Full Mental Jacket: Chapter 5: Creating Safety.

Each human experience is unique, even identical twins don’t have exactly the same path. However, there are general patterns of how we psychologically deal with certain situations.

Many years ago, I read John Douglas’ book Mindhunter. He was the FBI agent who was probably the father of serial killer profiling. In the book he covers off certain risk factors that with some degree of certainty was what the killer would have experienced in their childhood.

These included being most likely to be a male and usually had a single parent and that parent was most likely the mother and that mother would usually be extremely strict on the child. She more than likely also shamed and humiliated that child. That child would then act out violently towards animals because they weren’t able to defend themselves against the mother.

There are obviously many other factors that ultimately leads someone to want to kill multiple people. But the point is, there are risk factors that can lead to a lot of our mental health issues and so the key is to try to limit the risk factors but at the same time we need to try to include as many of the success factors as we can and include those in our schools and at home.

That said not every child has a loving home or can be protected from bad things happening. Life simply is not fair and so when someone does end up depressed or suffering from mental health issues it is important that we utilise a number of strategies that helps address those thought patterns that has brought them to that point.

Just medicating someone is not enough because it does not address the root causes. There are various therapies, theories and strategies and I am not aligned specifically to one. I am of the view that different ones can work for different people, but the key is to get the person talking about it or at least be looking for ways to improve their situation. When someone gives up then it is a much more difficult, if not impossible prospect.

There is a lot more awareness initiatives such as RUOK day, but we need to address creating the safety to initiate these conversations with those we think could be at risk.

We actually need to show more bravery to have those conversations. As I have stated in previous instalments of this series, we need to develop that skill in our children, but we as adults too often feel fear of offending our friends, brothers and sisters by bringing up our genuine concerns. We need to take a look at ourselves and genuinely ask if we are worried about someone?

My view is better to do something than do nothing and then live with that regret. Courage comes in many forms but ultimately it is doing something when there is a feeling of fear when doing it. Suspecting a friend is at risk of suicide is a tough subject to bring up. So sometimes we simply accept when someone says they are ok but often it requires deeper conversations to get them to talk at that level.

Here are a couple of basic strategies you can ask them to do to make you feel more comfortable that they aren’t hiding what is really going on. I mentioned a "Thoughts Diary" in a previous post and highly suggest this as a starting point. You must emphasize that they need to be honest with themselves while doing the diary for 7 days.

All they need to do is carry a pen and notebook with them and record date and time when they have what they think is a negative thought about anything and put a single line about the thoughts subject.

That is all they need to do. The purpose is to get them to do analysis work which uses a different part of the brain and this can help breaking previous thought patterns. It also shows how much negative thoughts are popping into their heads and gives great insight about the content of their thoughts.

Next step is to ask them questions about what they saw in the thoughts diary and if there were any "aha" moments. Asking them these questions does a couple of things.

1. It gets them to reflect again and this is a Blue Brain experience which keeps Red Brain at bay.

2. It shows you care and this enhances developing the safety for them to open up more. This is what they mean when they say develop rapport. The only difference is I’m giving you ways to do it.

From there it is important to keep asking questions like a coach would ask them, what they can do rather than offer advice which we all like to give. Unfortunately, if they feel any hint of judgement then it invokes a defensive response which takes them back to Silence or Violence in the Dialogue Model.

Previous instalments.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/full-mental-jacket-series-chapter-1-clint-adams/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/full-mental-jacket-chapter-2-brain-counselling-clint-adams/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/full-mental-jacket-chapter-3-creating-resilience-clint-adams/

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/full-mental-jacket-chapter-4-inner-story-clint-adams/