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To be creative as an adult

To some, the suggestion of being creative conjures exciting ideas of creating art, music and stories. To others it invokes a sense of dread, with a belief that creativity must be accompanied by a special talent, accomplishment and validation from others. This could be from negative experiences of art or music, for example in childhood, from never having had much opportunity to be creative, or other experiences that may make expressing yourself feel difficult.

To play

One of the best ways to think about creativity, and how it helps us, is to consider children playing. To play is to allow ourselves to explore and make sense of the world, bringing ideas, memories, thoughts and feelings to life. It is to imagine, to find meaning, symbols and metaphors in objects and environments, in ourselves and in
the people around us.

A young child faced with paint and a blank sheet of paper will probably not hesitate to allow themselves to draw, smear, splash and dab playfully, as they desire. Hand them a musical instrument and they will make noise, (sometimes a lot of noise!), without necessarily following a tune. At this early stage we are interacting with the world, making meaning and moving from one thought or action to the next, often with another person. This is dynamic and creates movement, growth, new neural pathways and even impacts on how we build relationships. At a young age, this playful creativity is essential in our early brain development, but play in adulthood also helps to keep our brains healthy on a neurobiological level. There are many contemporary scientific studies showing how creative activity activates different parts of the brain and keeps us healthy, as well as studies on the importance of play in child development. This backs up what theorists like psychiatrist/psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott proposed, in their work on child development in the mid-twentieth century.

Feeling the benefits

We all have the potential to be creative in different ways, it is a human characteristic. Apart from the scientific evidence, we can really feel the benefits of allowing creative activity into our lives. It may be through music, storytelling, writing, art making, cooking, gardening, dancing or any number of other pursuits that use creative thinking. In creative activity we can find an escape and a safe place to exist in times of difficulty, we can be expressive or mindful, we can regulate our emotions, pay ourselves attention, communicate an idea, and feel productive and have a sense of worth.

Creativity in psychotherapy

With my earlier training being in art psychotherapy, I have seen many adults, faced with a blank sheet of paper, feeling anxiety and self-judgement, even those who may consider themselves accomplished artists. It can feel exposing and similar to embarking on any type of therapy for the first time.

Your ability to control what you reveal of yourself (unconscious and conscious parts), can be challenged when you allow yourself to be creative, but with a therapist you feel you can trust, it can be very helpful and sometimes even transformative.

Creative thinking is not only for specific creative therapies, it comes through in talking therapy too, through the narratives we tell, the metaphors we use and the ways we solve problems and find new ways of thinking with another person. You might recognise yourself in a character in a Greek myth, or in an episode of your
favourite Netflix series, and want to explore that, or you might imagine a new life for yourself, take a new perspective on your past experiences or want to understand a dream you’ve had. The opportunities for creative thinking when it comes to your own development are truly endless.

When it feels too difficult

It can feel unsafe to allow yourself to think creatively. This can happen if you have had difficult experiences in your life that you have not had the opportunity to process, or you may not be sure why you feel this way. Your brain might be protecting you from something that feels painful. If this is the case, it could be worth thinking about it with a therapist you trust to help you to explore things at your own pace in a way that feels safer.

Why foster your creativity?

  • Conscious and unconscious emotions can be expressed and acknowledged where otherwise they might remain stuck, or expressed in unhealthy or less productive ways.
  • We can reveal things about ourselves and find ourselves in places we didn’t expect to be with new ideas emerging from within us. This can be life changing and lead us into new opportunities.
  • You don’t have to become ‘good’ at something, you just need some space for your thoughts and feelings to be expressed/explored. The value can be in the process as well as the final product.
  • For the enjoyment of creating for the sake of creating, with no judgement from yourself or anyone else.

So, make up songs, draw in your notebook, start a project, stack some pebbles on the beach. Allow yourself to create something without judgement and find what feels good for you.

 

Kirsty Toal is an experienced psychotherapist with a decade spent offering therapy, training and clinical supervision in a variety of settings. Kirsty offers short- and long-term psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy to adults, in person in Lewes and online.

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Learning to embrace uncomfortable emotions

Is there an expectation that we will not have uncomfortable emotions?

To have different emotions is to be human. Life is about feeling emotions. We notice our emotions and label them. Emotion is normal, we have to feel it to get past it.

How we look at things and process information is based on our early experiences. In psychological terms we develop schemas. These determine how we look at the world and act as a guide to our cognitive processes and behaviour:

‘A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organise and interpret information. Simply put, a schema describes patterns of thinking and behaviour that people use to interpret the world.’  Very Well Mind 2024.

Emotions can be problematic and we can hold negative beliefs about unpleasant emotion, i.e. emotional schemas, and this can lead us to wanting to avoid the negative emotion. In other words, we have appraisals about our emotions. For example: If you get angry then you will lose control; if you cry then you are weak; if you are afraid then you are a coward; you shouldn’t be upset because others have it worse than you; if you are sad then you are selfish. As a result of these beliefs, we may develop problematic emotional schemas such as: I am weak and childish if I have these feelings; my emotions are a burden to others; I will be punished for my feelings; other people don’t feel this way; I should stop feeling this way.

These appraisals guide us in managing the emotion and can make it difficult to express feelings, and a fear of expressing feelings may develop. This can then lead to mental health difficulties such as anxiety disorders, depression, low self-esteem.

Emotional schema development is influenced by all the same factors that influence our core beliefs, i.e. our early experiences, and significant others.

Think about the emotional environment you grew up in. How did people respond to your emotions? How did they make you feel about your emotions?

As a child you may not have been allowed to express your upset, you may have been told not to cry, to get over it and move on. However, crying is part of life. It’s linked to a normal emotion.

Parents may have had emotional styles, e.g. dismissive – denying the significance of a child’s emotion; disapproving – criticising and over controlling of a child’s feelings; or emotional coaching – assist in expressing, identifying and differentiating emotions, and problem solving. Emotional coaching obviously being the most helpful.

Many people fear not being able to control their emotions and so fear expressing them. However, we need to make room for these emotions, let the emotion in. You can have a feeling of anger and not act in a hostile way.

We can become anchored to our emotion if the emotion is intense. Intense emotion can be interpreted as long lasting and increasing in intensity. We can over focus on the emotion and use the current emotion to interpret current situations and predict future situations. This then maintains the problem. This can happen with anxiety, and the more anxious about situations we become, the smaller our world becomes. These negative feelings can lead onto other negative feelings such as hopelessness and helplessness.

However, if we can look at the situation from the perspective of a different emotion, might this change? For example: Be curious – what can I learn from this? Challenge – what can I do to make things better? Find meaning – how does this tell me what matters? Compassion – towards self or other. Emotions change. Can you think of your feelings as waves that come and go? It can be helpful to observe the emotion, notice if it goes up and down. Neither positive or negative feelings last indefinitely.

When we feel grief at the loss of a loved one and don’t want to feel like this anymore, does this mean we would rather not have had that person in our life, to not have had a relationship with them so that we can avoid experiencing the loss of the person? I suspect not.

We need to make room for the loss and the pain, build a life around this. Life is about having uffering. The suffering is worth it, to have experienced the love, the relationship, etc. We need to remember emotion is temporary. Think of when you experienced this emotion before, how did you move on from it? Think about past ways you coped, did what you fear happen? How did the emotion come to an end?

Problematic coping is when we try and avoid – we use drugs, alcohol, ruminate, stop doing things. Alcohol or drugs work in the moment but longer term we feel worse, and may need more to get the same effect and then feel even worse.

It is how we cope with the uncomfortable emotion that enables us to progress. In CBT we learn to do this by drawing on various strategies including distraction, problem solving, acceptance, social support, cognitive restructuring, decreasing the arousal, behavioural activation and modifying beliefs about emotion.

Being human means you will have unpleasant emotions. Pain, tragedy and loss are part of having a full life. Disappointments are inevitable. To manage disappointment, we readjust our expectations. We have to get through the difficult emotion to get to what we want. Emotions go up and down, we have to learn to tolerate them. You do the hard things so that they become easier in the future. If you believe the emotion goes on forever then it maintains the problem. We have other emotions than the one we’re thinking of right now. Think of feelings as coming and going, allow them to come and pass. We can’t suppress emotion, if you try to it comes back. The same with our thoughts, we can’t stop them coming. We have to make room for them, observe them, accept them and let them go.

 

Rebecca Mead is an accredited, registered and experienced Psychotherapist offering Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) to individuals adults.  Rebecca is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Rebecca Mead

Should I seek therapy?

How does CBT help with low mood and depression?

How does CBT help with low self esteem?

How does CBT work?

Practical examples for ‘food and mood’

Food and mood

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Parents – the ghosts and angels of our past

     They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
     They may not mean to, but they do.
     They fill you with the faults they had
     And add some extra, just for you.

These lines open Philip Larkin’s best-known poem, ‘This Be The Verse’. I still remember our English teacher reading it aloud to us, a class of giggling adolescent school children, many moons ago.

But now as a therapist, daughter, mother and hopefully a wiser individual than when I was aged thirteen years and seven months, I believe it needs some gentle revision. We have advanced our understanding of epigenetics and intergenerational trauma; these concepts are in common parlance with my children’s generation. But from a psychoanalytic perspective perhaps we can add a more helpful view.

In 1975 Selma Fraiberg (et al), a clinical psychologist and social worker wrote a seminal paper with the title, ‘Ghosts in the Nursery’. In it they create the metaphor of ‘ghosts’ to highlight the connection between a parent’s past unremembered negative experiences and their future parenting styles, communicated via the unconscious processes of which we are all, by their very nature, unaware.

In 2005 Lieberman (et al), wrote a paper countering or ameliorating the conclusions presented by Fraiberg entitled ‘Angels in the Nursery’. In this paper they illustrate how positive experiences are also transmitted unconsciously, even if unremembered, and can serve as protective factors for even the most troubled of the clients they worked with: ‘We argue that uncovering angels as growth-promoting forces in the lives of traumatized parents is as vital to the work of psychotherapy as is the interpretation and exorcizing of ghosts.’

Christopher Bollas, another renowned psychoanalyst, suggested that when we experience intense, overwhelming negative experiences or feelings as a child or young adult our unconscious serves to protect us by packaging them up and posting them forward to our adult self. In this way we are offered the opportunity to deal with them when we have the strength and resources to manage them without the fear of collapse. Carl Jung believed our unconscious has a teleological nature, which means it has a purpose or use towards a goal or end result. So perhaps when we receive this package to unwrap it’s because we’re ready, however unwelcome or difficult it may feel. Receiving this package from the past often prompts many of us to seek help from a professional psychotherapist, someone to unwrap the past with, a safe space, a guide or a guardian of the process.

This psychoanalytic process is an exploration of our past and how it relates to our present. It aims to weave an understanding of our unconscious processes using the threads that connect the experiences of our past and present selves.

And what of our parents? What do we know about their life stories, their childhood experiences? How do we ask? Should we ask?

Have we lost something in the lack of oral traditions that pass the experiences of our elders onto future generations? How much of your family’s relational history is available to you? How much of your childhood do you remember? If we don’t remember and we can’t ask, perhaps we can wonder or imagine together with a guide or a guardian in a therapeutic alliance.

And then perhaps we can ask… What if our parents managed to give us something they had never experienced themselves? What made it possible for them to do that? What if we somehow found the compassion, understanding and sensitivity to return to them something wonderful that they had never received, but found it in themselves to give to us?

There are ghosts in all our pasts, but there are also angels to find and perhaps thank, for ourselves, our parents and the generations to follow.

 

Shiraz El Showk is a Training Member of the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy (AGIP) and a registered Training member of the UKCP, She is experienced in Psychodynamic counselling and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy work with individuals, on both long and short term basis. Shiraz works from our Brighton and Hove practice, Lewes practice and online

 

Further reading by Shiraz El Showk –

Is an AI therapist as good as a human one?

What is the unconscious? (part one)

Why is three the magic number? Third spaces, secure bases and creative living (part two)

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Therapy and art… an intersection

Poets and artists have an uncanny knack for connecting our hearts and minds. In many ways this is also the project of psychotherapy; in any application of the underlying science it too becomes an art. Rarely do people enter therapy in search of theories, rather they want their experience, often painful, addressed. Dealing with the landscapes and soundscapes of our minds, we could describe psychotherapy, whatever else it is, as an interpretive art. Artists perform a vital function as story tellers for our times. Whatever the medium, art has the capacity to confront, to disrupt, to disturb, to inspire, to evoke and to capture the universal, the unique and the particular, and in so doing to comment on the experience of the individual and of the culture.

Each of us have stories to tell and we tell them over and over in many different ways. Our words, our gestures, our symptoms and our dreams all resonate with potential meaning. The stories we tell ourselves, collective and personal, carry meanings far beyond the simple and the linear. All, one way or another, are a reflection of the culture, the sub-culture, the family or individual life in which they arise. Psychotherapists are interested in child development, looking routinely to significant early life experiences to understand who and how people are in later life. It is also the case that these histories are more often than not incomplete, unreliable or fragmented reports of a person’s life. No matter… the skilful therapist will take what they can get. Engaging with a new client requires a willingness on the part of the therapist to see the world of another for what it is.

Noticing precedes understanding, and a tolerance for not knowing and a willingness to remain open before reaching too fast for formulations is a necessary tension a therapist must hold. A skilful therapist will not assume that their client(s) stories will begin at the beginning and end at the end. They know that the stories being told will be articulated in many ways, often beyond words. They are ready to be moved, one way or another by that which is being communicated, and together with their clients they will be ready to work sensitively and respectfully to construct more coherent, hopefully more liberating narratives.

Artists and therapists alike work with abstraction and revelation, with metaphor and meaning, with listening and rhythm, and with light and shadow. All are ways of coming at and expanding what is known, as well as understanding the limits of knowledge. There is an intersubjective dynamic that occurs both in the clinical as well as the creative process. An attuned therapist will feel their client’s experience as if it were their own, perhaps this is the only way we can truly understand another. This experiencing is evoked by more than just words. The same is true for the poet, painter and composer alike, there is a mysterious alchemic component necessary for any creative endeavour… more than just words or notes on the page, or paint on the canvas.

As a therapist I am unlikely to recommend the reading of a theoretical text to any of my clients, preferring instead to point someone towards a good novel, movie, piece of music or poetry. Where theoretical psychology might provide clarity in its description of experience, poetry and art has the power to evoke it. There is a place where both disciplines intersect and where we might find each in the other.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Gerry Gilmartin, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Gerry Gilmartin is an accredited, registered and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor. She currently works with individuals (young people/adults) and couples in private practice. Gerry is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Gerry Gilmartin –

Cultivating a tolerance for uncertainty

The importance of generosity and forgiveness in a hostile world

Understanding sexual desire

Reflections on freedom and security in a turbulent year

Reflections on getting back to normal

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How do I become more assertive?

Ask any psychotherapist what the goal of therapy is and you will likely get a slightly different answer. However, I would suggest that assertiveness is a core aspect of the work – allow me to explain.

Assertiveness is relational in context. We can and need courage to go forth in life but assertiveness is only needed in the context of relationships; when we are on our own we may need courage and bravery, but not assertiveness.

Healthy relationships between two (or more) adults are based on the premise that each can remain psychologically and emotionally separate to the other, each be aware of their boundaries and where both parties can put their wants and needs into the mix and negotiate to get these met.

Assertiveness is the ability to be aware of where you physically, psychologically and emotionally begin and end and importantly to be able to name those limits and protect them if necessary.

The two types of relationships

I see the world of relationships split across two realms – the one-person and two-person world.

In a one person world, even though it may look like there are two people interacting or having a relationship, in reality there is only one. If one party feels unable to ‘stand up’ to the other – to put their needs into the mix – then the relationship essentially revolves around the wants and whims of one person. This would be what we think of in the context of having a relationship with someone with a narcissistic personality: narcissistic people want the world to reflect back to them their wants and needs and they are unable to take anyone else into consideration.

There is a second scenario where one person relationships or interactions can manifest even if neither party has a narcissistic structure and that is where one of the individuals is unable to bring themselves, their wants, needs and appetite, into the relationship and this is where they are unable to be assertive.

For such people, when they encounter resistance from another, it brings on huge anxiety and their default position is to ‘placate’ or go along with the other for fear of upsetting them, hurting their feelings or encountering conflict – they are overly and pathologically agreeable.

This is behaviour that has been learnt at a very young age in their family of origin and most likely came about as a result of being in relationship with a parent who had a narcissistic structure.

For young children, their primary objective is to preserve the relationship with their caregiver(s). This is primal and essential as a child with no parent will not survive (either literally or psychologically).

The attachment style link

Now if a child is what we called securely attached, they learn from a young age that they are allowed (encouraged) to bring their thoughts feelings and needs into the relationship with their caregivers. This does not mean that they get everything that they want, but what it does mean is that that child can express anger, frustration, sadness and joy, without being shut-down by the parent. This is the perfect environment for a child to learn to become assertive.

If on the other hand a child has grown up to be insecurely attached, then in this context they have picked up overt or covert messages from their caregiver that they are not allowed to simply express themselves – that they are either too much, or too little. The child, in a bid to preserve the precarious attachment with their parent modifies their behaviour to become what they believe their parent wants them to be. And this become an entrenched way of relating that they then take forward into all encounters in their life.

In such contexts, the clinical work is through the relationship between t erapist and patient to start to slowly dismantle this relational style. The patient must mourn what they did not get as a child and then uncouple how they survived as a child from daily interactions in the present. In other words, they must start to become assertive and survive their unconscious fears of abandonment.

 

Mark Vahrmeyer, UKCP Registered, BHP Co-founder is an integrative psychotherapist with a wide range of clinical experience from both the public and private sectors. He currently sees both individuals and couples, primarily for ongoing psychotherapy.  Mark is available at the Lewes and Brighton & Hove Practices.

 

Further reading by Mark Vahrmeyer –

Why do we expect Women to Smile and not Men?

Why do some of us feel a constant sense of dread?

Is there a good way to break up with someone?

Can self care become an identity?

Can psychotherapy help narcissists?

 

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The adult survivor of neglect and abuse – lifelong considerations

Children who have been neglected and/or abused live to one degree or another with a lifelong legacy which can impact every aspect of their lives. Depending on the severity of abuse and neglect, the impact on the relationship with self and others will be significant and show up in many ways. I have written previously about the psychological impact on children who grow up in cults, and the kinds of abuse and neglect that takes place in such high-control groups. However, families can act like mini-cultic systems with their own ways of keeping secrets, coercing, and manipulating, and being socially presentable whilst hiding a darker truth.

What does a ’healthy’ family environment look like?

No family is perfect or entirely psychologically and emotionally healthy. However, there are families where ‘good enough care’ takes place. By ‘good enough’ I mean providing children with consistent emotional, psychological, and physical safety. For example: showing genuine interest and curiosity in the child, supporting their learning and developmental needs, protecting them from harm, expressing sincere love and care, respecting the child’s natural dependency needs whilst also encouraging their growing independence, to name a few. For a child to grow up with a relatively robust sense of self, they need to have grown up with adults who learnt to attune to them. This means respecting their individuality and uniqueness, whilst modelling and maintaining boundaries, acknowledging that children need to know their limitations and respect who is in charge, and ultimately, building and maintaining a good and healthy relationship with your children throughout their lives.

What does an unhealthy family environment look like?

There can be varying degrees of dysfunction, which will impact children in several ways. In such an environment parents will generally lack the capacity to emotionally attune to their children. In these families the needs of the child are not thought about, let alone understood. In an environment where there is ongoing stress or threat, as is seen in cases of abuse and neglect, the child will grow up lacking in psychological and emotional safety and typically learn to self-soothe rather than look for soothing from the parents or carers. Some children are forced to take excessive responsibility from an early age, for instance taking care of their family members in a role reversal situation. Children who suffer neglect usually withdraw into themselves and develop an acceptable false self to interact with the world. This is because showing distress or any genuine emotion was not an option in their family home. Children who suffer sexual and/or physical abuse learn to cope with intrusive behaviour by either becoming invisible or aggressive.

The adult survivor of neglect and abuse

Both neglectful and abusive behaviour in families tells the child that they do not matter to the very people to whom they should matter most. This type of emotional betrayal is very difficult for a child to process and overcome later in life. Once the relationship between primary carers and their children is severed in such a profound way, repair can be long and painful if it happens at all. Parents or carers who abuse and/or neglect their children are most likely psychologically damaged themselves and usually unwilling to learn from their mistakes. This is why repair is very rare.

The child will grow into an adult having missed out on some fundamental developmental steps and having developed psychological defences to cope with their upbringing. These defences, once vital for psychological survival, usually remain into adulthood until they begin to fail, which is when people usually come to therapy. Survival strategies learnt in childhood to cope with a hostile or neglectful environment are not conducive to healthy relationships in adult life. For instance, hypervigilance or emotional withdrawal can make relating to others problematic. For a relationship to grow it must be built on safety and trust. If this was absent or sparse in a person’s life, they can grow to either settle for very little or develop unrealistic expectations of themselves and other people.

The adult survivor and the search for love

The psychological legacy of childhood abuse and/or neglect has lifelong implications for adult attachments, especially relevant to significant relationships with romantic partners. Falling in love comes with the idealisation of a longed-for relationship and the type of love and emotional attunement that the person never had. The emotional hole left by their upbringing leaves them with an open wound which is usually well disguised. This painful emotional injury cuts deep into the soul. The longing for soothing from another can be a lifelong quest that is never fulfilled, because they either look in the wrong places for it, or it never feels enough despite their partner’s best efforts. It is also common for the adult survivor to seek partners who will display similar traits to their parents, and continue to tragically perpetuate this cycle in their lives and with their children.

Lack of repair

The lack of repair or acknowledgement by the people who inflicted harm is a tragic and painful legacy that many people who suffered neglect and abuse must live with. The ongoing lack of validation or acknowledgement, and dismissal of these lifechanging childhood experiences can feel cruel, confusing and keep the adult survivor in a constant loop of self-blame and self-hate. Often children who are abused and/or neglected are scapegoated by their family and therefore become the recipient of unwanted feelings. This often continues into adulthood where the person feels not only damaged by their childhood experience but as an adult continues to be ostracised, excluded, and blamed for the family issues. The child grows into an adult having never understood why they were and continue to be treated this way, even though they have done nothing wrong.

The therapeutic task

When someone grows up feeling unsafe and mistrustful of those around them, the primary task of any therapy is to rebuild trust and safety through the therapeutic relationship and in the person’s life. When trust has been broken at such a fundamental level, ordinary disappointment can feel at times devastating. The aim is to get the adult survivor to a place where they can learn to trust whilst also looking after themselves, and build relationships with people with whom they feel emotionally, psychologically, and physically safe whilst also having realistic expectations. Holding onto both good and disappointing aspects of relationships (including the one with the therapist) is work which takes a long time. Rebuilding trust also means trusting oneself. Learning to trust one’s thoughts and feelings again, or even for the first time.

Working with shame is another important part of therapeutic work, as the abused and/or neglected child carries a high degree of shame for the experiences they have been through. Depending on the level of abuse and neglect, and therefore the level of dissociation, trauma work is a vital part of the adult survivor’s recovery. Being able to feel a lifetime of hidden and suppressed emotions is painful but also brings back to life certain aspects of oneself that were deadened.

Finally, therapy is a place to hold witness to unthinkable, unspeakable, and unbearable experiences. These experiences must in time be articulated and understood within the limitations of language and the individual’s capacity to comprehend and process emotional pain.

 

On our website you can find more information about our counselling and psychotherapy services and how to contact our team.

 

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Clinical Superviser and Executive Coach. She works with individuals, couples and groups in Hove and Lewes.

 

Further reading by Sam Jahara – 

There are no shortcuts to growth

5 good reasons to be in therapy

The psychological impact on children who grow up in cults

What psychological processes make us ‘choke under pressure’?

Having healthy conversations with men about the menopause

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The psychological impact on children who grow up in cults

I have just watched the latest Netflix docu series “How to Become a Cult Leader?” and was pleased to see that images of the cult I grew up in appear in it with frequency, because it means it is undoubtedly and widely recognised as a cult. Familiar images of the cult leader doing “energy darshans” (so-called transmission of energy) with his disciples, who in turn look utterly blissful, was designed to portray him as someone who holds special powers and cures people’s suffering instantly.

Indoctrination from an Early Age

The indoctrination of children in cults differs from that of adults in that children are extremely vulnerable to adult influence – the people they look up to, especially their parents. Children’s brains are still developing, and they are like sponges, absorbing the world around them, the world of adults who create the environment they exist in. A child will absorb the world view of those around her and accept this as her reality because this is all she has known.

The Cult Leader’s Demands Always Comes First

In cults, the cult leader or doctrine always takes priority over anything else. The child who grows up in a cult will never be the centre of attention in her parent’s world because they will most likely be totally self-absorbed with the cult leader and the cult demands. These demands are usually great and unattainable because the leader is likely to be highly perfectionistic, insatiable, and persecutory of those who do not meet his or her ideals. Moreover, a cult leader will employ fear tactics with their disciples and keep them in a state of perpetual adoration towards him and shame towards themselves. In this state of fear, shame and total preoccupation with another, there is no room for the age-appropriate demands of a child who actually needs their parent’s care and attention.

“Have No Needs”

A child who grows up in a cult learns to have no needs because she quickly learns that they do not matter. To survive in the cult and gain some crumbs of attention from her parents, she will have no choice but conform to the leader’s demands, try to fit in as much as possible and override her natural developmental needs. This means the child will miss out on normal stages of development, if not also on education and normal peer interactions because of the insular and isolated nature of most cults.

Isolation and Abuse

Sending a child to school means interacting with the outside world, which most cults find threatening. Depending on how isolated a cult becomes, they will supply their own schooling, have children interact only with other cult children and make sure there is no outside influence that could lead the child to question her upbringing.

Keeping a child isolated from society also makes her vulnerable to abuse – sexual, physical, spiritual, emotional, and psychological. Isolated groups create their own rules and decide what is right or wrong. In the cult I grew up in for instance, children and teenagers were conveniently seen and treated as adults.  This meant that we were required to work long hours, worship and meditate with the adults. This also meant that schooling was minimal and there was no age-appropriate censorship to adult-only stuff. The cult leader – a self-proclaimed enlightened master – was seen as an expert in raising children, despite him not having any children himself or knowing anything about child development. If the cult leader condones inappropriate, harmful, or even criminal behaviour, then his disciples collude because all that matters is what the leader thinks. His truth matters above all truths, and he/ she is always above societal rules and norms, including the law. Under these circumstances, children are extremely vulnerable to predators.

The Objectification of Children

In cults, children are either seen as an inconvenience or used as means for growing the cult. In both situations, children are seen as objects and not encouraged to develop their own identity. In cults, nothing is in the best interest of a child. Everything is in the best interest of the leader and the organisation. Despite this well-known fact, cult leaders will make it seem that everything they do is for your good and the good of your children, even if there is plenty of evidence to the opposite (see ‘Gaslighting’ below). They will make you quash your doubts, question your sanity, and give up everything you have, including your children, in the service of “the greater good”. This “greater good” has very few winners, which are usually the leader and his inner circle.

Gaslighting

A central feature of cults is gaslighting – a term coined from the movie ‘Gaslight’ where it a young woman is manipulated by her husband into believing that she is descending into insanity. Cults do this on a large scale, which is designed to keep its disciples or followers in a state of perpetual doubt about their opinions and follow the opinions and ideas of the cult leader. It is an exercise in maintaining power over others and abdicating any responsibility for one’s actions. For instance, in the cult I grew up in the self-proclaimed enlightened master would attribute all personal suffering to his disciples and never take any responsibility. This extended to the sexual, financial, and psychological exploitation of ‘his people’ including children. When questioned, he would say that you had not surrendered to him enough and that this was your reason for suffering.

Leaving

When the child grows up and is lucky enough to leave the cult, she or he will have to contend with a long process of rebuilding or recovering her own identity. Everything that she is has been attributed to the cult or exists because of the cult. Sometimes, when a former child choses to leave, her family will want nothing to do with her. Or she may need to cut contact with her family to survive psychologically.

The Recovery Process

Cult recovery is a long and challenging process which requires the right support. Finding a group of like-minded individuals who share similar backgrounds is advisable, as well as finding a therapist who is experienced and knowledgeable about this type of work. Explaining to people what you have gone through is never easy. Former cult members and those who grew up in cults can feel a lot of shame about their past and have difficulty articulating what they have been through. Most people lack an appreciation of what it is like to live in a high control group and its effects.

Regaining One’s Mind and Setting Boundaries

Those who were born or grew up in cults will often need to learn or re-learn how to live in society. Although cults range in terms of how isolated and restricted their members are, the indoctrination of children is so deep that it will take a very long time to regain their own mind, learn to think for themself and have their own opinions. This extends to knowing one’s own preferences, wishes and needs. Because having own thoughts and opinions was frowned upon or even dangerous, it takes time to regain a sense of safety in doing normal things, having personal preferences, and even feeling entitled to personal space. Growing up in an environment where nothing belongs to you, all the thinking is done for you and personal space is not a thing, has big implications in later life when it comes to setting personal boundaries.

Sam Jahara is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Superviser. She is experienced in working with the psychological impact of high-control groups and cults on individuals, families and organisations. She has also spoken about her personal experience of growing up in a cult in recent public interviews.

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The First 5 Years

One of the most profound experiences we can have is to become a parent. If you had a good experience of growing up in a happy home where your needs were considered important, you felt secure, this is the best preparation for becoming a parent yourself.  

However, life is not quite as easy as that and many of us will encounter disruptions to our wellbeing because of parental illness, a lack of resources, social isolation, or neglect.  Trauma is used here to describe not necessarily an event but the often small every day psychological injuries inflicted on us whilst growing up in a dysfunctional family.  When we enter therapy, we are often unaware of the events and hidden daily routine attacks on our ego that happen in families.  How do we find a way of developing a mentally healthy approach to our role as parents, during the first 5 years of our children’s lives?

What is it about these first five years that are so important?

Both parents and caregivers need to recognize the importance of creating a safe and happy space for children to grow up in.  There is an equal need for parental closeness and nurturing of the infant regardless whether a male or a female partner.  Both parents in the household are equally important in the maturing process. Fathers can feel they have little to offer during the early weeks, months and years of a child’s life, however, it is clear fathers have an essential role during this period. 

  1. Neurobiological development – the development of the brain depends on a secure and safe space where the child can explore the environment for development and learning to take place. This lays down the neurological potential for later life and mental health.  If the family is dysfunctional whereby the parents are unable to regulate their emotional state or act out with physical or emotional abuse towards the child or partner, then the child will internalize these experiences, which come to the fore later in life.  Or if parents are not emotionally present and sibling rivalry is not contained, a child is bullied or goaded by other children. 
  2. Attachment and separation – from the moment of our birth we begin the process of separation from our mother learning and adjusting to the world around us.  We enter a world that will influence us on a personal, social and cultural level that will take us a lifetime to understand.  As a newborn we are completely dependent on those around us to keep us safe and secure. This is a demanding period for parents who have to sacrifice time and energy to looking after our needs.  It can be a difficult period of adjustment for parents as their role as parents will be unfamiliar.
  3. Language acquisition – language is not something we learn in a “book learning way” but we acquire it through interaction with our families and those around us.  Children in families where more than one language is spoken have increased number of neurons in the brain.  

 

How do you prepare for becoming parents?

If we are not to pass on to our children unwanted patterns or similar patterns of relating to our own children that we experienced; particularly if we have been exposed to trauma during our childhood, then we need to firstly look inwards at our experience of family life.

  1. Make a connection to your experience as a child.  What was the atmosphere like at home was it a calm happy place or full of energy and busy. What was your role in the family? What was the general atmosphere like at home? Did you feel recognized? Where do you come in the family are you the eldest child, the middle child or the youngest.
  2. Connect to your family history: Was it a safe and stable environment or were there lots of moves during your first 5 years. 
  3. What do you know of your parent’s childhood?
  4. Were there any problems of addictions in the family?
  5.  Were there any major events, loss of family members, new siblings in the family, catastrophic events, which put the family at risk?
  6. How did people respond to feelings? Was anger suppressed or expressed and understood? 

If at the end of reading this you realize there were family matters that need to be explored, thought about and processed, before the new baby arrives. Find a counsellor, psychotherapist or psychoanalyst who can help you and your partner understand how you might mitigate the impact of your dysfunctional family experience.  This might break a cycle of suffering, for you and allow you to improve your mental health whilst become a good parent to your children.

 

Dorothea Beech is a Group Analyst with many years experience working in the UK and overseas.  She worked as A Group Analyst in South Africa as a Lecturer at Cape Town UCT and at Kwa Zulu Natal University in Durban, lecturing on a Masters Program in Group Work.  Her MA in Applied research was on Eating disorders. Her interests are in cultural diversity and trans-generational influences on the individual.  Thea is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.

 

Further reading by Thea Beech –

How do I know if I am ready to become a parent?

Our emotions are shaped by our relationships?

Group Analytic Psychotherapy – the slow open group

It is never too late to start therapy

The Unconscious Mind

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Thinking about Dyslexia Differently

“The word itself – dyslexia – is ironically very hard for dyslexic people to spell correctly”
Eddie Izzard

Up to one in five people are influenced by dyslexia, including me and Eddie Izzard. Our differing genetic differences inform our ability to process and learn information – however, we can also simplify difficult problems, explain them with clarity, and see multiple perspectives making distant and unusual connections that others might not notice.
Some describe it as thinking outside the box – but it’s more than that – we are curious people, who notice numerous other boxes that need to be urgently investigated!

We are now learning to celebrate the positives of not being neurotypical, so let’s share this information with our children and young people who have received a dyslexia diagnosis or may have undiagnosed traits.

These children and young people sometimes present with mental health issues including anxiety and low mood; on closer investigation they also report struggling academically and unsupported dyslexia is sometimes there in the background making life difficult for the child.

Made by Dyslexia is an organisation whose mission is to help teachers spot, support and empower every dyslexic child and to help the world value dyslexic thinkers. Together with their Join the Dots campaign to help organisations and work places harness dyslexic thinking – their recent report ‘The Dyslexic Dynamic: Why Dyslexia Can Help Meet Today’s Talent Challenges’ is available on their website.  Made by Dyslexia is proving to be a powerful advocate for the dyslexic advantage.

Dyslexic thinking can be highly desired in the work place – we know that many entrepreneurs are dyslexic and creative industries are awash with us. And now GCHQ reports that its official dyslexic people make great spies!

Further reading includes The Dyslexic Advantage. Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain by Dr Brock L Eide and Fernette F Eide, published in 2011 this book describes the dyslexia processing style as a gift. It helps us understand the power of our own dyslexia or that of our children.

Dyslexie, is a typeface designed in 2008 for those influenced by dyslexia. By ignoring basic typography rules Dyslexie letters have heavier bottoms, longer sticks and different shapes.  The centre of gravity is shifted in the design so the letters sit it nicely and snuggly on the page so helping the readability of words.

So welcome to thinking about dyslexia differently – it can be both a pleasure and a pain to live with but life would be less interesting without it.

 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch. Online therapy is available.

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What is ‘othering’ and why is it important?

What is othering?

Othering describes a phenomenon whereby groups of people with a certain identity are marginalised and seen as outside the mainstream or norm. Those likely to be othered are often done so on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, class, caste, culture, disability, religion and age.

Othering as a concept, alludes to the constructed nature of identity and how these constructs are created to maintain power dynamics as well as an illusion of stability through naturalising difference. So, thinking about othering takes us into the realm of power and how power and identity are interconnected and constructed.

Othering is also bound to issues of inclusion and belonging. Those othered are positioned to ‘hold’ experiences of exclusion and outsider-ness by those who are positioned on the inside and the ‘norm’.

Othering operates in all societies. It has its roots in colonialism, racism, patriarchy, misogyny and homophobia. Othering can have extremely destructive and damaging consequences and at it’s most extreme can be seen in the genocide of one group by another.

On a more interpersonal level othering is hard to see as it is often an unconscious process, invisible, often to those doing the othering although generally less so to those who are othered.

Who has experienced Othering?

Most people I work with as a therapist have at some point or another in their lives experienced themselves as othered. While strictly speaking othering is a social-phenomena based on social identities as described above, many can have experiences particularly in childhood that place them into a position and experience of being othered.

As children and adolescents, many people have found themselves in what feels an outsider and inferior position. This can be for all kinds of reasons beyond larger social dynamics. Bullying is an obvious experience which some people have as children whereby they may find themselves inexplicably seen as different in an othered way. Some children can feel and be othered in their families.

Those who come from socially othered groups may well find these childhood traumas around othering compounded by and enmeshed with their social identity.

Why do I think othering is an important concept in my role as a therapist?

In my mind, therapy fundamentally works from a basic assumption that we have more in common than we have differences. All talking therapies at their heart strive for human understanding and empathy of the ‘other’. Therapy is about searching for connection and inclusion.

Othering is an illusion that exaggerates our differences, creates power dynamics and tells us these are natural. While othering naturalises power constructs between people it also disguises these very constructs. In therapy we strive, I believe, to expose illusions. In my work as a therapist, I try and help people authentically engage with their inner and external worlds.

Othering is also an experience that is likely to become internalised especially when it is bound up with childhood trauma. The othered part of the individual can be split off, denigrated and despised. This, usually unconscious, internal othering process may only start to emerge in therapy. I have seen these kinds of internalised power dynamics in many of my psychotherapy patients. In my experience, they become particularly complicated in those who have internalised a broader social message that who they are or what social group they belong to is outside and inferior to what is deemed the majority and the norm.

 

To enquire about psychotherapy sessions with Claire Barnes, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.

 

Claire Barnes is an experienced UKCP registered psychotherapist and group analyst offering psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy to individuals and groups at our Hove practice.

 

Further reading by Claire Barnes

Is a Therapy Group Right for Me? Am I Right for a Therapy Group?

What happens in Therapy Groups? The role of the Therapist

What happens in Group Therapy: Mirroring

The Problem with Change

What is it like being in a Psychotherapy Group? Case study – Joe

 

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When it comes to parenting, are you a builder or a gardener?

What a job it is to raise a child! So full of difficulty, so many moving parts in the process, so much resourcefulness and energy required. Then, just when the parent takes breath to admire their creation, off goes the young adult – at times with barely a backward glance. The parents are left behind wondering where those years have gone and trying desperately to remember what life was like before children.

But what about the process of raising a child? The very fact that there are piles of self-help books on an entirely natural process – after all, our species have been doing it for millennia – is enough in itself to make us pause and reflect. How has parenting just got so complicated and how can thinking about builders and gardeners make us reflect on our parenting style?

One of the factors that makes parenting so difficult is the way parents see themselves in the role. As society puts increasing value on the care and wellbeing of children, so the pressure is on parents to do a better job in raising them – to be accountable. Of course, much of this will be driven by the interests of the child – but there is also self interest involved. After all, that child will be a part of the parent, representing what the parent represents. Homer Simpson captured this idea of children replicating the values system of their parents in his usual comic fashion when he said that what he really liked about having children is ‘you can make them grow up to hate all the things you hate!’ Homer saw his children as extensions of himself, carrying within him some model of what he thought his grown-up child should look like – and seeing his job as making sure the way they see the world corresponds with the way he sees it. We might class his parenting style as project based – like a builder, following a set of plans to some fixed outcome.

Others might be comfortable in their role as parent without such a plan, perhaps allowing the child more freedom to find their own way. Rather than building, they might see their job as nurturing and hence we might class their parenting style as gardening. Whilst most of us will fall somewhere on a continuum between the extremes of these two approaches, thinking about them offers us the chance to re-assess what is going on for us, and for our children, in the process.

Builders

Parents who think in ‘building’ terms, might also be seen as project-focussed parents. They will often carry in their heads some template or plan as to what their child is to become. Self-help guides might be more like manuals in their minds. They will busy themselves with gathering the resources to realise that project. Ballet lessons, music lessons, sports sessions – all might be part of that plan. Of course, education will be crucial: the right school, the right approach and right attitude to progress. The aim will be to achieve the right outcome.

It can be extremely frustrating for these project-focussed parents when things do not go according to the plan. It is not unusual for there to be an amount of conflict, either with the child or with the support around them. Talk to any school head and they will have countless stories of this sort of difficulty.

The intention is a good one: to give the child the very best chance to achieve a particular – often aspirational – goal. The difficulty is that the model of the child-as-adult that is carried in the head of the parent may not be the one that the child carries for themself. It is a situation that can lead to anxiety in both camps. For the parents, they have to come to terms with the reality that they may not be able to determine outcome, and they may have to deal with disappointment and a sense of loss, as their children follow a path that was never in their (the parents’) plan. For the child, whom at some stage at least will have wanted to please their parents, they, too, will have to deal with difficult emotions that may involve a sense of having failed in some way. Not surprisingly, low mood and anxiety can be the result.

Gardeners

It would be unfair to say that gardener-parents have no plans for their children, but it is not quite as prescribed as it is in the case of builder-parents. Rather than a fixed plan and a fixed route to a clear end goal, gardeners look to provide the right context or culture for the child to develop – just as a literal gardener would provide the right soil for their plants. The parent sees their role as nurturer – providing the care that is required for their offspring to grow. There may still be ballet lessons, music lessons and extra sports classes, but these are not so much to build towards a pre-conceived plan – more to encourage and find the ‘soil’ that is going to best suit the child, whom, the parents hope, will learn to put down their own roots and gradually begin to nourish themselves.

The neuroscience of nurture and independence

If we consider our species, we will understand the need for parents to want the best for their child – if they did not, there would be many more neglected children and infant mortality would put at risk the propagation of the species. Likewise, it makes considerable evolutionary sense for children to want to please their parents – the people who are going to nourish them through to the point where they can provide for themselves and, once again, continue to propagate the species. These two neurobiological drives can often work in harmony for the infant years of the child, but the onset of adolescence is likely to cause some disruption. The child now is looking to become independent, whereas the parents might still be wanting (or needing) to follow the plan.

Difficult Feelings

Wherever we sit on this spectrum of parental styles, we are unlikely to escape having to deal with difficult moments in the raising of our children. What can sometimes help us is to recognise and separate what belongs to us and what belongs to the child. When we feel disappointed because our child does not seem to be matching the plans for them that we have in our own mind as parents, then the difficult feelings that arise within us will constitute a real challenge. Our own fantasies – ideas we carry about what might and might not be – can sometimes leave us bereft and never more so than in dealings with our children. We need to keep those feelings with us and avoid any temptation to visit them on our children. It is hardly their fault that they do not always carry the same fantasies as we do. We want our children to be independent, but sometimes that can be a very difficult place to get to unless we let go, not just of the child, but of all the plans we carry for them. Then, despite the very difficult feelings of loss, our children’s leaving us with barely a backward glance might just be a mark of a job well done.

 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch. Online therapy is available.

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Using empathy to re-build connection with children and young people

This last year of global pandemic has been a time of massive disruption to almost everyone. With it has come disconnection in various forms and the challenge of reconnecting at points when restrictions have lifted. Children and young people have faced their own particular challenges with school closures preventing contact with peers and friends, in addition to the stress of uncertainty about exams and other limitations related to online learning. At a time when many teens would normally be exploring social freedoms to the full, those who have kept to the rules have made do with scraps of interaction and often relied heavily on digital forums. Sadly, a considerable number have struggled to hold onto what fragile self-esteem and social confidence they formally knew. Even some of those used to thriving have found their resilience quashed and required additional support to pull through.

We are still in the early days of reconnecting with the world and all the structures of human engagement that we once took for granted and, with time, we will no doubt start to see the fuller picture of how people’s lives have been impacted by COVID and all that has come in its wake. For some, reconnecting is proving to be a battle. There are those for whom the protection of a smaller, quieter world felt safer and some are simply feeling rusty about conversing and interfacing with real live people.

Hardships faced by those whose lives COVID has touched in very tangible ways, have brought forth numerous stories of lived empathy in response to people encountering terrible pain and the loss of health and loved ones, empathy perhaps evoked by the realisation that these losses could become reality for any of us. Likewise, there has been widespread, heartfelt support for the thousands of frontline workers who have sacrificed their own safety for the wellbeing of others and for those who have lost jobs, income and businesses. Many have felt for children deprived of opportunities to learn and play as they usually would and this continues to be a time when the younger generation needs us to recognise and engage with what they are going through.

Children and young people with social and emotional difficulties always require our empathy as part of recovery and perhaps even more so in these times. Empathy is what helps them feel understood, paving the way for self-acceptance, which in turn makes it more possible to seek support from others. Daniel A. Hughes (pioneer of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy) places Empathy at the core of the PACE approach, along with Acceptance and Curiosity (see my other blogs on these two subjects). In his book, co-written with John Baylin (The Neurobiology of Attachment-Focused Therapy: Enhancing Connection and Trust) he talks about embracing “the child’s defensiveness, putting connection before correction” and offering “radical acceptance” of the child’s mistrust.

In this context, Hughes and Baylin were referring to the particular struggles faced by traumatised children with attachment difficulties but we could apply the same principle to supporting children and young people who are emotionally and socially adjusting to each “new normal” they are faced with, whether or not they have experienced additional childhood trauma pre-COVID.

Hughes and Baylin recognise that this is no easy task, likening it to “hugging a porcupine”. Social and emotional defences, by their nature, are often difficult to permeate and can repel. A child or young person who repeatedly gives off a vibe of wanting to be left alone can leave the person reaching out feeling confused, rejected, useless and resentful and can lead, understandably, to withdrawal. This makes it even harder for the child or young person to reconnect, risking further disconnection, isolation and all the ill-effects that these states can bring.

If we can catch ourselves withdrawing and find empathy within ourselves for how the child or young person may be feeling in that very moment when they are unable to allow us in, we provide a bridge back into connection. This is so powerful as it communicates that we have not given up and that we see the child or young person as worth sticking with – we still see that part of them which has the potential to be in relationship with others and the world.
Brene Brown, in a Youtube clip based on part of her Tedtalk on Empathy, beautifully describes how “empathy fuels connection”. She refers to Teresa Wiseman’s 4 qualities of empathy: recognising another person’s perspective is their truth, staying out of judgement, recognising emotion in others and then communicating this. This is about “feeling with people” she says. Being with others is so much more effective than trying to fix the situation by saying the right thing: “Rarely can a response make something better, what makes something better is connection.”

In taking an empathic stance, we make an active choice to suspend our own anxiety and impatience about the pace at which a child or young person is re-engaging with life post-lockdown. We accept where things are at and we take time to understand as best we can. We then make what Brene Brown calls a “vulnerable choice”, that is choosing to connect with something in ourselves which knows the feeling we have encountered in another. This vulnerable choice is a risk well worth taking if we are serious about wanting to mitigate against the secondary effects of COVID on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people today.

 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch with us. Online therapy is available.

 

References – 

See more from Brene Brown at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz1g1SpD9Zo

Read more from Baylin and Hughes.

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Executive Function (part 2): Ideas for Supporting Thinking Skills Development in Children

Referring back to my previous blog – Children and young people with Executive Functioning Difficulties need us to:

Accept that they have gaps and delays in these skills.

Learn, by spending time with them and observing, which Executive Function Skills need scaffolding and practice.

Support by being the air-traffic controller when a child can’t do this alone, building in steps like:

  • modify the environment – reduce noise/ remove other distractions, create comfort, provide easy access to resources, use visual aids/ prompts, movement/ sensory breaks.
  • simplify tasks – reduce language and instructions, keep tasks short and achievable.
  • support completion of tasks – help child get started and ensure he/ she understands and can access materials required – check in regularly; if needed, be alongside throughout a short task before child tries a similar one with less support.
  • Use memory cards – if child needs to wait for your support, write it down on a card for each of you – and if possible the approximate time you will return to the task with them.
  • build EF skills development through practice – carefully chosen activities/ games/ projects.

The best way to develop executive function skills is to do meaningful activities which require Executive Function (thinking) skills to be used. To be able to engage in these kinds of activities and draw on thinking skills, children need first to feel safe, regulated and connected – for this they need a regulated, consistent adult to support them. Children also need activities which interest them and which are achievable, matched to their emotional age and ability level or the level they could manage with support. The following ideas for activities and games are just a few of many which might help.

HOME-BASED ACTIVITIES
Many of these activities involve the use of working memory in order to plan, prioritize, and get organised. They may also require self-control to stay focused and flexibility to solve problems:

  • Build a bird box or bug hotel/ grow things/ make a wormery/ catch falling leaves/ watch birds
  • Bake/ plan and cook a meal/ make a rug/ make a puppet/ do a mosaic/ make fimo beads
  • upcycle furniture/ decorate a room/ mend a bike puncture/ junk modelling
  • start a collection/ invent games/ create hunts and trails for each other
  • do a jigsaw/ make lego models – either from the box or made up
  • make music or playlists/ make up dance routines/ do puppet shows/ role-play/ tell stories

MEMORY GAMES

  • Matching pairs (working memory, flexibility, self-control). Adapt this to suit attention span and memory skills by reducing the number of cards. Can be cooperative if you work as a team to see how many turns it takes you to find all the pairs.
  • I went to the shops (working memory). Take turns in a pair or group to add to a shopping list, repeating the full list each time – invent various (I went for a walk and I saw a …… ; I went exploring and I found a ……) – be as flexible as you need to be to keep child engaged – eg. give clues if they struggle to remember a word.

WORD GAMES

  • Word tennis (working memory, task initiation, attention, flexibility). Play cooperatively in pairs or a group. Take turns to pick a topic and see how many things you can name from that topic – pass a ball/ soft toy as you do it. Continue for as long as you can without repeating a word. If you wish, time how long you can all keep going for or count the number of words.
  • Cooperative Bananagrams (planning, prioritising, flexibility). For children not ready for the competitive version of this game, work altogether as a team to use all the letters to make lots of mini crosswords or one giant one. Adapt this for your child’s attention span by choosing how many letters you play with.

PICTURE / MOVEMENT GAMES

  • Jenga (self-control, flexibility, planning) – Adapt this game in any way that suits your child, eg. leave out the requirement to pile bricks on top, use a smaller stack, create a rule that when a brick is taken there are other actions to follow, which might be drawn from a pile of cards. Or, just use the bricks to create mini collaborative challenges. Eg. Let’s see how high we can make a staircase, What’s the tallest tower we can make? Can we make a domino rally in the shape of an S? Are there enough bricks to make an outline of both my arms?
  • Home-made Pictionary/ charades (flexibility, self-control) – Create your own bank of words/ pictures/ phrases to be drawn or acted out for others to guess – or use cards from published games. Avoid time limits if this creates stress. Play in pairs if this helps a child to participate – whisper together about how you’re going to draw or act out the word.
  • Freeze (focus, self control). Play music while everyone dances or moves in any way they want. Freeze when the music stops. Or everyone moves about and one person just shouts “Freeze!” Try holding your poses for a count of 5/10/ longer.
  • Dobble (focus, initiation, self-control) – a matching game done at speed – the twist is that matching pairs of images may be different in size and surprisingly hard to spot! There are different ways to play the game and various themed versions available.

STRATEGY GAMES

  • Forbidden Desert (planning, prioritising). This is designed as a cooperative game where participants work together to escape from a desert by finding pieces of a sun-powered flying-machine, whilst avoiding sandstorms and keeping water supplies topped up.
  • Quirkle (Planning, organisation, flexible thinking). A simple but original game based on matching colours and shapes on wooden painted blocks. Players need to think about where best to place their pieces for the maximum score. Work in teams if this suits your child best. And you could try using the blocks to make patterns – see what your child comes up with.
  • Rush Hour (Focus, flexible thinking, working memory, perseverance). This is the original version of a game which has been replicated on many apps. The real thing is a fun way of moving vehicles to enable an ice-cream van to leave a car park. There are 4 levels so it’s easily adapted.
  • Genius Square (Focus, flexible thinking, perseverance). This game can be played solo or against a partner/ other team. The task is to fit the blocks into the grid around where the dots are placed. There are always lots of possible solutions.

 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch with us. Online therapy is available.

 

Further resources and ideas are available at:

HARVARD Centre for the Developing Child website for activity ideas by age group –https://developingchild.harvard.edu/guide/a-guide-to-executive-function/

UNDERSTOOD website for ideas on supporting different areas of executive function.
https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/executive-functioning-issues/executive-functioning-issues-strategies-you-can-try-at-home?_ul=1*2sfyod*domain_userid*YW1wLVppUDNOQ3JWZXUwSTIzekQyall5N3c.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

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Executive Function Skills (part 1) – What They Are And Why Some Children Struggle With Them.

Executive functions are the cognitive skills we use to control and regulate our thoughts, emotions and actions to achieve goals. These three main areas of executive function work together:

  • Self-control/ inhibition – the ability to resist doing something distracting/ tempting in order to do what’s needed to complete a given task, helping us to pay attention, act less impulsively and stay focused.
  • Working memory – the ability to hold information in mind and use it to make connections between ideas, make mental calculations and prioritize action.
  • Cognitive flexibility – the ability to think creatively, switch gears and be flexible to changing requests and situations, allowing us to use imagination and creativity to solve problems.

For example, all three areas are needed in social pretend play:

  • Child needs to hold their own role and those of others in mind (working memory)
  • Child needs to inhibit acting out of character (employ self-control), and
  • Child needs to flexibly adjust to twists and turns in the evolving plot (cognitive flexibility)

The joint forces of our executive function skills can be thought about as . . .

  • the conductor of an orchestra, organising multiple instruments to make one unified sound or
  • an air-traffic controller managing safe take-off and landing for hundreds of air-craft

Executive functions are controlled by the frontal lobes of the brain which are connected with and control the activities in many other regions of the brain.

Hot and Cool Executive Functions
Hot executive functions are the self-management skills we use in the heat of the moment when emotions run high – they require concerted conscious effort and help us give up short term gain for the sake of a more important goal. Examples include: resisting temptation; focusing on a boring task; breaking an old habit; and biting our lip when angry. Cool executive functions are the skills we use when emotions aren’t really a factor. Examples include: remembering a list of numbers and repeating them back in reverse order and following a simple recipe.

Executive function skills are a vital part of learning. They help children to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment, listen to the teacher, wait for a turn and not call out. They are also pivotal in managing frustration, getting started on a task, staying focused, accepting constructive criticism and asking for appropriate help. They enable children to notice and correct mistakes, prioritise, persevere and complete challenging activities, resist the urge to retaliate and feel more confident about managing in school.

Children with under-developed executive function skills may act without thinking, overreact to small problems, be upset by changes in plans, forget to hand in homework, delay starting effortful tasks, switch between tasks without finishing any, lose or misplace things, struggle to meet deadlines and set goals, and lack insight into their behaviour.

Factors which can make it harder to access our executive function include tiredness and sleep deprivation, dyslexia and more complex learning difficulties, neuro-developmental conditions like Autism and ADHD, environments which overwhelm our senses and create stress, one-off traumatic incidents and complex trauma as a result of Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Given their significance, difficulties with Executive Function can contribute to social, emotional and mental health difficulties if they are unsupported and children who are already vulnerable for any of the above reasons may experience a compounding of the challenges they face. It is therefore essential that we take time to understand what these issues look like for each individual and adjust parenting, schooling and community interventions accordingly.

Look out for my forthcoming blog –  Executive Function Skills (Part 2) for ideas on how to support children with these difficulties.

 

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch with us. Online therapy is available.

 

Additional resources –

  • UNDERSTOOD website: https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-disabilities/executive-functioning-issues/what-is-executive-function
  • The book  Why Can’t I Do That? A Book About Switches by Fi and Gail Newood is designed to help children understand what Executive Function skills are and how they link to everyday challenges.

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Helping children to ride the waves of big emotions

Quite a few people this week have asked me about tips for supporting children at times of high emotional stress (e.g. anger, rage or anxiety). For this reason, I thought I would share with you some generic pointers for parents that I use in clinic, but which could apply to most children. These are predominantly drawn from the principles of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), which you may have heard of.

1. When a child is calm, help them to understand that emotions (of any kind) are a bit like waves… they rise, they peak and they fall. They come and they go, but they DO eventually end.

2. When a child (or their parent) notices that they are starting to become distressed (or to ‘fall out of their window of optimum arousal’), they can be supported to try the TIPP approach:

T = TEMPERATURE
Helping a child to change their body temperature (e.g. by splashing the face with cold water or eating or drinking something cold) can help them calm, as the body naturally gets hotter when distressed or aroused.

I = INTENSE EXERCISE
Engaging in intense exercise to match the level of emotional arousal (e.g. star jumps or running) provides a healthy outlet for anxious tension. – Ideally this should be a rhythmic exercise as it is more likely to activate a child’s earliest neural pathways of feeling soothed from when they were rocked as babies.

P = PACED BREATHING
Slow breathing, concentrating on their breath and (importantly) breathing out for longer than they breathe in, helps children to regulate the bodies. This is because longer exhalation naturally slows their heart rate and activates the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS), which in turn helps the body to calm.

PAIRED MUSCLE RELAXATION
Supporting a child to tense and then relax parts of their body, supports muscles to release tension. Relaxed muscles require less oxygen, so heart rate and breathing naturally start to slow down.

3. Having a calm box – Supporting a child to develop a pre-prepared box of all their favourite textures, smells, photos, games, sensory toys, etc., can be a lovely way to start to talk about emotions with a child and help them to feel a sense of self-efficacy in managing their own emotions. As time goes on, a child might start to ask for their box before becoming overly distressed.

4. Parental matching of the affect – When a child’s brain is distressed, it regresses to a much earlier developmental form of itself, whereby it does not register language or logic in the same ways. For this reason, a parent needs to ‘match’ the emotional intensity of the child in their non-verbal behaviours (e.g. when a child is shouting: using a loud (but not angry) voice, using BIG physical gestures, maintaining intense eye contact, etc.). The very act of ‘mirroring’ a child to themselves helps them to feel held and contained. The parent can then gradually lower their voice and soften their gestures, which the child will match in turn. I think of this as ’emotional hand holding’.

5. Having a cuddle – Following an emotional outburst, close physical connection instigated by a safe adult, is one of the most soothing and regulatory activities to do with a child to bring them back into a state of optimum arousal. It also enables them to learn that no matter what they have done or said, they are still loved, which is so important for developing a secure and healthy attachment. Once they are physically and emotionally calm, you might then want to talk about the actual behaviour if this needs to be addressed, however, the key is…’Connection before Correction!’!

I hope that you find some of these tools helpful. It is of course important to note, however, that what causes (and maintains) emotional distress in children can vary hugely from child to child. It is also important to note that for some children, what causes and maintains their distress can be very hard to determine. In such cases, parents should feel empowered to seek professional advice regarding a targeted assessment of their children’s specific needs.

Happy surfing everyone…!

Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch with us. Online therapy is available.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

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