Conflict - Living in fear and Pre-empting a situation.

Is it possible to pre-empt a situation occurring and be fully prepared for it? I think you cant really do this 100% of the time. It's a bit like imagining how you would cope with every imaginable scenario with your marriage before deciding to marry – its just not possible. So what can we do? Well if we can be as honest as possible with ourselves, be as prepared as we can be, be as open as we can be then if something unexpected comes along, then we can take it in our stride.

This does require a bit of psychology education though, so we can quickly read a situation and therefore be able to respond to it automatically in a positive helpful way. This also requires a value system, what I mean here is that we need to have a basic understanding and acceptance of what people are, what their needs and wants are, what their beliefs are.

There is always an element of fear involved too because we fear being physically or mentally abused because it 'hurts' and we want to avoid pain. Some people think of F E A R as meaning False Evidence Appearing Real. When you are prepared emotionally and physically then there is nothing to actually fear. To illustrate all of this I remember once in a unit I worked in, a large kid was shouting, swearing spitting and swinging his fists, hitting and kicking. My heart was racing but I recognised that if I was to go in there meeting rage with rage then we have 2 rages which isn't very helpful. In order to dissipate the situation I had to get into his 'space' so I went in there and face to face I consciously mirrored or copied his breathing rate with eye to eye contact after 6 or so breaths I gradually slowed mine down and he copied me until we were both sitting down in an embrace. Now had I not known a bit of NLP I wouldn't have been aware to do this – so that was psychology knowledge. Also had I not believed that this was a very special precious individual then I wouldn't have the respect or love for him. It also doesn't work all the time but it did diffuse that situation, no respect was lost it was all very nicely and appropriately addressed.

In order to make long term progress it is important to capitalise on these situations (this was taught to me by a hypnosis trainer). The situation above was an excellent opportunity to do some work with this kid in order to help him change his reaction behaviour. Immediately after this emotive episode when we were sitting down he was in a state which had occurred many many times in his life before, so I acknowledged that it must be very difficult for him to deal with this situation earlier this year when such and such happened, and we spoke about a similar thing happening in the recent past, he was sobbing, I had genuine compassion with him and took him back to when he was a kid and he was told by an adult to do something and how he reacted and how difficult it must have been and felt for him at that time. Now this was taking him back to when he was a little boy. He acknowledged this was true and sobbed in agreement, almost re-living the episode. Then I offered a different response he may have adopted at that time and because all his defences were down he would accept my suggestion and imagine a different outcome way back when he was a kid. I would then take him to a more recent episode and suggest what would have happened if he had adopted this new response for that too. All of which showed a positive outcome. It is very important to clothe all these scenarios in lots and lots of emotion using phrases like 'feel how uplifting and empowering that made you feel' ' it made you feel you were being listened to' 'you knew that it was fair' etc etc. What this does is instil new behaviour patterns so that if this is done frequently enough, when a similar situation happens, then this kid will 'automatically' respond differently and deal with the situation in a more productive way instead of lashing out.

When you have all the carers with the same beliefs, attitudes, expectations and desires then you have a truly transforming atmosphere where all can grow and develop. This may sound an utopian idea but it only needs an attitude of learning and a genuine heartfelt desire to try and offer a little positive experience in others lives. Although it is dealing with very raw emotion it is a beautiful opportunity to learn and grow. Those times in our lives when we experience the most sorrow, despair and pain are often the times when we learn the best lessons.