I think everyone knows that the phrase “don’t think of an elephant” leads to pretty much everyone thinking, and even picturing, an elephant. What you focus on gets reinforced.
This week Baroness Spielman, the former head of Ofsted, has expressed concern that schools are becoming centres of therapy and yet are not trained to be so. Their main qualifications and purpose are in educating children in the academic curriculum. Despite this, many teachers are being encouraged to provide trigger warnings and even ban certain books, including, it seems, some of Shakespeare’s plays, The Great Gatsby, Charlotte’s Web (apparently because there is talk of death and also talking animals), Matilda, and my favourite book as a child The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. You can find offence anywhere if you look for it.
The problem is that the more you train a young mind to look for offence, for problems, for bias, the more that brain will build the habit of seeking out and noticing the negatives and not the positives. Governments are talking about building resilience in young people, but their actions are in danger of disempowering them rather than empowering them.
As Spielman has pointed out, teachers now not only highlight potential problem areas in books which most previous generations have read without trauma but also ask children to talk about their negative emotions. If this is the case then I sincerely hope that they also focus a child’s attention on their helpful emotions too, and on what the child can appreciate and be grateful for. Otherwise we shall certainly be raising a generation whose minds have been trained only to see the negatives, not the opportunities or the creative possibilities, but potentially training them for victimhood, which doesn’t help them and certainly doesn’t help society.
Ok, so previous generations may have been too much ‘stiff upper lip’ but I suspect that if you were living in a brutal world, as life has been for centuries, a world of war, disease, small children dying for lack of vaccines or antibiotics, mothers dying in childbirth, fathers in war, people needed to focus on how to make each day good, for life was short and food and resources scarce. That probably resulted in a need to just get on with things.
Although there is much talk of how terrible life is today, the reality is that we are healthier, living longer, more accepting of all kinds of diversity and communicating across the globe in ways our forefathers never did or could. Yes, there are threats but let’s not overlook the advances or the peace that we have enjoyed.
We have indeed gained benefit from psychology and a deeper understanding of some mental health conditions but I don’t believe that we necessarily need to treat everyone as vulnerable. Otherwise, as I have said above, we all turn into fragile beings, unable to cope with life’s everyday challenges, let alone the kind of challenges our grandparents had to face, or we might have to face in future.
For expectations have outcomes. What we expect of ourselves, and others, transmits a message through voice tone and body language as well as words. There is research that has shown that a teacher’s expectations of a child shapes that child’s results – expect them to be clever, they become clever; expect them to be stupid, they become stupid.
We therefore need to give the message that the majority of us are competent and capable human beings, not that we are all fragile and vulnerable creatures who can’t manage life. The welfare state is designed for those who really need it, but they will be deprived of essential support if funds are dissipated on many more who, through kind intention no doubt, have been led to believe that they can’t cope. Witness the huge increase in children seeking mental health support.
It seems to me that recently educators and governments have been focusing young people’s minds too much on the negatives – the likelihood of victimhood, the likelihood of bias or being upset or offended by something. Trigger warnings on everything they watch or read just emphasizes the idea that they are under threat, even if they aren’t. And whether they are under threat or not we need to help them feel empowered to deal with life.
The trouble with trigger warnings is that they alert a child’s amygdala (the part of the brain in charge of fight or flight responses) to the fact that there is a potential threat, even if that threat is thoroughly unlikely or nebulous. As I explain in Cognitive-Behavioural Coaching Techniques for Dummies you become familiar with the way that the brain builds habits and patterns of thoughts and reactions. If someone is disempowered it is likely that they are being driven by underlying Negative Automatic Thoughts. These are neural pathways of thought in the brain and can become beliefs which influence emotions and behaviours. A thought such as “I can’t cope” will increase anxiety and the child is far less likely to be able to face the situation. Instead the child can become aware of how their thoughts are disempowering them and build new thoughts such as
“I accept that I am a little nervous about this but I shall give it my best go.”
“I would rather this person didn’t behave this way but I will find ways to manage it even if they do.”
“I will treat others with respect and they are more likely to treat me with respect.”
Gradually, with repetition, the optimistic and empowering thoughts become automatic habit and their emotions and behaviours can change within this process. Think stressful thoughts and the body emits cortisol; think positive thoughts and it can emit endorphins.
I sincerely hope that governments and educators alike start to treat children and the adult population with the expectation that the majority of us are competent and resilient human beings because I believe that will translate into positive actions in society. That way the welfare funds will go to those who really need them.
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