I once worked with John, a client whose life and career had been blighted by an experience from his schooldays, writes Sarah Litvinoff

He had been severely bullied by a group of girls. The misery this had caused him was compounded by shame - after all, they were only girls.

He became a fearful adult, who considered himself a wimp, stuck in a job he hated because he didn’t have any belief in his abilities to have something better, or a sense that he even deserved it. He thought about this bullying often, several times a week.

Some therapies are based on the theory that it is the memory of incidents such as these that determine how they affect us, rather than the events themselves. Our memories encapsulate a moment in time, and, indeed, a moment from our own particular perspective at that time, with all the thoughts, fears and biases we held back then. 

There was an advertisement some years back that showed a black man running at an old lady. I can’t remember what was being advertised, or even the exact details. But in essence shown from one view it looked as if he were a mugger. Then it was shown from another perspective, which revealed he was rushing to move her out of the way of a speeding car. Our own memories are like this. We see them from our own narrow viewpoint. And not only that, as we replay them, imbued as they are with the significance we have attached to them, they become even more powerful, more invested with the feelings we associate with them. In fact they are like mini films which we run over and over again, never changing. That’s fine when they are happy memories, but cause pain and dysfunction when they are unhappy. 

As a coach I don’t work therapeutically on a deep level with clients, but I do offer experiments — ideas to try that might make a difference. I told John about this theory and suggested that the next time this memory came to him he played around with it, as if he were a film director. Instead of allowing the film to unfold in the usual way, he was to step in and make changes. He could do anything: he could react in a different way, the girls could change their behaviour. He could choose to make fantastical, surreal things happen, or change it into a comedy. He could become a superhero, or vanish — whatever he wanted. 

John did this, and the effect was quite extraordinary, much better than I’d even hoped. He reported that the simple act of taking control of the memory, only the once, actually took all the power out of it. The girls suddenly just seemed like little girls, and he felt differently about himself. He went on to make massive changes in his working life. As he wrote to me at the end of coaching: “The main gains have been in energy level, self confidence, and an improved view of myself in the world.” 

Subsequently, one client who couldn’t look at her wedding photos without weeping because of the things that went wrong, found after a similar experiment that she was able to look back on the day with joy, and another client who was still traumatised four years later by the difficult birth of her daughter was able to make peace with what happened and move on. 

I too have used the method with one particular memory from my early childhood which had haunted me. In this instance I imagined myself as an adult back then, cuddling the little child that I was and giving her reassurance. Such a simple thing, but the memory has never disturbed me in the same way again. 

COACHING WITH SARAH

http://www.sarahlitvinoff.com

'In the business of bringing out your best.'

 

Got something you want to share? Upload it at 'Send Us Stuff'.