ideas that we can implement in our model. According to their framework, there are 7 factors that contribute to good brain health and increasing wellness when integrated into our daily lives.

Sleep

Sleep is the absolute foundation upon which all other mental health and wellbeing is built. If we don’t get the right quantity and quality of sleep, it affects our physical and mental health. Routine is critical for obtaining the quality and quantity we need. Having sleep consistency, such has making sure that your room is dark and cool – as you know, you’re much more comfortable and sleep better in a room that is cool rather than hot – is really important with sleep. Additionally, we should really be aiming for between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night. I know many people think they can get by with 5.5 or 6.5 hours of sleep, and I do that too, but research has shown that this practice has a really detrimental impact on our physical and mental health over time.

Sleep rejuvenates our physical health when we go through slow wave sleep and our mental health when we go through that REM sleep, which is the deeper form of sleep that helps us process traumatic memories and emotions. Moreover, when we’re not sleeping well, we’re usually not eating well either, as we tend to eat more junk food. We also may not be exercising the way we should because we just don’t have the energy for it.

Physical Activity

In addition to sleep, physical activity is key to healthy wellbeing. In fact, some research even suggests that exercise can be as, or even more, effective than antidepressants in treating depression. To learn more about this, check out Professor John Ratey’s work in his book, Spark, or online, where he talks about the critical link between physical health, exercise, and mental health.

Focus

Focus time is the next area they address in the Healthy Mind Platter framework. Your energy flows with where you put your focus. So often we feel really overwhelmed because we think we have 10, 15, even 20 things that we need to get done. But the truth is that we can literally only do one thing at a time. I know that a lot of people say that multitasking is a high-level skill. However, there’s lots of research regarding multitasking, including a blog article on our website, humanconnections.com.au, that shows that our energy and focus dissipate when we multitask, and the opportunity cost in refocusing is enormous.

In other words, if you’re focused on doing something and you get pulled away – distracted by a notification or whatever it is – you have to refocus when you return to what you were doing, and that loss in time is not an effective or productive way to work. Instead, being able to compartmentalize – to say, ok, I’ve got these 10 things to do or these 6 things that are stressing me out, to acknowledge those things and then lock them away and focus on one at a time – is much more effective in terms of productivity and wellbeing.

Connecting

Connecting time is equally important, and we get more of it by using our focus time wisely. Connecting is not just about connecting with other people; it’s also about connecting with nature, which has a rejuvenating quality for our wellbeing. You can connect with nature in simple ways by taking a walk, visiting a local body of water, or enjoying your favorite park. Of course, connecting with other people is important to.

Downtime and Playtime

The next two pieces of the framework – downtime and playtime – are challenging for me personally. Playtime involves making sure that there is some fun and laughter in your life. If you’re laughing, you’re not worried. The two can’t coexist. You can laugh and then a minute later, you can be worried about something, but in the moment when you’re laughing and having fun, you’re not worried. Laughter truly is remarkable medicine. Children are a great example here. They know exactly how to play. They’re in the moment, playing and having fun. As we age, we get too serious. I know that this is definitely a challenge for me. Looking for ways to have fun is really important.

Like playtime, I think downtime also becomes more difficult to conceive of as we age. To understand it, let’s use the metaphor of a car. If your car ran 24/7, it wouldn’t be long before something went wrong. The same is true of human beings. We need to be able to stop and have some downtime – time when we’re simply not doing or thinking about anything. This is often difficult because we’ve got so much to do, but as my great friend and mentor, Dr. David Lake, taught me, there’s always things that need doing. If we try to wait until everything is done before we can relax, we’re never going to get to relax. Instead, we need to schedule time in each day for downtime – time to just switch off. It helps for me to think of it like switching channels. If I’m working on something and it’s just not flowing or progressing, that means I’m not working effectively or efficiently, so maybe it’s time to switch the body’s channels and have some downtime. This means getting up and moving away from work, maybe going for a walk, getting outdoors, or just stretching for 5 minutes, and then getting back to work. It’s truly extraordinary how re-energizing this time can be.

Time-In

Lastly, time-in is what I refer to as your inner world – your thoughts, your emotions. This could mean a practice of mindfulness, meditation, or journaling. If you’re religious, prayer might be a part of this time. It’s a time to be reflective and self-aware, and there are many ways you can go about doing that.

Thanks to The Healthy Mind Platter framework, we now know there are many small but important changes we can make to our daily routines to increase our brain health and wellbeing.

Read the previous Modules here:

Module 4 The Accidental Counsellor Model

The Accidental Counsellor Short Course Module 4: The Accidental Counsellor Model

• September 21, 2020September 21, 2020 • The Accidental Counsellor

The Accidental Counsellor Model

The Accidental Counsellor Model is based on three core themes animated by your presence.

1) Self Care and Wellbeingso we are not overcome by the emotional distress of others. This also includes appropriate referral.

2)Connection so we are able to validate and acknowledge the person so they feel heard and understood.

3) Influence so we can ask appropriate “solution focused questions” if appropriate rather than giving unsolicited advice.

Presence

The accidental counsellor model is animated by presence. We’ve all experienced presence before. Think back to the last time you met a new person. Remember how you felt in the first 3-5 minutes of meeting them—either negative (your defense mechanisms kick in, walls go up, you can’t wait remove yourself from the situation) or positive (you’re so comfortable that you inexplicably feel like you’ve known this person for much longer than a few minutes). That’s presence. That’s what really animates the entire Accidental Counsellor Model. It’s your presence that animates the conversation.

Influence

Let’s start with influence. This is where a lot of accidental counsellors get stuck because it’s both natural and tempting to exert influence. As a human being listening to people’s stories of pain and stress, it’s quite natural to try to bring them comfort and to make them feel better. Thus, we can be tempted to rush in and provide advice, suggestions, and solutions. Specifically, I’m talking about providing unsolicited feedback and advice. The research says that when we tell people what to do, their motivation for doing it lessens, even if it was something they wanted to do in the first place.

Ask Don’t Tell

When we ask questions and people respond with their own answers, they’re much more motivated because they have ownership and responsibility. It’s much more empowering. The unintended consequence of offering people advice is suggesting that they can’t really fix the problem on their own. It’s like you’re saying, “You can’t resolve this. You need me to be able to get through this.”

Of course, no one intends to say that. It’s the unintended consequence of rushing in and rescuing people rather than just holding a space and hearing them. Obviously, common sense still applies here. If it’s a crisis situation, we need to be much more direct. People need to be safe. If someone’s asking you for some information and you have it, you should probably share it. However, when listening to people’s emotional distress, we typically want to just listen and then ask questions if appropriate.

In terms of preventing the temptation to influence, I recommend remembering the phrase ask, don’t tell. Specifically, ask solution-focused questions.

Connection

In order for our solution-focused questions to have an impact, we need to form a connection. I’m not talking about rapport here – if your reading this you know we need rapport. When I refer to connection I’m specifically talking about connecting to the person’s story of pain and suffering. That is acknowledging, validating, and normalising their experience. Here, I find it helpful to think of the phrase get in the pit with the person.

This is really important because when you do that, the person feels heard and understood. They trust you more, and they feel safer. They begin to calm down, and they feel less alone. I believe that it’s in the connection phase that transformation truly happens. This is the most powerful phase. It is where the healing actually takes place.

There are two key misunderstandings of connection that I want to address now.

Misunderstanding #1 Connecting means agreeing.

The first misunderstanding occurs when I say acknowledge, validate, and normalise the person’s experience. People often respond by asking, “What if the person’s lying?” Well, what if they are?

Consider this example in a school context:

What if a parent said, “I’m sick and tired of this school. The teachers can’t teach. My daughter is not learning,” so on and so forth. The parent is clearly quite upset. They might even be denigrating a teacher or staff member. The response I most often hear in this situation is defensive and explanatory. People start defending themselves or the organisation or the school and say, “Look, actually what happened was…” or “that’s not quite really how it unfolded. Can I give you the facts?” And, I hate to say it, but that’s a terrible response. That comes after the person feels heard and understood. They’re not going to listen to what you’re saying if they don’t think that you’re listening to them first.

In this situation, I would respond by saying something like this: “If I believed my daughter was going to a school and was walking into a classroom where the teacher was incompetent, I would be just as upset and distressed as you are right now.” Do not misinterpret and think that I’m agreeing here. I’m not. Surely, we can listen to people and help them feel heard and understood without agreeing. I’m simply acknowledging that I understand how the parent sees the situation. The first common misunderstanding is that I’m agreeing, but I’m actually acknowledging what the person is saying. I’m acknowledging their perspective so that they feel heard and understood.

Misunderstanding #2 Connecting with the person’s pain will make it worse for them.

The other common misunderstanding is that people think acknowledging, validating, and normalising the person’s experience is making it worse for them.We’re not making it worse. We’re getting in the pit with them and as a consequence they feel heard and understood and less alone.

Now I want to tell you about a client who came to see me about a miscarriage, so just a trigger warning here for people who may have had that experience.

I had a client who originally came to see me with her husband who had been diagnosed with bipolar, and they wanted to get some relationship counselling. Unfortunately, he only came once, but she kept coming back. I saw her over a period of several months. A few weeks after she started coming, she came in and just sat behind me silently.

I asked, “How how are you? What would you like to focus on this session?” And she said, “Oh, over the weekend I had a miscarriage.” And I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay, Rocky. I spoke to my doctor, and he said not to worry because I’m still quite young and it was our first time trying and this happens quite often.”

Do you see what happened there? Think about this in terms of energy. When she said I had a miscarriage, my initial response was, “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” My energy was lower. My job is to match where she is, not to bring her down to where I am.

This is a client-centered approach. It’s not about me. I have to be where the person is. So, I adjusted my response: “Okay, so if I’m hearing you right, you’ve had this experience, you’ve had this miscarriage, but it sounds like the doctor’s reassured you, and you seem to be processing this. Is that what you want to talk about this session or something else? What should we focus on?”

And she said, “Oh no, I think I’m okay with that. I really want to talk to you about being harassed at work”

And we spent the next hour talking about the harassment that she was experiencing at work from her manager.

A few months later, I opened the side door to my office, and she was there and in a really terrible state, sobbing at the door. I’d never met a client like that. I almost had to assist her while she walked over to the lounge. I said, “I can see you’re in a really terrible state. When you’re ready, just tell me what’s happened.” Through her sobbing, she told me that this is actually her third miscarriage. I wanted to know whether she had a support framework around her, so I asked, “Besides coming here, are there other people in your life?” because I knew that things weren’t great at home with her partner or at work.

“Are there other people in your life – family, friends – where you can have some support?”

“There’s my mum and my sister, but I can’t talk to them about this.”

“So what do you mean? Why can’t you talk to them about this?”

“They just find it too hard.”

“Well, how do you know that they find it too hard?”

“Because every time I talk to them about this, they just say, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s okay. You’re still young. You haven’t been to the specialist yet. You’ve gotta remain optimistic. You’ve gotta stay hopeful.”

That’s what it’s like when we are on the top of the pit looking down and thinking that we have to pull people out rather than descending down and being with them in that dark space.

So, I said to her, “I’m going to try my best to understand what this is like for you, but I’m not going to pretend to understand because how can I? I’m a male; you’re a female. I can never really know what you’re going through right now.” And while still sobbing, she started nodding her head a bit. When I talk about acknowledging, validating, and normalising, this is what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about having a 20-minute conversation. It can be one sentence, one word.

I asked, “Are you really worried that you’ll never become a mother?”

“Oh my God, Rocky. Yes. All of the time. I’m upset about this all of time. I don’t even want to get together with my husband. I’m scared I’m going to fall pregnant again. I’m going to have another miscarriage.” And she was suddenly energetic and talkative – her state transformed in an instant – and rightly so because she hasn’t been able to talk about these dark fears that she has. She can’t tell anyone about it because people will say, “Oh, it’s okay. Don’t think about that.”

The misunderstanding here is that people think that by asking her this question I have made her feel worse, but what’s making her feel worse is that nobody, including the people in her family who she loves, can actually hear her pain.

When people feel less alone, it’s incredibly healing and transformative. However, getting in the pit and doing this type of work takes a toll on you. And there’s real truth around the idea of vicarious trauma. That’s why looking after your own wellbeing and self care is a very important protective factor. It builds your own capacity to be able to get in the pit the way I’ve just described, and that creates and enhances balance in your own life.

Wellbeing and self care

My simple definition for wellbeing and self care is doing what brings you good, sustainable energy. If you’re hearing stories of pain and suffering and trauma day in day out, you need to be able to live the good life, whatever that means for you. It can be simple things.

One of the things that I’m currently really grateful for is that our trainings are all happening online now, so I’m not traveling as much, and I’m actually going for a walk twice a day at sunrise and sunset. Those walks are so energising for me. Whatever it is for you, you need to make sure to make time for that so that you have some balance to the stories of pain and trauma that you’re hearing, which will build your capacity getting in the pit.

Read the previous Modules here: