Two Chairs Counselling

Fear. We all feel it (and some of us do it anyway) but most of us can resonate with moments in our lives where we haven’t been able to take the next step that we want to take in our lives. I’ve allowed fear to stop me doing plenty of things, I allowed it to stop me setting up my private practice sooner than I wanted to.

The thing about fear – the existential fear rather than the phobia-type fears – is that we get stuck in an expectation loop. You expect to be able to do such and such and you’re afraid you won’t be able to.

For instance, you might expect to be able to fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow at night. Once you’ve lain there for a bit…still awake, you find yourself becoming more anxious which naturally dials the fight or flight response up a few notches. That means you’re not relaxed, you’re less likely to fall asleep and soon the fear and worry is spiraling out of control. You can input whatever scenario you like into this example, but ultimately what’s happening is the fear of not living up to your self-imposed expectations.

So how can you break the expectation loop?

1. Lower your expectations – This really is not the same as letting yourself down, it’s a key ingredient to achieving your goals. If you’re training for a marathon, you don’t expect to be able to run the full distance your first time in trainers. Break it down to smaller goals. Anyone who’s ever had a fitness programme designed for them at the gym will have experienced this. You want to lose 3 stone? Cool, that’s not going to happen by next week, so what’s the small goal for next week that will be one step on the way to the big goal?
2. Visualise yourself at a reasonable goal – My sister would call this “fake it til you make it!”. My business coach makes me do this all the time and although I secretly resent her for it (hello Laura!) because she makes me stand up and parade around my room and sometimes I feel silly. Plus, because of the magic of Skype she can see if I’m doing it or not! But, she’ll have me engage all my senses. She encourages me to see, feel and hear what I want my outcome to be. The visualisation helps me to access the thoughts and feelings that come with achieving my goal, once I’ve imagined it clearly, it becomes much less scary and much more exciting!
3. Replace the fear with patience – This is about getting rid of that negative self-talk we all engage in. Where you beat yourself up, say cruel and hurtful things to yourself and generally behave rather horribly to yourself. Now, consider this – if someone else (your mum, boyfriend, best-friend) spoke to you and told you all the awful things you tell yourself…you’d probably tell them to go shove it where the sun don’t shine. I’m inviting you to try and use more compassionate language with yourself. Not easy, I know. But it really does help.

If you’re afraid you’ll never be able to escape from your fears, remember that never is an unrealistic word. Never doesn’t exist in nature and it rarely exists in human-kind. Feed yourself a few more compassionate lines and remember that overcoming your fears isn’t easy and that you’re doing a great job in trying.

Tamarisk is the founder of Two Chairs Counselling in London Bridge. Two Chairs Counselling specialises in working with career-orientated women whose lives look great on paper, but suck in real life.

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Right – tomorrow there’s a really great newsletter going out about the 4 questions you should ask yourself that could save your career.

I don’t share what goes out in the newsletter here on the blog, I respect the fact that you’re kind enough to say “yes” to hearing from me directly so newsletter content is unique to my lovely tribe of subscribers. I’d hate for you to miss out on it so sign up now!

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Defensiveness is extremely contagious. When someone responds towards you in a defensive way, that jolt of angry defensiveness is often the automatic response. If you follow your own inner lizard, with it’s own worries of being insufficiently loved and excessively criticised, you may find yourself lashing out in response. And of course, it doesn’t take much foresight to see that this is likely to result in a war of words.

It’s easy to say that we should stay out of reptile mode, but that’s hard advice to follow when some highly defensive person launches an attack – especially if that person has any power over you. When your highly defensive boss, parent or business partner launches an attack you may not be able to stop yourself from getting upset in return. So what can you do? The answer is not to go lizard, but to go turtle.

One reason the Roman Empire was able to conquer much of ancient Europe was because of a military maneuver called the turtle. In battles, regiments would cluster together, the soldiers in the middle holding their shields above their heads, while those on the sides shielded the unit’s front, back and sides. They’d march along like that, pretty much indestructible to the weapons of the time.

But how can you put up an emotional shell and go turtle? It isn’t easy because mirror neurons in the brain fire in resonance with the feelings of the people around you. If you and I were talking, part of your brain would organise itself to match part of mine and vice versa. When you’re with a loving person, this is wonderful – it creates that very moving sense of a wonderful shared experience of joy. With a highly defensive person, it creates wars straight out of our evolutionary past. To avoid all out war, you must pull your sensitive social neurons back into their shell.

The good news is that once you’ve realised what’s happening, that the highly defensive person you’re talking with can and will take offense to the smallest thing, it’s not that hard to stop yourself following suit. Try this – think about an occasion when a highly defensive person blew up at you. Remember the shock, the anger, the urge to lash back. Got it? Good. Now picture your living room painted fuchsia with orange accents. Then try and work out if 713 is a prime number.

Did you notice how your mind lets go of emotional reactivity as it tackles visual or analytical problems? Artists and scientists are notoriously eccentric because their mental work diverts them from social connections. When you’re listening to a highly defensive person rant, train yourself to start thinking about painting your bedroom, quantum mechanics or start totting up your expenses from this month.

This will help you retreat into your inner turtle space to feel safe from the salvos and so that you don’t mirror the aggression of the highly defensive person. It will also help you converse with the highly defensive person without being destroyed.

Two Chairs Counselling is a specialist counselling practice focused on providing counselling for career-orientated women struggling with issues of self-esteem, self-confidence and relationship difficulties live happier, more fulfilling lives.

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Lots of us have come across people in our lives who seem to be super quick to take offense when you thought you were offering help, advice or constructive feedback. Worse, some of you might have someone like this in your life who asks you for feedback. Your heart sinks as you know that no matter what you say or how you say it, they’ll likely be devastated. People like this can be found in every family, workplace or group of friends. Dealing with them requires a special set of skills.

The Dark Side of Sensitivity

People like this often describe themselves as being sensitive and they are. But often their reactions to your comments are defense mechanism. The two may feel the same to the person experiencing them but in reality, they are worlds apart. Sensitivity is born of careful attention, it involves looking closely, understanding deeply and therefore not causing harm. Defensiveness is the bastard child of shame. For people who have survived harshly judgmental environments, shame dominates the psychological landscape.

Knowing that highly sensitive people’s destructive behaviour comes from shame doesn’t excuse it, but it does help you understand why. From the outside, defensive behaviour is disproportionate, bizarre, often appalling. But from the perspective of the highly sensitive person, these actions are justifiable self-protection.

How to Have a Functional, Trusting, Relaxed, Mutually Satisfying Human Relationship with a Highly Defensive Person

In short, you can’t. The long answer is you can’t, don’t bother trying. The reason one can’t look to defensive people for satisfying relationships is that it requires two human beings. I’m not being flip, defensive people genuinely think more with their ancient, reptilian brain. Beneath our elaborate neural structures that mediate our subtle social interactions we all posses what neuroscientists call the reptilian brain. It’s the most ancient part of the brain which evolved in reptiles and isn’t capable of nuanced emotion or logical thought. It’s primary driving force is fear. Two fears to be exact.

The first worry of the lizard brain (yours, mine, everyone’s!) is “I don’t have enough!” – enough food, money, love, glory. Insert your own noun here but the theme “not enough” pounds away constantly. The only other major concern for the lizard brain is “someone’s out to get me!”. A highly sensitive person perceives threat coming from lots of sources; one day the enemy could be a colleague, a relative the next, that mean women in the check-out at Tesco’s two minutes later. But to the lizard brain, someone somewhere is always about to attack.

Evolutionarily this makes sense. Lizards live longer if they obsessively acquire more food, shelter and mates, and if they expect predators to jump out at them at any moment. Sadly, reptiles are blind to nondefensive emotions; to the glow of love, the joyful giggle. The only thing playing on their mental movie screens all day, every day is The Lack and Attack Show. The same is true of highly sensitive/defensive people.

When humans are gripped by primal fear, they get completely in touch with their ancient lizard brains and highly defensive people are virtually always gripped by primal fear.

So the best relationship you can hope to sustain with a highly defensive people is the sort you might have with a reptile. Listen out the lyrics to the song The Snake by Al Wilson. You can treat a highly defensive person as tenderly as the woman in this song but you’re still highly likely to get bitten. Handle with care and step back.

Tamarisk is the founder of Two Chairs Counselling in London Bridge. Two Chairs Counselling specialises in working with career-orientated women whose lives look great on paper, but suck in real life.

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Over this Bank holiday weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships and how we invest in them. Maybe the word ‘bank’ was what got me thinking in such monetary terms, who knows.

Communication really is the one thing that will make your relationship a better place for both of you, but I’m guessing you knew that already, didn’t you? It’s the type, frequency and quality of how you communicate that will make all the difference. It also allows you to ‘take the temperature’ of the relationship, or sticking with the money metaphor, see how much interest is accruing in the relationship. Here are 5 simple steps to improving the quality and the quantity of your relationship:

1. Appreciations – take the time, daily, to share 5 things you appreciate about your partner. It sounds gushy and ridiculous but if you’re forced (because I’m ordering you to) to tell your partner why and how they matter to you, you’ll stop that feeling of being taken for granted creeping into your relationship. It happens slowly over time, but the moment you realise that’s how you feel, it can lead to feelings of resentment. Stave off those feelings by reminding your partner what’s special about them. Do it regularly.It’s like making small deposits into the love bank, both of you are paying in so it doesn’t feel like one person is withdrawing all the credit while the other person is paying in all the deposits. If saying them to each other feels too weird to contemplate, try writing them down and exchanging them. That way they can be read in private…and also kept to refer back to later. Like a bank statement that’s actually worth reading!

2. Wishes, Hopes, Dreams – share them, regularly. It not only shows that you’re interested in your partner but it’s also an invitation to help your partner achieve those goals. You’ll get to know what’s important to them and because our wishes, hopes and dreams change often you’ll appreciate them as an evolving, growing person not a static 2D cut out.

3. New Information – ever feel like you’re the last know, or maybe your partner does. We often tell friends and family about changes in plans or circumstances and think we’ve also told our partner. Make the daily updates a ritual so that they know about the business trip…the boiler man coming…or that you arranged for Sainsbury’s to deliver on Tuesday evening.

4. Mysteries – Clear-up big or little mysteries before they become sources of jealousy and suspicion. Most mysteries have very simple explanations. Your partner woke up unusually early and crept out of the house? He had a breakfast meeting he forgot to tell you about and didn’t want to wake you. Just ask, don’t let it fester.

5. Complaints with requests for change – This is about getting into the habit of asking for what you do want rather than want you don’t. Describe a specific (that word is key…try not to be vague!) behaviour that’s bothering you and how you’d like it to be different. For instance – instead of yelling ‘I hate it when you’re late!’ say ‘Being on time is important to me, if you’re going to be late, please call me with as much notice as possible to tell me when you’re going to arrive. That way, I’m not left fuming and I can adjust my plans to accommodate the new time”.

Tamarisk is the founder of Two Chairs Counselling in London Bridge. Two Chairs Counselling specialises in working with career-orientated women whose lives look great on paper, but suck in real life.

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