Do you have a ‘sense of agency’? Use it!

One of the privileges of working with lots of different organisations is that I get to pick up subtle shifts in their conversational focus and thus build a picture of how the workplace is changing. As part of the increased attention to employee-wellbeing over the last decade, ‘Resilience’ has been hogging the limelight – and rightly so – just in time to deal with the onslaught of things that we have needed to be resilient about!

As the challenges continue to mount, there is growing recognition that we can’t just hunker down until the old world is restored. That’s not going to happen. I am hearing mutterings of concern mixed with impatience and frustration. Dare I say…it might be time to move beyond work/life balancing, being reflective and mindful, and come back to the reality that work is a significant, and necessary part of our lives. It is a major part of what it means to be us – giving meaning, purposeful activity, social interaction and fulfilment. We literally need it!

A ‘sense of agency’ is defined in the psychological literature as “a feeling of control over actions and their consequences” (Moore 2016). It is the sense that you are the author of your life, your actions, and your thoughts and that this enables you an impact on external events and people around you.

During the past 2 years our freedom and choices have been heavily restricted by COVID. At the same time there have been civil liberties incidents and debates, a rise in conspiracy theories about societal control, censorship and surveillance, and a reduction in freedom of movement and travel – with many even working in ‘touchfree’, access-controlled offices. The behavioural and psychological implications of perceived lack of choice and control are well documented – not least in the literature surrounding prisoner of war camps during the Second World War. It does not bode well for post-pandemic recovery – particularly if we don’t balance compassion with accountability.

I was coaching a client yesterday who had a serious road accident during the pandemic. We were talking about getting back on the bike and the sense of safety whose loss was inhibiting this.

Psychological safety has come up repeatedly during my work over the last two years – but generally with an onus on employers creating conditions of psychological safety for their staff. We need to be encouraging, enabling and at times cajoling individuals to re-take ownership and let’s face it, JOY in their own ability to influence the world around them. Whilst lockdown allowed (even forced) people to step back from accountability and to lead a more relaxed life, many are struggling with the desire to step back up and hold the reins….and many businesses desperately need them to! LIFE needs us all to. The recipe for long life is intertwined with purposeful engagement and interaction.

I encouraged my biking client to add a post-it to her laptop urging her, in her cycling and her work to “JFDI”. She didn’t need to reflect, consider, stay safe, ask permission. She could decide…and act. She sent me a photo later of her out on the bike and smiling from ear to ear ;-). “It wasn’t easy” …she tells me, “but I did it!”

How many of your people are waiting to be given permission, expecting to be asked, ready to be required to re-engage, to stretch themselves, to take action and agency once more?

I will be running a short, educational, interactive, exploratory, and most importantly FREE session on Building Agency in the next few weeks. If you would like to know more, to explore what it might mean for you and your business, or you’d simply like to be part of the discussion, please do get in touch.

http://www.changingdialogues.com – racheljackson@changingdialogues.com

The Inner Sense of Interoception

Every so often a piece of knowledge I have sought out to help me in my parenting becomes front of mind in my work. In August, it was an article in the Guardian by David Robson entitled “Interoception: the hidden sense that shapes wellbeing”.

I found out about interoception (which my spellcheck is determined to reset to ‘interception‘) whilst trying to understand my son’s struggles to regulate his behaviour at school. Bright, sociable and empathetic, his autism shows up in his frustrations with others, his aggressive outbursts and his continual distraction from task.

As a baby I would have to remove anything from his immediate vicinity that could be in any way interesting in order for him to submit to sleep and even in near clinical conditions he would still struggle to drift off. It was when he was a toddler that we started to notice that his behaviour would worsen significantly when he needed to go to the loo, or was hot…or cold…or hungry – and it wasn’t until he was 8 and I was reading furiously to try to understand how to help him socially, that I came across the term interoception and things started to click into place.

Interoception is the perception of the internal state of one’s body – awareness of heartbeat, balance, blood pressure, breathing, digestion, muscle tension. It is gathered by tiny sensors throughout the body and sent to the brain to enable us to regulate our bodies effectively. There is increasing evidence to suggest impairment in this network of sensors, or in it’s communication with the brain, in those on the spectrum.

Where it gets even more interesting is when you read on to find that the sensors picking up temperature, heartbeat, muscle tension etc etc…are also clues to how we perceive emotion. We recognise, identify and even differentiate our emotional experiences based on these interoceptive messages coming from our bodies. When our heartbeat races, we feel anxiety. When our skin tingles we might feel fear, or excitement. Interoception has a huge part to play in our ability to identify, regulate and manage our emotional state. In fact impairments in interoception are one of the fundamental mechanisms implicated in Alexithymia – a disorder characterised by difficulties in recognising and reporting on one’s own emotions.

For my son, this means that the end of almost every movie is characterised by rolling around, kicking out and constant movement. The muscle tension we feel in the emotional climax of the story – which we might call sadness, or excitement, or fear, he experiences as a desire to move – something he calls “fidgetysilly” – and it makes him intensely anxious because he knows his behaviour is potentially inappropriate, especially in a cinema!

Interoception is now one of the fastest moving research areas in neuroscience. Prof Manos Tsakiris, a psychologist at Royal Holloway, University of London talks of “a constant communication dialogue between the brain and the viscera”.

The vast majority of this dialogue occurs at a physiological level – not only below conscious awareness but in advance of any sense of emotion – essentially a pre-cognitive awareness. It’s only as the brain begins to interpret these messages into emotional signals that we experience what we might call a ‘feeling’ which may then inform our choices and behaviours.

Scientists are now recognising how interoception underpins our ability to problem solve effectively, to intuit and empathise, to plan and to think creatively. Within that continual chatter between body and brain are vital clues to help us monitor both our mental and physical wellbeing – from maintaining our focus and motivation, to responding appropriately to challenges from our colleagues; from building confidence to take risks, to managing stress and anxiety at work; from the amount of water we drink daily, to the number of breaks we take or the way we sit at our desks.

So paying attention to message from our inner sensors is critical – research on depression suggests that those suffering from low mood are poorer at detecting changes to their own heartbeat, perhaps explaining that sense of emotional numbness and de-personalisation associated with the condition. But alas it’s not quite as simple as that; patients identified with anxiety are fully aware of their own heartbeat changes – but where tuning in should support their mental health, they often amplify these changes and ‘catastrophise’ their significance – seeing a small change in heartbeat as bigger than it is.

So how do we flex our ‘interoceptive muscles’ and increase our effective use of this constant dialogue?
So far, research does suggest positive results from ‘interoceptive therapies” including heartbeat detection tasks, interpreting emotions in speech and mindful attention to internal sensations – but there is perhaps an easier way to build your muscle…

Researchers have found that maintaining physical fitness (particularly srength based training) can help effective interoception. When we lose fitness through lack of exercise, we experience higher heart rates (and more post exercise pain like DOMS) following any form of physical or emotional challenges than we might if we maintain physical fitness. The brain is prone to interpret these sensations as being due to anxiety – rather than to physical movement – with a resulting impact on mental health. Essentially by building a body that can cope with strain…we begin to build a mind that can do the same. The more in tune we become with our physical movement, sensations, balance and bodily needs, the more we are able to feel in charge of our emotions, behaviours and social interactions.

My son is 11 now and we are increasingly aware of how intensely he experiences physical sensations from both the external and internal environment. If we can help him to interpret and respond to these effectively I am confident he will continue to grow in his ability to manage the emotions and behaviours they give rise to. In the meantime, I’m going to go and lift some weights in readiness for helping my clients navigate their own emotional journeys.

Quick tips to improve your Interoception:

• Pay attention to how your body feels. Before you get up in the morning, notice your breathing. Notice where there is muscle tension or pressure in any organs or tissue. Develop a habit of tuning into your body regularly throughout the day – perhaps in each transition between activities.
• Develop a habit of regular exercise – weight or strength training is not just for body builders. It is for any age or ability. Pick up a 2l bottle of water, push an old tyre, pull a chair or heavy cushion – better still join a gym or a yoga/pilates class. At the very least start walking, cycling, moving more!
• Notice your emotions more – do some journalling of how your feelings changes over time. It doesn’t have to be an essay every day. 5 minutes of easy reflection can be a really powerful way to get better acquainted with how, when and why your emotional states fluctuate.

Who is teaching who here?

You couldn’t make this up – but bear with me whilst I unfold the tale…

Last week a friend of ours bought a gift for our boys – a Star Wars construction kit to make a U-Wing. My eldest (6.6 – and yes the 0.6 is important) claimed this prize and between us we carefully inserted tabs and bent pieces until the model was complete…and I have to say pretty impressive.

Alas my youngest (nearly 5 – the ‘nearly’ is equally important) was upset – where was his model? I dutifully went onto Amazon and found the same brand but this time a model AT-AT. It arrived the next day – thanks Amazon – and whilst my eldest was in the bath, my youngest opened the package and filled with smiles. I suggested he keep it to himself until the morning as Leo would only want to play with it and he reluctantly agreed…only to sneak into the bathroom and wave it in front of his bathing brother with glee.
I put Ben to bed gripping his model-book ready for the morning….and went to put Leo to bed…who was now sad. “Why can’t I have an AT-AT?” comes the standard parental nightmare. “Do you think Ben would swap with me?”

Bedtime complete, I go downstairs and attend to my evening – helping my husband evaluate an umbrella (don’t ask) and watching the repeat Planet Earth II offered (the one with the snakes) to replace the Broken series we had planned to watch. We hear a few toilet trips upstairs but nothing really worth a walk up the stairs…until 10.15 when we are turning lights off to go to bed. I hear Benjamin’s door close, a quick dash across the landing and a hastily turned out light.

I find Leo with a fully completed AT-AT model in his hand sneaking into his brothers room to put it by his bed! It appears he has spent the last 2+hrs in his ‘bat cave’ with an angle poise lamp painstaking constructing what was in fact quite a tricky model. His eyes tell me he knows this may not have been the right choice…”I’m sorry – Ben wouldn’t have been able to make this so I did it for him…” he offers hopefully.
I do the necessary chat about “you’re going to be so tired for school” and “you should have asked first” but with secret pride in my heart I go downstairs to discuss how we should best handle this parenting dilemma. Between myself, my partner and two fellow mums over Messenger we agree that it could be an incredible act of love…or a devious lack of resistance to an envied toy. Either way it was clear that believing the former made us all feel better…and we went to bed – gently placing the completed AT-AT outside Ben’s door.

My youngest wakes at about 5.30 every day…and this morning comes into my room to update me on his wee colour (again – don’t ask!). Nothing is said about Star Wars or model making….

At 7am Ben comes downstairs and asks his dad whether he can help him to make his Star Wars model. Confused, dad reviews the presented model book – complete with all the pieces in their places as new….

It turns out that Ben had spent his morning carefully deconstructing the whole kit and painstakingly placing all the individual pieces back into their allotted places in the model book so that he could make it himself. There was no question about how it came to be made and outside his door – no complaints, no arguments, no pointy fingers or tears…he had simply fixed the problem…

…and we think we need to teach our children….

On a day where we are still reeling from a young person’s apparent decision to eliminate a number of other young people from this world at the Manchester Apollo please feel free to share this simple act of brotherly love with friends and colleagues.

Our children are born with the capacity for immense love, resilience and creativity…we need only nurture it.

It’s “Derbyshire Rain”!

Last weekend was spent in a small three man pop-up tent in a field with a four year old and a five year old…in Derbyshire.  If I wanted to study resilience in practice I could have looked no further – but in fact it was a last minute response to a clash between a car service which resulted in no car and a need to attend a dear friend’s 40th birthday party.

It rained….a lot.  It specifically rained in the vital hour between my children waking up and everyone else waking up and making breakfast together.  This meant explaining patiently to my son who is lying on one side of me that the reason we can’t go out yet is that the raincoats are in the car…with the umbrella.  Simultaneously explaining to the other son on the other side of me that no, we can’t lie together and watch a film on the iPod because the iPod is also in the car…and we can’t get to the car…because the raincoats are in the car…and its raining.

Donning shorts and t-shirt I ran through the torrential downpour and associated mud to retrieve said supplies – only to find both iPods depleted and both children disappointed.  Time for Plan B.

Having entered the sensible people’s accommodation choice, I found a large number of small children playing  a box of varied musical instruments with gusto…to the terrified faces of non-parent partygoers struggling with hangovers and headaches. We were saved!

Throughout the weekend the rain continued in true Derbyshire style to the absolute disinterest of everyone attending the party.  We made multiple bees from Lego, enjoyed a very impressive (and quite miraculous) campfire, watched children in varying states of undress make and shoot lego pistols, chased chickens round the yard and laughed at my friend’s son Sonny joyfully standing under torrents of water pouring off the marquee with his mouth open.

All kinds of alcohol were consumed in suitable (and to be fair unsuitable) quantities and the world, whilst damp, was well.

Yesterday my son sat beside me as we drove home from school watching the black sky finally dropping its payload over East Anglia.  He looked up with a smile and said “Look! It’s Derbyshire Rain!”.

I believe it is true to say that a memory has been made 😉

Forgive me….

…because I’ve just REALLY enjoyed my work!  Two weeks ago I ran my first free resilience seminar at Suffolk Food Hall for a great group of HR experts from a wide range of local businesses and it was FUN!

Today I ran another workshop at the CEFAS labs in Lowestoft courtesy of the lovely Karin Rundle who gave us her great lecture theatre for the morning – and I had FUN again.

90% of people are dissatisfied with their job and many are stressed and frustrated and unable to see the way out. If you want to get back the FUN and bounce in your role, maybe these words from an old old source will resonate with you. 

Mothers everywhere…

…are posting photos of their pride and joy entering a new phase of life – whether its “big school”, senior school, college courses, travel plans or first jobs.  The BPS magazine The Psychologist this month leads with “The Transition to School – Claire Hughes asks what matters and why” – talking about school readiness and the impact of family and community on successful transition and ‘developmental vulnerabilities’ (Brinkman et al., 2014).

For me this could not have been more poignant a subject.  After over a week of what I can only describe of total teenage rebellion from my 4 year old during perhaps the wettest summer holiday I can remember, I was on my knees – psychologically, emotionally and physically..and I had done something I often find difficult, embarrassing and vulnerable – I had asked for help.

Help arrived in the form of both family and friends and one thing stuck in my mind more than any other – ‘children are designed to be raised in a community – and that community doesn’t exist like it used to’.  I had been trying to cope on my own with two under fives for fear of failing in public.  The result was that I was isolated, my children were isolated, and the people who wanted to help felt ‘uninvited’ to do so. We were spiralling downwards and needed to reconnect with our community in order to recover.

Ironically my first two go-to jobs having dropped the boys off at school were a meeting around community dialogue (working with a number of passionate ‘Ipswich-ians’ to outline an Open Space event on the future state of the town) and the set up of a design planning session for Recovering from Motherhood for my own Resilience Series launching in Ipswich in November/December.

Talking to my own mother this morning about it all, she tells me she can no longer bear to watch the news following the reports of the 3 year old washed up on a Turkish beach and countless other heartbreaking stories of those fleeing Syria.  I reflected that the power of community and protection of others in danger has lead to a huge wave of opened doors across Europe – doors that may not even open regularly to neighbours and friends. Is our sense of community really so diminished in the UK…or do we become too easily paralysed in our goodwill by a fear of rejection, a fear of failure, a fear of judgement by others?  Is our famous ‘stiff upper lip’ still getting in the way of offering a clumsy, ill-thought through, perhaps foolish or unsustainable hand of help to someone who really doesn’t care if we have a plan or a solution…they just need a place to feel safe for a short while.

On a similar note I shared with my mother a wonderful comment made on Facebook about the news of a 13 year old who had been found wandering along the M5 near Oldbury on Thursday morning.  The news reels were full of the word “illegal immigrant”, “migrant” and “refugee”.  The comment on Facebook was incensed – “The word you are all looking for is CHILD”.  As I waved my son off to his second day at school, red jumper tucked under his arm, schoolbag swinging, I tried to imagine waving him off in 9 years time as he boards a small boat with 25 others to attempt a crossing of the worlds’  busiest shipping lane to reach a place he is not welcome and does not know. I could not.  I hope never to.

 

There is a banner stand in my living room!

I have been in business for nearly 8 years as an independent and for the first time (since getting delivery of those all important business cards), I have branded items in my possession.

I have just taken delivery of a banner stand, a large collection of pens and…wait for it…a branded mug and key fob – just the one for that exclusively mine feel! Isn’t it so true that it’s the little things that count? 😉

My new landing page is also live with updates about the new Resilience Series running in the autumn.  Click on the link for more info.

http://bouncability.changingdialogues.com

…or if you are interested in getting people to talk to themselves and each other better…try this one:

http://dialogue.changingdialogues.com

 

Things are hotting up…

So today I have spent my day juggling small boys who have accidentally spilt suntan cream/pressed exit on their Superhero Game and killed Spiderman/ emptied Travel Battleships pieces all over the floor…as well as negotiating with a Virtual Assistant from Time etc (recommended to me by Carrie Beddingfield from the glorious OneFishTwoFish), researching website redesigns and….agreeing to host a FREE Resilience session in October for HRDs across Suffolk and East Anglia in association with Waddington Brown HR recruitment specialists.

The event will be a half day session aimed at fraught HRDs who support fraught employees, fraught managers (and equally completely calm “hand it to HR” managers) and generally work to keep the ship afloat whilst potentially also juggling a similar home-life to myself!

At the moment we are looking at a couple of venues in Ipswich with a ‘stay for lunch afterwards’ option and are hoping to offer 13-15 places for that intimate feel, with a potential for follow on events (also FREE) where demand dictates.

Delegates will be treated to a discounted rate on the Open Sessions that I plan to run in November/December on EI, Leadership, Recovering from Motherhood and Managing in Uncertainty

Details to follow.  If you are interested in registering your place, drop me a line at racheljackson@changingdialogues.com…and remember – its FREE!

Becoming a Warrior

In September my eldest son starts school.  I find it hard to believe that its been 5 years since my life as I knew it was turned upside-down and inside out by the realisation that the bus I had been driving for so long now had passengers…with views of their own!  To see him dressed up in his new uniform ready to build his own bus and start to drive it…based on observation of his newly acquired stabiliser-free cycling…is terrifying and satisfying all at once.  With my youngest bringing up the rear with constant questions and narrative about the world…I am starting to remember where I was going when this all started and am quietly pleased that in fact the holding pattern that I put in place back in 2009 has actually stood me in pretty good stead.  I am still self employed, I still have money in the bank and in the business, I am still in contact and working with many of the same clients, and in fact I have learned an awful lot about myself, emotional intelligence, resilience and mindfulness as well as leadership and organisational development along the way.  I have built new friendships and grown new skills in staff engagement, surveymonkey and bullying and harassment (training not applying!) at Colchester Hospital, been trained in Open Space facilitation and Dialogue by the amazing Sheila Marsh and Roma Iskander at the Participation Agency, designed new courses with Dr Angela Smith with some great exercises, and helped my husband set up the beginnings of a route out of the rat race.

This week I made a big step forward though…I have joined Sam Pollock’s amazing Warrior Woman programme – a weights-based, holistic, female only route to building not only my fitness, but also my commitment, courage and strength to get back to who I need to be.  I have pushed ‘prowlers’, strained towards my toes and hollered my way towards a successful pull up (yes just the one).  My goal?  To regain my own freedom of spirit.  My measure? The ability to hang from a climbing wall overhang and calmly lift my feet up to where I want them.

Resilience Conference

I have lately been speaking to an old colleague about childcare and how the whole feeding process works when you pass your child to another person for a full day.  Given that I am still breastfeeding and the small amounts of pureed this-and-that I am adding into Leo’s diet are hardly enough to sustain him, its something that is causing me some concern. As someone who despite sometimes looking a little “seat of pants” does actually like to plan ahead, the reason for my concerns is the fast approaching date of the Resilience Conference at Brighton University on the 5th April.  I know its still a month away but when your preparation involves pumping ounce after ounce of milk from your body rather than printing business cards and brushing up over-dinner networking lines, it pays to start early!

To be fair though, I do also need to brush up a little on my networking.  This is in many ways my first day back at work and having recently put together both a resilience diagnostic and a two day workshop plan based on many days of prenatal reading and researching, I am keen to see where the world of Resilience finds itself and even keener to ensure that I become a part of the growing focus on this highly relevant and  growing development area.

If you are interested in talking Resilience, or catching up at the conference, do get in touch – through my website – http://www.changingdialogues.com or my mail rachel@changingdialogues.com.  I promise to try to avoid boring you with nappy-tales! 😉