Tag Archives: Anger

Defusing Anger in Relationships

Anger happens when, in some perceived way, we get a sense of a violation. A boundary that is crossed or a misalignment between someone else values compared to our own.

Sometimes these violations may be known to us – we may be aware of what angered us. At other times, the cause of the angry response may be outside of our conscious awareness. This is usually because the value that has been violated is a much deeper value. We tend to be aware of our surface values (such as trust for example) which makes it easy to spot why, when someone behaves in an untrustworthy way, we would take issue with it.

However, other values (for example significance) may be less conscious or may be values that we do not necessarily want to admit to having at such a high priority that should they be violated we would react with anger.

Some time ago, I was working with a woman who had come to see me at the NLP and Hypnotherapy Clinic in Hertfordshire. She had initially enquired about sessions of hypnotherapy, but as is often the case, we were able to resolve many of the challenges with anger in her relationship by way of NLP and CBT techniques instead.

The woman was frequently angry with her husband. They had at the start of their relationship been very loving towards each other but over the years she had come to resent him in some way and would fly off the handle very easily.

The husband would tolerate the snappy comments but every now and again, if she had been particularly provocative he would bite back and then a huge argument would begin.

Initially, I asked the woman about how her relationship was before the anger had crept in. Back then, she described her husband as a man who was always on the go. He seemed particularly energetic and had aspirations to start his own business. She felt that he was keen to impress her and that was where a great deal of his every had come from.

However, his plans to start his own business had gone out of the window, when they became pregnant with their first child. It seemed more sensible that he would take a promotion in his work instead.

Very soon their lives had transformed from an uncertain but adventurous future of starting their own business and carving out their lives together, to him going to work each day whilst she stayed at home looking after their child.

She became more dynamic as she ran the home and raised the child. He became exhausted by doing a job he did not enjoy. She began picking up the slack and doing more to make up for his lack of lust for life.

As this happened, unconsciously she began to think that his feeling toward her had changed. He no longer felt free and excited about the future and it appeared that the energised behaviour that he had previously had (which she had taken to mean he wanted to impress her) was gone. When she became more active and enthusiastic in her life he began to feel redundant in the dynamics of their relationship – as if he were no longer needed.

His response was to withdraw and hers was to attempt to jolt him into action with shocks of spikiness. Neither technique worked and this is why they both ended up getting so angry with each other.

Finding new and effective ways to respond to each other, change the balance in the relationship, show respect and appreciation and re-motivate each other was just one of the strategies we explore at the hypnotherapy Clinic. Finding out what you value most in your relationship and how those values may be getting violated is often the best way to diagnose the cause of anger in relationships and an NLP Practitioner would be able to help you to do this.

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk

How to Raise Mental Health Concerns

I’m going to be talking to you about how to express if indeed you should express to someone else that you think they’ve got a problem with their mental health. When I say ‘if indeed you should’ there are some things that we don’t flag up with other people and there are some things that we don’t raise the issue with them. For example, even if you are clinically qualified to do so you don’t tell your friend that you think that they’re autistic. We don’t go there, that’s something that somebody needs to find out as a result of deciding to go on a journey themselves. This is not your place to just kind of randomly throw into the conversation even if you think it’s for their benefit.

Here’s the very first thing that is super important before we even consider sitting down with someone and having a bit of a chat with them. Firstly, has something changed? I don’t mean do we know something in their life has changed. I mean in terms of these new behaviours, reactions and emotions that they’re displaying; these things that are troubling us about this person – is it different to how they used to be before? 

If it’s not, then actually we might not have a problem they might just be a bit quirky and a bit odd because those people do exist. If you notice that the person you’re concerned about has changed that there has been a notable change in how they are thinking, how they are behaving or how they are feeling then we’ve got grounds to proceed.

If it’s not those things maybe they’re not the one with the problem maybe it’s you, you know, maybe it’s your thinking that has changed about them but not necessarily them that’s changed and sometimes that happens in life. Sometimes we have a relationship with someone and the stuff that never used to bother us about them suddenly starts really annoying us and then it suddenly seems like they’re annoying us on purpose but they’re not they’ve always been that way but your tolerance levels have changed so if it’s that we don’t need to talk to them about it we need to work on our own problems, with our own tolerance levels and decide whether or not we still want this person in our life that’s a different thing but when the change has happened in the other person and it is having a significant impact on how they are thinking, behaving or feeling then we need to start thinking about sitting down with them, having a conversation and saying ‘I think there might be a problem here’ and having a look at it together.

From establishing that ‘yes, something has changed’ only then can we start thinking about how do we actually approach this interaction with them and have this further conversation with them. My first suggestion is that no matter whether this is an employee or a family member you start by keeping notes. You’re going to have to start keeping some evidence because if this is a relative that you’re concerned about and you maybe are going to end up being the person who accompanies them to the doctors at some stage and so to be able to have some history around when this has started and what’s been happening, what sorts of incidents you’ve noticed is going to serve you really well. 

You need to be keeping records of what’s going on with this person that you care about so that in an attempt to get them the right treatment you’ve got as much information as possible. One of the things that are really difficult with mental illness is describing your symptoms because you only see life from your own perspective and particularly when people get frightened about their mental health they’ll really downplay what their symptoms are or brush things off to one side or if they’re suffering from something up that higher end of the mental illness spectrum they might actually forget stuff that they’ve ever done.

Where possible I would suggest using the softening phrases when approaching another person: ‘I feel like that’s not the way you used to behave,’ ‘I feel like it’s not okay to treat people like that’ or ‘I feel like you’re not looking after yourself very well at the moment. In using such phrases, it’s like you’re taking responsibility for what you’re seeing and experiencing and not just being blaming and putting it all on them. I feel softening frame can work really well and generally just think about your language and the softening frames that you might be using.

The other thing that is really useful to do which the police do all the time where they interview a suspect. The police tell the suspect that the questioning is just to rule you out from our enquiries so that phrasing around this is to rule out anything else is something that I have learned to use a lot both with my mom and with the clients that I see where I suspect that the mental health issue or illness that they are experiencing is beyond the realms of my reach and I want them to get treatment but it’s not going to be with me. 

One of the frames that you can use here is to say I’d recommend going to the doctor just to rule out anything else and then I’ll often suggest something quite low level that’s not particularly terrifying or treatable but would also help to put the like to kind of get them into the system and to get whoever it is that they end up engaging with exploring other things. For example, if you have someone with anxiety then you could recommend that they go to see their GP just to rule out. If someone has a long-term sleep problem then you could say to them, you know, it’s probably worth talking it through with your GP or a counsellor just to rule out the fact that there’s something else playing on your mind, that’s interfering with your sleep patterns. If someone is showing some signs of some more mental health illnesses it’s worth going to your doctor to get a urine check because sometimes with certain urine infections it can cause your brain to start tripping out and working in a different way. 

I can suggest for you as the carer, as the employer or as the facilitator of getting the ball rolling on having this issue explored, for whoever it is in your life, that currently has a problem is that you are really brave about it because it can be a thankless task to undertake. It can also be incredibly stressful because you might see what is best for them but they may not see it for themselves. It might feel as if you’re kind of like going at it alone in some ways but when you do get them on the right track when they do get access to the help or the treatment that they need then you can give yourself a pat on the back and know that you did the best that you could.

Don’t underestimate the impact that things like stress, anxiety and depression can have on a person. Some things that might seem to be much more severe mental health issues actually just boil down to either stress, anxiety or depression or a combination of the three of them in some way and these can really change a person’s personality and they are recoverable so where you can support people in accessing the treatment that they need getting on the right path so that they can begin to live a healthier, happier life going forward with your assistance there by their side.

I hope that this was a useful and interesting one I know it’s the stuff that might not be relevant to you at this exact moment in your life but trust me if you ever interact with another human being at some point in the new or distant future you’re going to need this stuff because of everybody has a mental health issue at some point in their life and with the ageing population that we have, we’ve got more and more people that are going to be prone to mental illnesses and neurological issues later on in life so we need to know how to have these conversations knowing that they probably won’t be comfortable but facing up to them anyway.

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

The Question ‘Why’ in Dealing with Annoying People

At the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire, I help clients to control their emotions and language in dealing with annoying people. Since the pandemic, lots of you have been working in a different way. Some of you may have noticed that the people within the office have been acting a bit differently because of the circumstances and effect of the covid the past year. You’ve perhaps got a partner a home now that you weren’t used to having around and you now notice how annoying that can be to have them around the house every day! Some of you have had your kids there, maybe, you’ve discovered that your children are actually quite annoying.

I’ve been inspired by Brianna Wiest who has written an article called ‘ways to deal with people who annoy the crap out of you’. I particularly like that title and this is from the thought catalogue they do have an app. I’m going to kind of use some of those points that have been mentioned in the thought catalogue. 

First of all, I am going to make a recommendation to you that you start to just slightly change your focus now. Very often, what can happen when we’re dealing with annoying people is that we focus an awful lot on the ‘what it is about them that’s so freaking annoying’ instead of the actual things that they do and we get down into the sort of nitty-gritty detail about the specific ways in which they do it, like the ways in which they do that annoying thing. You are putting your time and your energy and like just your thinking energy which is really valuable. You’re putting it into that annoying problem and it solves absolutely nothing. 

In the past, you may have heard of me mention the reticular activating system. This is something in your brain and it works like a radar so that whatever you’re thinking about and focusing on it draws more of that into your consciousness.

Something that I do in sessions with clients at the Hypnotherapy and NLP Clinic in Hertfordshire is I’ll get them looking around the room saying the word ‘red’ to themselves. We call it the ‘Red Test’ at NLP4Kids. This works with adults and children. You get them looking around going red, red, red, red, and their brain gets tuned in to all the red stuff that they can see in the room or the red that’s here is just like bolder than everything else and then you say to them. If you ask them to tell you about all the blue stuff in the room, their minds are ‘blank’ because they hadn’t been looking for blue. Here’s the thing –  if that thing that annoys you about someone is like the red stuff, in that, you are constantly talking to yourself about it and like seeing it. If they’re doing it again and getting tuned into it then you’re going to end up seeing it everywhere. It’s going to feel like, it is, if not more consistent in the regularity at which it shows up.

One of the things that you can do is notice the blue stuff. Pick something that you can tune into and it doesn’t have to be something about that person, that annoying person but it could be so that it starts to divert your focus away from the annoying aspects onto something else and you get that reticular activating system working in a way that gets you to tune into more helpful stuff instead.

I’m going to share with you how I utilize the strategy I’ve just given you of going from red to blue with someone in a real-life scenario. We are going to stop focusing on the ‘why’ why do they do it, why do they do this annoying thing and why would they choose to do that. Here’s the thing when we think about anything in the format of a ‘why’ it doesn’t help you to come up with helpful answers. Let me give you an example, when we ask the question ‘why do they do that freaking annoying thing?’ or anything else that starts with a why it often gets us looking backwards into the past and negatively. 

If you ask yourself ‘why do they have to chew so loudly’? or something like that what that’s going to force your brain to do is to look back into the past to your memories, experiences and interactions with that person when they were doing that annoying thing. and if anything, if you’re going to come up with answers to that question like the answers typically speaking probably, won’t be all that favourable to them. They’re not going to be all that positive.

These actions are going to cause you to into a negative emotional state of annoyance all over again. One because you started reflecting back on times in the past where they’ve been doing that annoying thing and then you’ve gone and got yourself like when we recall stuff. When we recall certain memories they will trigger us back into the emotional state that we were feeling back at that time. If you think back to a time in the past when someone annoyed you; you can expect that your body is going to get a little tensed up or that your breathing is going to go a little bit squiffy or that you just start noticing negative emotions that you did not want to have again. 

Therefore, asking ‘why’ is bad for that reason but the other thing as I say is not just that it causes you to sort of reflect but it causes us to come up with answers to that why question which is most likely to be negative so unless you’re really checking yourself, like unless you’re being really conscious of the responses to that question if you just kind of like flippantly like go ‘oh I don’t have to be so annoying’ then your brain has a tendency to go well because they’ve never been taught good manners and to chew their food with their mouth shut because they like sitting close to you and seeing the look on your face when they make those chomping noises and it will come up like your own mind will come up with a list of really unhelpful reasons to answer that ‘why’ question so that’s why you shouldn’t ask why either of yourself or with anybody else.

In next month’s article, we will continue to focus on some tips and guidance in dealing with annoying people in your lives. 

By Gemma Bailey 

www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Using NLP to Get rid of Anger

The best thing about NLP is the way in which one can covertly weave it to an everyday focus and conversation and spin it into something more resourceful. You can talk to people and be NLPing them, without them even knowing it is happening.

I was out with a friend of mine in Hertfordshire, North London who had recently separated from her boyfriend. We knew that on this particular evening out, there was the possibility of bumping in to the ex-boyfriend so she was in a bit of a wound-up state. As we sat with our bottle of wine in the pub, a song came on in the background as my friend began to tune into it aware of the familiarity of it, she started to cry. Through the blubs and wales she explained that it had been their song – her and the ex-boyfriend’s and that she still loved him so much. It’s a good job I’m an NLP therapist and not a counsellor because sympathy just isn’t my thing. I reached over and touched her on the shoulder and said “It’s all going to be fine and I am sure he was an idiot anyway.”

This was closely followed by a snot-filled rage in which she exclaimed how she couldn’t believe how he had treated her, how could he do this etc and how much she hated him.

When this stage kicked in I quickly withdrew my comforting hand. Those of you who know NLP would have identified that I had accidentally anchored her melancholy state to her shoulder. You might think this was a bad thing. The truth is it would have been if I had not utilised it resourcefully later on. Really, I should skip the part where I tell you that this all happened by accident, and make out this entire event happened completely on purpose as a result of my marvellous skill set, but that wouldn’t be totally true!

Later on, we went to a Hertfordshire night club and guess who showed up? At this moment in time, there were several reactions she could have gone for and I thought she might go for blubbering wreck but to my surprise and his she launched into straight into snot-filled rage.

As she catapulted herself towards him, I spotted an expression in his face. In NLP we like to be very clear about the difference between a sensory observation and a hallucination. A hallucination is when you think you know what you have seen in the other person. The sensory based observation of the ex-boyfriend was this: His eyes widened. His jaw lowered. His skin tone became more pale. His forehead began to sweat. He became short of breath. The hallucination of what I saw, I will call ‘man having fear of ex-girlfriend’.

At this moment I grabbed her shoulder, yes, the same one as earlier and said something like: “I know that this isn’t the real feeling you are feeling towards him, isn’t it?” The snot-filled rage fizzled and vanished and the melancholy of earlier returned, though without the crying.

They had a conversation about staying friends and it was all okay. When she popped to the loo a little later he came over and spoke to me. He said: “I have no idea what strange therapy you did to her but you did something. She was ready to kill me and you diffused her somehow. How did you do that?”

At that point I realised what I had done. I realised I really could help others using NLP.

 

By Gemma Bailey
www.hypnotherapyandnlp.co.uk

Releasing Disappointment

Disappointment is one of those feeling that we all experience but fail to discuss as much as other more (seemingly) significant emotions such as anger, stress and anxiety.
It may be because emotions like humiliation and disappointment tend not to be crippling. Life still goes on in spite of them, but they cast a bit of a cloud over what might be a perfectly happy human.

Disappointment tends to bring with it feelings of sadness and failing. It can have undertones of anger and bitterness and has the potential therefore to be a very complex emotion.

Often, though not always, disappointment brings with it a continual whirring or ‘what if’s’. If only things had been different. Returning to what might have been is what creates the stuck-ness that disappointment has and it cannot really be overcome until someone is ready to put a greater degree of energy and focus into what will happen next than they are currently putting into what might have been.

Living in the past rarely serves us unless it is to learn from the mistake we made and to make contingency plans for how we will be better prepared in a similar situation in the future.

Essentially, once the driving process of what might have/should have been has passed, the only way to really move on is by asking (and answering) the question:

“What are you going to do about it? How can you be ready for what happens next?”

Some of you reading may be old enough to remember the old BT adverts with Maureen Lipman in the late 80’s. In one such advert she calls her grandson to find out about his exam results. They are not as good as his grandmother would have wanted. You see the disappointment flash across her face and you can hear it in his voice too as he recites each subject he took and each one a failed exam.

Finally she says “You didn’t pass anything?”

“Pottery” he replies with a sigh.

It would have been a fleeting “What can he do about it?” thought that causes her to respond with: “Pottery? Very useful! People will always need plates. Anything else?”

“And sociology.” He responds glumly.

“An Ology? He gets an Ology and he thinks he’s failed! You get an Ology and you’re a scientist!”

As she continues to reassure him you see his eyebrows lift as he begins to consider that his grandmother might have a fair point in what she is saying.

Releasing disappointment doesn’t just come from finding ways to make the best of what you have or what you are left with. It also comes from being honest about what you’ve got and creative about what you chose to do with it next. It might also be a case of forgiving and deciding to set the bar in a different place to where your prior expectations had previously thought it could go.

Recover first, then make a plan for moving forward and make that plan have multiple prongs that can safeguard you from having the same sort of disappointment again in the future.

By Gemma Bailey
www.HypnotherapyandNLP.co.uk