Why First Impressions Count

Do you have a family member or friend who is starting a new school or encountering a new form teacher any time soon? This may be of interest to you.

I’d like to repeat something told to me by a teacher. “Make sure your child behaves him/herself for the first term at least. Otherwise, the teachers will have made up their mind about that child and their reputation will be carried on throughout their school career - and possibly influence their future prospects.”

I was shocked. I was disturbed by the idea that still-developing personalities could be judged on a comparatively short-term acquaintance in a strange and unfamiliar situation. And what I found particularly unsettling was that the teacher - part of a team of professionals who has so much power over young lives - did not seem concerned about the approach. 

Most of us know that we make judgments about one another in the blink - or even less - of an eye. That stems from way back when. Our reptilian brain - the amygdala - is on high alert in new situations to keep us safe from danger. It is the part of the brain that activates our fight, flight or freeze reaction and it is so fast to react that we are likely to be unaware of what is actually going on until we reflect on it moments afterwards. 

An example we’ve given before is of someone walking down the street looking at their smart phone, not concentrating and being unaware of the world around them. They come to a road and are about to step off the pavement when something stops them and they stand stock still. A moment later a bus goes by and they feel the rush of air as it passes centimetres (or inches if you are still on imperial measures) away. They are shocked. As they feel a rush of adrenalin and an extremely heightened sense of awareness, they think: “If I had stepped out …” 

The amygdala - their reptilian brain - has saved them. It is amazing and fantastic and astonishing to think that a part of our brain that has been here since we first arrived millions of years ago is still of vital importance to us. Vital, of course, in the truly literal sense of the word.

But (hu)mans cannot live by amygdala alone so, fortunately, we have the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex to complete the limbic system, and us.

What this means is the combined intelligence of the whole of our brain allows us to move from instinct through to emotions and memories (ie learning from experience) to reason, judgment, self-control or freewill and to manage the decision-making process. In other words, the whole emotional and reasoning experience that goes to make us a complete adult. I say “adult” because these parts of our brain develop as we mature - the prefrontal cortex will develop during adolescence and should be fully mature by the age of around 25.  

Let's return to the school teacher meeting a child for the first time. 

The child is likely to have mixed emotions because they are facing a new experience. Some may welcome it, some may be hesitant, some may be very resistant - however they are, there is every chance they will act different to how they might do in a situation to which they are used.  

Meanwhile, the teacher - while clearly an adult in a physical form at any rate - who may be more used to, and more understanding of the situation, is also going to experience his or her own complex emotions. 

It might be their first day in charge, they might be a last-minute stand-in, there could be unexpected trouble at home or, even, they are in a state of high excitement and can’t wait to meet the new intake. Whatever their emotional state, they will still make a judgment and it will still be instinctive and that judgment, so that teacher tells me, is very likely to stay with the child during their school journey.  

I know I'm talking about an initial meeting but imagine that initial impression being stretched out over the next few weeks. The child who is compliant, keen, eager to please, may be easier to like. The resistant child who is determined not to give of themselves no matter how hard the teacher tries is likely to find themselves "dismissed" more easily, leading to more resistance and so the pattern continues. And that is what made me so sad.

This blog, I hope, will give some understanding to both sides of what may be going on within, even when we are unaware. 

Perhaps parents and others taking children to a school for the first time could encourage their child (don’t frighten or threaten or the point is lost!) to understand the importance of first meetings and the impression they want to give. Urge them to give as good as they can, in every way. I'm not suggesting selling out their individual and precious souls but thinking about how they appear or how they might want to appear and see how the two can come closer together, if need be. The power, after all, is most likely with the teacher.  

And teachers, remember these are little people (teenagers, too, however big they appear) with a long way to go. They may have stuff in the background of which you are unaware. May I ask you to aim to work with all those parts of your mature brain before you judge and decide the worth of the child in front of you. Use your instinct, your emotions and your reasoned training wisely. How you react to that child over the course of the term may have a strong and influential effect on their future - either good or bad.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here that all of us would do well to learn.

By Lulu Sinclair

Photos of children in class: CDC on Unsplash

 

The Best of Us ... The Worst of Us

“It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.” The opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities, written by Charles Dickens in 1859, sound a strikingly familiar chord today.  

We have made extraordinary advances in science and technology but, at the same time, we have ruthlessly used and abused our environment, and we now find ourselves exposed to a global threat over which we have, as yet, no control.  

This has led an unprecedented level of fear at a universal level, and the way we respond to that fear will be critical in how well we survive the corona virus pandemic.

Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and the survival of the fittest have been interpreted by some as every man for himself.  But in fact, if we look at animals in the wild, and what we now know about the way trees communicate with each other, it is evident that survival is about looking after your community (the herd or the woodland) and that individuals are significantly more at risk if they act independently of each other and do not collaborate with their tribes.  

Those who have emptied the shelves of supermarkets to stockpile for themselves are at risk of setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they not only create the very shortage that they are anxious to avoid, but are also still vulnerable to contracting the virus and may have unwittingly deprived themselves of the very people they will need to look after them.  

There is a fundamental difference between a survival gene and a selfish gene, and unless we can all recognise and respect that we need to collaborate in order to survive, I believe we will exponentially increase our chances of causing our own destruction.  

While we have now been given strict orders from the Government as to how we should behave, specifically focused on what we should not do, I feel there has been little support or advice with regard to the mental health aspect of this epidemic. 

For those people with pre-existing psychological disorders  such as depression, addiction, anxiety etc, being isolated can feel very risky and, in some cases, is actively dangerous. 

The instruction to limit activity and freedom that the Government had to issue was not one that anyone wanted to hear, and it was predictable that there would be a wide range of reactions, ranging from denial to outright panic.  

Covid 19 is creating universal trauma

It threatened us all with being forced to radically change our normality on a daily basis while, at the same time, giving us no certainty of an outcome over which we had no control.  

These are conditions that are very difficult to manage and they needed to be presented in a way that understood that fear would be likely to provoke resistance. Uncertainty and lack of control creates an immediate need for structure and support. 

I believe it would have been helpful for a Government minister to have offered strategies to be put in place to help people manage on a daily basis. For example, it would be useful to explain how to maintain structure in our daily lives; (regular meal times, etc.); how to use the time that we are at home in a constructive way - learning a new skill, exploring new ways of contacting people and perhaps revisiting old friendships. 

Failure to give advice in these areas has left many people without direction or purpose and has provoked anger and rebellion among some and, in others, impotent despair. 

Fortunately, we have also seen very positive examples of people showing compassion and collaboration in supporting and reaching out to each together when, for the first time ever, we experience trauma on a universal basis.

This is a time, I believe, to take stock of our own choices and priorities and to question some of our decisions so that, going forward, we can perhaps, lead our lives in a way that is less driven by short term gain. 

We could also understand and show more awareness of the consequences of our behaviour so that, in the longer term, we can better care for the environment we live in. By doing that, we can learn to take better care of ourselves. 

By Sue Sutcliffe

Coronavirus official information  

Current statistics 

   

It's All About Trust

Discussions about “safe spaces” have become wider over the past two years or so.  The pros and cons of what they are and whether or not they should be available have been taken up enthusiastically in the media. 

Young adults, from students upwards, talk about “not feeling safe” and the conversation continues. At the extreme end of the conversation, some university students try to ban visiting contributors or lecturers who might want to discuss a different point of view. The argument, from the lobbyists, runs that the audience may feel “threatened” or “unsafe”, therefore any discussion should be curtailed. It could be seen as a way of blocking dissent. It seems effective.

Older adults may seem a little bemused by the idea of a “safe space”, wondering how anyone could imagine there is somewhere out there that is just such a place. 

As a counsellor, I understand the point of a safe space (I'm going to put the quotation marks to one side for the moment). I hadn’t heard of the expression until I went to college but it made sense straight away. 

Imagine a client comes to see a therapist because they want to talk about something involving their innermost feelings. It’s an awkward situation; they want to talk but they don’t know what to say or they are worried about being judged. Or it may be that they have little experience of listening therapy and do not know what they "can" or "cannot" say. That’s a worry on top of the worry that is bringing them to see a therapist.

One way a counsellor can help them to understand the process is to explain that the counselling room is a “safe space” ie what goes on in the counselling room stays in the counselling room. In other words – and taking into account legal and ethical requirements – what the client says to the counsellor will go no further. That means the client has a “safe space” to speak. And, hopefully from that, the therapeutic process can bring its own healing into practice.  

So, while I understand the safe space from a therapeutic point of view, I wonder if there’s been a bit of confusion between “safety” and “trust”.

In order to talk freely, we have to trust that the person listening to us is a person we can feel safe talking to – confidentiality is key. And we have to feel that that same person has knowledge, wisdom and a desire to do the best for us. In other words: Is this person trustworthy and can I trust them to look after my best interests?

Is it possible that the increasing calls for safe spaces within society are more about being able to trust those in authority over us, rather than a place where we can hide and be protected from the outside world?

 

Here in the UK, we have the chaos surrounding Brexit which seems to be having a powerful effect on all us, regardless of what outcome we want. Our leaders are locked in a bizarre dance about which we can do nothing. They are trapped and many of us watch on appalled as the “grown-ups” demonstrate they’re not really very grown up at all. They seem to have taken on the mantle of squabbling children and it’s really not what we’re used to. 

Then we have what’s going on outside the UK – the US’s ever-changing foreign policy, the suffering and fighting in the Middle East, global climate change and natural disasters – it’s hard to find a way round what could easily become catastrophic thinking. No wonder the younger members of society see threats everywhere.

Someone I know with a legal background has a specialist interest in parking tickets. After years of studying the law on this particular subject, the person discovered a parking company was acting unlawfully. They used their knowledge to help people appeal their tickets – and win –and eventually wrote to the Department of Transport to explain that companies working on behalf of the state were allegedly employing sub-companies that were not complying with the law. 

You’d expect – or I would – that, when given information and evidence about this, a government representative would investigate but, so far, they haven’t. That seems unfair. 

So, too, does the news that some of the people who mark our students’ exams, have been found to be marking them incorrectly. One examining body is going to have to pay out compensation for exactly this. Who would have thought you could study hard for an exam, go in, do your best and still fail because someone else was incompetent?

These are just two examples that come to mind of situations where you would expect those in authority to be looking out for people who need representation but it sadly seems as if they are not. And that might mean something is going wrong.

We learn pretty early on that life is not fair but we are also taught that those in charge of us are looking out for our best interests. When we begin to doubt such "certainties", we may become anxious. We may find ourselves questioning all sorts of beliefs we had not even thought about before. I have a hunch many of us feel those in authority are more likely to be looking after their own best interests, rather than ours.And that leaves many of us feeling unsafe. It's a strange and uncomfortable feeling, and not one that sits well with us.

I wonder if, instead of inter-generational disputes about the benefits – or not – of safe spaces, we might agree that something is not working well enough for any of us in the arena of trust. Maybe, if those in charge could begin to repair that, fewer of us would feel the need to demand so many safe spaces.

By: Lulu Sinclair

Photo by MILKOVÍ on Unsplash

Photo by Joël de Vriend on Unsplash

Photo by Marcin Nowak on Unsplash

Hyper-Vigilance - Time To Burst The 'Safety' Bubble

A recent study suggests pregnant women become “hyper-vigilant” towards the end of their pregnancy in order to keep their unborn baby as safe as can be.

The research from Anglia Ruskin University looked at peripersonal space – the individual sense space around a person – and tested how a woman reacts during her pregnancy. 

Scientists used audio-tactile testing to investigate how the part of the brain that is aware of personal space was affected as the pregnancy developed. They found that, while it was unchanged during the first two trimesters, the boundaries were expanded during the third trimester as the woman’s body stretched to accommodate her growing baby.

It is a fascinating revelation and it’s easy to understand why this would be the case; it makes absolute sense. The woman is on the watch for any danger to her developing baby; all her senses are on high alert; she is careful, wary and on the lookout for any threat. She has reverted to her animal instinct, using the part of her primitive brain – the amygdala – that deals with emotions and is responsible for alerting her to danger. 

So, for an expectant mother, being hyper-vigilant makes sense. There is a very clear point to it. 

But what about hyper-vigilance in other circumstances, when the need may not be there?

Hyper-vigilance was good for our ancestors who had to be ever-aware of their surroundings and what was going on that might be a threat to their survival. The amygdala was crucial to their survival skills. It gave them the instant fight, flight or freeze reaction that could mean the difference between life and death. 

It is useful still, as 96 Harley Psychotherapy’s founder Dr Robin Lawrence explained: “You're walking down the road reading your smart phone and in a world of your own. You’re not thinking about what’s going on around you and are about to cross the road, when, for some explicable reason you stop. And just as you come to a sudden halt at the edge of the kerb, a big red bus goes by. 

“If you’d stepped out, you’d have been badly hurt at the very least. As it is, you’re standing still with shock, your mouth’s dry, your heart’s racing and you’re not sure what’s happened. 

“But you’re all right. You’re alive. And that’s because of some deep-down warning system within – your amygdala – was was doing its job well and looking after your survival.”

So far so good, but now we come to the more difficult part. 

We no longer operate within the same world as our ancestors and, all being well, our survival skills should have expanded to incorporate a greater need for reasoning and understanding that we need to use in our modern world.

For this, we need the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain that works out the best reasoned and calm way to respond to a present situation.  

The pre-frontal cortex gets messages through the hippocampus – another key part of the brain connected with our emotions – the part of our brain that stores past memories and information and guides us towards our response. 

Interestingly, studies suggest people with anxiety problems – of which hyper-vigilance is one – have a smaller pre-frontal cortex than those living within a “normal” range of anxiety levels. 

The good news is that it develops with use so the more a person uses their reasoning and “in the present” thought process, the easier the process will become and the less reliance the individual will have on the amygdala and its impulsive response. 

Hyper-vigilance is believed to be connected with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a reaction to something that was perceived to have been terrifying, out of control and perhaps even threatening to a person’s life. For example,  imagine a soldier who’s been under fire in battle and remains forever stuck in that heightened sense of awareness, unable to move from that terrified state into a place of reasonable normality. 

It may indeed have been the case at a particular time for an individual or it may have been a childhood recall – accurate or not – when one’s very survival did literally depend on another person. 

So, if a person is hyper-vigilant as almost a “default” position, their response to life may in fact be detrimental to them, the opposite of what they are trying to achieve. If they are permanently on the lookout for trouble, they will be forever reacting emotionally, impulsively or inappropriately because they have not worked out what is the right way to react for the situation that is happening in the present, at this moment.

Hyper-vigilance carried into adult life is not a good idea. It has the potential for reverting us to a child-like state where we are a being full of emotion but have lost the reasoning skills that help us develop into fully-fledged thoughtful and capable adults. 

So, while we admire nature’s ability to allow an expectant mother to use the temporary hyper-vigilance qualities she is gifted to protect her baby, we need to remember that, on a permanent basis, it is no way to live. 

By Lulu Sinclair

Image of pregnant woman by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

Image of a highly alert meerkat by Manfred Richter from Pixabay  

When Living The High Life Gets You Down

The conviction of Anna Sorokin, the woman who conned New York’s high society into believing she was a German heiress, is a great story. If you’re a journalist, that is, rather than a psychotherapist or counsellor. In which case, it’s a very, very sad story.

Anna Sorokin – who went by the name of Anna Delvey – now faces up to 15 years in prison. She’s in her mid-20s and, if sentenced to the maximum term, the former lorry driver’s daughter will be saying goodbye to the remainder of her youth and, arguably, the best time of her life.

During the course of her New York trial, we learned that Anna invented herself through social media and amassed tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt in pursuit of her life of luxury. She was seen at the best parties; visiting the best places and having the best of times. And we know she was doing this because it was all fully documented via social media.

Except, while the events she attended were real, the person wasn’t. She was made up. And the money she spent was not her money; it belonged to others. 

So how did this happen? What sort of person is prepared to risk their liberty by living a lie “in plain sight”? What may be going on inside to feel the need to go to such lengths to be “out there” to be visible.

Anna, who was born in Russia and went to live in Germany from the age of 16, seems to have had a lot of nerve. She arrived in New York determined to live the dream and, as her defence lawyer explained: “Anna had to fake it until she could make it.”

I understand lawyers have to work with what they’ve got but I’m astonished at that defence and, in a way, that it’s no longer so astonishing. It’s almost looked on as an admirable quality, rather than one of which to be a little ashamed. 

Was Anna not simply doing what everyone else would have done if they could? Was she narcissistic with a sense of entitlement or was she delusional? Or was it none of the above, just a determination to be at the top of the capitalistic tree, where so many other people seemed to be having a good time. Could it be that our western society is collectively looking for a quick fix? 

In the comparatively few years since it started up, social media seems to have morphed from being a great way of connecting with people to something rather more insidious. People’s posts on Facebook are not inclined to suggest life isn’t that great - quite the opposite - and it’s almost as though someone’s living a parallel life. One exciting and vibrant on-screen while, off-air, life’s so much more mundane.

And, if observing your Facebook friends having so much more fun than you is not enough to make you feel a bit low, log on to Instagram where you’ll find even more to envy at just the swipe of the screen. Parties, pools, yachts, jewellery and glamour, glamour, glamour – it’s all there. 

No wonder Anna came up with her plan. And she’s not the only one. If you haven’t seen the Netflix documentary on the Fyre Festival that never was, I urge you to watch it. It’s a tale of how hundreds of young music-loving adults people were fooled into handing over great sums of cash for the experience of a lifetime that didn’t happen. Even those people who were unknowingly involved in setting up the “experience” were duped into believing it was possible. Unbelievable, and yet so believable at the time of happening.

What social media – with “old school” media playing catch up via digital means – has done brilliantly is tapped into our natural fear of missing out. Facebook and Instagram (other social platforms are available…) show the “other” doing something far more exciting than we are and, if we don’t take up the invitation, we’ll be missing out. We experienced it as children and were taught – either through good-enough parents or learning our own lessons – that it was not always so. Nowadays, we are being bombarded with images that tell us it WAS always so and if we’re not in, we are so definitely out, out, out.

It’s quite heartening, in a strange way, to discover we are not the “cool” and cynical people we imagine ourselves to be and we are capable of succumbing to our childhood state in which we accept unquestioningly.

Encouragingly, this herd mentality aspect of social media is now being questioned, with Danish psychologist Svend Brinkmann in his book, The Joy of Missing Out, encouraging people to disengage and live a more "moderate" life. 

Anna’s story is not new. People have conned – and been conned – throughout history. But the scam has usually only become known to a limited number of people. 

However, with the every-day prevalence of social media, what makes this so extraordinary is that you and your activities become known to millions. And, because of the huge influence (“influencers” is the term given to those people who make a living from their glamorous online postings) that social media has on our every day life, maybe it’s time we wised up. 

I once saw a keyring that said: “I’m not easy but I can tricked”. It made me smile. Maybe now's the time for a little less laughter and a bit more healthy scepticism.  

By: Lulu Sinclair

Photo by Elena de Soto on Unsplash

Don't panic: it's Mental Health Awareness Week

Did you know it's Mental Health Awareness Week? Don't panic if not; you have two more days to get your head around this year's theme, anxiety, now one of the most common mental health problems here and in the rest of the world.

The Mental Health Foundation (MHF) is a key driver of Mental Health Awareness Week and its growing success in reaching out to sufferers and those who support them is largely down to the work of organisations and individuals throughout the UK, who help by promoting the week, hosting events and generally spreading the word.

This year, the MHF has produced a series of eye-catching posters, an easy-to-read guide to anxiety and a report entitled Living with Anxiety, based on some excellent field work conducted in April 2014. This survey of 2,330 adults (aged 18+) was implemented online and results were weighted to render them representative of the British population as a whole.

'Anxiety' in the context of the survey was defined as 'feeling worried, nervous or uneasy', and some of the findings make for interesting and sobering reflection:

• Almost one in five people say they feel anxious a lot of the time or nearly all the time
• Almost half (45%) of people say that money/debt/financial problems are they main cause of anxiety in their lives
• Four in every ten people who are currently employed say they experience anxiety about issues associated with their work
• Young people (aged 18 to 24) were twice as likely to feel anxious about being alone as older people (aged 55+)
• Comfort eating is used by a quarter of people to cope with feelings of anxiety (most common in women and the young)
• The most commonly used strategies to combat feelings of anxiety are talking to a friend, going for a walk or taking physical exercise

These are just a few of the nuggets and the report will reward your efforts to delve a little deeper, specially if you are involved with the treatment of anxiety and related disorders.

Are we, then, more anxious as a nation than we have been in the past? The report suggests that this is certainly the belief of those who participated in the survey, who say that they are more anxious now than they were five years ago. But equally, their current identification with the condition may be a function of the level of awareness that now exists among the population - thanks to the work of organisations like the Mental Health Foundation and initiatives such as Mental Health Awareness Week.

Still, it would seem prudent to take a common sense approach to what the figures are telling us - if the results are to be believed, work and money are potent triggers for problems with anxiety. Could it be there's something important going on in society at large?

Written by Jacqui Hogan