Taking Action. Date: 18 Oct 06

What happens when you notice that your life is falling apart ? You might wake up one day and think “What the f*** am I doing with my life ?” You might suddenly find that a close friend, partner or family member dies and you’re left numb, in shock and totally lost. Your partner might say “Enough is enough” and a relationship that you thought was great suddenly isn’t even there anymore. You might simply realise that you aren’t happy and haven’t been for a long time.

Many of my clients call me up in these situations and they ask for help. They want direction, they want answers and they want advice. Sometimes they want to be rescued. And, you know, it’s the simplest of questions that get them on the right path. I always ask “What do you want ?” Often the reply is “What do you mean ? From life or from working with you ?” And I usually answer “Yes”. We are creatures of habit and just as success can become a habit so can failure. We can talk ourselves into failing even before we’ve taken our first steps. Asking a different question can often give a new answer.

When I work with a client I am looking out for the language that they use. Words like “always”, “never”, “can’t” are familiar clues to how people have made sense of the world. As lesbians and gay men our world can seem to be mapped out for us. A life of being different and on the outside. This publication is called Our World as a definite statement that we belong. Not so many years ago this magazine would have been unthinkable - not because the internet didn’t exist – but because too few gay people believed that we had a right to live freely in the world. Too few to put this together and too few to make it worth the effort.

I worked with a guy called Paul who although he was 25 he lived as though he was 15 and had just escaped from home. He came to me because as he put it “I’ve just been dumped – again.” He had an intense rage within him, took all sorts of drugs at the weekend and was in danger of losing his job and that was just the start. He saw my advert and gave me a call. The fact that he called me put him one step ahead of lots of people in that he knew that he was unhappy and he knew he needed to sort loads of things out. Many people live their lives and don’t know that their unhappy and don’t know that things can be better.

When Paul came to see me he was tense, he was frustrated, he was beating himself up for failing. I’d asked him what he wanted from our work when he phoned me. He came with a printed list that covered 4 pages of A4. Paul was a supreme expert at being unhappy. He knew how to be unhappy, he knew when to be unhappy and he “knew” that he deserved to be unhappy. Like all of us, when we get a habit we can do it really well. The skill comes in doing something different, in creating a new habit. I let Paul tell me all about it – for twenty minutes. The bad friends, the bad boyfriends, the bad sex, the bad drugs, the bad counsellors, the bad family, the bad school, the bad job, the bad sex. Then I got bored. So I interrupted him:

“Hang on a minute. Are you as bored with this as I am ?”

He was stunned for a minute.

“You’re supposed to deal with all this shit” he said, actually he shouted that bit.

My reply was “Well, we can do one of two things. Stay with this shit or do something about getting out of it.”

So, I asked him when things turned bad. He looked confused. I don’t believe that we are born with our turmoil and shit. We learn how to do it at some time in our lives. We have an experience and we decide what that experience means about ourselves and the world. The problem is that often we hang onto that view of ourselves or the world even when things get better. We go through our lives with conclusions about the world even though the world and ourselves have changed.

After some minutes thinking Paul identified himself at 12. He’d been out with his parents in a big shopping centre and he’d got separated from them. The thing is that while he wasn’t worried – his parents were frantic with panic about him. When they found him some 30 minutes later he got a tirade from both parents about what a bad boy he was, that he didn’t deserve the shopping trip because bad boys don’t get presents, that bad boys like him end up getting hurt, hurting themselves and everyone else. Now, his parents were and are good people its just that they were inexperienced and scared. If you asked them today they probably wouldn’t even remember that episode. For Paul it was a totally different experience.

As we grow we make sense of the world. We’ll make patterns out of anything and everything and stick a meaning on to that pattern. Its what makes us so successful in the world. For Paul he made sense of what his parents told him. He was a bad boy, he didn’t deserve presents and good things and he got hurt and hurt people – always and all the time. All his experiences from that date were seen as through a filter – a filter that said “I am bad, I hurt people, I get hurt” and all that goes with that. 13 years of experiences later and 13 years to develop, practice and hone that habit. After 13 years of this Paul was so expert that he didn’t even know how expert he was at it, until I asked him.

He looked confused again and said that his past had happened so how could he change it. I pointed out that yes his past was over and finished. What we were dealing with was his creation of that past. His past didn’t exist anywhere except in his own mind. This being the case he was in control of it and could do with it whatever he wanted. Together we created a new experience of being 12 where he could see his parents panic and have a greater understanding of them and it. What they said was their way of making sure he was safe and they were happy. As soon as he realised what he did then and accepted that he could do something different Paul started to let it go and create a new future for himself. No longer being told he was bad reduced his tension and anger and meant that he could begin to allow himself success and create ways to be more relaxed and happy.

Making a change can often seen daunting. Yet, when the present situation is made clear the desire to change can begin and begin quickly. It might take time and it might take practice. Results can come just as soon as they are wanted. In Paul’s case he needed permission from me to make the change. He made a comment that a lot of people do and that is “Am I allowed to do it differently ?” The answer is most definitely yes.

I’d like to be able to tell you that Paul kept his job, found a new boyfriend and lived happy ever after. Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t exist. I put him together from a number of people that I’ve worked with. The issues are real and are ones that I meet almost every day in one form or another.