be hurt by such knocks and the rate at which it will recover may vary, but we all know about the pain (and inconvenience!) that a loss of confidence brings. I doubt if even the most meticulous genetic engineering of personality traits and idyllic lifestyle would ever be able to offer guaranteed protection.
| WHAT CAN HELP YOU • loving yourself • knowing yourself • skilful behaviour • optimism • genuineness WHAT CAN HINDER YOU • powerlessness • sexism • guilt • stereotypes • blame |
Changing Ourselves and Our World
Is Change Really Possible?
Yes, some ‘human leopards’ can – and do – change their spots! And the change no longer has to take a life-time. Advances in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy during the past 50 years have been immense. Today, we understand better than ever before how personalities are formed and sustained and we have developed relatively quick methods of enabling people to change their behaviour and feelings, if they wish to do so. The process of changing may not always be easy but it is invariably exciting and challenging, especially if we feel involved and in control of the operation ourselves!
Can We Change on Our Own?
Yes, and even if you do choose to get some help, you will still be doing at least 90 per cent of the work yourself! Self-help is the key to modern methods of helping people to change. That is not to say that professional therapists, like myself, have inadvertently worked ourselves out of a job! It’s just that our role and focus have changed. We aim to work in partnership with people. We try not to stand on pedestals, as symbols of perfect mental health. We allow ourselves to be seen as ‘real people’ with all the failings and imperfections which seem to go hand-in-hand with being human. We do not want to hide our knowledge and skills behind a cloak of mystique; we want to share these and admit our limitations.
Good therapy or counselling is not something that we passively receive and feel grateful for, it is two (or more) people working experimentally, and in partnership, towards a goal which we have set for ourselves, using techniques which we fully understand and have control over.
Another alternative is to join – or create – a self-help group. You can use this book and others, such as those recommended in the suggested Further Reading on here, to help you organize yourself.
Whichever method you use you can be sure that the self-help approach will prove to be a confidence booster in itself!
How Long Will It Take?
This will vary from individual to individual. For some people, six months may be all it will take to change some habits and regain their confidence. Others may take several years to reach the stage where they truly believe in their own worth. But starting the process can in itself be confidence-boosting. And once you start this kind of work on yourself, you will experience a steady increase in confidence. Until you start the process of change, it is often difficult to predict just how long it will take. I often say that one of the best aspects of my job is that it is never boring; I am constantly being surprised. It seems that the more people I meet and work with, the less inclined I become to make predictions about anyone’s potential for change and development – and that includes my own! Each person’s problem has an individuality of its own and this is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to produce enough scientific evidence to convince the sceptics that therapy is effective.
How Can We Begin to Change?
I have identified seven essential ingredients for any successful confidence-building programme, and they are as follows:
• Belief – We must trust that it is possible to change
• Motivation – We must need or want to change
• Insight – We must understand ourselves and our behaviour
• Goals – We must make sure these are our own and are realistic
• Practice – We must spend time and energy rehearsing new behaviours
• Support – We must get encouragement
• Reward – We must be able to feel the benefit of our hard work.
Let’s now consider each of these in some more detail.
ACQUIRING BELIEF
You could take yourself to the library and look up, in the various psychological and therapeutic journals, research studies on the subject of confidence-building, or it might be more rewarding to listen to, or read about, the personal experiences of other people who have overcome problems.
My Own Early Childhood
I had the kind of childhood destined to drain the confidence out of any man, woman or beast. Because of my mother’s alcoholism, I spent the majority of my childhood years in a series of children’s homes. As the eldest of the family, I was a ‘big girl’ and often felt responsible for the care of my brother and sister. Even as a very young child, I can remember sensing the desperate needs of the family and I tried to work out ways of coping. I quickly learned to assume an air of confidence and optimism which masked my own fears and craving for reassurance.
There were many occasions when my attempts to look after myself and my brother and sister were laughed at by adults. Some of the things which I did must have looked pretty funny to any outsider. For example, when I was about seven, and was alone in the house with my younger brother and baby sister, I attempted to make dinner for my sister, who was screaming with hunger. As I was standing on a chair beside the cooker, boiling some unscrubbed, and, presumably, very dirty potatoes, the door was broken open by the police. A social worker came to the kitchen door, burst into laughter when she saw what I was doing, and called the policemen, who also laughed.
Needless to say, my sister was quickly taken from my care and I stood by and silently watched her being placed in a nursery. My brother and I were taken to an even larger, even more impersonal institution, which has no nostalgic happy memories for me.
Our lives continued to be chaotic for very many years to come. Statutory child care, in those days was certainly far from ideal. We were generally bullied and often physically intimidated and abused. The way we were dressed alone indicated to the world that we were second-class citizens. Only occasionally were we taken from this lifestyle to spend some weekends and holidays in the contrasting gentility of my father’s middle-class, professional family. We were ‘odd-balls’ wherever we were, but we learned to be grateful for the small mercies.
