On this page, you will find our series of ‘Keeping the Peace’ webinars delivered by Alexis Powell–Howard, director of Fortis Therapy.
Each webinar is supported by a podcast that discusses the issues.
These interactive and engaging webinars have been developed to support police officers and staff with their mental health and emotional wellbeing.
The webinars aim to help you to recognise the signs of emotional struggle in yourself and others and will give you the knowledge on how to support yourself and your colleagues.
Alexis Powell–Howard has developed a reputation for being innovative, progressive, and collaborative in her thinking. She’s a professional speaker for mental health, speaking at conferences for businesses, HR networks, law firms, schools, emergency services, and the Ministry of Defence.
Duty of self care
In this session we discussed the role of serving the public, the impact of the job on your mental health, how to look after yourself and how to avoid burn-out.
Using the Fortis self care wheel you will learn how to explore your own levels of self care, receiving tips that you can apply to yourself and to others.
Alexis Powell–Howard: OK, so we do a big variety of different services, from therapy and training, through to wellbeing, and strategy development, and so hopefully, as I said, this will inform what we’re doing today. For some reason my thing isn’t clicking. There we go. So today we’re going to be thinking about the right conditions for growth. So what do we need in order to be able to function well? We’re also going to be thinking about wellbeing, mental health, and learning those signs of struggle which, there are quite a number of different signs, which I know some of you will be aware of, and some of you might not be, as well. And then also thinking about your own levels of self-care, and how you look after yourselves, and thinking about what’s on your menu for self-care. And then we’re going to share some ideas and strategies as well.
So we often are concerned with looking after others, and that’s something that came out of the work we do with the police, around making sure that other people are OK, and that we know what we do to step in, because that’s part of your role, is just to serve the public. But where do you fit into that? So what about you, and how do you look after yourself, and what do you do to keep yourself at the centre of everything that you do, really?
Does anybody remember this? There’d be a certain age range that might remember this. It’s a really bad photo, but it was the ‘70s, so you just have to excuse that. So this was from a children’s programme on a Friday called Crackerjack. Does everyone remember that, yeah? So Crackerjack was a really 1970s, cheap and cheerful fun, where basically we used to pile children up on these pedestals with lots of different objects, and see how much they could carry.
And this is how it feels when we’re starting to feel under pressure and under stress, that actually, we’ve got all these things that we’re holding, and what do we put down first? How do we see where we’re going? This kid in the middle, I think, has got a nice Frisbee there right in front of his face; he can’t see anything. So if you imagine, and can kind of relate to that, that there’s going to be times, and at the minute probably more than ever, where actually I’m carrying all these different responsibilities, I’m accountable for a lot of things. How do I keep moving forward and manage myself well so that I know what to put down, in what order, and how to keep myself steady?
A good way of thinking about how you’re doing, and I want you to just do this right now, is to put yourself on a scale of one to ten. So if you’re thinking about your wellbeing, that might be your mental health, emotional health, financial health, physical health, think about what number are you right now. You might decide that you are, I don’t know, a four out of ten, and that will be very subjective to you. You’ll be able to think, “Yeah, I think I’m a five or a six.” It’s very much about your experience. So if you are, say a five out of ten at the minute, because you know there’s things you could do differently, and maybe you’re not on it as much, what would make you a six? What would you need to do to just make a step change so that you can feel, actually, I know what I need to do to make myself feel better?
Because sometimes, we get stuck in a scale at a particular number, and life seems to be happening around us and we feel like we haven’t got much sense of agency, but we would like to do something different. So scaling yourself and just checking in is subjective, but it helps you to be able to think about where do you fit with that.
Stevenson and Farmer did a really good review of mental health in the workplace probably about three years ago now, and they talked about this fluctuation which I think is absolutely right, from what we see at Fortis. We work with a lot of clients of all ages, and we see people thriving and doing really well, at maybe a ten, and then struggling, kind of early numbers, and going down into the lower numbers, and feeling like, “Actually, I’m really struggling and I’m not sure how to cope.” So if you can track yourself, that’s a big part of wellbeing. What do I – today, how am I feeling? What do I need to do to help myself?
OK, so when we’re looking at definitions of duty of self-care, there are a lot of medical definitions, and when we’re talking about it from an NHS perspective, we’re thinking about how we look after ourselves medically. So do we take our medication? Do we look after ourselves? Do we do the minimum we can to support ourselves, so that we aren’t going into the NHS or the GP or the pharmacy too often to try and get help from them? So their definition is that it’s about understanding our condition and how we live with it.
From a Fortis perspective, and what we see in terms of self-care, actually these are the key things that we think about with self-care. So it’s about deliberately making time to consider, track and take care of yourself by creating opportunities and actions to protect your wellbeing and happiness. Now, there’s quite a few keywords in there. Doing something deliberately to help yourself, but making time for yourself as well, and tracking how you’re doing, and putting things in place that give you the opportunity to look after you.
And also, recognising that you’ve got a right to look after yourself. That’s something we hear a lot, is that, “I don’t – not necessarily that I haven’t got a right to do it,” but people don’t even consider that they might have a right to actually take care of themselves. So if you start to think about noticing things, putting opportunities in place, being able to take care of your wellbeing on a day to day basis, and it’s part of what you do, just part of what you do, just part of your day.
What it isn’t, is the stuff you do for maintenance. So having a hot shower is not self-care. That’s just what you do. Having a decent lunch isn’t – that’s not self-care. That’s just part of what you need to do every day to look after yourself. It’s not just about having a bath. It’s not just about going for a run. I’ve put this image in here of – I’m not quite sure what that is. I think that might be yoga, but just trying to think, it’s not these kinds of things that feel like they’re unattainable, and the things you can’t get hold of, they’re just individual to you, and they’re things that you find helpful.
OK, so if we’re thinking about burnout, that’s what we’re trying to avoid. This is the ultimate, you know, when we feel really ill, and that’s what stress causes. It causes us to feel incredibly ill. It’s not just about feeling under pressure. Stress is when you feel unwell. So you might feel a massive range of emotions, you might feel upset, very angry about things, or you might want to withdraw. So all of those symptoms start to tell you that something isn’t quite right.
Burnout has been classified, it’s in the International Classification for Diseases, and it’s been classified as an occupational phenomenon. I would argue that it’s far more than that because it’s about all our lives, and especially over the last year, what’s happening in our homes has also impacted on what’s happening in our workplace, because often we’re working – you might be working from home. It’s all been merged and blurred. It’s not seen as a medical condition, but it’s definitely a syndrome.
So if we’re looking at that chronic stress, you can see there I’ve bullet-pointed those three aspects, so feeling your energy – that exhaustion, quite often that tiredness, it’s absolutely a physical and emotional response. You might want to distance yourself from the job. You might be not wanting to engage with it because actually you just haven’t got the capacity to do it. And that’s where we start to see the negativity and feeling cynical about things. And also, you just become less professional because you just haven’t got that capacity and ability to be able to engage.
So when we’re looking at burnout, we’re looking at actually, how does that stretch across life in general? I was diagnosed with burnout probably ten or 11 years ago now, and during that time I literally just didn’t have any capacity for anything. I did the bare minimum, whether that was looking after my children, turning up to work. And it was a series of different things that’d happened that just left me in that place. So it’s a really physical and emotional fatigue, and if you’ve ever experienced it, you’ll know it takes a long time to recover from it.
So anything you can do that helps you to not get to that point is obviously going to be massively helpful. Now, I appreciate there’s going to be environmental factors, relational difficulties. There might be things going on at work that are beyond your control, but actually, if we’re trying to avoid this state of exhaustion, self-care is going to be a helpful antidote to that.
So if we’re looking at signs of struggle, I’ve deliberately put these all on one slide just because – I mean, there’s more than this – I could fill slides with them, but these are the kind of ones that you might see. So we know that feeling anxious is obviously a sign of us not managing things very well. We start to go into – there’s four different responses – there’s fight, flight, freeze and flock. So we go into all these different responses, depending on what’s happening, and how we function.
We start to feel that we can’t cope with things, and then we start to act out. So that might be that we either start to become frustrated, you might find yourself having less capacity for things that normally wouldn’t even bother you, or you might want to withdraw and take yourself away from situations.
You can see on here there’s some emotional responses, so becoming obsessive, feeling isolated, and trying to make sense of what’s going on, but there’s also some very physical responses as well. So what I tend to see is that our body will often tell us well before we’ll emotionally accept how we’re doing. So if anyone’s ever had annual leave, you’ve had your leave and you’ve been ill within 24 hours of finishing, you know that sore throat that kicks in, that cough that you get, the cold you get? We’ve all been there; we’ve all done it, but what happens is, then, our downtime becomes about recovering from our life as opposed to enjoying the downtime, because we’re working, and that’s what we’re doing it for, is to have money and time to be able to go and do nice things.
So if you notice that actually, physically you start to have symptoms – one of mine is a chest infection – that’s always what happens when I’m getting run down. That’s what is my – and I can ignore it to a point, and then I can’t ignore it anymore. Thankfully I haven’t done that for a few years. But these are the things, so you’ll have your own physical responses. Teeth grinding, I’ve put in there as well because that could be something that you’re doing at night subconsciously, but you’ll also feel that kind of, “I can’t quite remember what was in that meeting last week. I’m feeling quite fatigued.”
I’ve put in self-harm and self-sabotage. Self-sabotage can be any behaviours that you do that actually don’t help you, that actually undermine you and your process. And I’ve also put in here somewhere, yeah on the first line there, about self-medication. So your self-medication could be anything from alcohol use to prescribed drugs, to other drugs. It could be anything from shopping, to over-exercising. You might do a range of different behaviours that actually you just do to try and make yourself feel better, but you’re not really understanding what’s going on at the core of that, and so it’s not as helpful as it could be.
So if we’re thinking about the conditions for growth, as I said at the beginning, there’s a humanistic psychotherapy theory, and the guy who developed it, Carl Rogers, talks about the right conditions for growth. So, when you’re going to see a therapist, someone like me, what I’m trying to do is create the right conditions for the person who’s sat in front of me, whether that’s on a screen now, or face-to-face, to be able to help them to be able to grow from where they are right now. And a lot of people can be quite damaged by the time they get to that point of asking for help.
And he talked about potatoes, which is why you’ve got an image on there of potatoes, so he talked about, if you put a potato in a dark room, and you have a shaft of light, so it’s dark, it’s cold, but there’s a shaft of light, the potato will grow towards the light. Does that make sense? So the conditions for that potato to grow are right, and it’s the same thing for people. It’s the same thing for you as an individual, what you offer yourself, what you get from your family and your relationships, what you get within your organisation as well. So what are the right conditions for you to be able to grow and to be able to feel connected, grounded, and all of that good stuff that comes when we’re feeling well?
The five ways of wellbeing, I’m sure you’ll have come across these, but again, it’s just about thinking about, well, where am I at with this? At the minute, connectivity with others is quite tricky. You might be working and still seeing people on a daily basis, but you also might be struggling to do that with particular people because we’re not allowed to see people. So when we talked about social distancing, actually this is about physical distancing, but keeping connectivity. So how are you keeping connected with others? Are you preferring not to, or are you finding that, actually, I’ve started to get back into that, or you might’ve gone through phases? But being connected to others, so if you lead a team, how are you getting people to be connected with each other, especially if they’re all working in different places?
Being active, we know that physical health is massively important to our mental health. They’re not something that’s disconnected. They’re absolutely connected. So if you’re feeling that, actually, you’re taking time out to be active, that’s going to help your endorphins, it’s going to help your mental and emotional wellbeing. It’s also good for that stress relief as well, depending on what you’re doing.
That giving part in the middle there is about reciprocity. So if you are giving to others, you’re going to be able to get that great feeling back, of helping somebody and actually stepping forward. And that is a big part of your roles, really, and that you’re helping other people. I know that sometimes you’re arresting people and there’s all that side to it, but actually a lot of what you do, people look to the police to know what to do, and to help.
So keeping learning, making sure that – we know for mental health that actually engaging with some kind of learning – I’ll talk a bit about that later, and what that might look like. And also just taking notice. When you are taking notice of things, you might notice what’s happening around you, changing in seasons, the snow that’s around today. I don’t know about where you are, but there definitely is around me, and just taking notice of how people are responding to you, how you’re responding to them, what’s going on around you. When we aren’t coping very well, we stop taking notice of things because we don’t have the capacity to do it. So kind of scaling yourself on each of these areas and thinking, “Am I doing OK in these areas?” How could I do differently, and how could I improve them if I want to?” because it’s down to your choice.
When we’re thinking about surviving or thriving, going back to that quote at the beginning, these are the aspects of our health that we think about, in terms of our wellbeing, so your mental, emotional, physical, financial, and also your creativity. When I do training with police officers and I rock up with felt tips and stuff to colour in, there’s a kind of disbelief across the room like, “Oh, what is she doing?” And then I give them Haribo and that all goes away. Everyone’s fine with it [laughs].
But the creativity side of it, that might be anything that you like to do that is creative. But we tend to kind of, as we get older, and if we are struggling with our self-care, that kind of starts to go because it almost feels like I haven’t got time to do that, or I haven’t got the right to spend time on those things. So think about, in terms of your own health, but also the people around you, and how are they doing.
Financial health is a big part of how we do, so if you’ve ever had a situation where you’re in debt, you’ve got too much to pay for, and not enough money to pay for it, you haven’t planned for your future, all sorts of things like that, the financial aspect adds such a weight onto people mentally, and you might have quite strong messages about financial sides of things as well.
And I know our direction, I’ve put on there, our purpose, so our purpose is really important, and often when people that we see are struggling , have kind of lost sight of that. Why am I doing this? What’s it about, and why did I think this was a good idea in the first place? So connecting to what you’re – why – why am I doing what I’m doing?
We’ve often got the elephant in the room, which is why we’ve chosen the elephant for the logo for this, and for the podcasts as well, about what is not spoken about. And often our mental health isn’t something that people tend to want to speak about, because there’s still a stigma attached to it. That’s what we’re all working really hard to get away from, but our self-care is very much connected to making sure that we stay mentally well.
Mind have got their definition which I’ll give you chance to read as I’m talking over it, but you’ll see from here that actually there’s an awful lot that they say that we should be doing in order to be mentally well. So what does that really mean, and how realistic is it that we might be doing all of that all the time? I suspect that if I said, “Right, everyone, give me a show of hands, how many people are doing this 100 percent of the time?” there’d be very few people that could actually really genuinely put their hand up and say, “yeah, I’m all over this. I’ve got this.” There’ll be parts of this that you know you maybe don’t do that well,
And the bottom paragraph there about reasonable standards, often we set ourselves really high standards and expectations and then when we don’t meet them we give ourselves a really hard time. But the person who’s set those really high expectations is us. So in some ways, you think about that self-sabotage, you know, actually if you bring that expectation down, the chances are, you’re going to be able to meet it. So not setting yourself impossible goals, not trying to be perfect in everything as well. The ‘be perfect driver’ means that we’re striving all the time for it to be perfect, and all it takes is for somebody else’s judgement to say, “It isn’t,” or the sands to shift, and suddenly we’re not, and that can be quite derailing for some, especially if that’s one of their drivers.
When we were doing the training for this Keeping the Peace stuff, we asked about conditions of worth, and we did an exercise that was around putting post-it notes onto different titles that I’d put around the room, and it was really interesting to see what came out of that. So conditions of worth are what we feel we have to do in order to be acceptable and to gain the approval of other people.
So these are things we’ve learned growing up. I’m a psychotherapist, so it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t go back to childhood, so I’m just going to tip into that for a minute. We have conditions or worth that are based on what we’ve grown up in. And you might have really clear messages about that, so it might be anything from, if I’m not busy, I’m lazy. It might be about finances, save for a rainy day. Don’t spend it if you haven’t got it. It could be about talking about feelings, that could be a taboo. We can have all these different conditions. So what happens as we grow up is that we look around and see the responses of people around us, and what we need to do in order to gain approval.
And what came out from the training was that some of those messages that I’ve just said were really, kind of, at the core for some people about being in the job they’re in, being in the career they’ve chosen, what’s driven them to being where they are. And so thinking about your own conditions of worth, what did I grow up in, and what was the expectations? If I was going to get approval, or to be acceptable to somebody, what was it I needed to do? And what does that mean now, and how has that impacted on you now, and is it something you want to keep, and is it something you want to change? Also thinking about if you’re parents, have you passed some of those on to your own children, and again, are they ones that you want to keep, or change?
So conditions of worth is something I’ll pick up again in the next webinar, which is next month, but I just wanted to give a nod to it, because sometimes when we maybe don’t look after ourselves, from a self-care point of view, it’s because we’re bottom of the list. If I said to you, “Write down everything you’re responsible for,” where would you sit on it? Would it be at the bottom? Would you even be on it? And if you’re not on it, actually I would argue you probably need to be near the top, at least [laughs], if not at the top, because if you’re not OK, everything else isn’t OK. Our relationships suffer, we suffer.
So thinking about self-care, we are culturally, I would say, we grow up to think that taking time out for ourselves is something that is quite selfish, and this is the kind of thing we’re trying to break, around actually, this is about taking time and making sure that you are at the centre of your life, really. It isn’t about being selfish. It is about thinking about all these different areas of your life. So if you haven’t got glasses on, and you need them, you might need to put them on now.
But this is one of the exercises I do, and I’m happy to email this out to anybody who would like it, so let us know if you would. And what you do is, the middle point of this circle is zero and the outside edge is ten, all right? So if you do it all the time, if you’re really good at that segment, then you colour in the whole of that segment, so you’d give yourself a ten out of ten. So for example, if you factor mindfulness into your regular daily routine, it’s just part of what you do, then you can colour that in and say, “Right, I’m a ten out of ten on that. That’s great.” If you look at ‘take care of my space’, and you think – which is lucky you can’t see my desk at the minute, but if you think about, “Actually, I’m an eight out of ten,” you would colour to where you think roughly an eight is. All right? And as you go through this wheel, for each of those sections, you think, “Where am I at at the minute?”
Now, this is a complete snapshot of where you are today. It might be different six weeks ago, and it might be different in six weeks’ time. But thinking about each of these aspects, how am I doing, and where would I like to be able to extend the numbers, and where would I like to be able to focus? What have I lost touch with?
So, for example, physical health. For some people at the minute, if we’re not moving much, it’s difficult to factor it in, especially if you’re busy and you’ve got all sorts of things going on at home and work, and everything else. How do I manage that? What do I need to put in? So for me, one of the strategies I’ve put in place which I was regretting this morning when they were falling out, is that I’ve got two out of three of my children doing a HIIT session with me every morning. So we get up at quarter to seven, we do a HIIT session. They’re all teenagers [laughs], it’s like ... I don’t know why I even put it forward, but they’re getting out of bed and they’re exercising, so we’re all doing it. There’s three of us.
And that’s something that means I’m making sure that they’re getting what they need, and I get what I need. That wasn’t something I was doing three weeks ago. That’s because I’ve thought, “Hang on, just going out for a walk’s not enough. How can I factor it in?” So work through each of these sections which, as I said, I’m happy to send you, and just think, where am I at?
With your relationships, for example, the higher the number, the better the relationships, all right? So if you have people around you who don’t help you, or are quite undermining and there’s difficulties in those relationships, that number’s going to be lower. All right? So as I said, have a go at that. We’ll send it out to people, and you can see where you’re at. But what I would suggest you do if you do do it, is that you do it where you are today, and then you do it in six weeks’ time, and just see how you are and where you’ve improved.
And I know I’m banging on about scaling today, but it’s a really good mechanism. So if you’re happy with being a six out of ten with something, that’s great. This isn’t about being ten out of ten. For those people who want things to be perfect, it’s not about it being a ten out of ten, it’s just about where am I at right now, and what do I want to do differently?
Because, if you think about the impact of that on you, and if that wheel is quite wobbly, you are that wheel, that’s what’s representing you. OK? So if you had four of those on your car, how far are you actually going to get? Probably not that far, because there’ll be gaps and there’ll be things that probably don’t work as well.
If we’re thinking about what helps you, this is about your choices. So I hear a lot, “I haven’t got time for this, and this is happening and that’s happening, and that’s happening.” OK, so there’s actually choices within that about what you’re choosing to be involved in and what you’re choosing to let go of. Now, I’m not saying, at times, that our self-care might drop down if things are really busy, but it’s about reassessing and bringing yourself back up. So what helps you? What choices can you make that will help you? And what is it you actually enjoy doing? What do you like doing? What makes you happy? That’s about – there’s a psychotherapist in America, and she talks about, ‘what makes your tail wag?’ What gives you that feeling? And actually, most people have lost touch with that, at the minute especially, just because of the amount of things we can’t do.
So keep an eye on the basics. These are the things that we know from a mental health and emotional wellbeing point of view make a massive difference. So that might be your diet. What’s your sleep pattern like? I know you’re doing some really great sleep webinars, so get yourselves on those and learn about that because it’s a massive subject in its own right. But just thinking about my hydration levels. Making your bed in the morning so you feel like you’ve done something that actually is complete before you even leave the room. Having some fun. When was the last time you had a proper belly laugh and you really enjoyed yourself with somebody? And what’s your environment and your relationships like? These are the basics. If things start to impact on you, if you can actually improve some areas, even if you can’t improve others, that’s going to help, rather than everything coming down that scale.
And something that we’ve seen quite a bit with police officers and staff is about asking for what you need. There is still that, kind of, resistance, I guess, or avoidance of, “I need some help,” or “I need to talk to somebody,” or whatever. But actually asking for what you need can be massively helpful, and everybody needs something, and some support at some point. We don’t go through life without it. And sometimes people actually really want to help, and by not allowing them to help, that doesn’t help them either. So asking for what you need, and being clear about that and recognising that you do have some things that are within your control that maybe you aren’t taking control of, and again, that comes down to just valuing yourself.
So if we think about that menu, I talked at the beginning about a menu for self-care. I’ve put the Himalaya [Hyatt 00:27:47] Resort there, because we can all fantasize about being somewhere nice and warm. So if you think about your menu, what would be on your menu for self-care? What would you like to be on it? What would be on yours would be different to what’s on mine. And it isn’t about actually every day – some people really go with good habits, that you have good habits in every day, but realistically, when you – if you’ve got a busy life, that can be difficult to keep going, and you can give yourself a hard time for not having achieved what you’ve set out to achieve, whereas if you’ve got options and choices, then you pick whatever you need.
So being aware of your own levels of self-care and your own levels of wellbeing, there might be something that – like, you might like to go and hammer it at the gym. If you’ve got a gym at home, or if you can go to a gym, you might like to hammer that. That’s great. But there might be days when, actually, that’s the last thing you need. You need to rest and you need to do something – good food, or whatever it might be, or talk to somebody. So creating your menu and your options is really important. We’ll talk a bit more about that in a second.
So this is my German Shepherd, Digby. He’s part of my self-care. So when he comes to me and he’s bugging me because he needs to go out for a walk, and I can’t be bothered, I have to go out for a walk because he’s part of what makes me kind of think. And then I love it. When I’m out – you know, you never regret it, do you? You never regret going out for a walk. You never regret taking exercise.
But he’s part of my routine around, actually, as much as I want to do that for myself, sometimes I just think, “I haven’t got the energy,” and he’s like, “no, we have got the energy,” and he behaves as if he’s never been out on a walk before in his entire life, every time we go out for a walk. So that enthusiasm, it’s hard to deny it. So he’s part of my self-care, and he’s also – he lives in the moment. Dogs live in the moment. We can learn a lot from them, and taking out what’s happening and noticing what’s going on around them.
So when you’re thinking about your menu, and this is something to reflect on after this session, these are the kinds of things to think about. You’re going to have activities on there, so you might have three or four different types of exercise you like to do. You might have something around your diet and your water intake and that kind of thing. You might have socialising on there, but what does that really mean? Is that about going out for a walk with a friend or a family member, or is it about doing something on a platform like this, which I know we’re all a bit platformed out. But it’s about connectivity and engagement. But these are the ideas to think about. Is there something you can do that’s quite therapeutic for you?
Taking the time – if you need to book it in, book it in. Put it in your diary so you know you’ve committed to it. Even if you change your mind about what you’re going to do, at least you’ve put the time aside for yourself, putting down some of the responsibility that you feel, and putting those things in like fulfilment. Distraction is a great technique. If you’ve got a lot going on, go and do something that distracts you from it. You don’t have to engage and over think everything. Doing something creative, so that might be anything from cooking to planting something, to being creative and actually creating something. I’m surrounded by art therapists at Fortis and they’re always – someone’s just dropped something in today they’ve made – it’s all that importance around that. And then on the right hand side, what makes you well? Create space mentally and physically.
Joy, so joy is one of the most difficult emotions, because when we feel joy we’re waiting for it to end. Like, this is great but it won’t be here tomorrow because there’s always going to be a down. You always come the other side of it. So factor it into your self-care menu, along with these other things at the end, which we’ve mentioned. Gratitude is a great antidote if things are really tricky. What are you grateful for, and who’s important to you?
This is going to sound like a really counsellor-y thing to say now, but breathing is a fantastic strategy to be able to support yourself when you’re feeling like, actually, I just need a minute. And that’s belly breathing, so breathing into your diaphragm, seven/11, breathe in for seven, out for 11. Your out breath wants to be longer than your in breath. And just slow down that physiological response that you’re having, to stress. So keep an eye on how you’re breathing.
If you’re just breathing shallowly in the top of your rib cage all the time, you’re not getting in enough oxygen and you’re not going to be feeling that – if you just take a deep breath now as I’m speaking, and do it a couple of times, you’ll probably find that you can crack your shoulders, you can track where the tension is, you know where you hold it in your body. And that’s what that’s important for. So whether it’s about just doing breathing exercises to help you with stress, or meditation, or whatever it might be, there’s loads of things out there that you can do now that’s available.
Writing things down. So I don’t journal as such in this way, but what I do do is mind maps. So this isn’t one of mine, by the way, this is just one I’ve found. But I write mind maps down, lists, because it just helps me to get my thoughts in order. So if you’re holding an awful lot of information, then write it down. If you wake up in the night and that stuff’s going round in your head, write it down. You don’t have to hold it in your head all the time. And part of what we try to do is think, “Oh, it’s fine, I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” or “I’ll manage that later,” but it’s still in the background ticking over, and we tend to over-think.
So anything that helps you to create space, write it down. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is either. I always think of it a bit like, you know corks that come to the top, that you might start writing something down, and it goes to the most – can be connected to the most weirdest and wonderful things, and you think, “Where’s that even come from?” It doesn’t matter, just write it down and get it out of your head so you’re not having to carry it around with you.
Think about your physical clutter as well, so often, when you’re – these are all the indicators and the signs to look out for. So if, for example, your space, your work space, your home space, starts to become really cluttered, quite often that will represent what’s going on in your head. So get some order in place. I’m not suggesting you go the other end of the spectrum and become obsessive about the space, but it’s just about balance.
And actually, we all know, when we’ve sorted out one of those cupboards in your house that are spring-loaded, and I know we’ve all got them, it’s not just me, that when you open the door and it is full of all sorts of stuff that you’ve been gathering over the years, when you sort that out and you throw some stuff away, you feel better, and it’s the same thing around you in your space, just think about, “What am I holding onto physically, and what would it feel like to get rid of it?” Because often, it’ll help you to feel just a bit more in control, and a bit less anxious about things.
We’ve talked about asking for what you need, and I think asking for help is one of those things. Knowing when you need to ask for help, who can help you with it, as well, and asking the right person. We talk – there’s a lot of things out there now about, it’s good to talk, and it absolutely is. You know, I wouldn’t do what I do for a living if I didn’t think that, but it’s good to talk to somebody who’s going to help. It’s good to talk to the right person, because often, if we talk to the wrong person, or they give us advice that doesn’t really fit for us, then that’s not great. So think about, when I ask for help, who do I ask for, and who’s my network, who’s my team around me that can help me with some of the things that I maybe need some support with?
Boundaries are also a big part of your self-care. So when we talk about boundaries, it’s creating that space around yourself. So how many people on the call, and please put comments in – I know I can see them going up – please just say about how you feel about saying no. So saying no can sometimes be a really difficult thing to do. We tend to say yes and then figure it out later, or say yes and then feel resentful about saying yes. OK? So how can you say no? And I appreciate the hierarchical structure of what you work in, this is a difficult situation to talk about, but there’s other things in life where you say yes to things when actually that probably doesn’t help you.
And saying no, which can leave you with a sense of guilt, or you might feel like, “Urgh, I’ll say yes anyway, I’ll get involved,” but does it drain you? Does it help you? Are you happy to say yes to something, and actually genuinely feel happy about that? Would you rather say no? And how many times have you said yes to something when you absolutely wanted to say no? That might even be around social events. It could be about time with friends, it could be about family, that you almost can sacrifice yourself in order to make somebody else feel OK. So think about where your boundaries are, and think about whether you’re happy for those, and are there things that you could maybe say no to that would help you to feel better?
I’ve touched on mindfulness, which is a whole session in itself, so I wanted to just talk a little bit about mindlessness. Some of you will have maybe one phone, maybe two phones, maybe a couple of phones and a screen, maybe that and a laptop. You’ll have smart TVs. Everything is interactive and everything is available 24 hours a day, and our brains aren’t meant to function that way. So on the one hand, it can be really helpful to have something to just scroll through, like that kind of mind-numbing, just switch off, but on the other hand, you can also lose hours of your day and time doing that, when actually you might be able to do something that’s more constructive that actually helps you.
So what I would say is, with technology, is making sure that you manage it so you’re not available 24/7, that it is put to one side, that if it helps you to have a work phone and a home phone, then that’s also – it creates those boundaries, if you’re in a role where you can do that, she says, in brackets.
If you are on social media, and obviously there’s a lot of stuff about it in the news and everything at the minute, which you’ll all be fully aware of, try and make your social media streams the best magazine you’ve ever read. Go for the things that you really like to read about, the things that entertain you, the things that help you to feel connected to the things you like to do. So manage this time on the screens, manage what you’re actually seeing, as well, and I’m sure you’ll have covered this in the sleep workshops, try not to look at that kind of light for at least an hour before bed, because it does trigger your brain. So just consider your relationship – are you sat in a room sometimes with real people, and you’re on your phone looking at other people that you don’t really care that much about, and what would it be like to be able to actually be in the room with the people you’re with?
And then those people around you who mood-hoover you, who take the joy out of life and relationships, that their energy is really heavy. So I’m sure, if I say there’ll be people in your life where you spend time with them and you can feel yourself just – your energy levels just draining out of your feet. And you might – I appreciate this is difficult if it’s family members, but it might be that you are spending a lot of time with people who don’t help you to feel energised, and don’t connect with you on that other level. So think about who’s around you. Who do you need to unfollow in real life? Who do you need to unfollow on social media? How do you create that space for yourself?
And consider those relationships, as well, all right? Because I was just thinking, I’ve got a friend who I see, and I can see her for an hour for breakfast, when I was allowed to do that, and I would be more knackered based on that conversation and what happened in that hour, than I ever would be seeing clients all day, because there’s that drain that comes with it.
Creativity, loads of ideas on there for you around creativity. I’ve put wood turning at the bottom there because I’ve got a bit obsessed with wood turning on the YouTube videos, not that I can do it myself, but I like to see what people create. It’s all about stimulating that creativity in your brain. So have a look at that and think, “Actually, those are things I could do, things I haven’t done for years, or things I love to do every day that really help me.” And have a go. You know? Have a go at something. The amount of adults who will say, “I’m not creative,” but they’ll really take care about what they wear, they’ll really take care about how they present food on a plate – there’s these things that we do which are creative and they are part of what makes us tick.
Learning. So there was a really good episode on the BBC, I think, the other night about mental health. I don’t know if anybody saw it. It was Tanya Byron, I think, who’s a psychologist, and they were looking at different ways of helping mental health. And one of the things they talked about was that if you’re doing physical exercise and you are also learning something at the same time, so a podcast, or there’s something on in the background that you’re learning about, that can be really good for mental health. It increases the blood flow to the brain. And I think that using these kinds of ideas, around podcasts, audio books, having a really good playlist, if you love music, all those different things can really help you to just come away from your head sometimes.
So if you like a particular podcast, if you like a particular audio book, if you like the Keeping the Peace podcasts, if you like anything that distracts you, but it also gives you information, playlists, music playlists, and audio recordings is another thing. So rather than writing things down, you might like to audio record what’s going on. So again, just another thing around self-care, find what works for you. There’ll be things that you’ll go, “Oh, yeah, I really enjoy that and I haven’t done it for ages,” so how can you put that back in?
And your moving, so getting out for a walk, as I said, like I do with Digby, noticing what’s going on around you, but there’s also some great research out there. Blue Mind, which is about being in water, so if you do paddle boarding, and those kinds of things. Green therapy is about being outside and just being in nature. Active meditation, mindfulness. You might like gardening. There’s a really good book that’s been written by the RHS recently about the science of being in the garden, how to help your wellbeing and your mental health, and just factoring, all of these different aspects in. Some of them won’t work for you at all, and some of them really will, so put them on your menu.
And then, there are some helpful apps out there as well, so again, things like Headspace and Calm, they can really help with putting meditation and breathing exercises, reflection time, into your day. Even if it’s a couple of minutes. It doesn’t have to be an hour long; it can just be something where you just do a process that you go through. And again, it depends on what you like, what voice you like, how you engage with those different sounds of music, and everything else. And Sleepio is also a good app for sleep as well. I just thought I’d put that in there because it’s all part of rest.
So the Keeping the Peace podcast, and I’m going to keep plugging it in case you haven’t listened to it yet, we’ve done the first series, we’re onto the second series now, and there’ll be two extra podcasts, one for today’s webinar and one for next month’s webinar about the masks we wear, so we’ll add those, that extra content on there as we go.
And if anybody wants to get in touch with me, please feel free to do so. There’s loads of stuff we put on our website, all free content. There’s the Westerly Club, which is a men’s mental health group, which is a private group on Facebook. The F Word, which is another private Facebook group open to anybody, and again, it’s just about being around people, and engagement, and discussing how people are doing, all of which can be really helpful.
And the other thing to just consider with self-care is that if you’ve ever rung IT because you’ve got a problem with your laptop – I hope there’s nobody on here from IT – they’ll generally tell you to switch it off and switch it on again. Am I right? So it’s the same thing with you. Sometimes you’ve just got to unplug, whatever that means for you, and just give yourself permission to do that. It’s OK to take that time and to actually unplug yourself from everything.
So we often are concerned with looking after others, and that’s something that came out of the work we do with the police, around making sure that other people are OK, and that we know what we do to step in, because that’s part of your role, is just to serve the public. But where do you fit into that? So what about you, and how do you look after yourself, and what do you do to keep yourself at the centre of everything that you do, really?
Does anybody remember this? There’d be a certain age range that might remember this. It’s a really bad photo, but it was the ‘70s, so you just have to excuse that. So this was from a children’s programme on a Friday called Crackerjack. Does everyone remember that, yeah? So Crackerjack was a really 1970s, cheap and cheerful fun, where basically we used to pile children up on these pedestals with lots of different objects, and see how much they could carry.
And this is how it feels when we’re starting to feel under pressure and under stress, that actually, we’ve got all these things that we’re holding, and what do we put down first? How do we see where we’re going? This kid in the middle, I think, has got a nice Frisbee there right in front of his face; he can’t see anything. So if you imagine, and can kind of relate to that, that there’s going to be times, and at the minute probably more than ever, where actually I’m carrying all these different responsibilities, I’m accountable for a lot of things. How do I keep moving forward and manage myself well so that I know what to put down, in what order, and how to keep myself steady?
A good way of thinking about how you’re doing, and I want you to just do this right now, is to put yourself on a scale of one to ten. So if you’re thinking about your wellbeing, that might be your mental health, emotional health, financial health, physical health, think about what number are you right now. You might decide that you are, I don’t know, a four out of ten, and that will be very subjective to you. You’ll be able to think, “Yeah, I think I’m a five or a six.” It’s very much about your experience. So if you are, say a five out of ten at the minute, because you know there’s things you could do differently, and maybe you’re not on it as much, what would make you a six? What would you need to do to just make a step change so that you can feel, actually, I know what I need to do to make myself feel better?
Because sometimes, we get stuck in a scale at a particular number, and life seems to be happening around us and we feel like we haven’t got much sense of agency, but we would like to do something different. So scaling yourself and just checking in is subjective, but it helps you to be able to think about where do you fit with that.
Stevenson and Farmer did a really good review of mental health in the workplace probably about three years ago now, and they talked about this fluctuation which I think is absolutely right, from what we see at Fortis. We work with a lot of clients of all ages, and we see people thriving and doing really well, at maybe a ten, and then struggling, kind of early numbers, and going down into the lower numbers, and feeling like, “Actually, I’m really struggling and I’m not sure how to cope.” So if you can track yourself, that’s a big part of wellbeing. What do I – today, how am I feeling? What do I need to do to help myself?
OK, so when we’re looking at definitions of duty of self-care, there are a lot of medical definitions, and when we’re talking about it from an NHS perspective, we’re thinking about how we look after ourselves medically. So do we take our medication? Do we look after ourselves? Do we do the minimum we can to support ourselves, so that we aren’t going into the NHS or the GP or the pharmacy too often to try and get help from them? So their definition is that it’s about understanding our condition and how we live with it.
From a Fortis perspective, and what we see in terms of self-care, actually these are the key things that we think about with self-care. So it’s about deliberately making time to consider, track and take care of yourself by creating opportunities and actions to protect your wellbeing and happiness. Now, there’s quite a few keywords in there. Doing something deliberately to help yourself, but making time for yourself as well, and tracking how you’re doing, and putting things in place that give you the opportunity to look after you.
And also, recognising that you’ve got a right to look after yourself. That’s something we hear a lot, is that, “I don’t – not necessarily that I haven’t got a right to do it,” but people don’t even consider that they might have a right to actually take care of themselves. So if you start to think about noticing things, putting opportunities in place, being able to take care of your wellbeing on a day to day basis, and it’s part of what you do, just part of what you do, just part of your day.
What it isn’t, is the stuff you do for maintenance. So having a hot shower is not self-care. That’s just what you do. Having a decent lunch isn’t – that’s not self-care. That’s just part of what you need to do every day to look after yourself. It’s not just about having a bath. It’s not just about going for a run. I’ve put this image in here of – I’m not quite sure what that is. I think that might be yoga, but just trying to think, it’s not these kinds of things that feel like they’re unattainable, and the things you can’t get hold of, they’re just individual to you, and they’re things that you find helpful.
OK, so if we’re thinking about burnout, that’s what we’re trying to avoid. This is the ultimate, you know, when we feel really ill, and that’s what stress causes. It causes us to feel incredibly ill. It’s not just about feeling under pressure. Stress is when you feel unwell. So you might feel a massive range of emotions, you might feel upset, very angry about things, or you might want to withdraw. So all of those symptoms start to tell you that something isn’t quite right.
Burnout has been classified, it’s in the International Classification for Diseases, and it’s been classified as an occupational phenomenon. I would argue that it’s far more than that because it’s about all our lives, and especially over the last year, what’s happening in our homes has also impacted on what’s happening in our workplace, because often we’re working – you might be working from home. It’s all been merged and blurred. It’s not seen as a medical condition, but it’s definitely a syndrome.
So if we’re looking at that chronic stress, you can see there I’ve bullet-pointed those three aspects, so feeling your energy – that exhaustion, quite often that tiredness, it’s absolutely a physical and emotional response. You might want to distance yourself from the job. You might be not wanting to engage with it because actually you just haven’t got the capacity to do it. And that’s where we start to see the negativity and feeling cynical about things. And also, you just become less professional because you just haven’t got that capacity and ability to be able to engage.
So when we’re looking at burnout, we’re looking at actually, how does that stretch across life in general? I was diagnosed with burnout probably ten or 11 years ago now, and during that time I literally just didn’t have any capacity for anything. I did the bare minimum, whether that was looking after my children, turning up to work. And it was a series of different things that’d happened that just left me in that place. So it’s a really physical and emotional fatigue, and if you’ve ever experienced it, you’ll know it takes a long time to recover from it.
So anything you can do that helps you to not get to that point is obviously going to be massively helpful. Now, I appreciate there’s going to be environmental factors, relational difficulties. There might be things going on at work that are beyond your control, but actually, if we’re trying to avoid this state of exhaustion, self-care is going to be a helpful antidote to that.
So if we’re looking at signs of struggle, I’ve deliberately put these all on one slide just because – I mean, there’s more than this – I could fill slides with them, but these are the kind of ones that you might see. So we know that feeling anxious is obviously a sign of us not managing things very well. We start to go into – there’s four different responses – there’s fight, flight, freeze and flock. So we go into all these different responses, depending on what’s happening, and how we function.
We start to feel that we can’t cope with things, and then we start to act out. So that might be that we either start to become frustrated, you might find yourself having less capacity for things that normally wouldn’t even bother you, or you might want to withdraw and take yourself away from situations.
You can see on here there’s some emotional responses, so becoming obsessive, feeling isolated, and trying to make sense of what’s going on, but there’s also some very physical responses as well. So what I tend to see is that our body will often tell us well before we’ll emotionally accept how we’re doing. So if anyone’s ever had annual leave, you’ve had your leave and you’ve been ill within 24 hours of finishing, you know that sore throat that kicks in, that cough that you get, the cold you get? We’ve all been there; we’ve all done it, but what happens is, then, our downtime becomes about recovering from our life as opposed to enjoying the downtime, because we’re working, and that’s what we’re doing it for, is to have money and time to be able to go and do nice things.
So if you notice that actually, physically you start to have symptoms – one of mine is a chest infection – that’s always what happens when I’m getting run down. That’s what is my – and I can ignore it to a point, and then I can’t ignore it anymore. Thankfully I haven’t done that for a few years. But these are the things, so you’ll have your own physical responses. Teeth grinding, I’ve put in there as well because that could be something that you’re doing at night subconsciously, but you’ll also feel that kind of, “I can’t quite remember what was in that meeting last week. I’m feeling quite fatigued.”
I’ve put in self-harm and self-sabotage. Self-sabotage can be any behaviours that you do that actually don’t help you, that actually undermine you and your process. And I’ve also put in here somewhere, yeah on the first line there, about self-medication. So your self-medication could be anything from alcohol use to prescribed drugs, to other drugs. It could be anything from shopping, to over-exercising. You might do a range of different behaviours that actually you just do to try and make yourself feel better, but you’re not really understanding what’s going on at the core of that, and so it’s not as helpful as it could be.
So if we’re thinking about the conditions for growth, as I said at the beginning, there’s a humanistic psychotherapy theory, and the guy who developed it, Carl Rogers, talks about the right conditions for growth. So, when you’re going to see a therapist, someone like me, what I’m trying to do is create the right conditions for the person who’s sat in front of me, whether that’s on a screen now, or face-to-face, to be able to help them to be able to grow from where they are right now. And a lot of people can be quite damaged by the time they get to that point of asking for help.
And he talked about potatoes, which is why you’ve got an image on there of potatoes, so he talked about, if you put a potato in a dark room, and you have a shaft of light, so it’s dark, it’s cold, but there’s a shaft of light, the potato will grow towards the light. Does that make sense? So the conditions for that potato to grow are right, and it’s the same thing for people. It’s the same thing for you as an individual, what you offer yourself, what you get from your family and your relationships, what you get within your organisation as well. So what are the right conditions for you to be able to grow and to be able to feel connected, grounded, and all of that good stuff that comes when we’re feeling well?
The five ways of wellbeing, I’m sure you’ll have come across these, but again, it’s just about thinking about, well, where am I at with this? At the minute, connectivity with others is quite tricky. You might be working and still seeing people on a daily basis, but you also might be struggling to do that with particular people because we’re not allowed to see people. So when we talked about social distancing, actually this is about physical distancing, but keeping connectivity. So how are you keeping connected with others? Are you preferring not to, or are you finding that, actually, I’ve started to get back into that, or you might’ve gone through phases? But being connected to others, so if you lead a team, how are you getting people to be connected with each other, especially if they’re all working in different places?
Being active, we know that physical health is massively important to our mental health. They’re not something that’s disconnected. They’re absolutely connected. So if you’re feeling that, actually, you’re taking time out to be active, that’s going to help your endorphins, it’s going to help your mental and emotional wellbeing. It’s also good for that stress relief as well, depending on what you’re doing.
That giving part in the middle there is about reciprocity. So if you are giving to others, you’re going to be able to get that great feeling back, of helping somebody and actually stepping forward. And that is a big part of your roles, really, and that you’re helping other people. I know that sometimes you’re arresting people and there’s all that side to it, but actually a lot of what you do, people look to the police to know what to do, and to help.
So keeping learning, making sure that – we know for mental health that actually engaging with some kind of learning – I’ll talk a bit about that later, and what that might look like. And also just taking notice. When you are taking notice of things, you might notice what’s happening around you, changing in seasons, the snow that’s around today. I don’t know about where you are, but there definitely is around me, and just taking notice of how people are responding to you, how you’re responding to them, what’s going on around you. When we aren’t coping very well, we stop taking notice of things because we don’t have the capacity to do it. So kind of scaling yourself on each of these areas and thinking, “Am I doing OK in these areas?” How could I do differently, and how could I improve them if I want to?” because it’s down to your choice.
When we’re thinking about surviving or thriving, going back to that quote at the beginning, these are the aspects of our health that we think about, in terms of our wellbeing, so your mental, emotional, physical, financial, and also your creativity. When I do training with police officers and I rock up with felt tips and stuff to colour in, there’s a kind of disbelief across the room like, “Oh, what is she doing?” And then I give them Haribo and that all goes away. Everyone’s fine with it [laughs].
But the creativity side of it, that might be anything that you like to do that is creative. But we tend to kind of, as we get older, and if we are struggling with our self-care, that kind of starts to go because it almost feels like I haven’t got time to do that, or I haven’t got the right to spend time on those things. So think about, in terms of your own health, but also the people around you, and how are they doing.
Financial health is a big part of how we do, so if you’ve ever had a situation where you’re in debt, you’ve got too much to pay for, and not enough money to pay for it, you haven’t planned for your future, all sorts of things like that, the financial aspect adds such a weight onto people mentally, and you might have quite strong messages about financial sides of things as well.
And I know our direction, I’ve put on there, our purpose, so our purpose is really important, and often when people that we see are struggling , have kind of lost sight of that. Why am I doing this? What’s it about, and why did I think this was a good idea in the first place? So connecting to what you’re – why – why am I doing what I’m doing?
We’ve often got the elephant in the room, which is why we’ve chosen the elephant for the logo for this, and for the podcasts as well, about what is not spoken about. And often our mental health isn’t something that people tend to want to speak about, because there’s still a stigma attached to it. That’s what we’re all working really hard to get away from, but our self-care is very much connected to making sure that we stay mentally well.
Mind have got their definition which I’ll give you chance to read as I’m talking over it, but you’ll see from here that actually there’s an awful lot that they say that we should be doing in order to be mentally well. So what does that really mean, and how realistic is it that we might be doing all of that all the time? I suspect that if I said, “Right, everyone, give me a show of hands, how many people are doing this 100 percent of the time?” there’d be very few people that could actually really genuinely put their hand up and say, “yeah, I’m all over this. I’ve got this.” There’ll be parts of this that you know you maybe don’t do that well,
And the bottom paragraph there about reasonable standards, often we set ourselves really high standards and expectations and then when we don’t meet them we give ourselves a really hard time. But the person who’s set those really high expectations is us. So in some ways, you think about that self-sabotage, you know, actually if you bring that expectation down, the chances are, you’re going to be able to meet it. So not setting yourself impossible goals, not trying to be perfect in everything as well. The ‘be perfect driver’ means that we’re striving all the time for it to be perfect, and all it takes is for somebody else’s judgement to say, “It isn’t,” or the sands to shift, and suddenly we’re not, and that can be quite derailing for some, especially if that’s one of their drivers.
When we were doing the training for this Keeping the Peace stuff, we asked about conditions of worth, and we did an exercise that was around putting post-it notes onto different titles that I’d put around the room, and it was really interesting to see what came out of that. So conditions of worth are what we feel we have to do in order to be acceptable and to gain the approval of other people.
So these are things we’ve learned growing up. I’m a psychotherapist, so it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t go back to childhood, so I’m just going to tip into that for a minute. We have conditions or worth that are based on what we’ve grown up in. And you might have really clear messages about that, so it might be anything from, if I’m not busy, I’m lazy. It might be about finances, save for a rainy day. Don’t spend it if you haven’t got it. It could be about talking about feelings, that could be a taboo. We can have all these different conditions. So what happens as we grow up is that we look around and see the responses of people around us, and what we need to do in order to gain approval.
And what came out from the training was that some of those messages that I’ve just said were really, kind of, at the core for some people about being in the job they’re in, being in the career they’ve chosen, what’s driven them to being where they are. And so thinking about your own conditions of worth, what did I grow up in, and what was the expectations? If I was going to get approval, or to be acceptable to somebody, what was it I needed to do? And what does that mean now, and how has that impacted on you now, and is it something you want to keep, and is it something you want to change? Also thinking about if you’re parents, have you passed some of those on to your own children, and again, are they ones that you want to keep, or change?
So conditions of worth is something I’ll pick up again in the next webinar, which is next month, but I just wanted to give a nod to it, because sometimes when we maybe don’t look after ourselves, from a self-care point of view, it’s because we’re bottom of the list. If I said to you, “Write down everything you’re responsible for,” where would you sit on it? Would it be at the bottom? Would you even be on it? And if you’re not on it, actually I would argue you probably need to be near the top, at least [laughs], if not at the top, because if you’re not OK, everything else isn’t OK. Our relationships suffer, we suffer.
So thinking about self-care, we are culturally, I would say, we grow up to think that taking time out for ourselves is something that is quite selfish, and this is the kind of thing we’re trying to break, around actually, this is about taking time and making sure that you are at the centre of your life, really. It isn’t about being selfish. It is about thinking about all these different areas of your life. So if you haven’t got glasses on, and you need them, you might need to put them on now.
But this is one of the exercises I do, and I’m happy to email this out to anybody who would like it, so let us know if you would. And what you do is, the middle point of this circle is zero and the outside edge is ten, all right? So if you do it all the time, if you’re really good at that segment, then you colour in the whole of that segment, so you’d give yourself a ten out of ten. So for example, if you factor mindfulness into your regular daily routine, it’s just part of what you do, then you can colour that in and say, “Right, I’m a ten out of ten on that. That’s great.” If you look at ‘take care of my space’, and you think – which is lucky you can’t see my desk at the minute, but if you think about, “Actually, I’m an eight out of ten,” you would colour to where you think roughly an eight is. All right? And as you go through this wheel, for each of those sections, you think, “Where am I at at the minute?”
Now, this is a complete snapshot of where you are today. It might be different six weeks ago, and it might be different in six weeks’ time. But thinking about each of these aspects, how am I doing, and where would I like to be able to extend the numbers, and where would I like to be able to focus? What have I lost touch with?
So, for example, physical health. For some people at the minute, if we’re not moving much, it’s difficult to factor it in, especially if you’re busy and you’ve got all sorts of things going on at home and work, and everything else. How do I manage that? What do I need to put in? So for me, one of the strategies I’ve put in place which I was regretting this morning when they were falling out, is that I’ve got two out of three of my children doing a HIIT session with me every morning. So we get up at quarter to seven, we do a HIIT session. They’re all teenagers [laughs], it’s like ... I don’t know why I even put it forward, but they’re getting out of bed and they’re exercising, so we’re all doing it. There’s three of us.
And that’s something that means I’m making sure that they’re getting what they need, and I get what I need. That wasn’t something I was doing three weeks ago. That’s because I’ve thought, “Hang on, just going out for a walk’s not enough. How can I factor it in?” So work through each of these sections which, as I said, I’m happy to send you, and just think, where am I at?
With your relationships, for example, the higher the number, the better the relationships, all right? So if you have people around you who don’t help you, or are quite undermining and there’s difficulties in those relationships, that number’s going to be lower. All right? So as I said, have a go at that. We’ll send it out to people, and you can see where you’re at. But what I would suggest you do if you do do it, is that you do it where you are today, and then you do it in six weeks’ time, and just see how you are and where you’ve improved.
And I know I’m banging on about scaling today, but it’s a really good mechanism. So if you’re happy with being a six out of ten with something, that’s great. This isn’t about being ten out of ten. For those people who want things to be perfect, it’s not about it being a ten out of ten, it’s just about where am I at right now, and what do I want to do differently?
Because, if you think about the impact of that on you, and if that wheel is quite wobbly, you are that wheel, that’s what’s representing you. OK? So if you had four of those on your car, how far are you actually going to get? Probably not that far, because there’ll be gaps and there’ll be things that probably don’t work as well.
If we’re thinking about what helps you, this is about your choices. So I hear a lot, “I haven’t got time for this, and this is happening and that’s happening, and that’s happening.” OK, so there’s actually choices within that about what you’re choosing to be involved in and what you’re choosing to let go of. Now, I’m not saying, at times, that our self-care might drop down if things are really busy, but it’s about reassessing and bringing yourself back up. So what helps you? What choices can you make that will help you? And what is it you actually enjoy doing? What do you like doing? What makes you happy? That’s about – there’s a psychotherapist in America, and she talks about, ‘what makes your tail wag?’ What gives you that feeling? And actually, most people have lost touch with that, at the minute especially, just because of the amount of things we can’t do.
So keep an eye on the basics. These are the things that we know from a mental health and emotional wellbeing point of view make a massive difference. So that might be your diet. What’s your sleep pattern like? I know you’re doing some really great sleep webinars, so get yourselves on those and learn about that because it’s a massive subject in its own right. But just thinking about my hydration levels. Making your bed in the morning so you feel like you’ve done something that actually is complete before you even leave the room. Having some fun. When was the last time you had a proper belly laugh and you really enjoyed yourself with somebody? And what’s your environment and your relationships like? These are the basics. If things start to impact on you, if you can actually improve some areas, even if you can’t improve others, that’s going to help, rather than everything coming down that scale.
And something that we’ve seen quite a bit with police officers and staff is about asking for what you need. There is still that, kind of, resistance, I guess, or avoidance of, “I need some help,” or “I need to talk to somebody,” or whatever. But actually asking for what you need can be massively helpful, and everybody needs something, and some support at some point. We don’t go through life without it. And sometimes people actually really want to help, and by not allowing them to help, that doesn’t help them either. So asking for what you need, and being clear about that and recognising that you do have some things that are within your control that maybe you aren’t taking control of, and again, that comes down to just valuing yourself.
So if we think about that menu, I talked at the beginning about a menu for self-care. I’ve put the Himalaya [Hyatt 00:27:47] Resort there, because we can all fantasize about being somewhere nice and warm. So if you think about your menu, what would be on your menu for self-care? What would you like to be on it? What would be on yours would be different to what’s on mine. And it isn’t about actually every day – some people really go with good habits, that you have good habits in every day, but realistically, when you – if you’ve got a busy life, that can be difficult to keep going, and you can give yourself a hard time for not having achieved what you’ve set out to achieve, whereas if you’ve got options and choices, then you pick whatever you need.
So being aware of your own levels of self-care and your own levels of wellbeing, there might be something that – like, you might like to go and hammer it at the gym. If you’ve got a gym at home, or if you can go to a gym, you might like to hammer that. That’s great. But there might be days when, actually, that’s the last thing you need. You need to rest and you need to do something – good food, or whatever it might be, or talk to somebody. So creating your menu and your options is really important. We’ll talk a bit more about that in a second.
So this is my German Shepherd, Digby. He’s part of my self-care. So when he comes to me and he’s bugging me because he needs to go out for a walk, and I can’t be bothered, I have to go out for a walk because he’s part of what makes me kind of think. And then I love it. When I’m out – you know, you never regret it, do you? You never regret going out for a walk. You never regret taking exercise.
But he’s part of my routine around, actually, as much as I want to do that for myself, sometimes I just think, “I haven’t got the energy,” and he’s like, “no, we have got the energy,” and he behaves as if he’s never been out on a walk before in his entire life, every time we go out for a walk. So that enthusiasm, it’s hard to deny it. So he’s part of my self-care, and he’s also – he lives in the moment. Dogs live in the moment. We can learn a lot from them, and taking out what’s happening and noticing what’s going on around them.
So when you’re thinking about your menu, and this is something to reflect on after this session, these are the kinds of things to think about. You’re going to have activities on there, so you might have three or four different types of exercise you like to do. You might have something around your diet and your water intake and that kind of thing. You might have socialising on there, but what does that really mean? Is that about going out for a walk with a friend or a family member, or is it about doing something on a platform like this, which I know we’re all a bit platformed out. But it’s about connectivity and engagement. But these are the ideas to think about. Is there something you can do that’s quite therapeutic for you?
Taking the time – if you need to book it in, book it in. Put it in your diary so you know you’ve committed to it. Even if you change your mind about what you’re going to do, at least you’ve put the time aside for yourself, putting down some of the responsibility that you feel, and putting those things in like fulfilment. Distraction is a great technique. If you’ve got a lot going on, go and do something that distracts you from it. You don’t have to engage and over think everything. Doing something creative, so that might be anything from cooking to planting something, to being creative and actually creating something. I’m surrounded by art therapists at Fortis and they’re always – someone’s just dropped something in today they’ve made – it’s all that importance around that. And then on the right hand side, what makes you well? Create space mentally and physically.
Joy, so joy is one of the most difficult emotions, because when we feel joy we’re waiting for it to end. Like, this is great but it won’t be here tomorrow because there’s always going to be a down. You always come the other side of it. So factor it into your self-care menu, along with these other things at the end, which we’ve mentioned. Gratitude is a great antidote if things are really tricky. What are you grateful for, and who’s important to you?
This is going to sound like a really counsellor-y thing to say now, but breathing is a fantastic strategy to be able to support yourself when you’re feeling like, actually, I just need a minute. And that’s belly breathing, so breathing into your diaphragm, seven/11, breathe in for seven, out for 11. Your out breath wants to be longer than your in breath. And just slow down that physiological response that you’re having, to stress. So keep an eye on how you’re breathing.
If you’re just breathing shallowly in the top of your rib cage all the time, you’re not getting in enough oxygen and you’re not going to be feeling that – if you just take a deep breath now as I’m speaking, and do it a couple of times, you’ll probably find that you can crack your shoulders, you can track where the tension is, you know where you hold it in your body. And that’s what that’s important for. So whether it’s about just doing breathing exercises to help you with stress, or meditation, or whatever it might be, there’s loads of things out there that you can do now that’s available.
Writing things down. So I don’t journal as such in this way, but what I do do is mind maps. So this isn’t one of mine, by the way, this is just one I’ve found. But I write mind maps down, lists, because it just helps me to get my thoughts in order. So if you’re holding an awful lot of information, then write it down. If you wake up in the night and that stuff’s going round in your head, write it down. You don’t have to hold it in your head all the time. And part of what we try to do is think, “Oh, it’s fine, I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” or “I’ll manage that later,” but it’s still in the background ticking over, and we tend to over-think.
So anything that helps you to create space, write it down. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is either. I always think of it a bit like, you know corks that come to the top, that you might start writing something down, and it goes to the most – can be connected to the most weirdest and wonderful things, and you think, “Where’s that even come from?” It doesn’t matter, just write it down and get it out of your head so you’re not having to carry it around with you.
Think about your physical clutter as well, so often, when you’re – these are all the indicators and the signs to look out for. So if, for example, your space, your work space, your home space, starts to become really cluttered, quite often that will represent what’s going on in your head. So get some order in place. I’m not suggesting you go the other end of the spectrum and become obsessive about the space, but it’s just about balance.
And actually, we all know, when we’ve sorted out one of those cupboards in your house that are spring-loaded, and I know we’ve all got them, it’s not just me, that when you open the door and it is full of all sorts of stuff that you’ve been gathering over the years, when you sort that out and you throw some stuff away, you feel better, and it’s the same thing around you in your space, just think about, “What am I holding onto physically, and what would it feel like to get rid of it?” Because often, it’ll help you to feel just a bit more in control, and a bit less anxious about things.
We’ve talked about asking for what you need, and I think asking for help is one of those things. Knowing when you need to ask for help, who can help you with it, as well, and asking the right person. We talk – there’s a lot of things out there now about, it’s good to talk, and it absolutely is. You know, I wouldn’t do what I do for a living if I didn’t think that, but it’s good to talk to somebody who’s going to help. It’s good to talk to the right person, because often, if we talk to the wrong person, or they give us advice that doesn’t really fit for us, then that’s not great. So think about, when I ask for help, who do I ask for, and who’s my network, who’s my team around me that can help me with some of the things that I maybe need some support with?
Boundaries are also a big part of your self-care. So when we talk about boundaries, it’s creating that space around yourself. So how many people on the call, and please put comments in – I know I can see them going up – please just say about how you feel about saying no. So saying no can sometimes be a really difficult thing to do. We tend to say yes and then figure it out later, or say yes and then feel resentful about saying yes. OK? So how can you say no? And I appreciate the hierarchical structure of what you work in, this is a difficult situation to talk about, but there’s other things in life where you say yes to things when actually that probably doesn’t help you.
And saying no, which can leave you with a sense of guilt, or you might feel like, “Urgh, I’ll say yes anyway, I’ll get involved,” but does it drain you? Does it help you? Are you happy to say yes to something, and actually genuinely feel happy about that? Would you rather say no? And how many times have you said yes to something when you absolutely wanted to say no? That might even be around social events. It could be about time with friends, it could be about family, that you almost can sacrifice yourself in order to make somebody else feel OK. So think about where your boundaries are, and think about whether you’re happy for those, and are there things that you could maybe say no to that would help you to feel better?
I’ve touched on mindfulness, which is a whole session in itself, so I wanted to just talk a little bit about mindlessness. Some of you will have maybe one phone, maybe two phones, maybe a couple of phones and a screen, maybe that and a laptop. You’ll have smart TVs. Everything is interactive and everything is available 24 hours a day, and our brains aren’t meant to function that way. So on the one hand, it can be really helpful to have something to just scroll through, like that kind of mind-numbing, just switch off, but on the other hand, you can also lose hours of your day and time doing that, when actually you might be able to do something that’s more constructive that actually helps you.
So what I would say is, with technology, is making sure that you manage it so you’re not available 24/7, that it is put to one side, that if it helps you to have a work phone and a home phone, then that’s also – it creates those boundaries, if you’re in a role where you can do that, she says, in brackets.
If you are on social media, and obviously there’s a lot of stuff about it in the news and everything at the minute, which you’ll all be fully aware of, try and make your social media streams the best magazine you’ve ever read. Go for the things that you really like to read about, the things that entertain you, the things that help you to feel connected to the things you like to do. So manage this time on the screens, manage what you’re actually seeing, as well, and I’m sure you’ll have covered this in the sleep workshops, try not to look at that kind of light for at least an hour before bed, because it does trigger your brain. So just consider your relationship – are you sat in a room sometimes with real people, and you’re on your phone looking at other people that you don’t really care that much about, and what would it be like to be able to actually be in the room with the people you’re with?
And then those people around you who mood-hoover you, who take the joy out of life and relationships, that their energy is really heavy. So I’m sure, if I say there’ll be people in your life where you spend time with them and you can feel yourself just – your energy levels just draining out of your feet. And you might – I appreciate this is difficult if it’s family members, but it might be that you are spending a lot of time with people who don’t help you to feel energised, and don’t connect with you on that other level. So think about who’s around you. Who do you need to unfollow in real life? Who do you need to unfollow on social media? How do you create that space for yourself?
And consider those relationships, as well, all right? Because I was just thinking, I’ve got a friend who I see, and I can see her for an hour for breakfast, when I was allowed to do that, and I would be more knackered based on that conversation and what happened in that hour, than I ever would be seeing clients all day, because there’s that drain that comes with it.
Creativity, loads of ideas on there for you around creativity. I’ve put wood turning at the bottom there because I’ve got a bit obsessed with wood turning on the YouTube videos, not that I can do it myself, but I like to see what people create. It’s all about stimulating that creativity in your brain. So have a look at that and think, “Actually, those are things I could do, things I haven’t done for years, or things I love to do every day that really help me.” And have a go. You know? Have a go at something. The amount of adults who will say, “I’m not creative,” but they’ll really take care about what they wear, they’ll really take care about how they present food on a plate – there’s these things that we do which are creative and they are part of what makes us tick.
Learning. So there was a really good episode on the BBC, I think, the other night about mental health. I don’t know if anybody saw it. It was Tanya Byron, I think, who’s a psychologist, and they were looking at different ways of helping mental health. And one of the things they talked about was that if you’re doing physical exercise and you are also learning something at the same time, so a podcast, or there’s something on in the background that you’re learning about, that can be really good for mental health. It increases the blood flow to the brain. And I think that using these kinds of ideas, around podcasts, audio books, having a really good playlist, if you love music, all those different things can really help you to just come away from your head sometimes.
So if you like a particular podcast, if you like a particular audio book, if you like the Keeping the Peace podcasts, if you like anything that distracts you, but it also gives you information, playlists, music playlists, and audio recordings is another thing. So rather than writing things down, you might like to audio record what’s going on. So again, just another thing around self-care, find what works for you. There’ll be things that you’ll go, “Oh, yeah, I really enjoy that and I haven’t done it for ages,” so how can you put that back in?
And your moving, so getting out for a walk, as I said, like I do with Digby, noticing what’s going on around you, but there’s also some great research out there. Blue Mind, which is about being in water, so if you do paddle boarding, and those kinds of things. Green therapy is about being outside and just being in nature. Active meditation, mindfulness. You might like gardening. There’s a really good book that’s been written by the RHS recently about the science of being in the garden, how to help your wellbeing and your mental health, and just factoring, all of these different aspects in. Some of them won’t work for you at all, and some of them really will, so put them on your menu.
And then, there are some helpful apps out there as well, so again, things like Headspace and Calm, they can really help with putting meditation and breathing exercises, reflection time, into your day. Even if it’s a couple of minutes. It doesn’t have to be an hour long; it can just be something where you just do a process that you go through. And again, it depends on what you like, what voice you like, how you engage with those different sounds of music, and everything else. And Sleepio is also a good app for sleep as well. I just thought I’d put that in there because it’s all part of rest.
So the Keeping the Peace podcast, and I’m going to keep plugging it in case you haven’t listened to it yet, we’ve done the first series, we’re onto the second series now, and there’ll be two extra podcasts, one for today’s webinar and one for next month’s webinar about the masks we wear, so we’ll add those, that extra content on there as we go.
And if anybody wants to get in touch with me, please feel free to do so. There’s loads of stuff we put on our website, all free content. There’s the Westerly Club, which is a men’s mental health group, which is a private group on Facebook. The F Word, which is another private Facebook group open to anybody, and again, it’s just about being around people, and engagement, and discussing how people are doing, all of which can be really helpful.
And the other thing to just consider with self-care is that if you’ve ever rung IT because you’ve got a problem with your laptop – I hope there’s nobody on here from IT – they’ll generally tell you to switch it off and switch it on again. Am I right? So it’s the same thing with you. Sometimes you’ve just got to unplug, whatever that means for you, and just give yourself permission to do that. It’s OK to take that time and to actually unplug yourself from everything.
The masks we wear
This session looks at how we present ourselves, how we respond to others, what we show and what we keep hidden and will discuss the reasons why.
It investigates our perception of others, how this can get in the way and how we can all understand and manage the masks we wear better.
Neil: Morning, everyone. We’re just waiting for everybody to come into the room, and then we’ll make a start. OK, I think the majority of you who were waiting are with us now, so we’ll make a start, and I think there’ll probably be a few others who join us over the next few minutes, but we’ll get cracking. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the second of our webinars in the new Keeping the Peace series entitled The Masks That We Wear. Now, an especially warm welcome to your response officer watching this as part of the National Response Policing Week. These webinars have been designed to help support everyone in the policing family with their mental health and emotional wellbeing, so please do sit back and enjoy it if you can, and don’t worry if you didn’t see the first session. That’s fine. There’s a recording of it that you’ll be able to see on the Oscar Kilo website, and it won’t affect today’s session at all.
My name’s Neil Collinson. I work for the National Police Wellbeing Service, and I’m very pleased to say that Alexis Powell-Howard is joining me again today. Alexis is the Managing Director of Fortis Therapy, who brought us the Keeping the Peace podcasts, and the Duty of self care webinar last month. It’s fair to say Alexis is a bit of a leading expert in her field, so we’re very grateful that she’s back today to pass on her knowledge and expertise in this area.
There’s just a couple of things to go through before we start. Towards the end of the webinar today, there’s going to be an opportunity for you to have some Q&A, so if you have a question at any point, please do put that in the chat and I’ll collate them all, and I’ll endeavour to get Alexis to answer as many as she possibly can before the end. That said, if you do want to interact with her, there’s no problem. If you’ve got the ‘raise a hand’ function, please do raise your hand, otherwise put in the chat that you’d like to ask a question, and we’ll get you on to ask a question, you can unmute yourself and speak to Alexis directly.
Don’t worry if we don’t get to your question, then Alexis is going to try and sort through the questions after the end of the webinar, if that’s possible. The webinar is going to be recorded so that other colleagues can watch it afterwards. If you feel uncomfortable with this, please do feel free to turn your camera off. We certainly won’t be picking on anyone during the session, so don’t worry, and the questions and answers at the end won’t be recorded, and your questions are anonymised anyway, so please do feel free to put your questions in there if you have one.
Now finally, this wouldn’t be a webinar without some IT gremlins. It always happens to us, even with our best of intentions, something always crops up. So please be patient with the IT. Sometimes you will find that it’s easier to rejoin, leave and rejoin if need be, if your screen freezes. And likewise, if we have any IT issues, please do bear with us and we will try and fix them as we go along. But fingers crossed it’s all going to go smoothly, you are going to enjoy it, and hopefully you get to take a lot from the session today. So Alexis, I’ll hand over to you. Thanks very much.
Alexis: Thanks, Neil. Morning everybody, I hope you’re all OK, and ready for your week. I’m really excited to be here and to be talking to you about the masks we wear. So I’m going to share my screen just so that you can see my presentation, as we go along. As Neil says, if there’s any questions or any comments you want to make, anything at all, please put them in the chat because whatever you put in the chat, somebody else will be reading and that might help them as well.
So I don’t have all the answers, none of us do, but if you’ve got anything that you think really works for you, or something that you want to comment on, then please do. I really appreciate that interaction. And if you do want to keep your camera on, that’s great too, because that means I can see people’s faces. If we were doing this for real, I’d be able to see you all sat in an audience. You never know. One day we might be able to go back to that.
So I’m Alexis. I’m the Managing Director at Fortis, as Neil said. I’m a psychotherapist, systemic practitioner, coach, trainer, mediator, supervisor, speaker, everything that really is to do with people. I’m fascinated by people, and always have been, and have done quite a bit of work within policing, delivering training, doing mediations, providing therapy, and at courses we provide therapy to officers and staff as well.
So this idea for doing this webinar, really, has come from all of those conversations and all the things we’ve learned as we’ve been doing that work. I’ve done a TedEx which is called Why Hide the Repair. If you just put my name in and Google it, that’ll come up. It’s about 16 minutes so it’s not too long, and gives you a bit of an idea of our approach around mental health and where Fortis comes from as well, really.
I’m also the host for the Keeping the Peace podcast. We put out an episode to support the last webinar that I did last month, the Duty of Self-care with Mark Mottashed from Lancashire, and we put out one with DCI Pete Thorp from Humberside to support this webinar. We just thought it might be helpful to hear a conversation about some of these aspects. And you can listen to it anytime, anywhere. It’s on all the major platforms. If you search for it, you’re probably best to search for Oscar Kilo because it’ll come up then. But yeah, I’ll plug that again at the end, just to kind of – and I’m going to talk a bit about the conversation I had with Pete Thorp as well, during the webinar.
So at Fortis we provide a massive range of different services. It’s developed over the years. I would say that we’ve evolved, but actually I think we’ve just expanded, really, in terms of different services, and just ways of being able to use what we know and what we’re learning all the time to be able to support people the best way possible. We have got a website and there is loads of free content on there, so if you are a contact for your force, and put out information about stress, mental health, about loss, about anything to do with what’s happened over the past year as well – there’s lots of tips on there, feel free to download them and use them. There’s lots of strategies and ideas that you can use, so please, we’d love it if you would use that.
We’ve also got Facebook groups which I just wanted to flag because these are also available to anybody. So we have our main Facebook page which, we do self care sessions which are Facebook Lives every Thursday. There’s a couple left. We’re going to do them until the end of March. We’ve done them for three months, myself and Joe from Fortis. And these are conversations with different people about what helps them with their self care, and what they’ve learned. And they can be really helpful just to normalise the conversation, and they’re all on there, so you can have a look at the historic ones.
We’ve also got The F Word which is a Facebook group open to anybody, and that’s a community again where we share ideas, and we encourage people within that community as well. And linked to that are network events and newsletters that we put out. So we’re trying to get as much information out as we possibly can to help as many as possible.
And then we have the Westerly Club, and the Westerly Club is for men only, and it’s about men’s mental health and accessing support. And the idea behind the Westerly is, it’s a fishing term – I’m from Grimsby, so it seemed appropriate. Your Westerly is your best mate, really. He’s the person you lean on, the person who helps you. It’s a bit like your west wind, so if you’d had a bad fishing trip, there would be the person who’d buy you a pint and check in with you and make sure you’re OK, and that’s what that group is about. And the guys in there blow me away every day with how supportive they are for each other, so if you’re a guy over the age of 16, or you know somebody who would benefit, then please tell them to ask to join. And then, you know, all the other usual platforms.
So I just wanted to let you know that those things are there. You don’t have to introduce yourself in them, you don’t have to engage if you don’t want to, but if you just want to kind of be in the background, that’s absolutely fine.
So today we’re going to be talking about the masks that we wear, and the way that I’m going to approach that is to think about how we present ourselves in terms of our self, and also what we might see in others, and how we present ourselves to others as well. We’re going to explore the persona and the shadow, which is very much around a Jungian way of working. so Carl Jung, who was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he actually founded analytical psychology. So I’m not going to go into massive amounts of depth with that because literally, we would literally be here for days, but I’m going to take out some of the parts of his thoughts that might be relevant and useful to you, and we see and we use in ways that we support people as well.
So we’re also going to think about the filter, and what we do with our responses, and how we might perceive others, and how that might get in the way as well, and what is happening when those difficulties can occur. We’re going to think a bit about how you might want to manage your mask, and I’m going to use different types of theory, not just from a Jungian perspective, but different kinds, types of theory that just, for me, really demonstrate some really simple ideas that you can maybe go away and have a go at and reflect on and think about.
Thank you to those people who got in touch with me after the last webinar, who told me some of the things that’d resonated, and what they wanted to use and think about. It was really helpful to know that, and so again, with this one, if you go away and you have some light bulb moments, or there’s some things that you’ve been reflecting on, then let me know because that would be great.
So all of this, everything we’re doing and everything we do at Fortis, really, and what’s happening this week at Oscar Kilo is all around emotional intelligence and increasing our emotional intelligence. So understanding, and being aware of ourselves and being able to control ourselves, express our emotion, and also to be able to handle those relationships around us. Making good, sensible decisions, good judgements, but also being empathic.
So when we think about empathy, it’s very different to feeling sympathetic. Sympathy is about feeling sorry for someone, which obviously we all have that capacity to do that, but actually, in terms of our emotional intelligence, thinking about our empathy, and are we able to walk in someone else’s shoes, are we able to think about their context and what makes them feel the way they feel, or behave the way they behave?
And when we talk about presentation, as I said in that slide about what we’re going to cover in the next hour, I’m thinking about what we see. So you will be doing this all the time in your roles; you’ll be looking at how do people present, what do they look like, how are they responding to others, how are they responding to you. You’ll be thinking about how you respond to other people as well. What are non-verbals like, what does that tell you about somebody?
How do people recount their experiences? So if you’re taking statements off people, they’ll all have slightly different ways of recounting what’s happened. There might be quite big differences in how they recount what’s happened, but they will have their perception. Where does the really heavy things like blame and doubt and shame, where do they sit for you, but also, where do they sit for that other person? So when we’re thinking about presentation, does that seep out at times, is it shown in different types of behaviour?
And what’s happening for each person, and how are others responding and reacting to them? So if I’m assessing someone on their presentation from a mental health perspective, that can tell me an awful lot. Somebody interacting with someone else, somebody’s account of how they are responded to by other people, all of that tells me an awful lot about that person, and how they might be seen by others, how I might be perceiving them as well.
And also think about what isn’t said. What is the unsaid? There’s a lot that can seep out in lots of ways, behaviourally and emotionally, but there might be an awful lot of things that aren’t being said. And often, when I get asked to do mediations especially, there’s an awful lot that’s gone under the surface that’s not been said, or that’s been assumed or presumed by people. So considering what has been unsaid and what could that be, and is it even in the awareness of the people, or of yourself?
And also, what is our internal response? So if I’m working with someone on tracking, how am I feeling about this person, what am I feeling about what they’re saying, can I be really congruent and honest about my response to what they’re saying, and how do I put that across in a way that can be received?
So there’s an awful lot, when we’re thinking about presentation, how we present to each other, and how we respond and react to each other, tells us an awful lot about what’s going on internally for ourselves, but also maybe we can start to understand other people in a slightly different way, which we’ll talk a bit more about later.
So part of our masks and part of how we present is also about our roles. So how do you manage your life, and how many different roles do you have? So if you quickly did a grid, and if we were sat in a room together, we would be doing this as an exercise, and just wrote down how many different roles do you actually have in life – I did this yesterday, I hadn’t done it for a while, and I did this yesterday, and I could literally fill that grid. That’s how many boxes I managed to fill in terms of the number of different roles I’ve got.
So if you consider how many different roles you have, so it might be professionally, it might be personally, could be in your relationships, it could be communities you’re a part of, it could be within your family – it goes on and on and on – if you consider how many different roles you have, how do you present in each of those different roles? What do you show of yourself in each of those different roles? It’s quite interesting to think about which parts of your personality you take to them, and which parts you don’t as well.
If you colour-coded those different boxes in terms of maybe how connected you feel to other people, how you present, which bits of you you feel – how authentic you feel when you’re in those roles, it’d be interesting again to reflect on which bits of me do I keep hidden, and what do I hold back? So anything you can think around, the roles that you have, but also how your personality evolves and develops and changes depending on the relationships you’re in, and what your role is within that community is interesting to consider.
Sometimes we don’t really recognise how much we are holding in terms of those different roles and responsibilities, but also, how do we present? How would people perceive us in those roles? And are we being our authentic selves, or are we having to feel that we need to protect ourselves? Are we feeling that we can trust others? All of that impacts on how we come across.
Now I wanted to show you and share this with you because I think it’s a really helpful model. And some of you may have seen this before, and some of you may not, but it’s called the Jahari Window, and it was developed by a guy called Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955. Jo, Joseph – Harry, Harry, this very inventive way of coming up with a model. And they drew this model all that time ago to think about self-awareness, our personal development, and also, how we communicate. So our interpersonal relationships, considering our behaviour in group dynamics, and also, you can apply it to things like team development, and how teams respond to each other.
So I’m going to go through it just to explain each of those areas because it really makes sense when you understand what that looks like. It looks a bit complicated on there, but if you look at these four boxes, that’s your whole window, OK? Now, this represents you as a whole person, and the number one there, the open and free area, this is the information about our attitudes, our behaviours, our emotions and feelings, our skills and our views. And it’s what is known by ourselves, so what we’re aware of, but also what is known by others as well. And we’re OK with other people knowing that, there’s no sense of needing to hide anything, that area is open, and it’s free.
And it will mean that we can communicate quite well when we’re in this, so the larger that area becomes, the more effective we become because we’re able to communicate and we’re not hiding. We might want to improve that area, so if you were going to draw this for yourself, if you’ve got a pen and paper in front of you, just kind of sketch it out, put those four boxes in as equals and then just dot the lines as to where you might feel that you are right now. If we want to expand that area, you’ll see there it says ‘feedback solicitation’ as you’re looking at it on the right hand side, and also ‘self-disclosure and exposure’ at the bottom.
If we want to expand that, we need to hear what other people think and feel about us, what’s their feedback, and we also want to maybe share more of ourselves. If you’re going into a new role, you might kind of not do that initially because you’re not sure you can trust people; you don’t know quite what the relationships are going to be like.
And then that unknown area there, it talks about shared discovery. Again, you would expand out into there, so that might be self-reflection, doing webinars and things like this today, listening to things that help you, reading, therapy, coaching, all of those things help you to tap into that unknown area, OK? So the unknown area is unknown by you, but also unknown by others. So we’ve got the open area there which is known by self and known by others; we’ve got the unknown area which for me is quite exciting. I think that’s like the untapped potential, so what bits of myself do I not know, and how can I learn about those? And I have therapy when I need to. I have supervision every month to try and explore and expand on that.
The blind area, now this part is the part where we ask for feedback, so we aren’t aware of it, but others will be. So if I give you an example of that, years ago I worked for Marks & Spencer’s, and I went into Marks’s as somebody who’d worked in a family business. I was quite direct at the time, hadn’t really softened up around the edges yet, and I was trying to do things for what I thought were the right reasons. But actually, how I was coming across to people, they were seeing me as being quite icy, really. There was no emotion, I was just very direct, and for me, we had to get the job done.
When they gave me that feedback, which one of them was brave enough to do, it meant that I could understand how I was coming across, and soften my approach and rethink about that. Now that was years and years ago, and I still remember that feedback because it was a blind area, a blind spot for me. I wasn’t aware. So as long as you can take that feedback on board and not be defensive, then obviously that’s going to help your development. And that’s why we do exercises like psychometric testing’; it’s why we do 360 feedback. All of those things help us to understand ourselves a little bit more.
So if we go then onto thinking about the hidden area, now this hidden area’s also called a facade as well, so this will be information that’s known to you, but you want to keep it from others. So there might be parts of self that you maybe don’t like, or that you want to keep hidden because it feels safer to do this. And it might be your personal information, it could be your past experiences, it could be feelings, fears, secrets, and we keep it hidden for other people because we want to keep that private.
And the problem is that if we keep that at the same size as that original diagram, as that equal quarter, it can really prevent us from actually growing and moving into development because sometimes we feel that things that we don’t really – we might feel we need to be worried about something, we might be fearful, we might be ashamed, we might be all sorts of different emotions, but actually, the more we can accept that about ourselves, the more we can understand ourselves and that emotional intelligence bit we were talking about before, the better that’s going to be for us, and there’s less need to keep hiding who we are and how we feel about things.
So again, you might do this exercise and think, “Actually, I had loads of development over the past, I don’t know, say year, or something like that, and I can see that it’s different. My window is different to where it was before.” So opening your Jahari window, opening that free area and being more accepting of yourself, but also being more open with others, can be massively helpful. That’s not to say that I understand, too, that there’s times when you want to protect yourself, because we’ve all been there and we’ve all had those relationships or dynamics, or team dynamics that can affect us in that way.
So the unknown areas, as I mentioned earlier, is around tapping into some of that unknown about ourselves, what we might be feeling, our capabilities, what we’re talented at. We might keep some of that untapped potential due to traumatic experiences in the past. There might be things that’ve happened that we may not even be aware of, may not even be able to remember, but it’s quite an exciting place when we look at it from a therapeutic perspective, because actually the more we know, the more aware we are, the more open we can be and the less frightened we feel about keeping that part of us hidden.
If anybody wants this put in the – I can send you this image on this slide on email, so just put in the chat if you’d like it because I’m happy to share it, and I can put a description with it as well.
So another layer on top of that, so we’ve got the Jahari Window and we’ve got thinking about what do I share and what do I keep hidden, which is very much about what masks are about. We’ve also got conditions of worth, and I mentioned this in the first webinar that we did, and I wanted to be a bit more specific about it. So this, our conditioning comes from the way we need to behave in order to get approval from others. So this is our significant others growing up. So what we want to do is get approval from people around us and experience that feedback.
So there’ll be ways that we behave, and almost messages that we’ve created growing up that mean that we will keep doing those things in order to get a response from people. And that response helps us with our self-worth, so we want to get their approval.
The difficulty is, as we get older, maybe how we’ve been conditioned to do that, or how we’ve chosen to do that growing up may be something that doesn’t fit for us as an adult. And it becomes our interjected messages, our interjected values. So we internalise how we behave in order to get the expectations from others. So that might be about approval, it might be about not wanting to be rejected. There could be all sorts of – it’s very personal. It’s very much about what we’ve grown up in, and what we’re looking to get from other people.
So I know that one of mine, which we’ll talk a bit more about in a minute in terms of value, is about working hard. I grew up in a family business. If someone didn’t turn up, you just did the double shift. You just worked hard. And so I’ve had to unpick that. I still work hard, but I’ve also got to unpick how I also have enough self-worth to be able to stop working and to take time out and look after myself, and also ask for help, and all of those things that I was really conditioned not to do by my upbringing, even though my parents would say that that wasn’t messages they gave me, that was how I internalised it.
So thinking about your messages that you have, and how that impacts on you, is really important, and it can really clash with your world views, which is why sometimes we feel conflicted, and maybe feel compromised, and that’s leading us to feeling unhappy, feeling depressed, or our mood can be low and anxious because we don’t want to not get that approval from significant others, in the main. Some people don’t care, I appreciate that, but in the main, that’s how we work.
A guy called Eric Berne also came up with this idea which is that we have a script. So we grow up, with our conditioning, with what happens around us, and we might act out that repeatedly in our relationships. We might act it out at work, we might act it out in teams, we might act it out in our family. And that script is kind of, if you think about it, it’s a bit like having the villains and the heroes and the plot twists and everything else – it’s what we’ve grown to expect.
So you might have things in your life where you think, “I don’t know why that keeps happening in my relationships,” or “I get to a certain point at work and I keep getting stuck, or I don’t go any further.” And it might be that it’s because of how you are scripted to see your life and how you feel you are in your role in your life. So going back to those ideas about all your different roles, how are you behaving in each of those roles? And do you come across similar wins, and do you come across similar difficulties in each of those areas?
You might see this if you’ve worked in things like domestic abuse, where the relationship just might be different people but the same pattern keeps happening. That can be very much linked to this as well. And it can mean that we feel quite incongruent. So congruence is about feeling genuine, and being genuine and authentic, and incongruent is obviously the exact opposite to that.
So we might feel like actually, how my life is rolling out in front of me, how this script keeps happening, really doesn’t fit with me, and how I feel and how I want to feel, and how I want to manage my life, and that’s where reflection or my self-research is really important, because you can make those changes. That’s what therapy is about, about making changes and making choices that, you know, maybe you didn’t even know they were there to make. But it can really help with life, and quality of life, and self-worth as well.
So if we think about that script and we think about those values, that conditioning, this is how this manifests itself. So if I am to be of value, I must ... And if you look down that list, there’s just some ideas I’ve come up with in terms of work I’ve done with officers and staff in training and in therapy that might resonate. But this is about, fundamentally, if I’m going to be valuable, this is what I must do. Now, the word ‘must’ doesn’t really give you much room for manoeuvre. It’s right up there with ‘should’. I must do this or I must do that. If you’d look down that list, you might see, actually, there’s a couple of those that really fit for me, that I consider that, in order for me to be of value, I must do each of these things.
So I must, say for example, be perfect. And being perfect is a massive driver. It can be quite a strong conditioning for people, and you can literally drive yourself into the ground trying to be perfect. And the being perfect is based on what somebody else’s perception is of you. I want to meet that need, I want to get their approval so I’ll be as perfect as I can. That’s why it’s so devastating when you don’t get that person’s approval, or you feel rejected, because well, I’ve done it as perfectly as possible.
You might have one around not asking for help. That might be something that – I see that sometimes with officers and staff when we’re working with them, that actually asking for help has been the actual last thing that they got to. It’s actually, “I’ve got to. I’ve got no choice to because actually I’m supposed to know what to do and I’m supposed to know how to help. I’m the person who does the helping.” So reflecting on your own conditions of worth through interjected messages can be really helpful to think about, is that something that I still want to have, or is it something that I would like to change, and be maybe a bit kinder to myself?
And that’s something that came out in the podcast with Pete Thorp around masks was, actually, this being a little bit more kind and a bit more nurturing to yourself can be really helpful in just feeling that you’re not your own worst critic, because that’s how this starts to manifest itself.
The other thing I wanted to just mention really is around boundaries, because in the first webinar that we did, when I said about saying no, there was a flurry of activity in the chat about how people found that really hard. And obviously, in your roles, you are there to follow orders, and that’s – you’re there to serve the public, and there’s these very, obviously strong messages about what you need to be doing, and saying no can feel like, actually, that’s impossible in my role.
But I think I wanted to say a bit more about it and expand on it a little bit from a boundaries perspective, so if we go back to thinking about our conditioning, and if saying no is something that we really struggle with, it could be that growing up we were asked to help others, but not asked to help – we were never really allowed to help ourselves, as an example.
So if you were brought up in a family where you help someone else, but you don’t put yourself first, then actually, saying no is really hard because that goes against – it can be quite a frightening thing to do because it goes against what we’ve been brought up in, in order to feel acceptable, and to be approved of.
So considering your boundaries and thinking about where you are in them, I think can be massively helpful because you can reflect on, actually, there are certain times when you might be quite assertive with your boundaries and you feel OK with that, but there might be other times when you’re more unclear, where you might be more passive. You might not ask for what you need. You might not even be sure about what you like, what matters to you. You’re not clear about you underneath all of that.
And I know this is something that, when I’m working with people, when we think about what they actually like and what’s really important to them, and what’s important in terms of their values, sometimes that can be actually really tough to figure out because we can often base our values and what’s important to us on what other people have told us, or have conditioned us to feel is valuable, and what they feel is important to them.
So I’ve tried to do this on kind of a bit of a spectrum. So if we’re looking at our boundaries being very rigid, that can be very much about not wanting to trust people, not feeling that we can trust, but also might be an element of, I don’t want to get found out. So if you stick rigidly to your boundaries and it’s very clear that you’re not going to move from them ever, then that’s going to be really difficult. So you might think about your team and think, “Actually, there’s someone who’s really rigid with their boundaries, that doesn’t help us as a team, but what’s going on for them? Why do they feel the need to be rigid around those boundaries? Is there some insecurity, is there some uncertainty? Why do they feel closed off?” All of those kinds of things.
And what we want to be doing is recognising where we are on this spectrum, and thinking, “Actually, I’m being healthy with my boundaries.” Something that I’ve seen with officers is that they might be quite clear about boundaries in work, but be really unclear outside of work, and be quite passive, and those healthy boundaries actually that they have when they’re in work, when they know what is expected and they know what the role means to them, and they know what the uniform means, and everything else, it’s quite difficult when it’s just you as a person, just without any of those structures and boundaries already in place.
So considering those roles we’ve talked about, considering where are our boundaries within them, and what parts of my personality do I show or do I not show, it quite interesting to reflect on because you might want to make some changes there. You might want to think, “Actually, why do I not do it there, but I do do it there? How is that easier for me?”
So when we’re thinking about the masks that we wear, there’s a stand there, you’ll see the image there. Those, all of those masks have been done by either clients who gave us permission to use them, or members of the general public. So we use masks in therapy, because sometimes being creative can be massively helpful to communicate what’s going on. And we use them with all ages, so this isn’t about children, this is about adults and young people, and we’ve done them with anyone. They can run but they can’t hide [laughs]. It’s quite an effective therapeutic tool.
But what we did was, a couple of years ago we asked the general public to help us. We wanted to show and demonstrate how individual mental health is for each of us, and how individual our emotions are for each of us, and we thought we’d get about 40 people who would respond, 40, 50 people, so that’s how many masks we bought, and we had far more than that, a good 250, 300 people got in touch because they wanted to have a mask and express themselves, and decorate it to show that, so we had some amazing ones that were sent back in, where people have spent hours on expressing themselves. And so we were able to make this display to be able to demonstrate that actually each of us is different, each of us has our own interpretation, our own difficulties, our own experiences.
And we all also have a certain amount of things that we keep on the inside, that we maybe hide from others, we don’t want to share. Now that might be because we want to portray ourselves in a particular way on the outside, and on the inside we might feel a mix of emotions, but one of the things that really came out was not wanting to be seen to be weak, and not wanting to be seen to be vulnerable or emotional. We’ve done this with police officers, we’ve done this with whole families, adult families who sat together around the table and did these together to talk about their experiences and what they felt. So they’re quite a powerful tool, and we were incredibly grateful that people took that chance to do that.
If we apply it to the Iceberg metaphor which, we all love an iceberg, the part that is on the outside of the mask is what we’re showing in terms of our conscious mind, so what we maybe choose to show when we’re feeling in control. We might not choose to show things if we’re not feeling in control, but from a conscious mind, it’s what we choose to put out there. So we might have particular ways of wanting to communicate, show our values, behave, all of those things, and our conscious mind contains all of those thoughts and feelings and at any given moment, and we can process them and think and talk about them quite rationally when we’re using that conscious mind.
But if we think about the pre-conscious, so this is a Freudian idea, so you’ve got to love a bit of Freud – if you put that just under that surface there, those are the things, in therapy, we talk about being on the edge of our awareness. So they’re around, they’re kind of looking to attract the eye of the conscious mind, to come forward, but that’s where we would think there’s something on the edge of awareness that would suddenly come into the conscious mind, and those are those light bulb moments where we think, “Oh, God, why have I never seen that like that? Why have I never thought about it in that way?” Or suddenly we feel differently because we’ve had that realisation.
So we have the pre-conscious issues just under the surface there, and then we’ve got the unconscious mind, or the subconscious, whichever way you want to call it. And as you can see, that’s a vast majority of what makes us tick. It’s all of our reservoir, if you like, of feelings and thoughts, all our urges, our memories, that are outside of our conscious awareness. Now, most of the contents of the unconscious are usually something that we feel is unacceptable, or unpleasant, and it can lead to feelings like feeling conflicted, feeling compromised, feeling anxious, feeling in pain. And it’s probably something that, when it moves into the preconscious, if it can, then those are the things that might impact on us without us really realising it, in the conscious – not without realising it, but it might impact us on a conscious mind.
We might start to show behaviours and think, “Why am I behaving in this way? What is that linked to, and why is this person triggering me, or why is the situation triggering me?” As you can see, from the iceberg, there’s an awful lot going on behind, and then you’ve got the conscious mind on the top there, the bit that we’ve decided is the safe bit, the bit that we can show people.
And also part of the unconscious mind is that all our involuntary movements, so breathing, our blinking, all those things that we don’t even think about, are subconsciously happening. And also, our sleep patterns, so if we have things going on that are under the surface, quite often our sleep will be affected. We might dream, we might have quite a vivid imagination around things that come to the surface and start to be processed during our sleep. So it has quite an impact on us, and if we’re thinking about this as a mask, what we show on the outside is the conscious stuff, and then the bit behind is the preconscious and the unconscious.
And the part of the mask that I love, the bit that I find really helpful thinking about it using a mask rather than using the iceberg, is that our persona is what we show on our outward face, so if you think about your uniform, if you wear a uniform, or your role, your position, these things might be part of your mask. They might be quite integral to how you present yourself, and what you feel is important in your role, and how you might be at work. It might be different to how you are at home, but your persona at work may be part of this. And I’ve seen it where officers, uniformed officers who put the uniform on in the morning kind of go, “Right, OK, this is what I am today,” but actually, at home might be struggling to empty the dishwasher or just really simple stuff that actually, they’re struggling at home, but find that at work, I know who I am at work and I know what I need to present.
The shadow, which is all that stuff under the surface, the bit behind the mask, this is all the stuff that we might consider to be negative. It’s usually stuff that’s repressed, that therefore is maybe unknown, so going back to that unconscious or subconscious stuff, and if you imagine that your mask, the bit that you have in front of you is your filter, you’re filtering all the time, what do I need to show, what do I not need to show, how do I manage that situation? You might be triggered by something, you might feel angry, you might feel fearful or you might feel ashamed, and you might not be able to filter that in the moment.
That might be something which kind of spills out, but there might be other times where you step away and give yourself chance to reflect and think, and actually then come at it from a different perspective. but there’s all this stuff going on behind the surface and we saw that when we did the mask exercise with the community, that people were just holding such a lot of emotion and such a lot of experiences and a lot of shame and fear that they weren’t expressing, and were actually feeling quite low and anxious as a result of that.
The reason we use creativity to communicate that is that sometimes the language can be quite limiting in expressing how we feel. So when I turn up to a training, Keeping the Peace training for a load of police officers and staff, and I put out colouring pens and pencils, and the looks that I receive are all a bit like, “What is she up to?” But I want to come away from that cognitive, conscious stuff and I want to get to some of the stuff, safely – I don’t want to make anyone feel vulnerable with their colleagues, but safely to express things in a different way. So choosing colours, choosing patterns, being able to think about what this expression represents for this person.
So we didn’t do mask exercises in the training because I didn’t want to leave people feeling vulnerable, and I wanted to be able to help people to reflect and be able to process those on an individual basis if that’s what they wanted to do. But what we did do was talk about masks, and talk about the shadow and the persona, to be able to maybe give a different language to sometimes how we might be feeling, and what we might be either expressing or holding back.
And so when I asked DCI Pete Thorp to help me with this, I asked him if he would fill out – if he would decorate a mask, and I didn’t give him any direction, I just asked him to – just to take what we’d done in the training, because he’s been in the training; he was the lead, he was with me for all the training that we delivered for the PVP team at Humberside, and just express himself using colours or patterns or whatever he wanted to do. So I’m going to show you a few examples, and I’m just going to talk through this one. so please, do listen to the podcast because it’s really interesting to hear how he approached this.
But he was really – he really wanted the colours to be important, and to represent him in the best way that he could, express himself in the best way he could. And what was interesting was, he’s actually colour-blind, so he had to research the colours, then he had to buy pencils that actually had the colours written on so that he could make it was accurate in how he wanted to communicate. So the blue that you can see there on the front of the mask, which is mirrored on the inside of the mask, for him was about reliability, about being trustworthy as a leader role. He wanted his team to feel that he had loyalty, and there was honour, and there was that stability that he was offering people. And it was very much linked to how he feels on the inside, to what he wanted to show on the outside.
The red, the compartmentalised aspect was quite interesting, but the red side of it was about strength and energy and boldness and passion, and the yellow on the other side of the forehead was about being positive and optimistic, and lively and upbeat. And then the orange side, which was representative of creativity and enthusiasm, trying ideas, seeing if it works; if it doesn’t, learning from it, having a go at things. And he took very seriously his role, and how he wanted to present that in a very clear way that would support the people who work with him, and keep in mind the staff that are in the team, but also the victims, and the public as well.
On the inside, I was really kind of – he really kind of risked putting in there about how he felt with that violet. That middle streak there is violet, just so you know, and that part represents worry and double-guessing, and over-thinking, and not being sure, and ... So actually what he has learned to do over the years is recognise those feelings are there, but also come back to that blue section there about his values, and the brown section, which was about stability and grounding, and he describes it as dull. That part is also next to the blue, so that very much about a foundation that he felt represented himself, and being genuine and really solid.
And then the streak of black that you can see there on the left edge is that kind of tipping into darker thoughts and tipping into depression. And actually he talks about how he manages those thoughts and how he brings himself back into a more rational way of thinking.
And those boxes on the right hand side, which he reliably informs me are grey, they represent those boxes that we hear a lot about in therapy. What’s in the boxes? How many boxes have you got in that warehouse in your brain? Sometimes we hear about people having lots of them, or one massive one, and the lids are coming off, or there’s behaviours, feelings and emotions coming out. And he was talking about how something, for example like child post-mortems is in one of those boxes, and those things that have impacted on him, but also, that there’s less there than there used to be.
So he deliberately didn’t decorate the rest of the mask on the inside there because actually he wanted to represent what goes on above the eyes and what happens in the mind. And expressing it in this way was quite liberating, even though it was quite hard, and I think putting it out on a public podcast is incredibly brave because this is about talking about our inner workings. Now, if we’d been in a therapy session which wasn’t being recorded, we would’ve explored some of those things in more depth, but we wanted to show how this can be used, and how helpful it can be, but also how hard it is as well to be really honest about some of that stuff, and the shadow that might be in the back there, and those worries, am I good enough, and feeling anxious, and how you then filter that and present it, or how he filters that and presents that on the front.
I wanted to share a couple of others with you as well. So this one is by a lady who was in her mid-20s, and when I asked her if she would decorate this mask, she did the front, so it says on there, storms make trees take deeper roots, which is a Dolly Patron quote, and you’ll see the tree there, and there’s lots of roots, and there’s the storm on the left hand side as you’re looking at it. And she hadn’t decorated the inside, and when I went back to her and said, “Would you mind just decorating the inside so that we’ve got the balance of the shadow and those emotions internally, and what you show on the inside?”
And then she did that inside there, which is obviously incredibly dramatic, incredibly dark, lots of lightning, thoughts and worries and feelings. Some stars in there as well, but very black, very contrasted to the front of the mask, which I think is a very personal story about how this lady filters what she shows on the outside and what is really going on at times on the inside.
And then this one, which was about presenting a happy, sunny, lovely day on the outside, but actually, what’s going on internally, which was feeling quite sad and frightened and unsure and uncertain. So if you imagine those last two masks, that you’ve got someone in your – one of your colleagues who feels this way, how are they presenting and how are they behaving, and what’s going on for them? And who knows? Who knows about that?
If we’re considering the shadow, it’s a lot of our hidden aspects of our personality that we want to push to one side. There might be things that we think are unacceptable, like I talked about asking for help, or not working hard, you know, or not working the hours, or whatever it might be – not doing that’s taking a process of reflection and making different decisions about it. We might have quite a lot of deep emotions that we keep behind the mask, and a lot of these might be formed during our development, and unmet needs as we were growing, as we’ve got older.
But there also might be some positive things that’ve come from that, so for example, you might have learned to be more assertive due to childhood experiences. But what we do know is that those behaviours can sometimes seep out. So if someone’s behaviour starts to change, if their presentation is different, if your presentation becomes different, quite often somebody else will see it before we see it. And that’s quite helpful if you’ve got a good support network around you, if they can say, “Is everything OK?”
But the other thing we tend to do is project some of what we feel about ourselves onto other people, so sometimes our perception of others – so this is complicated [laughs]. So our perception of other’s perception of us can be incorrect. So we might feel that we know what they think about us, or how they feel about us. We might be quite angry with someone who maybe puts in better boundaries than us, or isn’t available to work at the drop of a hat, or whatever, but actually, sometimes that’s because we’re projecting our own feelings about ourselves onto other people.
And that’s where, sometimes, giving yourself a bit of space before you respond or react to something, can be really helpful. There can be often very little evidence for what we feel is happening in a relationship, and we might be misreading the situation because we’re projecting how we feel about ourselves onto somebody else. So being conscious of that, and recognising, actually, this is something that’s about me, not them. And if you can bring that into your awareness and work on that, then that’s going to help you to feel more at ease with yourself, you’re going to be less hidden, going back to that Jahari Window, and that’s the kind of trick with this – there’s no – being able to admit some of these things to ourselves, and being able to actually work with them, and then being able to not feel quite so fearful of expressing how we feel, and worried about someone not approving of us.
So just in terms of our self-reflection, learning about ourselves can be really scary and you might want to avoid it. It’s something that Pete and I laugh about in the podcast is that we’d planned to do this a long time ago, this podcast, and we’ve both avoided it because we knew it was going to be something that was going to be more personal. So that was just interesting, in terms of how we usually would work together.
If you understand yourself, you’re going to be more aware of your triggers, what you’re driven by, and taking time out to reflect can be difficult, but really necessary. The more we know ourselves, and the more we understand our personas and what masks we put on, and what’s going on in our shadow, the better our understanding is of how we behave and react to others. So actually, if we can understand that, then we can be more authentic in ourselves, and we can not be quite so hard on ourselves, and not maybe looking for approval in quite the same way as we maybe have done.
So if you wanted to do a mask, or something along those lines, express it creatively, what would it look like? How would you approach it? Yours would be very individual, it’d be different to anybody else’s. You might approach it in a completely different way to the ones I’ve shown you, which is completely fine, there’s no rules, which can be a bit scary if you’re not used to working creatively, but there might be something that you might maybe want to do. You might want to do it with family members, or if you’ve got a really great team, you might want to do it with them. But again, it’s about being careful just about how people might feel vulnerable as a result of that.
So in terms of reflections, and we’ll come to questions for a few minutes, as I said, if you’d like the Jahari Window, let me know because I’m happy to send it out to you, and I’ll put some stuff in there for you to think about. And the idea around the masks, consider your personas, think about how you behave in different roles that you’re in and different groups that you might be connected to. Consider your shadow. What happens with your shadow? And also do some research. Read, listen to audio books, watch YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, listen to Keeping the Peace podcast, anything that’s going to help you to be able to reflect on yourself. It’s that unknown bit in the Jahari Window, there’s all this stuff to know. There’s all this stuff to learn. You’re never done, which some people might think, “Ugh, that’s just so annoying,” but for others, that might be quite a nice feeling. Journal things, voice record how you’re feeling, and what reflections you’ve had. And very much, ask for support if you need it. You can’t do these things always on your own, and I know I haven’t been able to do them on my own. I’ve had lots of support over the years to think about myself and think about how I present, and what I do and what I don’t do, and how I feel when I’m triggered and all of those things.
So I wanted to put a couple of ideas for further reading. There’s the Chimp Paradox, which I know we mentioned last time, which is really accessible, and there’s also a children’s version of that now as well. There’s an inner work book written by Robert Johnson which is in relation to the dreams and ideas that might be going on with the subconscious, and how that might come out during sleep. And there’s a couple of TedTalks I wanted to just mention. There’s Dr Steven Lautenson who talks about projecting your personal shadows, really accessible and really interesting.
And also Brene Brown, who’s a psychotherapist like me, and she’s got loads of TedTalks out there, and podcasts, and all sorts of things. Now, you might not like her style, or you might, but listen to some of it because at least it’ll give you some other things to think about and apply to yourself. And then obviously, the Keeping the Peace podcasts, which I’m just going to mention again.
OK, so shall we just come to any questions that anybody wants to ask? I’m just going to stop sharing my screen. Oh, there’s a few things in the chat.
Neil: Yeah, we have got a few things in the chat, but for generally a quiet bunch in relation to questions. But I’ll give you a thought, just in case we’re going to get any in the next few minutes. Just something I was reflecting on is that the masks almost give you a kind of super power, inasmuch as you can suddenly go to work, and certainly in the role that we do, and you can make hundreds of different decisions, and you can take on so much work, but then you go home and you can’t actually make a decision about what you’re having for your tea, or whatever it is. And I think that’s a really good way of demonstrating the difference between the two
Alexis: Yeah, absolutely, and I think partly as well, if your role is that you’re having to make decisions all the time, and you’re looked to for that as well, obviously, and probably every role in policing has that element to it, that sometimes it’s nice to hand that over to somebody else as well, and it’s OK to do that. I very much do that at home. I make a lot of decisions at work, and then I go home and I don’t care what we do for tea, I don’t mind what we do on Saturday. It’s fine. And you might have different masks for different things, that’s the other thing I meant to say, was that you might have, if you were decorating ten of them for different roles you’re in, they might all be quite different on the outside anyway, so how you filter is – it’s a choice, isn’t it, as well?
Neil: Yeah, absolutely, it is. I think one of the other things, as well, going back to the Jahari Window is that certainly in the police, we’re really – we haven’t been good historically about giving feedback so people are really reluctant to actually ask for that feedback because they don’t know what’s going to come, and [unintelligible 00:55:54] criticism.
Alexis: Yeah, it’s potentially quite a nerve-wracking thing to ask for, isn’t it? because you’ve got to trust the people who are giving you the feedback. One of the things that Pete talks about in the podcast is, he wondered, if he asked others to decorate a mask, the outside of the mask for what they see from him, would they interpret it in the same way? And I thought it was quite interesting. It’s also quite risky to ask somebody else to do that, but a great idea when you think about that 360 feedback that, I’ve been through that process myself, and everyone just kind of – everyone I know anyway, has always kind of crossed their fingers and hoped for the best that they’re going to get something that’s going to not be too harsh.
But you’re right, sometimes we can feel like we’ve got to not ask for feedback for fear of what it might be. Just because someone gives you feedback, doesn’t mean to say it’s completely accurate. It’s their perception. So you can take from that what you need, and sometimes when we hold onto the stuff that we think isn’t fair, that’s what the shadow is based on, it’s like, “Well, I don’t agree with that and it’s not fair, and I’m going to feel wounded about that.” But actually, not everyone’s going to like what they see, and not everyone’s going to like what you do, so it’s OK to accept that feedback for what it is, but also maybe take on the parts that you feel are really relevant to you that you want to do something about.
Neil: That’s great. Well, Alexis, we’ve just about ran out of time, but thanks very much for doing this for us today. It’s been really, really interesting. If anyone has any questions they want to ask, please do put them in the chat, or send them to us via email and we can pick them up afterwards, but Alexis, thanks very much.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks everybody.
Tony: To anyone who were here from the north east, I would just like to say, Alexis, you’ve put some very, very valid points over, as I say, and they’ve certainly given me some reflection. And what I’ll do is, I’ll hand these on to my actual colleagues at Northumbria Police because I think that it was a very, very good presentation.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks Tony, I really appreciate your feedback. And if you need anything, just so that everyone’s got my email, it’s [email protected]. I don’t’ know if Joe can put that in the chat for me, that would be great. Yeah, [email protected]. I’m happy if you want to drop me an email, or if there’s anything else you want to chat about, it’s not a problem.
Tony: Thank you.
Alexis: Thank you.
Neil: Thanks very much.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
Tony: Bye, guys. Have a good day.
Alexis: Bye. Have a good week. [Laughs]
My name’s Neil Collinson. I work for the National Police Wellbeing Service, and I’m very pleased to say that Alexis Powell-Howard is joining me again today. Alexis is the Managing Director of Fortis Therapy, who brought us the Keeping the Peace podcasts, and the Duty of self care webinar last month. It’s fair to say Alexis is a bit of a leading expert in her field, so we’re very grateful that she’s back today to pass on her knowledge and expertise in this area.
There’s just a couple of things to go through before we start. Towards the end of the webinar today, there’s going to be an opportunity for you to have some Q&A, so if you have a question at any point, please do put that in the chat and I’ll collate them all, and I’ll endeavour to get Alexis to answer as many as she possibly can before the end. That said, if you do want to interact with her, there’s no problem. If you’ve got the ‘raise a hand’ function, please do raise your hand, otherwise put in the chat that you’d like to ask a question, and we’ll get you on to ask a question, you can unmute yourself and speak to Alexis directly.
Don’t worry if we don’t get to your question, then Alexis is going to try and sort through the questions after the end of the webinar, if that’s possible. The webinar is going to be recorded so that other colleagues can watch it afterwards. If you feel uncomfortable with this, please do feel free to turn your camera off. We certainly won’t be picking on anyone during the session, so don’t worry, and the questions and answers at the end won’t be recorded, and your questions are anonymised anyway, so please do feel free to put your questions in there if you have one.
Now finally, this wouldn’t be a webinar without some IT gremlins. It always happens to us, even with our best of intentions, something always crops up. So please be patient with the IT. Sometimes you will find that it’s easier to rejoin, leave and rejoin if need be, if your screen freezes. And likewise, if we have any IT issues, please do bear with us and we will try and fix them as we go along. But fingers crossed it’s all going to go smoothly, you are going to enjoy it, and hopefully you get to take a lot from the session today. So Alexis, I’ll hand over to you. Thanks very much.
Alexis: Thanks, Neil. Morning everybody, I hope you’re all OK, and ready for your week. I’m really excited to be here and to be talking to you about the masks we wear. So I’m going to share my screen just so that you can see my presentation, as we go along. As Neil says, if there’s any questions or any comments you want to make, anything at all, please put them in the chat because whatever you put in the chat, somebody else will be reading and that might help them as well.
So I don’t have all the answers, none of us do, but if you’ve got anything that you think really works for you, or something that you want to comment on, then please do. I really appreciate that interaction. And if you do want to keep your camera on, that’s great too, because that means I can see people’s faces. If we were doing this for real, I’d be able to see you all sat in an audience. You never know. One day we might be able to go back to that.
So I’m Alexis. I’m the Managing Director at Fortis, as Neil said. I’m a psychotherapist, systemic practitioner, coach, trainer, mediator, supervisor, speaker, everything that really is to do with people. I’m fascinated by people, and always have been, and have done quite a bit of work within policing, delivering training, doing mediations, providing therapy, and at courses we provide therapy to officers and staff as well.
So this idea for doing this webinar, really, has come from all of those conversations and all the things we’ve learned as we’ve been doing that work. I’ve done a TedEx which is called Why Hide the Repair. If you just put my name in and Google it, that’ll come up. It’s about 16 minutes so it’s not too long, and gives you a bit of an idea of our approach around mental health and where Fortis comes from as well, really.
I’m also the host for the Keeping the Peace podcast. We put out an episode to support the last webinar that I did last month, the Duty of Self-care with Mark Mottashed from Lancashire, and we put out one with DCI Pete Thorp from Humberside to support this webinar. We just thought it might be helpful to hear a conversation about some of these aspects. And you can listen to it anytime, anywhere. It’s on all the major platforms. If you search for it, you’re probably best to search for Oscar Kilo because it’ll come up then. But yeah, I’ll plug that again at the end, just to kind of – and I’m going to talk a bit about the conversation I had with Pete Thorp as well, during the webinar.
So at Fortis we provide a massive range of different services. It’s developed over the years. I would say that we’ve evolved, but actually I think we’ve just expanded, really, in terms of different services, and just ways of being able to use what we know and what we’re learning all the time to be able to support people the best way possible. We have got a website and there is loads of free content on there, so if you are a contact for your force, and put out information about stress, mental health, about loss, about anything to do with what’s happened over the past year as well – there’s lots of tips on there, feel free to download them and use them. There’s lots of strategies and ideas that you can use, so please, we’d love it if you would use that.
We’ve also got Facebook groups which I just wanted to flag because these are also available to anybody. So we have our main Facebook page which, we do self care sessions which are Facebook Lives every Thursday. There’s a couple left. We’re going to do them until the end of March. We’ve done them for three months, myself and Joe from Fortis. And these are conversations with different people about what helps them with their self care, and what they’ve learned. And they can be really helpful just to normalise the conversation, and they’re all on there, so you can have a look at the historic ones.
We’ve also got The F Word which is a Facebook group open to anybody, and that’s a community again where we share ideas, and we encourage people within that community as well. And linked to that are network events and newsletters that we put out. So we’re trying to get as much information out as we possibly can to help as many as possible.
And then we have the Westerly Club, and the Westerly Club is for men only, and it’s about men’s mental health and accessing support. And the idea behind the Westerly is, it’s a fishing term – I’m from Grimsby, so it seemed appropriate. Your Westerly is your best mate, really. He’s the person you lean on, the person who helps you. It’s a bit like your west wind, so if you’d had a bad fishing trip, there would be the person who’d buy you a pint and check in with you and make sure you’re OK, and that’s what that group is about. And the guys in there blow me away every day with how supportive they are for each other, so if you’re a guy over the age of 16, or you know somebody who would benefit, then please tell them to ask to join. And then, you know, all the other usual platforms.
So I just wanted to let you know that those things are there. You don’t have to introduce yourself in them, you don’t have to engage if you don’t want to, but if you just want to kind of be in the background, that’s absolutely fine.
So today we’re going to be talking about the masks that we wear, and the way that I’m going to approach that is to think about how we present ourselves in terms of our self, and also what we might see in others, and how we present ourselves to others as well. We’re going to explore the persona and the shadow, which is very much around a Jungian way of working. so Carl Jung, who was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he actually founded analytical psychology. So I’m not going to go into massive amounts of depth with that because literally, we would literally be here for days, but I’m going to take out some of the parts of his thoughts that might be relevant and useful to you, and we see and we use in ways that we support people as well.
So we’re also going to think about the filter, and what we do with our responses, and how we might perceive others, and how that might get in the way as well, and what is happening when those difficulties can occur. We’re going to think a bit about how you might want to manage your mask, and I’m going to use different types of theory, not just from a Jungian perspective, but different kinds, types of theory that just, for me, really demonstrate some really simple ideas that you can maybe go away and have a go at and reflect on and think about.
Thank you to those people who got in touch with me after the last webinar, who told me some of the things that’d resonated, and what they wanted to use and think about. It was really helpful to know that, and so again, with this one, if you go away and you have some light bulb moments, or there’s some things that you’ve been reflecting on, then let me know because that would be great.
So all of this, everything we’re doing and everything we do at Fortis, really, and what’s happening this week at Oscar Kilo is all around emotional intelligence and increasing our emotional intelligence. So understanding, and being aware of ourselves and being able to control ourselves, express our emotion, and also to be able to handle those relationships around us. Making good, sensible decisions, good judgements, but also being empathic.
So when we think about empathy, it’s very different to feeling sympathetic. Sympathy is about feeling sorry for someone, which obviously we all have that capacity to do that, but actually, in terms of our emotional intelligence, thinking about our empathy, and are we able to walk in someone else’s shoes, are we able to think about their context and what makes them feel the way they feel, or behave the way they behave?
And when we talk about presentation, as I said in that slide about what we’re going to cover in the next hour, I’m thinking about what we see. So you will be doing this all the time in your roles; you’ll be looking at how do people present, what do they look like, how are they responding to others, how are they responding to you. You’ll be thinking about how you respond to other people as well. What are non-verbals like, what does that tell you about somebody?
How do people recount their experiences? So if you’re taking statements off people, they’ll all have slightly different ways of recounting what’s happened. There might be quite big differences in how they recount what’s happened, but they will have their perception. Where does the really heavy things like blame and doubt and shame, where do they sit for you, but also, where do they sit for that other person? So when we’re thinking about presentation, does that seep out at times, is it shown in different types of behaviour?
And what’s happening for each person, and how are others responding and reacting to them? So if I’m assessing someone on their presentation from a mental health perspective, that can tell me an awful lot. Somebody interacting with someone else, somebody’s account of how they are responded to by other people, all of that tells me an awful lot about that person, and how they might be seen by others, how I might be perceiving them as well.
And also think about what isn’t said. What is the unsaid? There’s a lot that can seep out in lots of ways, behaviourally and emotionally, but there might be an awful lot of things that aren’t being said. And often, when I get asked to do mediations especially, there’s an awful lot that’s gone under the surface that’s not been said, or that’s been assumed or presumed by people. So considering what has been unsaid and what could that be, and is it even in the awareness of the people, or of yourself?
And also, what is our internal response? So if I’m working with someone on tracking, how am I feeling about this person, what am I feeling about what they’re saying, can I be really congruent and honest about my response to what they’re saying, and how do I put that across in a way that can be received?
So there’s an awful lot, when we’re thinking about presentation, how we present to each other, and how we respond and react to each other, tells us an awful lot about what’s going on internally for ourselves, but also maybe we can start to understand other people in a slightly different way, which we’ll talk a bit more about later.
So part of our masks and part of how we present is also about our roles. So how do you manage your life, and how many different roles do you have? So if you quickly did a grid, and if we were sat in a room together, we would be doing this as an exercise, and just wrote down how many different roles do you actually have in life – I did this yesterday, I hadn’t done it for a while, and I did this yesterday, and I could literally fill that grid. That’s how many boxes I managed to fill in terms of the number of different roles I’ve got.
So if you consider how many different roles you have, so it might be professionally, it might be personally, could be in your relationships, it could be communities you’re a part of, it could be within your family – it goes on and on and on – if you consider how many different roles you have, how do you present in each of those different roles? What do you show of yourself in each of those different roles? It’s quite interesting to think about which parts of your personality you take to them, and which parts you don’t as well.
If you colour-coded those different boxes in terms of maybe how connected you feel to other people, how you present, which bits of you you feel – how authentic you feel when you’re in those roles, it’d be interesting again to reflect on which bits of me do I keep hidden, and what do I hold back? So anything you can think around, the roles that you have, but also how your personality evolves and develops and changes depending on the relationships you’re in, and what your role is within that community is interesting to consider.
Sometimes we don’t really recognise how much we are holding in terms of those different roles and responsibilities, but also, how do we present? How would people perceive us in those roles? And are we being our authentic selves, or are we having to feel that we need to protect ourselves? Are we feeling that we can trust others? All of that impacts on how we come across.
Now I wanted to show you and share this with you because I think it’s a really helpful model. And some of you may have seen this before, and some of you may not, but it’s called the Jahari Window, and it was developed by a guy called Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955. Jo, Joseph – Harry, Harry, this very inventive way of coming up with a model. And they drew this model all that time ago to think about self-awareness, our personal development, and also, how we communicate. So our interpersonal relationships, considering our behaviour in group dynamics, and also, you can apply it to things like team development, and how teams respond to each other.
So I’m going to go through it just to explain each of those areas because it really makes sense when you understand what that looks like. It looks a bit complicated on there, but if you look at these four boxes, that’s your whole window, OK? Now, this represents you as a whole person, and the number one there, the open and free area, this is the information about our attitudes, our behaviours, our emotions and feelings, our skills and our views. And it’s what is known by ourselves, so what we’re aware of, but also what is known by others as well. And we’re OK with other people knowing that, there’s no sense of needing to hide anything, that area is open, and it’s free.
And it will mean that we can communicate quite well when we’re in this, so the larger that area becomes, the more effective we become because we’re able to communicate and we’re not hiding. We might want to improve that area, so if you were going to draw this for yourself, if you’ve got a pen and paper in front of you, just kind of sketch it out, put those four boxes in as equals and then just dot the lines as to where you might feel that you are right now. If we want to expand that area, you’ll see there it says ‘feedback solicitation’ as you’re looking at it on the right hand side, and also ‘self-disclosure and exposure’ at the bottom.
If we want to expand that, we need to hear what other people think and feel about us, what’s their feedback, and we also want to maybe share more of ourselves. If you’re going into a new role, you might kind of not do that initially because you’re not sure you can trust people; you don’t know quite what the relationships are going to be like.
And then that unknown area there, it talks about shared discovery. Again, you would expand out into there, so that might be self-reflection, doing webinars and things like this today, listening to things that help you, reading, therapy, coaching, all of those things help you to tap into that unknown area, OK? So the unknown area is unknown by you, but also unknown by others. So we’ve got the open area there which is known by self and known by others; we’ve got the unknown area which for me is quite exciting. I think that’s like the untapped potential, so what bits of myself do I not know, and how can I learn about those? And I have therapy when I need to. I have supervision every month to try and explore and expand on that.
The blind area, now this part is the part where we ask for feedback, so we aren’t aware of it, but others will be. So if I give you an example of that, years ago I worked for Marks & Spencer’s, and I went into Marks’s as somebody who’d worked in a family business. I was quite direct at the time, hadn’t really softened up around the edges yet, and I was trying to do things for what I thought were the right reasons. But actually, how I was coming across to people, they were seeing me as being quite icy, really. There was no emotion, I was just very direct, and for me, we had to get the job done.
When they gave me that feedback, which one of them was brave enough to do, it meant that I could understand how I was coming across, and soften my approach and rethink about that. Now that was years and years ago, and I still remember that feedback because it was a blind area, a blind spot for me. I wasn’t aware. So as long as you can take that feedback on board and not be defensive, then obviously that’s going to help your development. And that’s why we do exercises like psychometric testing’; it’s why we do 360 feedback. All of those things help us to understand ourselves a little bit more.
So if we go then onto thinking about the hidden area, now this hidden area’s also called a facade as well, so this will be information that’s known to you, but you want to keep it from others. So there might be parts of self that you maybe don’t like, or that you want to keep hidden because it feels safer to do this. And it might be your personal information, it could be your past experiences, it could be feelings, fears, secrets, and we keep it hidden for other people because we want to keep that private.
And the problem is that if we keep that at the same size as that original diagram, as that equal quarter, it can really prevent us from actually growing and moving into development because sometimes we feel that things that we don’t really – we might feel we need to be worried about something, we might be fearful, we might be ashamed, we might be all sorts of different emotions, but actually, the more we can accept that about ourselves, the more we can understand ourselves and that emotional intelligence bit we were talking about before, the better that’s going to be for us, and there’s less need to keep hiding who we are and how we feel about things.
So again, you might do this exercise and think, “Actually, I had loads of development over the past, I don’t know, say year, or something like that, and I can see that it’s different. My window is different to where it was before.” So opening your Jahari window, opening that free area and being more accepting of yourself, but also being more open with others, can be massively helpful. That’s not to say that I understand, too, that there’s times when you want to protect yourself, because we’ve all been there and we’ve all had those relationships or dynamics, or team dynamics that can affect us in that way.
So the unknown areas, as I mentioned earlier, is around tapping into some of that unknown about ourselves, what we might be feeling, our capabilities, what we’re talented at. We might keep some of that untapped potential due to traumatic experiences in the past. There might be things that’ve happened that we may not even be aware of, may not even be able to remember, but it’s quite an exciting place when we look at it from a therapeutic perspective, because actually the more we know, the more aware we are, the more open we can be and the less frightened we feel about keeping that part of us hidden.
If anybody wants this put in the – I can send you this image on this slide on email, so just put in the chat if you’d like it because I’m happy to share it, and I can put a description with it as well.
So another layer on top of that, so we’ve got the Jahari Window and we’ve got thinking about what do I share and what do I keep hidden, which is very much about what masks are about. We’ve also got conditions of worth, and I mentioned this in the first webinar that we did, and I wanted to be a bit more specific about it. So this, our conditioning comes from the way we need to behave in order to get approval from others. So this is our significant others growing up. So what we want to do is get approval from people around us and experience that feedback.
So there’ll be ways that we behave, and almost messages that we’ve created growing up that mean that we will keep doing those things in order to get a response from people. And that response helps us with our self-worth, so we want to get their approval.
The difficulty is, as we get older, maybe how we’ve been conditioned to do that, or how we’ve chosen to do that growing up may be something that doesn’t fit for us as an adult. And it becomes our interjected messages, our interjected values. So we internalise how we behave in order to get the expectations from others. So that might be about approval, it might be about not wanting to be rejected. There could be all sorts of – it’s very personal. It’s very much about what we’ve grown up in, and what we’re looking to get from other people.
So I know that one of mine, which we’ll talk a bit more about in a minute in terms of value, is about working hard. I grew up in a family business. If someone didn’t turn up, you just did the double shift. You just worked hard. And so I’ve had to unpick that. I still work hard, but I’ve also got to unpick how I also have enough self-worth to be able to stop working and to take time out and look after myself, and also ask for help, and all of those things that I was really conditioned not to do by my upbringing, even though my parents would say that that wasn’t messages they gave me, that was how I internalised it.
So thinking about your messages that you have, and how that impacts on you, is really important, and it can really clash with your world views, which is why sometimes we feel conflicted, and maybe feel compromised, and that’s leading us to feeling unhappy, feeling depressed, or our mood can be low and anxious because we don’t want to not get that approval from significant others, in the main. Some people don’t care, I appreciate that, but in the main, that’s how we work.
A guy called Eric Berne also came up with this idea which is that we have a script. So we grow up, with our conditioning, with what happens around us, and we might act out that repeatedly in our relationships. We might act it out at work, we might act it out in teams, we might act it out in our family. And that script is kind of, if you think about it, it’s a bit like having the villains and the heroes and the plot twists and everything else – it’s what we’ve grown to expect.
So you might have things in your life where you think, “I don’t know why that keeps happening in my relationships,” or “I get to a certain point at work and I keep getting stuck, or I don’t go any further.” And it might be that it’s because of how you are scripted to see your life and how you feel you are in your role in your life. So going back to those ideas about all your different roles, how are you behaving in each of those roles? And do you come across similar wins, and do you come across similar difficulties in each of those areas?
You might see this if you’ve worked in things like domestic abuse, where the relationship just might be different people but the same pattern keeps happening. That can be very much linked to this as well. And it can mean that we feel quite incongruent. So congruence is about feeling genuine, and being genuine and authentic, and incongruent is obviously the exact opposite to that.
So we might feel like actually, how my life is rolling out in front of me, how this script keeps happening, really doesn’t fit with me, and how I feel and how I want to feel, and how I want to manage my life, and that’s where reflection or my self-research is really important, because you can make those changes. That’s what therapy is about, about making changes and making choices that, you know, maybe you didn’t even know they were there to make. But it can really help with life, and quality of life, and self-worth as well.
So if we think about that script and we think about those values, that conditioning, this is how this manifests itself. So if I am to be of value, I must ... And if you look down that list, there’s just some ideas I’ve come up with in terms of work I’ve done with officers and staff in training and in therapy that might resonate. But this is about, fundamentally, if I’m going to be valuable, this is what I must do. Now, the word ‘must’ doesn’t really give you much room for manoeuvre. It’s right up there with ‘should’. I must do this or I must do that. If you’d look down that list, you might see, actually, there’s a couple of those that really fit for me, that I consider that, in order for me to be of value, I must do each of these things.
So I must, say for example, be perfect. And being perfect is a massive driver. It can be quite a strong conditioning for people, and you can literally drive yourself into the ground trying to be perfect. And the being perfect is based on what somebody else’s perception is of you. I want to meet that need, I want to get their approval so I’ll be as perfect as I can. That’s why it’s so devastating when you don’t get that person’s approval, or you feel rejected, because well, I’ve done it as perfectly as possible.
You might have one around not asking for help. That might be something that – I see that sometimes with officers and staff when we’re working with them, that actually asking for help has been the actual last thing that they got to. It’s actually, “I’ve got to. I’ve got no choice to because actually I’m supposed to know what to do and I’m supposed to know how to help. I’m the person who does the helping.” So reflecting on your own conditions of worth through interjected messages can be really helpful to think about, is that something that I still want to have, or is it something that I would like to change, and be maybe a bit kinder to myself?
And that’s something that came out in the podcast with Pete Thorp around masks was, actually, this being a little bit more kind and a bit more nurturing to yourself can be really helpful in just feeling that you’re not your own worst critic, because that’s how this starts to manifest itself.
The other thing I wanted to just mention really is around boundaries, because in the first webinar that we did, when I said about saying no, there was a flurry of activity in the chat about how people found that really hard. And obviously, in your roles, you are there to follow orders, and that’s – you’re there to serve the public, and there’s these very, obviously strong messages about what you need to be doing, and saying no can feel like, actually, that’s impossible in my role.
But I think I wanted to say a bit more about it and expand on it a little bit from a boundaries perspective, so if we go back to thinking about our conditioning, and if saying no is something that we really struggle with, it could be that growing up we were asked to help others, but not asked to help – we were never really allowed to help ourselves, as an example.
So if you were brought up in a family where you help someone else, but you don’t put yourself first, then actually, saying no is really hard because that goes against – it can be quite a frightening thing to do because it goes against what we’ve been brought up in, in order to feel acceptable, and to be approved of.
So considering your boundaries and thinking about where you are in them, I think can be massively helpful because you can reflect on, actually, there are certain times when you might be quite assertive with your boundaries and you feel OK with that, but there might be other times when you’re more unclear, where you might be more passive. You might not ask for what you need. You might not even be sure about what you like, what matters to you. You’re not clear about you underneath all of that.
And I know this is something that, when I’m working with people, when we think about what they actually like and what’s really important to them, and what’s important in terms of their values, sometimes that can be actually really tough to figure out because we can often base our values and what’s important to us on what other people have told us, or have conditioned us to feel is valuable, and what they feel is important to them.
So I’ve tried to do this on kind of a bit of a spectrum. So if we’re looking at our boundaries being very rigid, that can be very much about not wanting to trust people, not feeling that we can trust, but also might be an element of, I don’t want to get found out. So if you stick rigidly to your boundaries and it’s very clear that you’re not going to move from them ever, then that’s going to be really difficult. So you might think about your team and think, “Actually, there’s someone who’s really rigid with their boundaries, that doesn’t help us as a team, but what’s going on for them? Why do they feel the need to be rigid around those boundaries? Is there some insecurity, is there some uncertainty? Why do they feel closed off?” All of those kinds of things.
And what we want to be doing is recognising where we are on this spectrum, and thinking, “Actually, I’m being healthy with my boundaries.” Something that I’ve seen with officers is that they might be quite clear about boundaries in work, but be really unclear outside of work, and be quite passive, and those healthy boundaries actually that they have when they’re in work, when they know what is expected and they know what the role means to them, and they know what the uniform means, and everything else, it’s quite difficult when it’s just you as a person, just without any of those structures and boundaries already in place.
So considering those roles we’ve talked about, considering where are our boundaries within them, and what parts of my personality do I show or do I not show, it quite interesting to reflect on because you might want to make some changes there. You might want to think, “Actually, why do I not do it there, but I do do it there? How is that easier for me?”
So when we’re thinking about the masks that we wear, there’s a stand there, you’ll see the image there. Those, all of those masks have been done by either clients who gave us permission to use them, or members of the general public. So we use masks in therapy, because sometimes being creative can be massively helpful to communicate what’s going on. And we use them with all ages, so this isn’t about children, this is about adults and young people, and we’ve done them with anyone. They can run but they can’t hide [laughs]. It’s quite an effective therapeutic tool.
But what we did was, a couple of years ago we asked the general public to help us. We wanted to show and demonstrate how individual mental health is for each of us, and how individual our emotions are for each of us, and we thought we’d get about 40 people who would respond, 40, 50 people, so that’s how many masks we bought, and we had far more than that, a good 250, 300 people got in touch because they wanted to have a mask and express themselves, and decorate it to show that, so we had some amazing ones that were sent back in, where people have spent hours on expressing themselves. And so we were able to make this display to be able to demonstrate that actually each of us is different, each of us has our own interpretation, our own difficulties, our own experiences.
And we all also have a certain amount of things that we keep on the inside, that we maybe hide from others, we don’t want to share. Now that might be because we want to portray ourselves in a particular way on the outside, and on the inside we might feel a mix of emotions, but one of the things that really came out was not wanting to be seen to be weak, and not wanting to be seen to be vulnerable or emotional. We’ve done this with police officers, we’ve done this with whole families, adult families who sat together around the table and did these together to talk about their experiences and what they felt. So they’re quite a powerful tool, and we were incredibly grateful that people took that chance to do that.
If we apply it to the Iceberg metaphor which, we all love an iceberg, the part that is on the outside of the mask is what we’re showing in terms of our conscious mind, so what we maybe choose to show when we’re feeling in control. We might not choose to show things if we’re not feeling in control, but from a conscious mind, it’s what we choose to put out there. So we might have particular ways of wanting to communicate, show our values, behave, all of those things, and our conscious mind contains all of those thoughts and feelings and at any given moment, and we can process them and think and talk about them quite rationally when we’re using that conscious mind.
But if we think about the pre-conscious, so this is a Freudian idea, so you’ve got to love a bit of Freud – if you put that just under that surface there, those are the things, in therapy, we talk about being on the edge of our awareness. So they’re around, they’re kind of looking to attract the eye of the conscious mind, to come forward, but that’s where we would think there’s something on the edge of awareness that would suddenly come into the conscious mind, and those are those light bulb moments where we think, “Oh, God, why have I never seen that like that? Why have I never thought about it in that way?” Or suddenly we feel differently because we’ve had that realisation.
So we have the pre-conscious issues just under the surface there, and then we’ve got the unconscious mind, or the subconscious, whichever way you want to call it. And as you can see, that’s a vast majority of what makes us tick. It’s all of our reservoir, if you like, of feelings and thoughts, all our urges, our memories, that are outside of our conscious awareness. Now, most of the contents of the unconscious are usually something that we feel is unacceptable, or unpleasant, and it can lead to feelings like feeling conflicted, feeling compromised, feeling anxious, feeling in pain. And it’s probably something that, when it moves into the preconscious, if it can, then those are the things that might impact on us without us really realising it, in the conscious – not without realising it, but it might impact us on a conscious mind.
We might start to show behaviours and think, “Why am I behaving in this way? What is that linked to, and why is this person triggering me, or why is the situation triggering me?” As you can see, from the iceberg, there’s an awful lot going on behind, and then you’ve got the conscious mind on the top there, the bit that we’ve decided is the safe bit, the bit that we can show people.
And also part of the unconscious mind is that all our involuntary movements, so breathing, our blinking, all those things that we don’t even think about, are subconsciously happening. And also, our sleep patterns, so if we have things going on that are under the surface, quite often our sleep will be affected. We might dream, we might have quite a vivid imagination around things that come to the surface and start to be processed during our sleep. So it has quite an impact on us, and if we’re thinking about this as a mask, what we show on the outside is the conscious stuff, and then the bit behind is the preconscious and the unconscious.
And the part of the mask that I love, the bit that I find really helpful thinking about it using a mask rather than using the iceberg, is that our persona is what we show on our outward face, so if you think about your uniform, if you wear a uniform, or your role, your position, these things might be part of your mask. They might be quite integral to how you present yourself, and what you feel is important in your role, and how you might be at work. It might be different to how you are at home, but your persona at work may be part of this. And I’ve seen it where officers, uniformed officers who put the uniform on in the morning kind of go, “Right, OK, this is what I am today,” but actually, at home might be struggling to empty the dishwasher or just really simple stuff that actually, they’re struggling at home, but find that at work, I know who I am at work and I know what I need to present.
The shadow, which is all that stuff under the surface, the bit behind the mask, this is all the stuff that we might consider to be negative. It’s usually stuff that’s repressed, that therefore is maybe unknown, so going back to that unconscious or subconscious stuff, and if you imagine that your mask, the bit that you have in front of you is your filter, you’re filtering all the time, what do I need to show, what do I not need to show, how do I manage that situation? You might be triggered by something, you might feel angry, you might feel fearful or you might feel ashamed, and you might not be able to filter that in the moment.
That might be something which kind of spills out, but there might be other times where you step away and give yourself chance to reflect and think, and actually then come at it from a different perspective. but there’s all this stuff going on behind the surface and we saw that when we did the mask exercise with the community, that people were just holding such a lot of emotion and such a lot of experiences and a lot of shame and fear that they weren’t expressing, and were actually feeling quite low and anxious as a result of that.
The reason we use creativity to communicate that is that sometimes the language can be quite limiting in expressing how we feel. So when I turn up to a training, Keeping the Peace training for a load of police officers and staff, and I put out colouring pens and pencils, and the looks that I receive are all a bit like, “What is she up to?” But I want to come away from that cognitive, conscious stuff and I want to get to some of the stuff, safely – I don’t want to make anyone feel vulnerable with their colleagues, but safely to express things in a different way. So choosing colours, choosing patterns, being able to think about what this expression represents for this person.
So we didn’t do mask exercises in the training because I didn’t want to leave people feeling vulnerable, and I wanted to be able to help people to reflect and be able to process those on an individual basis if that’s what they wanted to do. But what we did do was talk about masks, and talk about the shadow and the persona, to be able to maybe give a different language to sometimes how we might be feeling, and what we might be either expressing or holding back.
And so when I asked DCI Pete Thorp to help me with this, I asked him if he would fill out – if he would decorate a mask, and I didn’t give him any direction, I just asked him to – just to take what we’d done in the training, because he’s been in the training; he was the lead, he was with me for all the training that we delivered for the PVP team at Humberside, and just express himself using colours or patterns or whatever he wanted to do. So I’m going to show you a few examples, and I’m just going to talk through this one. so please, do listen to the podcast because it’s really interesting to hear how he approached this.
But he was really – he really wanted the colours to be important, and to represent him in the best way that he could, express himself in the best way he could. And what was interesting was, he’s actually colour-blind, so he had to research the colours, then he had to buy pencils that actually had the colours written on so that he could make it was accurate in how he wanted to communicate. So the blue that you can see there on the front of the mask, which is mirrored on the inside of the mask, for him was about reliability, about being trustworthy as a leader role. He wanted his team to feel that he had loyalty, and there was honour, and there was that stability that he was offering people. And it was very much linked to how he feels on the inside, to what he wanted to show on the outside.
The red, the compartmentalised aspect was quite interesting, but the red side of it was about strength and energy and boldness and passion, and the yellow on the other side of the forehead was about being positive and optimistic, and lively and upbeat. And then the orange side, which was representative of creativity and enthusiasm, trying ideas, seeing if it works; if it doesn’t, learning from it, having a go at things. And he took very seriously his role, and how he wanted to present that in a very clear way that would support the people who work with him, and keep in mind the staff that are in the team, but also the victims, and the public as well.
On the inside, I was really kind of – he really kind of risked putting in there about how he felt with that violet. That middle streak there is violet, just so you know, and that part represents worry and double-guessing, and over-thinking, and not being sure, and ... So actually what he has learned to do over the years is recognise those feelings are there, but also come back to that blue section there about his values, and the brown section, which was about stability and grounding, and he describes it as dull. That part is also next to the blue, so that very much about a foundation that he felt represented himself, and being genuine and really solid.
And then the streak of black that you can see there on the left edge is that kind of tipping into darker thoughts and tipping into depression. And actually he talks about how he manages those thoughts and how he brings himself back into a more rational way of thinking.
And those boxes on the right hand side, which he reliably informs me are grey, they represent those boxes that we hear a lot about in therapy. What’s in the boxes? How many boxes have you got in that warehouse in your brain? Sometimes we hear about people having lots of them, or one massive one, and the lids are coming off, or there’s behaviours, feelings and emotions coming out. And he was talking about how something, for example like child post-mortems is in one of those boxes, and those things that have impacted on him, but also, that there’s less there than there used to be.
So he deliberately didn’t decorate the rest of the mask on the inside there because actually he wanted to represent what goes on above the eyes and what happens in the mind. And expressing it in this way was quite liberating, even though it was quite hard, and I think putting it out on a public podcast is incredibly brave because this is about talking about our inner workings. Now, if we’d been in a therapy session which wasn’t being recorded, we would’ve explored some of those things in more depth, but we wanted to show how this can be used, and how helpful it can be, but also how hard it is as well to be really honest about some of that stuff, and the shadow that might be in the back there, and those worries, am I good enough, and feeling anxious, and how you then filter that and present it, or how he filters that and presents that on the front.
I wanted to share a couple of others with you as well. So this one is by a lady who was in her mid-20s, and when I asked her if she would decorate this mask, she did the front, so it says on there, storms make trees take deeper roots, which is a Dolly Patron quote, and you’ll see the tree there, and there’s lots of roots, and there’s the storm on the left hand side as you’re looking at it. And she hadn’t decorated the inside, and when I went back to her and said, “Would you mind just decorating the inside so that we’ve got the balance of the shadow and those emotions internally, and what you show on the inside?”
And then she did that inside there, which is obviously incredibly dramatic, incredibly dark, lots of lightning, thoughts and worries and feelings. Some stars in there as well, but very black, very contrasted to the front of the mask, which I think is a very personal story about how this lady filters what she shows on the outside and what is really going on at times on the inside.
And then this one, which was about presenting a happy, sunny, lovely day on the outside, but actually, what’s going on internally, which was feeling quite sad and frightened and unsure and uncertain. So if you imagine those last two masks, that you’ve got someone in your – one of your colleagues who feels this way, how are they presenting and how are they behaving, and what’s going on for them? And who knows? Who knows about that?
If we’re considering the shadow, it’s a lot of our hidden aspects of our personality that we want to push to one side. There might be things that we think are unacceptable, like I talked about asking for help, or not working hard, you know, or not working the hours, or whatever it might be – not doing that’s taking a process of reflection and making different decisions about it. We might have quite a lot of deep emotions that we keep behind the mask, and a lot of these might be formed during our development, and unmet needs as we were growing, as we’ve got older.
But there also might be some positive things that’ve come from that, so for example, you might have learned to be more assertive due to childhood experiences. But what we do know is that those behaviours can sometimes seep out. So if someone’s behaviour starts to change, if their presentation is different, if your presentation becomes different, quite often somebody else will see it before we see it. And that’s quite helpful if you’ve got a good support network around you, if they can say, “Is everything OK?”
But the other thing we tend to do is project some of what we feel about ourselves onto other people, so sometimes our perception of others – so this is complicated [laughs]. So our perception of other’s perception of us can be incorrect. So we might feel that we know what they think about us, or how they feel about us. We might be quite angry with someone who maybe puts in better boundaries than us, or isn’t available to work at the drop of a hat, or whatever, but actually, sometimes that’s because we’re projecting our own feelings about ourselves onto other people.
And that’s where, sometimes, giving yourself a bit of space before you respond or react to something, can be really helpful. There can be often very little evidence for what we feel is happening in a relationship, and we might be misreading the situation because we’re projecting how we feel about ourselves onto somebody else. So being conscious of that, and recognising, actually, this is something that’s about me, not them. And if you can bring that into your awareness and work on that, then that’s going to help you to feel more at ease with yourself, you’re going to be less hidden, going back to that Jahari Window, and that’s the kind of trick with this – there’s no – being able to admit some of these things to ourselves, and being able to actually work with them, and then being able to not feel quite so fearful of expressing how we feel, and worried about someone not approving of us.
So just in terms of our self-reflection, learning about ourselves can be really scary and you might want to avoid it. It’s something that Pete and I laugh about in the podcast is that we’d planned to do this a long time ago, this podcast, and we’ve both avoided it because we knew it was going to be something that was going to be more personal. So that was just interesting, in terms of how we usually would work together.
If you understand yourself, you’re going to be more aware of your triggers, what you’re driven by, and taking time out to reflect can be difficult, but really necessary. The more we know ourselves, and the more we understand our personas and what masks we put on, and what’s going on in our shadow, the better our understanding is of how we behave and react to others. So actually, if we can understand that, then we can be more authentic in ourselves, and we can not be quite so hard on ourselves, and not maybe looking for approval in quite the same way as we maybe have done.
So if you wanted to do a mask, or something along those lines, express it creatively, what would it look like? How would you approach it? Yours would be very individual, it’d be different to anybody else’s. You might approach it in a completely different way to the ones I’ve shown you, which is completely fine, there’s no rules, which can be a bit scary if you’re not used to working creatively, but there might be something that you might maybe want to do. You might want to do it with family members, or if you’ve got a really great team, you might want to do it with them. But again, it’s about being careful just about how people might feel vulnerable as a result of that.
So in terms of reflections, and we’ll come to questions for a few minutes, as I said, if you’d like the Jahari Window, let me know because I’m happy to send it out to you, and I’ll put some stuff in there for you to think about. And the idea around the masks, consider your personas, think about how you behave in different roles that you’re in and different groups that you might be connected to. Consider your shadow. What happens with your shadow? And also do some research. Read, listen to audio books, watch YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, listen to Keeping the Peace podcast, anything that’s going to help you to be able to reflect on yourself. It’s that unknown bit in the Jahari Window, there’s all this stuff to know. There’s all this stuff to learn. You’re never done, which some people might think, “Ugh, that’s just so annoying,” but for others, that might be quite a nice feeling. Journal things, voice record how you’re feeling, and what reflections you’ve had. And very much, ask for support if you need it. You can’t do these things always on your own, and I know I haven’t been able to do them on my own. I’ve had lots of support over the years to think about myself and think about how I present, and what I do and what I don’t do, and how I feel when I’m triggered and all of those things.
So I wanted to put a couple of ideas for further reading. There’s the Chimp Paradox, which I know we mentioned last time, which is really accessible, and there’s also a children’s version of that now as well. There’s an inner work book written by Robert Johnson which is in relation to the dreams and ideas that might be going on with the subconscious, and how that might come out during sleep. And there’s a couple of TedTalks I wanted to just mention. There’s Dr Steven Lautenson who talks about projecting your personal shadows, really accessible and really interesting.
And also Brene Brown, who’s a psychotherapist like me, and she’s got loads of TedTalks out there, and podcasts, and all sorts of things. Now, you might not like her style, or you might, but listen to some of it because at least it’ll give you some other things to think about and apply to yourself. And then obviously, the Keeping the Peace podcasts, which I’m just going to mention again.
OK, so shall we just come to any questions that anybody wants to ask? I’m just going to stop sharing my screen. Oh, there’s a few things in the chat.
Neil: Yeah, we have got a few things in the chat, but for generally a quiet bunch in relation to questions. But I’ll give you a thought, just in case we’re going to get any in the next few minutes. Just something I was reflecting on is that the masks almost give you a kind of super power, inasmuch as you can suddenly go to work, and certainly in the role that we do, and you can make hundreds of different decisions, and you can take on so much work, but then you go home and you can’t actually make a decision about what you’re having for your tea, or whatever it is. And I think that’s a really good way of demonstrating the difference between the two
Alexis: Yeah, absolutely, and I think partly as well, if your role is that you’re having to make decisions all the time, and you’re looked to for that as well, obviously, and probably every role in policing has that element to it, that sometimes it’s nice to hand that over to somebody else as well, and it’s OK to do that. I very much do that at home. I make a lot of decisions at work, and then I go home and I don’t care what we do for tea, I don’t mind what we do on Saturday. It’s fine. And you might have different masks for different things, that’s the other thing I meant to say, was that you might have, if you were decorating ten of them for different roles you’re in, they might all be quite different on the outside anyway, so how you filter is – it’s a choice, isn’t it, as well?
Neil: Yeah, absolutely, it is. I think one of the other things, as well, going back to the Jahari Window is that certainly in the police, we’re really – we haven’t been good historically about giving feedback so people are really reluctant to actually ask for that feedback because they don’t know what’s going to come, and [unintelligible 00:55:54] criticism.
Alexis: Yeah, it’s potentially quite a nerve-wracking thing to ask for, isn’t it? because you’ve got to trust the people who are giving you the feedback. One of the things that Pete talks about in the podcast is, he wondered, if he asked others to decorate a mask, the outside of the mask for what they see from him, would they interpret it in the same way? And I thought it was quite interesting. It’s also quite risky to ask somebody else to do that, but a great idea when you think about that 360 feedback that, I’ve been through that process myself, and everyone just kind of – everyone I know anyway, has always kind of crossed their fingers and hoped for the best that they’re going to get something that’s going to not be too harsh.
But you’re right, sometimes we can feel like we’ve got to not ask for feedback for fear of what it might be. Just because someone gives you feedback, doesn’t mean to say it’s completely accurate. It’s their perception. So you can take from that what you need, and sometimes when we hold onto the stuff that we think isn’t fair, that’s what the shadow is based on, it’s like, “Well, I don’t agree with that and it’s not fair, and I’m going to feel wounded about that.” But actually, not everyone’s going to like what they see, and not everyone’s going to like what you do, so it’s OK to accept that feedback for what it is, but also maybe take on the parts that you feel are really relevant to you that you want to do something about.
Neil: That’s great. Well, Alexis, we’ve just about ran out of time, but thanks very much for doing this for us today. It’s been really, really interesting. If anyone has any questions they want to ask, please do put them in the chat, or send them to us via email and we can pick them up afterwards, but Alexis, thanks very much.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks everybody.
Tony: To anyone who were here from the north east, I would just like to say, Alexis, you’ve put some very, very valid points over, as I say, and they’ve certainly given me some reflection. And what I’ll do is, I’ll hand these on to my actual colleagues at Northumbria Police because I think that it was a very, very good presentation.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks Tony, I really appreciate your feedback. And if you need anything, just so that everyone’s got my email, it’s [email protected]. I don’t’ know if Joe can put that in the chat for me, that would be great. Yeah, [email protected]. I’m happy if you want to drop me an email, or if there’s anything else you want to chat about, it’s not a problem.
Tony: Thank you.
Alexis: Thank you.
Neil: Thanks very much.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
Tony: Bye, guys. Have a good day.
Alexis: Bye. Have a good week. [Laughs]
Duty of self care interview
In this podcast style interview Alexis talks with Sergeant Mark Mottashed of Lancashire Constabulary about the importance of self care, what self care means, Mark’s experiences and his lessons learned during his career.
Podcast Url
Keeping the Peace Series 2, Episode 1 - The Duty of Self Care
Alexis Powell-Howard: Hello and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast with me, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today I’m joined by Sergeant Mark Mottashed of Lancashire Police. Hi Mark.
Mark: Hi.
Alexis: We’re going to be talking today about self care and the duty of self care, which backs up a webinar that I will be delivering on the 9th February to the National Police Wellbeing Service for Oscar Kilo so if anybody has been along to watch the webinar this will back it up. If you haven't seen the webinar that’s fine too because the subjects we’re going to be talking about will be relevant to anybody, really, around self care and it’s, obviously, a hot topic at the moment with lockdowns and everyone having to, kind of, think about themselves a bit more differently than usual.
Mark, would you just introduce yourself a bit and just say about your role and your time in the police, just so people know a bit about you.
Mark: Yes. I’ll start with the standard cop introduction where I’ve been a cop for 14 years. I’m currently in an office role at the moment within corporate development, I’ve been there for the last 12 months. Prior to that I’ve had a bit of a mixed past, I was in organisational development for four months, prior to that I was in the force control room as a team leader and also as a demand reduction unit for, I think, just over 12 months again. Prior to that it was five years on the armed response unit and then prior to that it was on and off for the best part of four years acting/temping sergeant. Then before that I did my time on normal response in the St Anne’s area and a bit of community beat management over at Blackpool town centre, as well. So quite a varied career, I’d say.
Alexis: Yes, I was going to say, there’s lots of different chunks of time there doing lots of different responsibilities, isn’t there, lots of different roles.
Mark: Yes.
Alexis: Obviously, we’re talking today about self care, so I’m assuming that you have an interest in self care and wellbeing for us to be having this conversation, am I right?
Mark: Yes. It was first introduced to me by a colleague of mine called Neil who works for Oscar Kilo, commonly referred to as being jobbed, in the job. Me and Neil used to work with each other on the van management unit, he actually mentored me for a good six months, and we both have an interest in personal development. So we would talk often about that and have some quite candid conversations about first line management and some of the resilience needed and perhaps some behaviours that we were witnessing from other line managers that perhaps insinuated that they were struggling with their resilience.
And, you know, sharing personal experience, as well, you know, it’s not a walk in the park for anyone, leadership, and we would often discuss or certainly share new insights into what we’ve read, what we’ve listened to and, yes, just share experiences.
Alexis: You can often find can’t you, as well, just thinking about leadership, that people are often picking up how to be a leader from the leaders around them, you know, you might have leadership training but, actually, fundamentally it’s what you experience, isn’t it? And I think wellbeing and self care is one of those aspects that if leaders are struggling or if that isn’t part of the culture of the organisation and those conversations aren't happening you’ve almost got to seek it out somewhere else, really, to be able to, kind of, think about it and think about yourself in that context as well.
Mark: Yes, absolutely. Yes, most learning is done by peer learning, isn’t it? I mean, what’s gone on with [unintelligible 00:03:43], to be fair, I think we’re quite good welfare wise, certainly with our chief running Oscar Kilo, being a national lead. And I’ve seen the work that’s been done by Neil and Julie, as well, who used to head it up, and we do a lot of good things. There’s a lot of compassion in Lancs to try and improve the wellbeing side, both from police officer and police staff side so, yes.
Alex: So when you’re thinking about that for yourself then why have you got that keen interest in it, why were you, kind of, reading and sharing those ideas with Neil?
Mark: I think it probably started when I took my exams, my sergeant exams early doors, so I started leadership in the police from year three onwards and, to be honest, retrospectively it was probably a bit too early for me. I know you’ve got to start somewhere so I won’t be too harsh on myself, but yes it was just dealing with that aspect.
Now, I came from the military police for four years so my background, if you wanted someone to do something it was very command and control, you have to do this, and if anyone ever asked why it was because we were the military police and that’s what we’re expected to do. So as far as telling people to do things it was a very easy environment because of the command and control, you know, that’s why it’s there sometimes.
So I identified when I was taking over a team, even though I had all the aspirations to do a really good job, there were some real times that required quite a bit of resilience. Certainly when you’re starting afresh and you’re trying to make the best decisions perhaps you lack that experience. But what really stood out for me during leadership is that you could make a string of decision throughout the shift, throughout the set of shifts and they could all be right.
And then you would make one decision and that was it, you know, through trying to do the best thing, however, you would make a bad decision, that was deemed bad by the team, and it very quickly turned sour, or not as in unprofessional but they wouldn’t be happy with your decision. And I think, yes, I lacked resilience back then because it really did affect me.
It didn’t affected me professionally as in I wouldn’t change my mind unless it was warranted, you know, I wouldn’t run off in fits of tears. But what I did notice was that when I was at home after the shift I would think on that decision over and over again, OK, what could I have done wider, wider, and just kept replaying that. So, you know, having recognised that I thought, OK, perhaps I need to work on my resilience.
So it was as simple as just going through Google and looking at, OK, how to improve resilience and, yes, that’s kind of where it stemmed from. And doing that research, kind of, reinforces some of my values and beliefs around leadership. Again, that’s just grown over time and I think it genuinely does, I mean, there are some leadership aspects which a lot of people do have but for me I think what has grown over the years is the accountability and responsibility of leadership.
If you’re willing to put your hand up and say, yes, I want to be a leader, I want to manage this team, then you need to accept accountability and responsibility. And to do that, before that comes resilience and then resilience, as we know, is then supported by and originates from self care. So if you’re not looking after yourself and your allowing, like I did early on in my career, for those thoughts to affect me, if you’re not getting a grip on that and trying to address it then it can take its toll.
Alexis: And it’s recognising those thoughts can be really difficult to manage, can’t they, because that kind of overthinking and ruminating almost on decisions that you’ve made, things you can’t actually undo, they’ve been done, you’ve already moved away from it, if you like, in terms of time, the impact might be something you’re still having to manage. But the thoughts can be something that can really derail your confidence, can’t they, if you’re not, kind of, conscious of actually being a bit kinder to yourself.
Recognising the impact of what you’ve been making decision about over maybe a series of shifts and, you know, how you’ve maybe tried to manage people and all the context to that, actually, you can become very self-critical and I think that really affects resilience, doesn’t it, in terms of managing people, as well?
Mark: Yes. I completely agree. And I think it’s important to note it’s not just isolated to police, this is leadership across the board. Granted in the emergency services and the NHS, you know, when you’re dealing with sometimes life and death situations, yes, the resilience needs to be perhaps a bit more resilient at times compared to other roles. But, yes, in every leadership role you’re going to face the complications of people.
And I have these discussions with a wide range of my friends who are in different roles and I know certainly because I started relatively early on, I was about 26 I think, which I still thought was relatively young for management. But from then I was constantly talking to, I still do talk to people who are either in leadership positions or starting leadership positions and this is the kind of stuff I would tell them.
Listen, you can read a lot of books about leadership and it will tell you a lot of stuff about do this, strategic vision, plan this or say this, but it doesn’t really deal with the intricacies and the difficult side of leadership which is performance management or, yes, having difficult and authentic conversations with staff and dealing with confrontation. Which, you know, I love that phrase which everyone says, including me at times, when they go, I don’t like confrontation. And the reality is no one likes confrontation but it is a real part of leadership at times.
And I think that, going back to my comment about, it’s not just the police, I think there’s a lack of guidance out there, or certainly easily accessible guidance to say, this is how you do it. Again, I think that stems from people lacking that resilience and the training side and the knowledge to address it, so if you’ve got a problem it’s far easier to not address it than …
Alexis: Avoidance is key.
Mark: Yes, exactly. So, yes, sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent now.
Alexis: No, I was just thinking there about that idea around, you know, if you are leading others, you’re right, in terms of, actually, you can do lots of leadership training, you can do lots of reading around it. But it is about what you’re modelling as a leader for the people that are in the team that you’re manging, how open you are to people and that, kind of, human interaction, as well.
That it would be really easy if you could just direct people and they just did as they were told and there was no emotion around any of that. Because as much as you want to take that out of the conversation it’s definitely there because we’re people and we’re social beings so you can’t avoid it, can you. So whatever you’re doing as a leader or whether you’re working in a team there’s always going to be those interactions. And I think when you do leadership training you can learn the theory of it but whether or not you actually change fundamentally your approach as a person is another thing because you’ve got to really engage with it on that level, on that deeper level.
Mark: Yes. Agreed. I think what does help with that is having a support network of leaders around you, and I have really focused on that over the latter part of my career to try and … I think sometimes promotion gears you up to competition and there’s some good things with that because, obviously, you want to try and do your best and competition creates exactly that. But what I have found, certainly towards the last four years, is that I found it better to have an aligned leadership team who all support each other to deal with those difficult problems.
It’s all too easy when you see a supervising struggling who you think is not doing a good job, it’s all too easy to perhaps criticise, you know, at water cooler chats. When actually, really, what I think they should be doing is recognising that they’re struggling, going over, offering them support and advice and then forming that form of – I know this sounds corporate – but aligned leadership or support network to then address those issues that they’re struggling with. For example, the resilience around some staff issues.
I keep mentioning leadership because, I mean, I automatically see leadership as doing exactly the same for your staff, it isn’t just for leaders, you know, that example can be done with staff as well. In fact, it should be, that’s the whole part of accountability and responsibility of your role to address the welfare needs of your staff. But it also should extend to your colleagues and also your line management, as well, you know, offering them support.
Alexis: Yes. Because you just said there about support network and from a self care, resilience, mental health, you know, all of the stuff that we’re talking about, your support network is really important, isn’t it, because that’s what keep you buoyant. And questioning colleagues and being able to see that they’re struggling, what are the signs of struggle and being able to step in, what do I need to do, what help do I need.
Because I think that context is really important that, like you say, you can see behaviours and think, they’re not performing, or, they’ve let us down, all that kind of thing. But actually what’s going on, what’s going on behind that behaviour and supporting them with that rather than it becoming, like, a critical kind of, you know, negative response to it.
Mark: Yes, and I suppose that’s where the self care side kind of links in, because I’ve experienced that in the past and I’m still susceptible to that, I always will be I think, you know, leadership is always a learning curve, you’re never the finished leader. So recognising that in myself and then also recognising it in other people.
A big tell-tale sign for me that someone is struggling, certainly as a leader, is when they become – and this is quite common as you should imagine in our role - is quite the robust, macho approach to dealing with staff where it’s almost peacocking. I think not always but certainly in my experience it would indicate that someone is actually struggling when they’re doing that and they feel like they need to create a shell.
So if I witness stuff like that, or certainly if I see people withdrawing certainly as management and not addressing perhaps minor things, which someone would perhaps say something and then it would almost be challenging the manager and it would be embarrassing for them to challenge so they would perhaps walk off, or not walk off, just be a bit meek towards it. I would recognise that as, oh, OK, I’ve been there I know that’s quite difficult to address.
And I would have discussions with them and I do, and say, OK, you know, on a case by case basis sometimes people don’t react well if you turn up and say, I think you’re struggling. If you say, how are you, and then start explaining … the tactic I’ve used in the past is I start explaining issues I’ve had and errors that I’ve made, what about you, how are you finding it? And then you would start that or get them to open up and say, it’s OK to talk about this, I’ve experienced it in the past, this is how it’s worked for me, I’ll give you some help and support surrounding it, exactly like you would do for staff.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely. It’s that, kind of, talking about it, isn’t it, and creating an opportunity for conversation rather than walking away and just ignoring what you’re seeing, that’s one of the main things.
You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo and Humberside Police.
So when we were talking about with the self care wheel, which I know the people that are listening may not have come across, but it’s similar idea to the life wheel, there’s all sorts of different ideas out there if people want to Google them to get a rough idea about it. But I sent you my version of the wheel for you to complete and it’s broken down into sections around all sorts of aspects of life, really, you know, from stress levels and time management and relaxation, clutter, time out, exercise, diet.
All the things that we think about from a mental health and emotional wellbeing perspective are captured in the wheel and it’s something that I’ve developed over the years and used a lot in training and with a lot of police officers, as well. So you’ve taken the time out to complete that for me so we can have a chat about it today, we’re not going to go through it section by section but I just wondered how you’d felt, kind of, reflecting on your self-care at the minute. Because, obviously, we’re in lockdown three, lots of things happening around us, what were your thoughts about it?
Mark: Well, first of all with regards to COVID I think myself and certainly most colleagues in the police and emergency services do consider themselves lucky that we’re still employed. You know, there’s nothing much changed for me, I’ve still been going to work so I’ve still had that routine. Yes, so I just want to acknowledge the fact that even though we are discussing it my circumstances are by no means as difficult as others and I’m by no means professing that.
I forget to mention at the start, as well, and this is something I was conscious of, I’m not a self care guru.
Alexis: It’s too late now.
Mark: I wouldn’t profess to be so, yes. So I’m looking at this wheel, yes, things that stuck out for me was the exercise/movement and diet, and that’s not a cop out, I know that probably looks like that’s probably the least emotionally demanding thing to talk about. But I have recognised at the moment I’ve done a lot of office based for the last 12 months and, obviously, we’ve not been able to go out as much as well, yes, my diet and exercise has really dropped.
That was what stood out for me on this wheel because those are important things, you know, I had quite a healthy upbringing, obviously, in the jobs that I’ve done previously and the roles I’ve had to keep fit. And I enjoy keeping fit, as well, I don’t see it as a chore, but I have noticed, and this could be to do with age as well, that the waistline is creeping.
Alexis: We’ll blame that, we’ll blame that.
Mark: Yes, on the wrong side of the belt. So, yes, that stuck out. Time with my family and friends, now that was low but, as you can see, I’ve put there COVID-19, I think that really has an impact. I know you can talk to them by telephone and what not, but actually just with your mates. I mean, I’ve got a few friends but there’s a tight group of three of us and one of them has moved to America not too long ago. And then another one is actually a paramedic and he’s just busy, you know, as you could imagine he’s working all the shifts he can just to try and keep us above water and we don’t see our friend over in America.
And I do miss that, and we do catch up occasionally on WhatsApp and it is really hard so I feel really buoyed up when we do a voice message and we probably should do that more often. So, I need to speak to Mike and Trev probably more and family as well, of course. I do keep in regular contact with them, I mean, I’ve got a hoard of nieces and nephews and obviously with COVID and doing the job that I do, as well, we’ve got to be really strict with what we can and can’t do. So, you know, unfortunately we’ve missed birthdays, we can only drop things off, we can’t go in and properly say hello to them and give them a hug, so yes, that stood out for me on this wheel.
Alexis: Yes. I mean, even though you know the context of that, COVID-19 and the impact of that, there is that social aspect in both of those, isn’t there? Because I’ve been thinking about, obviously, we’ve been told to socially distance but, actually, it’s the physical distance that we need to do, the social stuff is the stuff we really, really need to do. Because, like you said, you come off and you feel buoyed up and it can just lift you sometimes, not necessarily that you’re in a low place particularly but it’s just nice to have that conversation with someone who knows you really well and you can have that banter and check in with each other and all of that stuff.
Mark: Yes. I agree.
Alexis: Any other segments that kind of stuck out for you?
Mark: The being mindful thing, I know we had a chat previous to this, didn’t we, about the stuff I’d looked at and, again, it was one of my friends who … I was on AIB at the time and just due to lack of staffing we were doing 12 hour shifts constantly. I remember being tired and run down and going for a drink with him once and he just always seemed to have a calm air about him throughout the previous six months. And I asked him about it because I just felt a bit, you know, stressed and tired, and he started talking about mindfulness.
He was very guarded with it, as lads are, you know, I think he used the phrase, you might think it’s woo woo, he said, but I do this mindfulness thing. And I’m thinking, oh gosh, is he going to go all top knot and sit on a yoga mat. But, yes, he talked about it and got me onto Eckhart Tolle.
Alexis: The Power of Now, yes, yes.
Mark: Actually, I think it was the New Earth that I read, it was about … But I’ve also listened to the Power of Now as well, so it’s like, yes, being in the moment and being mindful. That for me was quite high on there and, I suppose, in layman’s terms it’s about being mindful before it puts people off about sitting around in tie dye shirts. And it’s just about recognising what your actual emotional state is, it’s all linking into emotional intelligence which is I know a big thing that is discussed at Lancs Police. I know Daniel Goldman does a lot around it, doesn’t he?
But, yes, just being mindful and recognising when you’re in a good mood, you’re in a bad mood, and when is best to interact with people or have particular conversations. And just recognising that when you are perhaps in a worse mood that it’s OK to be like that, just recognising it. The big indicator for me is driving to work in the morning and if there is someone behind me fairly close I can see in my rear view mirror I will perhaps grumble something. Even though it happens almost every day when I recognise that I think, oh yes, I’m tired, OK, I need to get some coffee, get some water.
Alexis: Yes, less capacity.
Mark: Yes. Or don’t have certain conversations that day. So, you know, I really advocate people just looking into mindfulness, and do not be put off by it like I was previously, thinking you’re going to sit around with a load of hippies in a circle chanting. It’s actually about just taking that time out, simple breathing exercises, and just recognising where you are, and not being too hard on yourself, as well. You know, if you’ve had a bad day and you’ve done something which you’re not particularly happy about or you’ve said a comment or you’ve thought a particular thing because you’re angry, it's OK to be like that, just take some time out for yourself.
Alexis: I think that’s really important, that acceptance part, you know, because we are our own worst critics quite often, aren't we, and quite often what I see is people who have very high standards for themselves and when we can’t meet those standards suddenly, you know, there’s lots of things around not being good enough and feeling bad and guilty and shame and all of those really strong emotions which are really heavy. And I think just simple things, like you’ve just described there, like observing and tracking how you’re doing.
And I think one of the things for me with mindfulness is that if you can actually create opportunities just to breathe properly, you know, there doesn’t have to be hours and hours of it, like you say, you’re not sat on a yoga mat kind of floating. It’s not about that, it’s about just actually looking after yourself and observing, what are my thoughts doing, you know, what am I feeling and what’s going on.
Because you can be in it sometimes far too much and you don’t get that perspective because you’ve literally got your head down and if you can actually stand up and see what’s going on in your head and reflect on it that way you’re probably going to get more opportunity to actually take control of how you’re feeling.
Mark: Yes. I see it a lot and I’ve experienced it, as well, during the early temps and promotion, you know, people are in the promotion process and you’re that focused on trying to do it and that worried that, actually, I see people coming back after rest days during the process and they’ll say, do you know what, I’m not sure I want it. I’ve been there and had those conversations and I say, listen, what you’re feeling is absolutely fine, you know, you’ve actually thought, what’s going on, I’ve been so busy on the treadmill I’ve not actually, like you said, put your head up to say, where am I going here, is the thing I want to do. Yes, and recognising that in others has been helpful, I think.
Alexis: Yes, and I think part of that is factoring in space to have those thoughts, because I think reflection is part of that and I think sometimes we’re just running at full pelt and you don’t get chance to actually reflect on, like you just said, is this actually something I want.
Mark: Yes.
Alexis: You know, ultimately, the answer still might be yes but what does it mean and why am I feeling the way I’m feeling and that kind of thing, and actually breaking it down a bit rather than just feeling overwhelmed.
Mark: Yes, and I think that’s why annual leave is so important, and just having your work/life balance as well. Because something I’ve had and I’m always complimented on by my friends and family, is that I tend to keep quite a distinct line between work and home life. I think I’m lucky with that because where I’m at at the moment it doesn’t dictate I need to do that and I recognise that the further you go up in the organisation that home/life balance, at your own choice, will have to change because there’s far more impetus on you.
But, yes, I do have a distinct line and sometimes I acknowledge the fact that, well, it does come off exactly like I’m not a sociable person, but I do like to keep work and home life very separate. I don’t go on that many social functions, again, it’s not because … I used to when I was younger, I think like most did, but I always think I like to keep that gap. And I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, that just works for me.
I like to think I apply myself at work and then I do think about work a lot at home, certainly when it comes to if I’m pushing for promotion or working on particularly projects or making some decisions or making some bad decisions I think about it a lot. So for me what works is to have that distinct gap between home and work.
Alexis: Is that something that you consciously decided to do or has that evolved as time has gone on and, you know what I mean, that’s just a natural boundary you’ve put in place?
Mark: It’s difficult to say without actually sound the exact opposite, but I like to say I have a bit of humility. So when I was in the army four years prior to the police I was very conscious about – and I’ve got my friend to thank for this – that I could never come back and say, I was in the army, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, it just wouldn’t happen. It was just, like, Mark, wind your neck in, you’re just one of the lads.
Alexis: Yes, stop it.
Mark: And I never wanted to be like that anyway but it was always nice to be surrounded by people who would ground you. It became a bit of a joke, actually, because we would say something, oh yes, I just did such and such, I went for a run. Oh, how far? About six miles. They’re like, right. I go, yes, but I’m in the army, you know. And that still sticks now, they still say it to me now, so I’ve always recognised it.
That was a real distinct difference because you were at work 24/7 and then when you were off you were off, you know, you didn’t go to work you were off for a good two weeks. Then I thought, OK, right, when I join the police, recognising that it can swallow you up at times. Because when I was in the military police I used to hang around with colleagues who were in the police as well and I could see how some were distant but some were really involved. And, yes, I just never wanted to, as I say, it never worked for me to lean towards getting fully involved in my job.
So I think, yes, that difference between the army being so distinct, kind of, bled into the police and it just works for me. Like I said, there is no right or wrong, you know, some people it works for them that their social life is work or colleagues from work and I think there’s some benefit in that. It’s just, yes, it didn’t work for me, I felt like I was perhaps giving up a bit too much.
Alexis: And I think that’s really key, as well, that you’ve found that that works for you, that’s probably because of that conditioning that there was that, kind of, you’re all in or you’re all out of it in the army days. But making those choices that fit for you as an individual is really important because you can get I think sometimes influenced, peer support can be really positive and it can also have, obviously, negative impacts, as well. And you can be influenced to go along with what you think is the right thing to do because that’s what other people are doing, but it might not work for you.
So it’s making choices, isn’t it, that actually create time for self care, time for time out, days off, all of that as well.
Mark: Yes, agreed. I find probably that, because like I said before your leadership style and your skills are always evolving, but one thing for me, having just got into a bit more of the corporate wheel side of things where politics are very real and a necessary thing. And I struggled with that transition if I’m honest at the start, where I came from an operational background, I was very focused on – the phrase I would use – getting it right for the troops. And a decision would perhaps be made that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, and I got into a bit of, I’d say, a bit of a cycle.
I found that where I was, like, I don’t agree with it, you know, it’s a bit ambiguous and then I’d think, am I being really effective in the role that I’m doing, is it what I wanted to do. Yes, and that was, as I say, a bit of a small cycle, nothing major it was just something that I recognised. Then I thought, oh, actually, and what really came through and, again, clarified my leadership approach was just authenticity.
So when it came to a decision I found myself doing almost like double, triple, quadruple feedback loops in my head, thinking what do the politics say about this, what do the politics say about that. Which, again, are important but I would always say, what is the right thing to do, an authentic approach. And I found that was really good at just me putting my foot on the ball and saying, OK, this is the right thing to do so this is what I should be doing.
I’m not saying that politics and the right thing to do never marry up, quite often they do. It’s just whenever I was struggling or lacked the experience to understand the political reason for it I would always harp back to, OK, what’s the right thing to do, what do I think is the right thing to do, and that really would centre my approach.
Alexis: I was going to say, it grounds you, that idea of what’s the right thing to do just grounds you straight away, doesn’t it, because all that noise of all the other perspectives and perceptions, like you say, the politics of things it can really detract from, actually, coming back to the decision you can make with what you’ve got at that time.
Mark: Yes. I would advocate that but, again, that might be a naïve notion because there are bigger decisions afoot sometimes, aren't there?
Alexis: Yes, but I think you can apply that to just personally, you know, what’s the right thing to do for me, what’s grounding me in this decision I’m making. Because often what I see, especially with officers and staff when we’re working with them therapeutically, is that you can get really drawn into what’s the right thing to do for somebody else. I don’t mean actually in the workplace, I just mean generally, you know, knowing how to help someone or how to … Because of what you do for a living, you know, that’s what you do every day and to actually not have to do that personally and step away from it and go, actually, that’s not the right thing for me, it’s the right thing for them but not necessarily for me, is actually quite a different mindset.
Mark: Yes. I was thinking about this the other day and I thought I might bring it to your attention and see what your thoughts are on it. The dichotomy of being in the police or emergency services, more so the police, is that you’re trying to do the best thing for people, however, you will quite often see the worst of people. And does that manifest – obviously without giving away too much detail – but do you find that manifests itself a lot with police officers, they struggle with that?
Alexis: Yes. Because I think you know what people are capable off, whereas, the general public might have an idea but they don’t see it for real. So, you know, what your fantasy about that might be in the general public can be one thing but, actually, when you’re dealing with it every day and you’re trying to find your way through that. You know, you’ve got your own moral compass, if you like, and your own ways of working which keep you, hopefully, on that straight and narrow, although that doesn’t always happen but, you know, most of the time. And I think it can create quite a lot of conflict because then when you’re dealing with that every day and then you’re trying to, kind of, have a family life and friendships and everything else you’re perspective is automatically different.
Mark: Yes, OK.
Alexis: Do you see what I mean?
Mark: Yes, more geared towards are you being defensive or seeing negative sides of people.
Alexis: Yes, and trust, trust being difficult as well because, essentially, you’re trained to question and investigate and think about and try and put pieces together and that kind of thing. It’s a bit like me as a therapist, you know, how I’m trained to think, it’s having to, kind of, learn how to maybe switch some of that off so that you don’t have to do that all the time outside of work, as well as in work.
Mark: Yes, got you. In fact, yes, I watched something recently, I think it was on a Ted Talk, it was about a therapist who said he was in an elevator in New York, he’d finished a long day and his neighbour said, how are you, and he just couldn’t answer him. He said, he had to build that resilient wall and figure out when to switch off and when not to switch off. Mind you, I’ve not done much research into therapy, that’s the first time and, yes, quite eye opening that that is an issue for them.
Alexis: Well, I got an email off an officer today who I do work with and it asked me how I was, so I gave him a response. And he knows me really well and he came back with, that was very corporate. I was, like, OK, if you want the real answer, here you go. But it is, it’s knowing when to switch it off and who you can do that with, and I think it’s just for police officers to be able to do that smoothly. And I think when you’re under a lot of pressure, as well, you know, working a lot of hours and everything else, it’s just trying to, kind of, keep an eye on that balance between what you’re taking on at work and how you’re seeing things and what you’re doing outside of work.
Mark: Right. So what’s what you would advocate then, just that balance, a bit of mindfulness?
Alexis: Yes. And just keeping yourself in mind, because I think that’s the thing that can almost drop off the list, you know, everybody else is important, the job’s important, but whereabouts are you on that list. Are you at the bottom of it or are you actually at the top so you’re looking after yourself first and then you look after everybody else? It’s tempting to just kind of go, it doesn’t matter about me, I’ll negate me and my needs and I’ll look after everybody else.
Mark: Yes, OK, that makes sense.
Alexis: Well, that’s really gone really quickly, I feel like we’ve covered loads of ground there, as well. Thanks for coming to talk to me, Mark, I really appreciate it.
If there’s anybody out there who wants to ask for more information or get in touch then by all means get in touch on the social media platforms for Oscar Kilo or Fortis Therapy and Training and we’ll definitely come back to you.
Thanks for your time, Mark.
Mark: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Thanks you for listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast, it’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you subscribe you will be notified of the next episode as soon as it's available. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for future podcasts so please do comment or get in touch on our social media platforms for either Fortis Therapy and Training or Oscar Kilo.
Alexis Powell-Howard: Hello and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcast with me, Alexis Powell-Howard. Today I’m joined by Sergeant Mark Mottashed of Lancashire Police. Hi Mark.
Mark: Hi.
Alexis: We’re going to be talking today about self care and the duty of self care, which backs up a webinar that I will be delivering on the 9th February to the National Police Wellbeing Service for Oscar Kilo so if anybody has been along to watch the webinar this will back it up. If you haven't seen the webinar that’s fine too because the subjects we’re going to be talking about will be relevant to anybody, really, around self care and it’s, obviously, a hot topic at the moment with lockdowns and everyone having to, kind of, think about themselves a bit more differently than usual.
Mark, would you just introduce yourself a bit and just say about your role and your time in the police, just so people know a bit about you.
Mark: Yes. I’ll start with the standard cop introduction where I’ve been a cop for 14 years. I’m currently in an office role at the moment within corporate development, I’ve been there for the last 12 months. Prior to that I’ve had a bit of a mixed past, I was in organisational development for four months, prior to that I was in the force control room as a team leader and also as a demand reduction unit for, I think, just over 12 months again. Prior to that it was five years on the armed response unit and then prior to that it was on and off for the best part of four years acting/temping sergeant. Then before that I did my time on normal response in the St Anne’s area and a bit of community beat management over at Blackpool town centre, as well. So quite a varied career, I’d say.
Alexis: Yes, I was going to say, there’s lots of different chunks of time there doing lots of different responsibilities, isn’t there, lots of different roles.
Mark: Yes.
Alexis: Obviously, we’re talking today about self care, so I’m assuming that you have an interest in self care and wellbeing for us to be having this conversation, am I right?
Mark: Yes. It was first introduced to me by a colleague of mine called Neil who works for Oscar Kilo, commonly referred to as being jobbed, in the job. Me and Neil used to work with each other on the van management unit, he actually mentored me for a good six months, and we both have an interest in personal development. So we would talk often about that and have some quite candid conversations about first line management and some of the resilience needed and perhaps some behaviours that we were witnessing from other line managers that perhaps insinuated that they were struggling with their resilience.
And, you know, sharing personal experience, as well, you know, it’s not a walk in the park for anyone, leadership, and we would often discuss or certainly share new insights into what we’ve read, what we’ve listened to and, yes, just share experiences.
Alexis: You can often find can’t you, as well, just thinking about leadership, that people are often picking up how to be a leader from the leaders around them, you know, you might have leadership training but, actually, fundamentally it’s what you experience, isn’t it? And I think wellbeing and self care is one of those aspects that if leaders are struggling or if that isn’t part of the culture of the organisation and those conversations aren't happening you’ve almost got to seek it out somewhere else, really, to be able to, kind of, think about it and think about yourself in that context as well.
Mark: Yes, absolutely. Yes, most learning is done by peer learning, isn’t it? I mean, what’s gone on with [unintelligible 00:03:43], to be fair, I think we’re quite good welfare wise, certainly with our chief running Oscar Kilo, being a national lead. And I’ve seen the work that’s been done by Neil and Julie, as well, who used to head it up, and we do a lot of good things. There’s a lot of compassion in Lancs to try and improve the wellbeing side, both from police officer and police staff side so, yes.
Alex: So when you’re thinking about that for yourself then why have you got that keen interest in it, why were you, kind of, reading and sharing those ideas with Neil?
Mark: I think it probably started when I took my exams, my sergeant exams early doors, so I started leadership in the police from year three onwards and, to be honest, retrospectively it was probably a bit too early for me. I know you’ve got to start somewhere so I won’t be too harsh on myself, but yes it was just dealing with that aspect.
Now, I came from the military police for four years so my background, if you wanted someone to do something it was very command and control, you have to do this, and if anyone ever asked why it was because we were the military police and that’s what we’re expected to do. So as far as telling people to do things it was a very easy environment because of the command and control, you know, that’s why it’s there sometimes.
So I identified when I was taking over a team, even though I had all the aspirations to do a really good job, there were some real times that required quite a bit of resilience. Certainly when you’re starting afresh and you’re trying to make the best decisions perhaps you lack that experience. But what really stood out for me during leadership is that you could make a string of decision throughout the shift, throughout the set of shifts and they could all be right.
And then you would make one decision and that was it, you know, through trying to do the best thing, however, you would make a bad decision, that was deemed bad by the team, and it very quickly turned sour, or not as in unprofessional but they wouldn’t be happy with your decision. And I think, yes, I lacked resilience back then because it really did affect me.
It didn’t affected me professionally as in I wouldn’t change my mind unless it was warranted, you know, I wouldn’t run off in fits of tears. But what I did notice was that when I was at home after the shift I would think on that decision over and over again, OK, what could I have done wider, wider, and just kept replaying that. So, you know, having recognised that I thought, OK, perhaps I need to work on my resilience.
So it was as simple as just going through Google and looking at, OK, how to improve resilience and, yes, that’s kind of where it stemmed from. And doing that research, kind of, reinforces some of my values and beliefs around leadership. Again, that’s just grown over time and I think it genuinely does, I mean, there are some leadership aspects which a lot of people do have but for me I think what has grown over the years is the accountability and responsibility of leadership.
If you’re willing to put your hand up and say, yes, I want to be a leader, I want to manage this team, then you need to accept accountability and responsibility. And to do that, before that comes resilience and then resilience, as we know, is then supported by and originates from self care. So if you’re not looking after yourself and your allowing, like I did early on in my career, for those thoughts to affect me, if you’re not getting a grip on that and trying to address it then it can take its toll.
Alexis: And it’s recognising those thoughts can be really difficult to manage, can’t they, because that kind of overthinking and ruminating almost on decisions that you’ve made, things you can’t actually undo, they’ve been done, you’ve already moved away from it, if you like, in terms of time, the impact might be something you’re still having to manage. But the thoughts can be something that can really derail your confidence, can’t they, if you’re not, kind of, conscious of actually being a bit kinder to yourself.
Recognising the impact of what you’ve been making decision about over maybe a series of shifts and, you know, how you’ve maybe tried to manage people and all the context to that, actually, you can become very self-critical and I think that really affects resilience, doesn’t it, in terms of managing people, as well?
Mark: Yes. I completely agree. And I think it’s important to note it’s not just isolated to police, this is leadership across the board. Granted in the emergency services and the NHS, you know, when you’re dealing with sometimes life and death situations, yes, the resilience needs to be perhaps a bit more resilient at times compared to other roles. But, yes, in every leadership role you’re going to face the complications of people.
And I have these discussions with a wide range of my friends who are in different roles and I know certainly because I started relatively early on, I was about 26 I think, which I still thought was relatively young for management. But from then I was constantly talking to, I still do talk to people who are either in leadership positions or starting leadership positions and this is the kind of stuff I would tell them.
Listen, you can read a lot of books about leadership and it will tell you a lot of stuff about do this, strategic vision, plan this or say this, but it doesn’t really deal with the intricacies and the difficult side of leadership which is performance management or, yes, having difficult and authentic conversations with staff and dealing with confrontation. Which, you know, I love that phrase which everyone says, including me at times, when they go, I don’t like confrontation. And the reality is no one likes confrontation but it is a real part of leadership at times.
And I think that, going back to my comment about, it’s not just the police, I think there’s a lack of guidance out there, or certainly easily accessible guidance to say, this is how you do it. Again, I think that stems from people lacking that resilience and the training side and the knowledge to address it, so if you’ve got a problem it’s far easier to not address it than …
Alexis: Avoidance is key.
Mark: Yes, exactly. So, yes, sorry, I’ve gone off on a tangent now.
Alexis: No, I was just thinking there about that idea around, you know, if you are leading others, you’re right, in terms of, actually, you can do lots of leadership training, you can do lots of reading around it. But it is about what you’re modelling as a leader for the people that are in the team that you’re manging, how open you are to people and that, kind of, human interaction, as well.
That it would be really easy if you could just direct people and they just did as they were told and there was no emotion around any of that. Because as much as you want to take that out of the conversation it’s definitely there because we’re people and we’re social beings so you can’t avoid it, can you. So whatever you’re doing as a leader or whether you’re working in a team there’s always going to be those interactions. And I think when you do leadership training you can learn the theory of it but whether or not you actually change fundamentally your approach as a person is another thing because you’ve got to really engage with it on that level, on that deeper level.
Mark: Yes. Agreed. I think what does help with that is having a support network of leaders around you, and I have really focused on that over the latter part of my career to try and … I think sometimes promotion gears you up to competition and there’s some good things with that because, obviously, you want to try and do your best and competition creates exactly that. But what I have found, certainly towards the last four years, is that I found it better to have an aligned leadership team who all support each other to deal with those difficult problems.
It’s all too easy when you see a supervising struggling who you think is not doing a good job, it’s all too easy to perhaps criticise, you know, at water cooler chats. When actually, really, what I think they should be doing is recognising that they’re struggling, going over, offering them support and advice and then forming that form of – I know this sounds corporate – but aligned leadership or support network to then address those issues that they’re struggling with. For example, the resilience around some staff issues.
I keep mentioning leadership because, I mean, I automatically see leadership as doing exactly the same for your staff, it isn’t just for leaders, you know, that example can be done with staff as well. In fact, it should be, that’s the whole part of accountability and responsibility of your role to address the welfare needs of your staff. But it also should extend to your colleagues and also your line management, as well, you know, offering them support.
Alexis: Yes. Because you just said there about support network and from a self care, resilience, mental health, you know, all of the stuff that we’re talking about, your support network is really important, isn’t it, because that’s what keep you buoyant. And questioning colleagues and being able to see that they’re struggling, what are the signs of struggle and being able to step in, what do I need to do, what help do I need.
Because I think that context is really important that, like you say, you can see behaviours and think, they’re not performing, or, they’ve let us down, all that kind of thing. But actually what’s going on, what’s going on behind that behaviour and supporting them with that rather than it becoming, like, a critical kind of, you know, negative response to it.
Mark: Yes, and I suppose that’s where the self care side kind of links in, because I’ve experienced that in the past and I’m still susceptible to that, I always will be I think, you know, leadership is always a learning curve, you’re never the finished leader. So recognising that in myself and then also recognising it in other people.
A big tell-tale sign for me that someone is struggling, certainly as a leader, is when they become – and this is quite common as you should imagine in our role - is quite the robust, macho approach to dealing with staff where it’s almost peacocking. I think not always but certainly in my experience it would indicate that someone is actually struggling when they’re doing that and they feel like they need to create a shell.
So if I witness stuff like that, or certainly if I see people withdrawing certainly as management and not addressing perhaps minor things, which someone would perhaps say something and then it would almost be challenging the manager and it would be embarrassing for them to challenge so they would perhaps walk off, or not walk off, just be a bit meek towards it. I would recognise that as, oh, OK, I’ve been there I know that’s quite difficult to address.
And I would have discussions with them and I do, and say, OK, you know, on a case by case basis sometimes people don’t react well if you turn up and say, I think you’re struggling. If you say, how are you, and then start explaining … the tactic I’ve used in the past is I start explaining issues I’ve had and errors that I’ve made, what about you, how are you finding it? And then you would start that or get them to open up and say, it’s OK to talk about this, I’ve experienced it in the past, this is how it’s worked for me, I’ll give you some help and support surrounding it, exactly like you would do for staff.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely. It’s that, kind of, talking about it, isn’t it, and creating an opportunity for conversation rather than walking away and just ignoring what you’re seeing, that’s one of the main things.
You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo and Humberside Police.
So when we were talking about with the self care wheel, which I know the people that are listening may not have come across, but it’s similar idea to the life wheel, there’s all sorts of different ideas out there if people want to Google them to get a rough idea about it. But I sent you my version of the wheel for you to complete and it’s broken down into sections around all sorts of aspects of life, really, you know, from stress levels and time management and relaxation, clutter, time out, exercise, diet.
All the things that we think about from a mental health and emotional wellbeing perspective are captured in the wheel and it’s something that I’ve developed over the years and used a lot in training and with a lot of police officers, as well. So you’ve taken the time out to complete that for me so we can have a chat about it today, we’re not going to go through it section by section but I just wondered how you’d felt, kind of, reflecting on your self-care at the minute. Because, obviously, we’re in lockdown three, lots of things happening around us, what were your thoughts about it?
Mark: Well, first of all with regards to COVID I think myself and certainly most colleagues in the police and emergency services do consider themselves lucky that we’re still employed. You know, there’s nothing much changed for me, I’ve still been going to work so I’ve still had that routine. Yes, so I just want to acknowledge the fact that even though we are discussing it my circumstances are by no means as difficult as others and I’m by no means professing that.
I forget to mention at the start, as well, and this is something I was conscious of, I’m not a self care guru.
Alexis: It’s too late now.
Mark: I wouldn’t profess to be so, yes. So I’m looking at this wheel, yes, things that stuck out for me was the exercise/movement and diet, and that’s not a cop out, I know that probably looks like that’s probably the least emotionally demanding thing to talk about. But I have recognised at the moment I’ve done a lot of office based for the last 12 months and, obviously, we’ve not been able to go out as much as well, yes, my diet and exercise has really dropped.
That was what stood out for me on this wheel because those are important things, you know, I had quite a healthy upbringing, obviously, in the jobs that I’ve done previously and the roles I’ve had to keep fit. And I enjoy keeping fit, as well, I don’t see it as a chore, but I have noticed, and this could be to do with age as well, that the waistline is creeping.
Alexis: We’ll blame that, we’ll blame that.
Mark: Yes, on the wrong side of the belt. So, yes, that stuck out. Time with my family and friends, now that was low but, as you can see, I’ve put there COVID-19, I think that really has an impact. I know you can talk to them by telephone and what not, but actually just with your mates. I mean, I’ve got a few friends but there’s a tight group of three of us and one of them has moved to America not too long ago. And then another one is actually a paramedic and he’s just busy, you know, as you could imagine he’s working all the shifts he can just to try and keep us above water and we don’t see our friend over in America.
And I do miss that, and we do catch up occasionally on WhatsApp and it is really hard so I feel really buoyed up when we do a voice message and we probably should do that more often. So, I need to speak to Mike and Trev probably more and family as well, of course. I do keep in regular contact with them, I mean, I’ve got a hoard of nieces and nephews and obviously with COVID and doing the job that I do, as well, we’ve got to be really strict with what we can and can’t do. So, you know, unfortunately we’ve missed birthdays, we can only drop things off, we can’t go in and properly say hello to them and give them a hug, so yes, that stood out for me on this wheel.
Alexis: Yes. I mean, even though you know the context of that, COVID-19 and the impact of that, there is that social aspect in both of those, isn’t there? Because I’ve been thinking about, obviously, we’ve been told to socially distance but, actually, it’s the physical distance that we need to do, the social stuff is the stuff we really, really need to do. Because, like you said, you come off and you feel buoyed up and it can just lift you sometimes, not necessarily that you’re in a low place particularly but it’s just nice to have that conversation with someone who knows you really well and you can have that banter and check in with each other and all of that stuff.
Mark: Yes. I agree.
Alexis: Any other segments that kind of stuck out for you?
Mark: The being mindful thing, I know we had a chat previous to this, didn’t we, about the stuff I’d looked at and, again, it was one of my friends who … I was on AIB at the time and just due to lack of staffing we were doing 12 hour shifts constantly. I remember being tired and run down and going for a drink with him once and he just always seemed to have a calm air about him throughout the previous six months. And I asked him about it because I just felt a bit, you know, stressed and tired, and he started talking about mindfulness.
He was very guarded with it, as lads are, you know, I think he used the phrase, you might think it’s woo woo, he said, but I do this mindfulness thing. And I’m thinking, oh gosh, is he going to go all top knot and sit on a yoga mat. But, yes, he talked about it and got me onto Eckhart Tolle.
Alexis: The Power of Now, yes, yes.
Mark: Actually, I think it was the New Earth that I read, it was about … But I’ve also listened to the Power of Now as well, so it’s like, yes, being in the moment and being mindful. That for me was quite high on there and, I suppose, in layman’s terms it’s about being mindful before it puts people off about sitting around in tie dye shirts. And it’s just about recognising what your actual emotional state is, it’s all linking into emotional intelligence which is I know a big thing that is discussed at Lancs Police. I know Daniel Goldman does a lot around it, doesn’t he?
But, yes, just being mindful and recognising when you’re in a good mood, you’re in a bad mood, and when is best to interact with people or have particular conversations. And just recognising that when you are perhaps in a worse mood that it’s OK to be like that, just recognising it. The big indicator for me is driving to work in the morning and if there is someone behind me fairly close I can see in my rear view mirror I will perhaps grumble something. Even though it happens almost every day when I recognise that I think, oh yes, I’m tired, OK, I need to get some coffee, get some water.
Alexis: Yes, less capacity.
Mark: Yes. Or don’t have certain conversations that day. So, you know, I really advocate people just looking into mindfulness, and do not be put off by it like I was previously, thinking you’re going to sit around with a load of hippies in a circle chanting. It’s actually about just taking that time out, simple breathing exercises, and just recognising where you are, and not being too hard on yourself, as well. You know, if you’ve had a bad day and you’ve done something which you’re not particularly happy about or you’ve said a comment or you’ve thought a particular thing because you’re angry, it's OK to be like that, just take some time out for yourself.
Alexis: I think that’s really important, that acceptance part, you know, because we are our own worst critics quite often, aren't we, and quite often what I see is people who have very high standards for themselves and when we can’t meet those standards suddenly, you know, there’s lots of things around not being good enough and feeling bad and guilty and shame and all of those really strong emotions which are really heavy. And I think just simple things, like you’ve just described there, like observing and tracking how you’re doing.
And I think one of the things for me with mindfulness is that if you can actually create opportunities just to breathe properly, you know, there doesn’t have to be hours and hours of it, like you say, you’re not sat on a yoga mat kind of floating. It’s not about that, it’s about just actually looking after yourself and observing, what are my thoughts doing, you know, what am I feeling and what’s going on.
Because you can be in it sometimes far too much and you don’t get that perspective because you’ve literally got your head down and if you can actually stand up and see what’s going on in your head and reflect on it that way you’re probably going to get more opportunity to actually take control of how you’re feeling.
Mark: Yes. I see it a lot and I’ve experienced it, as well, during the early temps and promotion, you know, people are in the promotion process and you’re that focused on trying to do it and that worried that, actually, I see people coming back after rest days during the process and they’ll say, do you know what, I’m not sure I want it. I’ve been there and had those conversations and I say, listen, what you’re feeling is absolutely fine, you know, you’ve actually thought, what’s going on, I’ve been so busy on the treadmill I’ve not actually, like you said, put your head up to say, where am I going here, is the thing I want to do. Yes, and recognising that in others has been helpful, I think.
Alexis: Yes, and I think part of that is factoring in space to have those thoughts, because I think reflection is part of that and I think sometimes we’re just running at full pelt and you don’t get chance to actually reflect on, like you just said, is this actually something I want.
Mark: Yes.
Alexis: You know, ultimately, the answer still might be yes but what does it mean and why am I feeling the way I’m feeling and that kind of thing, and actually breaking it down a bit rather than just feeling overwhelmed.
Mark: Yes, and I think that’s why annual leave is so important, and just having your work/life balance as well. Because something I’ve had and I’m always complimented on by my friends and family, is that I tend to keep quite a distinct line between work and home life. I think I’m lucky with that because where I’m at at the moment it doesn’t dictate I need to do that and I recognise that the further you go up in the organisation that home/life balance, at your own choice, will have to change because there’s far more impetus on you.
But, yes, I do have a distinct line and sometimes I acknowledge the fact that, well, it does come off exactly like I’m not a sociable person, but I do like to keep work and home life very separate. I don’t go on that many social functions, again, it’s not because … I used to when I was younger, I think like most did, but I always think I like to keep that gap. And I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, that just works for me.
I like to think I apply myself at work and then I do think about work a lot at home, certainly when it comes to if I’m pushing for promotion or working on particularly projects or making some decisions or making some bad decisions I think about it a lot. So for me what works is to have that distinct gap between home and work.
Alexis: Is that something that you consciously decided to do or has that evolved as time has gone on and, you know what I mean, that’s just a natural boundary you’ve put in place?
Mark: It’s difficult to say without actually sound the exact opposite, but I like to say I have a bit of humility. So when I was in the army four years prior to the police I was very conscious about – and I’ve got my friend to thank for this – that I could never come back and say, I was in the army, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, it just wouldn’t happen. It was just, like, Mark, wind your neck in, you’re just one of the lads.
Alexis: Yes, stop it.
Mark: And I never wanted to be like that anyway but it was always nice to be surrounded by people who would ground you. It became a bit of a joke, actually, because we would say something, oh yes, I just did such and such, I went for a run. Oh, how far? About six miles. They’re like, right. I go, yes, but I’m in the army, you know. And that still sticks now, they still say it to me now, so I’ve always recognised it.
That was a real distinct difference because you were at work 24/7 and then when you were off you were off, you know, you didn’t go to work you were off for a good two weeks. Then I thought, OK, right, when I join the police, recognising that it can swallow you up at times. Because when I was in the military police I used to hang around with colleagues who were in the police as well and I could see how some were distant but some were really involved. And, yes, I just never wanted to, as I say, it never worked for me to lean towards getting fully involved in my job.
So I think, yes, that difference between the army being so distinct, kind of, bled into the police and it just works for me. Like I said, there is no right or wrong, you know, some people it works for them that their social life is work or colleagues from work and I think there’s some benefit in that. It’s just, yes, it didn’t work for me, I felt like I was perhaps giving up a bit too much.
Alexis: And I think that’s really key, as well, that you’ve found that that works for you, that’s probably because of that conditioning that there was that, kind of, you’re all in or you’re all out of it in the army days. But making those choices that fit for you as an individual is really important because you can get I think sometimes influenced, peer support can be really positive and it can also have, obviously, negative impacts, as well. And you can be influenced to go along with what you think is the right thing to do because that’s what other people are doing, but it might not work for you.
So it’s making choices, isn’t it, that actually create time for self care, time for time out, days off, all of that as well.
Mark: Yes, agreed. I find probably that, because like I said before your leadership style and your skills are always evolving, but one thing for me, having just got into a bit more of the corporate wheel side of things where politics are very real and a necessary thing. And I struggled with that transition if I’m honest at the start, where I came from an operational background, I was very focused on – the phrase I would use – getting it right for the troops. And a decision would perhaps be made that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, and I got into a bit of, I’d say, a bit of a cycle.
I found that where I was, like, I don’t agree with it, you know, it’s a bit ambiguous and then I’d think, am I being really effective in the role that I’m doing, is it what I wanted to do. Yes, and that was, as I say, a bit of a small cycle, nothing major it was just something that I recognised. Then I thought, oh, actually, and what really came through and, again, clarified my leadership approach was just authenticity.
So when it came to a decision I found myself doing almost like double, triple, quadruple feedback loops in my head, thinking what do the politics say about this, what do the politics say about that. Which, again, are important but I would always say, what is the right thing to do, an authentic approach. And I found that was really good at just me putting my foot on the ball and saying, OK, this is the right thing to do so this is what I should be doing.
I’m not saying that politics and the right thing to do never marry up, quite often they do. It’s just whenever I was struggling or lacked the experience to understand the political reason for it I would always harp back to, OK, what’s the right thing to do, what do I think is the right thing to do, and that really would centre my approach.
Alexis: I was going to say, it grounds you, that idea of what’s the right thing to do just grounds you straight away, doesn’t it, because all that noise of all the other perspectives and perceptions, like you say, the politics of things it can really detract from, actually, coming back to the decision you can make with what you’ve got at that time.
Mark: Yes. I would advocate that but, again, that might be a naïve notion because there are bigger decisions afoot sometimes, aren't there?
Alexis: Yes, but I think you can apply that to just personally, you know, what’s the right thing to do for me, what’s grounding me in this decision I’m making. Because often what I see, especially with officers and staff when we’re working with them therapeutically, is that you can get really drawn into what’s the right thing to do for somebody else. I don’t mean actually in the workplace, I just mean generally, you know, knowing how to help someone or how to … Because of what you do for a living, you know, that’s what you do every day and to actually not have to do that personally and step away from it and go, actually, that’s not the right thing for me, it’s the right thing for them but not necessarily for me, is actually quite a different mindset.
Mark: Yes. I was thinking about this the other day and I thought I might bring it to your attention and see what your thoughts are on it. The dichotomy of being in the police or emergency services, more so the police, is that you’re trying to do the best thing for people, however, you will quite often see the worst of people. And does that manifest – obviously without giving away too much detail – but do you find that manifests itself a lot with police officers, they struggle with that?
Alexis: Yes. Because I think you know what people are capable off, whereas, the general public might have an idea but they don’t see it for real. So, you know, what your fantasy about that might be in the general public can be one thing but, actually, when you’re dealing with it every day and you’re trying to find your way through that. You know, you’ve got your own moral compass, if you like, and your own ways of working which keep you, hopefully, on that straight and narrow, although that doesn’t always happen but, you know, most of the time. And I think it can create quite a lot of conflict because then when you’re dealing with that every day and then you’re trying to, kind of, have a family life and friendships and everything else you’re perspective is automatically different.
Mark: Yes, OK.
Alexis: Do you see what I mean?
Mark: Yes, more geared towards are you being defensive or seeing negative sides of people.
Alexis: Yes, and trust, trust being difficult as well because, essentially, you’re trained to question and investigate and think about and try and put pieces together and that kind of thing. It’s a bit like me as a therapist, you know, how I’m trained to think, it’s having to, kind of, learn how to maybe switch some of that off so that you don’t have to do that all the time outside of work, as well as in work.
Mark: Yes, got you. In fact, yes, I watched something recently, I think it was on a Ted Talk, it was about a therapist who said he was in an elevator in New York, he’d finished a long day and his neighbour said, how are you, and he just couldn’t answer him. He said, he had to build that resilient wall and figure out when to switch off and when not to switch off. Mind you, I’ve not done much research into therapy, that’s the first time and, yes, quite eye opening that that is an issue for them.
Alexis: Well, I got an email off an officer today who I do work with and it asked me how I was, so I gave him a response. And he knows me really well and he came back with, that was very corporate. I was, like, OK, if you want the real answer, here you go. But it is, it’s knowing when to switch it off and who you can do that with, and I think it’s just for police officers to be able to do that smoothly. And I think when you’re under a lot of pressure, as well, you know, working a lot of hours and everything else, it’s just trying to, kind of, keep an eye on that balance between what you’re taking on at work and how you’re seeing things and what you’re doing outside of work.
Mark: Right. So what’s what you would advocate then, just that balance, a bit of mindfulness?
Alexis: Yes. And just keeping yourself in mind, because I think that’s the thing that can almost drop off the list, you know, everybody else is important, the job’s important, but whereabouts are you on that list. Are you at the bottom of it or are you actually at the top so you’re looking after yourself first and then you look after everybody else? It’s tempting to just kind of go, it doesn’t matter about me, I’ll negate me and my needs and I’ll look after everybody else.
Mark: Yes, OK, that makes sense.
Alexis: Well, that’s really gone really quickly, I feel like we’ve covered loads of ground there, as well. Thanks for coming to talk to me, Mark, I really appreciate it.
If there’s anybody out there who wants to ask for more information or get in touch then by all means get in touch on the social media platforms for Oscar Kilo or Fortis Therapy and Training and we’ll definitely come back to you.
Thanks for your time, Mark.
Mark: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it.
Alexis: Thank you. Thanks a lot.
Thanks you for listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast, it’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you subscribe you will be notified of the next episode as soon as it's available. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for future podcasts so please do comment or get in touch on our social media platforms for either Fortis Therapy and Training or Oscar Kilo.
The masks we wear interview
Alexis talks with DCI Pete Thorp of Humberside Police about the masks we wear and in particular his mask. Alexis asked him to take part in a creative task, and in this podcast they discuss how this felt, how Pete interpreted the task and his reflections having done it.
Podcast Url
Keeping the Peace Series 2, Episode 2 – The Masks We Wear
Alexis: Hello, and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcasts, with me Alexis Powell-Howard. Today we’re going to be talking about the masks we wear and this podcast is to support a webinar that I am delivering for Oscar Kilo about masks that are worn in policing.
Today I’m joined by DCI Pete Thorp from Humberside Police, who is going to talk to me about his thoughts around the masks that are worn in policing and also his own masks having sent him a mask to decorate, and he’s brought it with him today so we’re going to talk about this.
We are recording on Zoom today so the sound quality might not be as you’d expect but we just wanted to cover the ideas behind the masks and what that might mean and how you might interpret that for yourselves. So you may not have been part of a webinar but that doesn’t matter because this will be relevant to anybody, really.
Morning, Pete.
Pete: Morning. How are you?
Alexis: I’m good, thank you. Thanks for coming to join me about this one. I wanted to ask you to be involved in it because we worked together quite a lot on different parts of the training and you’ve been to the training that we’ve delivered called Keeping the Peace. So I know that you understand the concept of the masks because we talk about it in the training, don’t we?
Pete: We do, yes.
Alexis: So can you tell me a bit about what you’ve thought about in relation to this topic, really?
Pete: Yes. I think when you asked me to do it and actually do the mask I felt quite happy colouring it in and when I worked out what I wanted to, sort of, put down. But I still had some apprehension, I suppose, in the background about, sort of, showing it to anybody and actually, not baring your soul but having that confidence to say, certainly when you do the flip side of the mask, you know, that felt very personal and quite sensitive almost in many ways.
So I think you have to be quite brave to do it and, sort of, be open to other people seeing that side of you. Because I think sometimes, certainly in my experience of being in the police is, it’s not necessarily a macho environment but there is something about not really, sort of, talking about your feelings or talking about, you know, what’s currently going on in your mind. And it’s all about just getting on with it and pulling your big boys’ pants up and doing the business, really. So, in that sense, it was an interesting experience to do it personally.
But, no, it felt good. The only slight issue is I’m colour blind so when I talk through what I’ve coloured in it might not represent what I’ve coloured in.
Alexis: It’s going to be interesting then, we could go anywhere with this. So just for those people who don’t know, the reason that we are talking about masks is because it’s something that we use in therapy with clients and it’s a really creative way of being able to understand what we show on the outside and what we keep hidden or what we might be aware of, or maybe even unaware of on the inside.
So the mask that Pete’s referring to is a papier-mâché mask that he’s decorated on the outside and on the inside to represent, you know, how he’s interpreted that. And having done this with lots of clients over the years and also having done it as a project that we do with the community where we sent masks out and they sent them back in that they’d decorated, it’s interesting to, kind of, explore.
But, as you’ve said, it’s kind of there, you know, you’ve decorated it, it’s out there, it’s not in your head anymore and it’s actually something you’ve expressed creatively, which can be challenging.
Pete: Yes, it definitely is challenging. And just, sort of, having it with me today when I look at it it’s a bit weird the mask anyway to look at, if you know what I mean, but it’s like looking at the inside of it certainly, I think, do I really want to go there. But I’ll go there, it will be fine.
Alexis: Brilliant, thank you. Thanks for taking that risk, as well, I appreciate it. So tell me a little bit about how you approached it, because everyone does this differently, so what were your thought processes as you did that?
Pete: Well initially I was trying to think how to creatively express what I wanted to put on it, and I’m not a very good drawer so the thought of drawing pictures quickly went out of my mind. I started thinking about colours and the meaning of colours, so I actually did a bit of research on the internet about what different colours mean. And then, with the help of some colouring in pencils that have got the colours written on them so I don’t colour in the wrong colour, I just started colouring in, really.
And I got to a point where I went with some bold quite regimented colouring in on the front, and then when you turn it over it got a bit crazy, really. So, yes, it was interesting, and finding out what some of the colours represent and how you can interpret that was really interesting, actually, so it’s artistic, I think is the safe way to describe it.
Alexis: Yes, creative, it can be anything, it’s down to interpretation.
Pete: Absolutely.
Alexis: I noticed on the front, because obviously I’ve got photographs in front of me, that it was quite, kind of, compartmentalised really, was that your intention to have that separateness around the different colours?
Pete: Yes, I think so. And trying to just … It’s interesting because when I was thinking about doing this it’s like, this is what I think I project, and it will be really interesting I think to get other people to colour the front of your mask in for you and see what they see and you just do the back side. But I was trying to represent some sort of … I think the way I portray myself in my professional life certainly it’s quite organised, quite structured and quite straightforward in terms of I think people understand who I am and what I’m like.
And I was trying to put that into a contrast then of what’s on the reverse where it’s a bit more chaotic and very different colours, as well, the colours don’t match up very much. I mean, there’s blue on the front and the back and, for me, that was about having some maybe a little bit conservative but being professional and thinking about being reliable and having some loyalty and some honour and being trustworthy, that’s for me what that blue represents.
So it features quite predominantly on the front but also features on a section on the flip side as well, so there was some commonality, if you like, between what I put out there and what is really going on, if you like. But then the other colours are not represented at all on the inside or on the outside, which thinking about it now is a bit odd, in a way.
Alexis: The blue colour that you’ve talked about there feels like it represents those values that are important to you, that that was something you know you have those values internally it’s something that you’re keen to show on the outside but also within your role, you know, it feels like the role fits with those values.
Pete: Yes, massively. And I suppose my job as a, I don’t like the use the word senior leader, but as a leader of a team and of a department, you know, it’s really important to me that I am reliable and that the people I work with can trust me and feel that I’ve got their back and that we’re really professional in what we do. So to me that was really important to reflect that really strongly and for me it was really important to demonstrate that that does come from within as well, it’s a consistent thing.
So, yes, on the inside we’re going to talk about my insecurity and dark thoughts and all the rest of it, but the one thing I am careful to make sure that people see is actually what’s really, you know, my core values if you like. You know, it’s all about that need to be reliable and have that professional, that stability sort of thing, and trustworthiness was really important so that’s why it came out on both sides, I think.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s important because the masks is almost like the filter, isn’t it, from what’s going on in the inside to what you’re showing on the outside, or how you’d like other people to see you on the outside as well. You know, especially as a leader and in a management role, as well, it’s important, isn’t it, to kind of think about that.
Pete: Yes, and I think, like you say, that how you want people to see you is really interesting, isn’t it, because you don’t necessarily want people to see you as a bit of an insecure mess, they want to see you, sort of, being quite strong and bold. And, I guess, that’s why the way I’ve done it on the front is to maybe try and reflect what I want to project to people, whereas, if I was to show this to my wife the front bit she would be, like, that’s not really you. But if I showed her the other side she’d be, like, yes, that is you, that makes more sense.
And I think that’s interesting, isn’t it, how people … how do you get over that barrier to actually feel more comfortable to show people the inside bit who you work with, or anybody actually because you might not want to show anybody the inside bit.
Alexis: No, and I think sometimes it’s interesting to think about who you do take that front layer off with because it might only be a really small number of people, it might only be one person. But some people don’t have anyone that they do that with, so it’s almost like it’s a shadow part of themselves that they hold onto and don’t show anybody. And that might be related to all sorts of different reasons about not wanting to be vulnerable, or feeling ashamed of feeling that way, or embarrassed or whatever it might be.
But keeping that makes on all the time is actually really hard work and I think sometimes by the time, you know, we see people at forces with mental health it’s like it’s not sustainable to keep that mask on in the same way every day when actually there are a lot of things going on under the surface that aren't being expressed and are just getting worse, really.
Pete: No, absolutely. And I think, you know, if you can get over that fear that you’re going to be judged or people are going to think something about you and show some sort of weakness, and that’s a cultural thing I think wider in the police. I think quite often people form perceptions with other people and that then becomes the truth or the narrative around that individual, where actually it’s just a perception. And I think if we felt genuinely more comfortable to be able to be ourselves and be more aligned to our own values sometimes I think that would be of a real benefit to us. And certainly I think for me having that blue on either side is the way I, sort of, come across and demonstrate what my values are, I suppose, and how that informs how I operate at work.
Alexis: Absolutely. So you’ve got three other colours on the front there that are kind of in sections as well, what do they represent?
Pete: Half my forehead is red and half is yellow, so the red is all about strengths, energy, passion, sort of, boldness, and I think I try to project that in terms of … and it sort of marries up with the yellow, really, as well, thinking about being positive, optimism, it’s got a bright, happy, lively sort of colour. So taking those together, trying to be that person that is positive and is going to be upbeat about something and, you know, be quite strong in trying to make something happen or doing something, and I hope that is reflect in the actual output. I mean, you’ve worked with me, you’ve known me and worked with me so you, kind of, get a bit of both but, hopefully, that comes across in how I am.
So it was all about, really, just that bold, bright strong colours that represent positivity, strength and, like, a determination to do something and a passion about something. That’s kind of where I was going with those.
Alexis: I mean, for me I definitely see that when we’re working on projects or thinking about how to do something, you know, that come up with solutions and the thinking outside of the box, if you like, which I hate that phrase but you know what I mean, it’s like, kind of, coming up with creative ideas. And I think that does take energy and innovation and to be passionate about what’s important, because otherwise you don’t have that, you don’t become connected to coming up with those ideas and those solutions because, you know, things don’t seem that important otherwise.
So being able to, kind of, recognise actually there’s an energy here and there’s a want to be seen as well to be driving things forward and putting in new ideas I think is really important to who you are and how you portray yourself as well within your role.
Pete: No, absolutely. And I think that’s kind of where I was going with the orange, because the other part of it is orange, so my right cheek is orange. That’s, again, another bright, sort of, trying to demonstrate that represents to me creativity and enthusiasm and cheerfulness. So it would be silly of me to come to work and be really down and miserable or irritated and annoyed about the state of the world or, you know, the massive challenges that we have in policing and to come and be like that is just going to … well, it puts everybody on the wrong foot then straight away.
I think it’s really important in a leadership role that you are really clear about … be realistic and be honest about that, but let’s try and think how we make it better rather than just dwelling on saying it’s all rubbish and, oh my god, it’s terrible, it’s never going to get any better. Well it never will with that attitude so let’s at least try something, if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else, but let’s give it a go.
And I think, hopefully, coupled then with that being truthful and being that reliable, sort of the blue bit comes into it as well, hopefully, that collectively gives the people that I work with, you know, some general sense of hope that we are going to try and make things better and we are trying to look after them and support them. Working in the environment that I work in, which is in the public protection arena, then the staff really feel … it’s a really high risk, pressurised role for them and it’s important that they have someone that is going to be positive but honest with them at the same time. And is going to be full of energy trying to improve what we do for our staff but for the victims as well, and for the public at large.
So that’s why I felt I wanted to go pretty strong, if you like, on just really bold four colours, as well, that sort of are distinct.
Alexis: And positive, as well. Because I was just thinking there about, you know, how you … because there will be times when you don’t feel as full of energy or as positive and it’s how you manage that for yourself, as well, isn’t it? I was just thinking when you were talking, if you are feeling in a negative place and other people are negative you can get, kind of, into those collusive conversations where it literally just spirals down into nothing is any good and what’s the point in us keeping going and doing what we’re doing.
But, actually, by not kind of engaging with those ideas and trying to bring other people up, you know, even if you’re not feeling up, it feels like that’s really important, it’s something that you work hard to do.
Pete: Yes, massively. And I think in a way maybe that’s why the flip side of the mask is very different because it’s not disingenuous the front of the mask but it serves a need and my role is to do that, if you see what I mean. So, yes, I might be having an off day and something might be really irritating me but to project that in the wrong environment would not be the right thing to do.
So I don’t think it’s about having, you know, like a split personality, because when I first started doing the mask I thought, oh my god, I’ve got a really bad, like, split personality thing where the front is totally different to the back. But then, as I thought about it more, maybe I’m just rationalising it and making my craziness feel a bit better in my own head, but for me I have quite, and we’ve talked about this before in other things that we’ve done together where it’s about having some sort of delineation between your work, professional life and the rest of your life.
Because otherwise, certainly in some roles, and there are some really difficult jobs to do in policing, if it consumes you and becomes your entire life you are living in this world that is not representative of what the world actually is because you only see the bad bits and you only see the really difficult bits. So if you can’t delineate some of that then I think that causes people more anxiety, more stress and then puts you into that negative cycle, as well.
Alexis: Definitely. I think that’s a really good point. And I think the second series of podcasts that we’re working on at the minute is about that, isn’t it, it’s how to keep well and keep that in focus whilst also doing a job that’s really difficult and, like you said, you can see the worst of what’s going on in society and how to keep buoyant and get that balance while actually doing that. Which sometimes will be easier than others but it’s just keeping it in mind, really.
Pete: Yes, it is and it’s having that genuineness about it, as well, so whatever you felt on the front it can’t be fake, it has to be something you believe and is a part of you. So for me the two sides in many ways aren't distinct at the same time because it does reflect other parts of me, but this is almost like this is what I want people to see.
Alexis: I wonder as well that the blue, as you were talking there, I thought the blue almost grounds you in what you want to put out on the outside, what’s going on in the inside, but it always comes back to that value base, doesn’t it, as well, so that feels like it grounds you in that.
Pete: Yes.
Alexis: You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo and Humberside Police.
So tell me a bit about what’s going on in the inside because, obviously, we’ve got layers of colours here, we’ve got some boxes as well.
Pete: Yes. So the predominant colour across the most is supposed to be violet, which is representing, sort of, sensitive side and maybe a little bit insecure, and that’s taken a broad sweep across most of the top half of my head where my brain is, if you see what I mean. And I think that is probably a much more honest, you know, having that constant sort of feeling about, oh, have I done something right, or, is it good enough, or, is there a better way I could have done that, or, why has someone not appreciated that amazing thing that I’ve just done. Those sort of thoughts are all the time spinning around in my head and worrying about, you know, I suppose, yes, worrying about whether I’m actually good enough or able to do it.
So when you operate in an SIO role, which I’m learning, I’m a learning SIO at the minute, you know, suddenly me controlling the violet part of my head, if you like, has been quite a challenge because suddenly you’re in a position where you’re expected just to know what to do and get on with it. And that’s quite nerve wracking in many ways so my insecurities about, well, have I been in the job long enough to have such a responsibility or do I know enough and all that bit has come into place previously and I think it’s just understanding that you never really have all the answers.
Actually, as long as you’re able to get over the fact that you’re never going to know everything and there is always somebody who will know the answer, you know, have that humility. And the blue bit is to come back to say, actually, let’s just go back and find out what the actual answer is rather than panicking about it and beating myself that I don’t know, how can I possibly know everything.
Alexis: Yes. And I can really relate to that, I think, because I know for me there is that part of me that, kind of, second guesses or sometimes reflects on something and thinks, oh, maybe I could have done that differently or could have done it better, or should I have said that, all that kind of thing. But, actually, I think you’re trying to put yourself out there in an authentic way that is the risk, it’s the risk of second guessing yourself because you want to make sure that you’re coming across in the right way.
And you’re right, it’s being realistic that no one has all the answers, as much as people might look to you have them nobody does. So grounding yourself in that, who can help me and who might have that area of expertise or who can direct me with that or talk to somebody about it, can make such a difference can’t it to kind of think, yes, I’ve made the right decision there.
Pete: Yes, absolutely. And have the confidence to check your working out, I think that’s a cultural thing in the police sometimes, I think that’s getting better but there is that thing where I think people worry sometimes when they’re thinking of promotion or thinking of undertaking some other specialist role. Quite often when I do mentoring with other people they talk about, well, I don’t really feel like I’m ready, I don’t know if I know enough. It’s like, you need to get over that because you’re never going to know it, or, speak to a chief constable they will say, yes, I don’t know everything, that’s not my job. So it’s getting your head around it sometimes, I think.
Alexis: Yes, in therapy we talk about a concept of good enough, is it good enough.
Pete: Yes.
Alexis: Because, you know, you can have that be perfect driver where you want it to be absolutely spot on and it’s never really spot on because a week later you might have made a different decision based on something else you know. You know what I mean, it’s a movable feast all the time, I think. So coming back to, am I good enough, or, do I feel what I’ve dozen is good enough, I think is probably a really good baseline to, kind of, check in with yourself over that.
Pete: Absolutely. Yes, definitely, definitely.
Alexis: OK. So we’ve got that swathe of colour going across the top, tell me a bit about these other colours you’ve got going on around, you’ve got the blue we’ve talked about.
Pete: You’ve got the blue which we’ve talked about and then next to the blue is some brown, and for me that was, like, I think I’m quite dull and quite, sort of … the way I read it it talked about being relaxed and confident but also being, sort of, earthy and a little bit dull. And, I think if I was to have one colour that defines me I would probably go with brown in that I’m fairly confident in what I’m doing in life, I think.
And this is weird though because I’ve just talked about how unconfident I am, but when I actually sit down and control the violet bit then actually underneath there is some solid earth where I think, now, come on, you do know what you’re doing, let’s reassure yourself. I am quite laid back and generally sort of easy going and I think reasonably solid and quite reliable but quite genuine as well.
So for me I wanted that clearly in there just to represent that because I think you can have a lot of things going on, and the way I’ve done this mask is, it’s only coloured above the eyes, so the whole bottom of the mask is uncoloured. And I’ve deliberately done that because I wanted to show that the area where your brain is on the mask is really busy, and it sometimes feels that my head is really busy in my actual brain rather than in me, if you see what I mean.
And the brown bit is there in the background as, like, the bit that you go back to sort of say, no, come on, just have a moment where you think, no, don’t be silly now, you can’t know everything conversation with yourself. Or the fact that I am reasonably alright at what I do and not a terrible person in the world and those sorts of thoughts. So it was important that I had it there in quite a, sort of, lumpy face bit to say, just calm down.
Alexis: Yes, I was thinking that, because it’s interesting that that is at the bottom, it’s almost like, this is what I need to come back to, you know, it’s next to the blue as well and it feels like, if I can ground myself and bring myself back to that set of thoughts and that confidence that is there. Sometimes that violet bit is the part where you might feel a bit, you know, there might be some anxieties there, there might be some what if’s going on, you know, and all that kind of thing. But it’s almost like, hang on, bring myself back down to this level and it feels like that the brown and the blue are the foundation that that violet bit is, kind of, sat upon.
Pete: Yes. Because then the violet, actually, does shade into black, so right at the very top there is a streak of black and, I suppose, that’s representing, actually, if you move away from the foundation bit and you get too immersed in the insecurity bit then that leads me into depression. Or a dark space where the insecurity almost then can take over, which then puts me into, sort of like, not a spiral but can tip that thinking into, well, I must be rubbish, or, clearly the world isn’t very happy with me, and those sorts of darker thoughts. But it’s only a small streak at the top because I tend to, sort of, if I move away from the base just tend to float around in a hazy violet uncertainty.
Alexis: But then do you find that you’ve learned, because I was just thinking about that black streak there and I think we all have a potential to have that, you know, depending on what’s happening in our lives and what’s going on. And do you feel like you, kind of, almost have to work your way back through that, through that violet insecurity bit into that grounded part, is that part of your process. I was thinking there you might dip your toe into that black part sometimes and go, hang on a minute, I need to just bring myself back out of that.
Pete Thorpe: Yes, and then it’s like, well, let’s just work back through and apply a bit of logic. So, like, I don’t know, the world thinks I’m a complete buffoon, OK, well they could probably think that for several reasons, and that could then make me think dark thoughts. But then it’s like, well, hang on, that’s a bit generalised, the world thinks you’re a buffoon, who really thinks you’re a buffoon. And there will be some people, without a doubt, that’s fine, but it’s not the world.
So then suddenly you put some rational thought process into the irrationalness of the insecurity and the way I do it is just go, hang on a minute, is that right because that’s a bit extreme what you’re thinking there that everybody in the world thinks you’re a buffoon. Well, I don’t know everybody in the world so clearly not everybody does, so suddenly that’s a little bit better than it was. And, actually, if it really does think that, actually, does it really matter.
Then you start working through that step down process, I guess, is how I would think about it, where I would get myself up to a certain level and then have to really then think, let’s just be sensible now, think it through what you’re saying. Is it rational? Is it actually true? Does it makes sense or is it just you being stupid? And it’s a bit like that inner chimp thing isn’t it where it’s like, well, you’re inner chimp has gone raging off and you’re just going, oh yes, it must be right, it must be right. Then it’s only when you have some rational thought you go, no, let’s just be sensible now and think it through and come back to that blue/brown sort of level.
Alexis: It’s like, I was just thinking, if you’re looking at it from a cognitive behavioural point of view or the chimp paradox, or any of these things that can really help if people are interested in them, is that what’s the evidence for what I’m thinking. You know, and that catastrophic thinking or the awfulizing we can get caught up in that we are the worst person in the world and, you know, we’re not worthy, all of those really difficult feelings and those difficult thoughts. Actually, if you inject some of that rational thought and actually put some evidence in, you know, then that’s going to help to, kind of, create more of a balanced view.
Pete: Yes.
Alexis: I think that’s really important, isn’t it, when you’re looking at how we manage our emotions and our triggers, as well, because sometimes we might … You know, I was just thinking about that on the inside of your mask, you might get triggered into that black bit more quickly for some things and for others you might not hit that at all. But, you know, having a thought process or stepping back and thinking, just let me review this and where am I at, even if you don’t necessarily believe it, I think working through that process really helps to bring down those emotions, doesn’t it?
Pete: Yes, absolutely. And, do you know what, the next day it will probably go back up and have to bring exactly the same thought process and re go through it again in my head. Because I can’t just do it once and then it’s, oh, that bit is solved it will never come back again, because it does, it will come back again and I’ll have to think, right, hang on a minute, and just re go through that process.
And I’m not sure there is a way of ever completely stopping these things popping up and you’re having to resettle them, if there was it would be great, maybe you could tell us if there was, but I’m not sure if there is. Being able to then … Sometimes it’s quite tiring, isn’t it, you have to keep going back and working through it again, but at least you keep working through it and realising that you’re being a bit crazy.
Alexis: I mean, there are lots of things to help to give your head a break, whether that’s mindfulness practices or meditation or whatever, and they are massively helpful and there’s loads of evidence to show that. I think sometimes it’s recognising how you as a person actually function and what works for you, because it’s different for each of us. I know for myself if I go so far down a path of a particular thought process I can recognise it and I can bring myself back from it because I know myself well enough to be able to do that, 15/20 years ago I wouldn’t have known myself well enough to do that.
So every time you learn something new about yourself you just get a bit better about it. And I think that’s the other thing is that, you know, you learn more and once that self-awareness is there you can’t unlearn it, once you know that about yourself you know it.
Pete: Yes, and I think what really helps me is realising that I’m not unique in that thought process and, actually, it’s pretty normal and everybody probably has these moments, some more frequently than others but everybody has it at some point. So to me that really helps put me back into the grounded sort of space, it’s like, no, this is not just you, this is pretty normal, and if you’ve got a really stressful job or you’ve got some real high pressure around you then maybe that triggers me sometimes more than it should.
In terms of I’ve had a really bad day at work or a really difficult day at work and that maybe does then trigger other things that flip over into the other part of my life. And it’s having to then go back and realise that and work back through it but then accepting that that’s pretty normal.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely. So tell me a bit about these, we’ve got three boxes down the right hand side, they’re black as well so tell me a bit about what they represent.
Pete: Well, they are grey.
Alexis: Oh, they’re grey, OK.
Pete: That was my attempt at shading, Alexis.
Alexis: Very good, it’s very impressive.
Pete: Thank you. So the boxes are there as some of those things that you carry around with you that you maybe can’t get rid of or you don’t want to get rid of but you need to put them somewhere otherwise they will just drive you crazy. The way I think about it in my mind is I have a series of … like a small warehouse which has got lots of boxes in it, and so some of the things that you experience at work or in your personal life, or whatever it might be, you know, I’ve found really upsetting or have really affected me then there’s some things you can’t necessarily ever remove but you have to do something about controlling them otherwise it will just consume you.
So, you know, I have a box that deals with … we’ve talked about this before in other podcasts that we’ve done, about post mortems of babies, if that was just flirting around in my head all the time that would just drive me distraction. So there has to be some way I process it in my own mind to park it without probably ever getting rid of it but it’s there and I can control it better. I actually visualise it in my mind as like a store room with boxes in it and each box has got something else in it.
And there are some boxes have got topics, like child post mortems, but they’re all in there. Whether I can ever get rid of them, I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about the need to get rid of them. But it’s just the way I, sort of, deal with some of the bits of … and it’s not just work based stuff as well, but some of those bits that have happened to me in my upbringing or in my life that I either don’t really know exactly how to deal with that so I will put it in a box and I will leave it.
But equally understanding that at some point, you can’t just keep building boxes and boxes because they will just take over. So it’s that management of it and almost having to have some sort of weeding process at some point where you go, right, let’s just take that box and try and resolve it and move on. And there have been points where I’ve done that with some of the bits and, I suppose, what I’m left with now is the stuff that I still don’t really know how to deal with it so they just sit there.
Alexis: Do you think there’s times when there’s been more boxes and less boxes than you’ve got at the minute?
Pete: Yes, without a doubt. I’ve definitely got fewer boxes than I’ve ever had before, without a doubt. I think if I was alive to even having this conversation with you ten years ago then I’d have had an awful lot of boxes. And if you look back to what was happening in my life ten years ago, I was in a really self-destructive pattern where everything was going a bit haywire, really, and going off the rails in many ways. And that was because I wasn’t dealing with what was going on in my head properly.
But now, and it’s been really interesting since we’ve been working together in the last few years, and understanding some of the things we talk about in the Keeping the Peace training and all that sort of stuff has been really helpful in me removing some of my boxes and making it a much more manageable level. And I feel comfortable and I don’t necessarily want to get rid of some of my boxes.
Alexis: No, I think potentially there is always something, isn’t there, anyway, you know, I’ve popped in and out of therapy when I’ve needed to and I have supervision every month, and there’s still things that I come back to and need to process again. And I think sometimes, as well, as your life changes, you know, as you get older or as you learn more about yourself, you come back to those things from a different angle or a different perspective as well and you have a different view of them.
I know often we see police officers and staff for therapy often they’ve got either too many boxes in that warehouse to the point where they can’t shut the doors and it’s coming out in behaviour and emotions and everything else. Or there is just one massive box that’s just, kind of, overloaded and is, you know, again the lid isn’t shut on it anymore. I think it’s recognising and tracking how are you storing that stuff in your head and how much is it impacting on you on a daily basis and what you need to do or who you can talk to, or who can help to, kind of, I don’t know, sometimes just unpack them a bit. You might pack some of it back in but just understanding it makes such a difference, doesn’t it?
Pete: Absolutely, yes, absolutely. And I think it’s not being afraid to have some as well, just don’t have too many.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely.
Is there anything else you want to say about your mask before we finish, does that feel like we’ve covered some of the main things you wanted to show in it?
Pete: Yes, I think so. I think when I think about certainly the inside bit and that violet, sort of, pattern area, I think it feels quite liberating, actually, to be able to … Because, obviously, this isn’t just a conversation that me and you are going to have here, is it, so whoever is out there is going to think, Pete Thorpe’s got real insecurities. Well, yes, I have probably but at least I can try and control them. So, no, I don’t think there’s anything else to say, really.
Alexis: Well, thank you, I really appreciate you putting yourself out there and doing that because I know it’s hard to do. And I know we were laughing, weren't we, a couple of weeks ago that when we decide that we’re going to do something we, kind of, get it booked in and crack on, and this is something we’ve kept putting off and putting off having this conversation. And when we talked about that it’s just because it is such a personal thing to talk about and, you know, we do know it’s going to be out there for people to listen to.
So I appreciate you doing that and taking the risk and being so honest, as well, about the process you’ve been through compelling that exercise, but also the reflections you’ve had afterwards as well.
Pete: No, you’re welcome, I hope whoever listens to it gets something from it.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely.
So thank you very much for that and, as I said, there is a webinar that will be videoed and recorded and will be accessible to people through the Oscar Kilo website that supports this podcast. But if you don’t watch the webinar hopefully the podcast will have been helpful as well just in general just to, kind of, think about how you do portray yourself and what’s going on in the inside. What feels authentic and what feels maybe is a bit overwhelming and things that you’d like to do in order to look after yourself, which is what all these podcasts are about.
Thanks everybody. Thanks Pete, appreciate it.
Pete: Thank you.
Alexis: Thank you. Take care everyone.
Thank you for listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast, it’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you subscribe you will be notified of the next episode as soon as its available. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for future podcasts so please do comment or get in touch on our social media platforms for either Fortis Therapy and Training or Oscar Kilo.
Alexis: Hello, and welcome to the Keeping the Peace podcasts, with me Alexis Powell-Howard. Today we’re going to be talking about the masks we wear and this podcast is to support a webinar that I am delivering for Oscar Kilo about masks that are worn in policing.
Today I’m joined by DCI Pete Thorp from Humberside Police, who is going to talk to me about his thoughts around the masks that are worn in policing and also his own masks having sent him a mask to decorate, and he’s brought it with him today so we’re going to talk about this.
We are recording on Zoom today so the sound quality might not be as you’d expect but we just wanted to cover the ideas behind the masks and what that might mean and how you might interpret that for yourselves. So you may not have been part of a webinar but that doesn’t matter because this will be relevant to anybody, really.
Morning, Pete.
Pete: Morning. How are you?
Alexis: I’m good, thank you. Thanks for coming to join me about this one. I wanted to ask you to be involved in it because we worked together quite a lot on different parts of the training and you’ve been to the training that we’ve delivered called Keeping the Peace. So I know that you understand the concept of the masks because we talk about it in the training, don’t we?
Pete: We do, yes.
Alexis: So can you tell me a bit about what you’ve thought about in relation to this topic, really?
Pete: Yes. I think when you asked me to do it and actually do the mask I felt quite happy colouring it in and when I worked out what I wanted to, sort of, put down. But I still had some apprehension, I suppose, in the background about, sort of, showing it to anybody and actually, not baring your soul but having that confidence to say, certainly when you do the flip side of the mask, you know, that felt very personal and quite sensitive almost in many ways.
So I think you have to be quite brave to do it and, sort of, be open to other people seeing that side of you. Because I think sometimes, certainly in my experience of being in the police is, it’s not necessarily a macho environment but there is something about not really, sort of, talking about your feelings or talking about, you know, what’s currently going on in your mind. And it’s all about just getting on with it and pulling your big boys’ pants up and doing the business, really. So, in that sense, it was an interesting experience to do it personally.
But, no, it felt good. The only slight issue is I’m colour blind so when I talk through what I’ve coloured in it might not represent what I’ve coloured in.
Alexis: It’s going to be interesting then, we could go anywhere with this. So just for those people who don’t know, the reason that we are talking about masks is because it’s something that we use in therapy with clients and it’s a really creative way of being able to understand what we show on the outside and what we keep hidden or what we might be aware of, or maybe even unaware of on the inside.
So the mask that Pete’s referring to is a papier-mâché mask that he’s decorated on the outside and on the inside to represent, you know, how he’s interpreted that. And having done this with lots of clients over the years and also having done it as a project that we do with the community where we sent masks out and they sent them back in that they’d decorated, it’s interesting to, kind of, explore.
But, as you’ve said, it’s kind of there, you know, you’ve decorated it, it’s out there, it’s not in your head anymore and it’s actually something you’ve expressed creatively, which can be challenging.
Pete: Yes, it definitely is challenging. And just, sort of, having it with me today when I look at it it’s a bit weird the mask anyway to look at, if you know what I mean, but it’s like looking at the inside of it certainly, I think, do I really want to go there. But I’ll go there, it will be fine.
Alexis: Brilliant, thank you. Thanks for taking that risk, as well, I appreciate it. So tell me a little bit about how you approached it, because everyone does this differently, so what were your thought processes as you did that?
Pete: Well initially I was trying to think how to creatively express what I wanted to put on it, and I’m not a very good drawer so the thought of drawing pictures quickly went out of my mind. I started thinking about colours and the meaning of colours, so I actually did a bit of research on the internet about what different colours mean. And then, with the help of some colouring in pencils that have got the colours written on them so I don’t colour in the wrong colour, I just started colouring in, really.
And I got to a point where I went with some bold quite regimented colouring in on the front, and then when you turn it over it got a bit crazy, really. So, yes, it was interesting, and finding out what some of the colours represent and how you can interpret that was really interesting, actually, so it’s artistic, I think is the safe way to describe it.
Alexis: Yes, creative, it can be anything, it’s down to interpretation.
Pete: Absolutely.
Alexis: I noticed on the front, because obviously I’ve got photographs in front of me, that it was quite, kind of, compartmentalised really, was that your intention to have that separateness around the different colours?
Pete: Yes, I think so. And trying to just … It’s interesting because when I was thinking about doing this it’s like, this is what I think I project, and it will be really interesting I think to get other people to colour the front of your mask in for you and see what they see and you just do the back side. But I was trying to represent some sort of … I think the way I portray myself in my professional life certainly it’s quite organised, quite structured and quite straightforward in terms of I think people understand who I am and what I’m like.
And I was trying to put that into a contrast then of what’s on the reverse where it’s a bit more chaotic and very different colours, as well, the colours don’t match up very much. I mean, there’s blue on the front and the back and, for me, that was about having some maybe a little bit conservative but being professional and thinking about being reliable and having some loyalty and some honour and being trustworthy, that’s for me what that blue represents.
So it features quite predominantly on the front but also features on a section on the flip side as well, so there was some commonality, if you like, between what I put out there and what is really going on, if you like. But then the other colours are not represented at all on the inside or on the outside, which thinking about it now is a bit odd, in a way.
Alexis: The blue colour that you’ve talked about there feels like it represents those values that are important to you, that that was something you know you have those values internally it’s something that you’re keen to show on the outside but also within your role, you know, it feels like the role fits with those values.
Pete: Yes, massively. And I suppose my job as a, I don’t like the use the word senior leader, but as a leader of a team and of a department, you know, it’s really important to me that I am reliable and that the people I work with can trust me and feel that I’ve got their back and that we’re really professional in what we do. So to me that was really important to reflect that really strongly and for me it was really important to demonstrate that that does come from within as well, it’s a consistent thing.
So, yes, on the inside we’re going to talk about my insecurity and dark thoughts and all the rest of it, but the one thing I am careful to make sure that people see is actually what’s really, you know, my core values if you like. You know, it’s all about that need to be reliable and have that professional, that stability sort of thing, and trustworthiness was really important so that’s why it came out on both sides, I think.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s important because the masks is almost like the filter, isn’t it, from what’s going on in the inside to what you’re showing on the outside, or how you’d like other people to see you on the outside as well. You know, especially as a leader and in a management role, as well, it’s important, isn’t it, to kind of think about that.
Pete: Yes, and I think, like you say, that how you want people to see you is really interesting, isn’t it, because you don’t necessarily want people to see you as a bit of an insecure mess, they want to see you, sort of, being quite strong and bold. And, I guess, that’s why the way I’ve done it on the front is to maybe try and reflect what I want to project to people, whereas, if I was to show this to my wife the front bit she would be, like, that’s not really you. But if I showed her the other side she’d be, like, yes, that is you, that makes more sense.
And I think that’s interesting, isn’t it, how people … how do you get over that barrier to actually feel more comfortable to show people the inside bit who you work with, or anybody actually because you might not want to show anybody the inside bit.
Alexis: No, and I think sometimes it’s interesting to think about who you do take that front layer off with because it might only be a really small number of people, it might only be one person. But some people don’t have anyone that they do that with, so it’s almost like it’s a shadow part of themselves that they hold onto and don’t show anybody. And that might be related to all sorts of different reasons about not wanting to be vulnerable, or feeling ashamed of feeling that way, or embarrassed or whatever it might be.
But keeping that makes on all the time is actually really hard work and I think sometimes by the time, you know, we see people at forces with mental health it’s like it’s not sustainable to keep that mask on in the same way every day when actually there are a lot of things going on under the surface that aren't being expressed and are just getting worse, really.
Pete: No, absolutely. And I think, you know, if you can get over that fear that you’re going to be judged or people are going to think something about you and show some sort of weakness, and that’s a cultural thing I think wider in the police. I think quite often people form perceptions with other people and that then becomes the truth or the narrative around that individual, where actually it’s just a perception. And I think if we felt genuinely more comfortable to be able to be ourselves and be more aligned to our own values sometimes I think that would be of a real benefit to us. And certainly I think for me having that blue on either side is the way I, sort of, come across and demonstrate what my values are, I suppose, and how that informs how I operate at work.
Alexis: Absolutely. So you’ve got three other colours on the front there that are kind of in sections as well, what do they represent?
Pete: Half my forehead is red and half is yellow, so the red is all about strengths, energy, passion, sort of, boldness, and I think I try to project that in terms of … and it sort of marries up with the yellow, really, as well, thinking about being positive, optimism, it’s got a bright, happy, lively sort of colour. So taking those together, trying to be that person that is positive and is going to be upbeat about something and, you know, be quite strong in trying to make something happen or doing something, and I hope that is reflect in the actual output. I mean, you’ve worked with me, you’ve known me and worked with me so you, kind of, get a bit of both but, hopefully, that comes across in how I am.
So it was all about, really, just that bold, bright strong colours that represent positivity, strength and, like, a determination to do something and a passion about something. That’s kind of where I was going with those.
Alexis: I mean, for me I definitely see that when we’re working on projects or thinking about how to do something, you know, that come up with solutions and the thinking outside of the box, if you like, which I hate that phrase but you know what I mean, it’s like, kind of, coming up with creative ideas. And I think that does take energy and innovation and to be passionate about what’s important, because otherwise you don’t have that, you don’t become connected to coming up with those ideas and those solutions because, you know, things don’t seem that important otherwise.
So being able to, kind of, recognise actually there’s an energy here and there’s a want to be seen as well to be driving things forward and putting in new ideas I think is really important to who you are and how you portray yourself as well within your role.
Pete: No, absolutely. And I think that’s kind of where I was going with the orange, because the other part of it is orange, so my right cheek is orange. That’s, again, another bright, sort of, trying to demonstrate that represents to me creativity and enthusiasm and cheerfulness. So it would be silly of me to come to work and be really down and miserable or irritated and annoyed about the state of the world or, you know, the massive challenges that we have in policing and to come and be like that is just going to … well, it puts everybody on the wrong foot then straight away.
I think it’s really important in a leadership role that you are really clear about … be realistic and be honest about that, but let’s try and think how we make it better rather than just dwelling on saying it’s all rubbish and, oh my god, it’s terrible, it’s never going to get any better. Well it never will with that attitude so let’s at least try something, if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else, but let’s give it a go.
And I think, hopefully, coupled then with that being truthful and being that reliable, sort of the blue bit comes into it as well, hopefully, that collectively gives the people that I work with, you know, some general sense of hope that we are going to try and make things better and we are trying to look after them and support them. Working in the environment that I work in, which is in the public protection arena, then the staff really feel … it’s a really high risk, pressurised role for them and it’s important that they have someone that is going to be positive but honest with them at the same time. And is going to be full of energy trying to improve what we do for our staff but for the victims as well, and for the public at large.
So that’s why I felt I wanted to go pretty strong, if you like, on just really bold four colours, as well, that sort of are distinct.
Alexis: And positive, as well. Because I was just thinking there about, you know, how you … because there will be times when you don’t feel as full of energy or as positive and it’s how you manage that for yourself, as well, isn’t it? I was just thinking when you were talking, if you are feeling in a negative place and other people are negative you can get, kind of, into those collusive conversations where it literally just spirals down into nothing is any good and what’s the point in us keeping going and doing what we’re doing.
But, actually, by not kind of engaging with those ideas and trying to bring other people up, you know, even if you’re not feeling up, it feels like that’s really important, it’s something that you work hard to do.
Pete: Yes, massively. And I think in a way maybe that’s why the flip side of the mask is very different because it’s not disingenuous the front of the mask but it serves a need and my role is to do that, if you see what I mean. So, yes, I might be having an off day and something might be really irritating me but to project that in the wrong environment would not be the right thing to do.
So I don’t think it’s about having, you know, like a split personality, because when I first started doing the mask I thought, oh my god, I’ve got a really bad, like, split personality thing where the front is totally different to the back. But then, as I thought about it more, maybe I’m just rationalising it and making my craziness feel a bit better in my own head, but for me I have quite, and we’ve talked about this before in other things that we’ve done together where it’s about having some sort of delineation between your work, professional life and the rest of your life.
Because otherwise, certainly in some roles, and there are some really difficult jobs to do in policing, if it consumes you and becomes your entire life you are living in this world that is not representative of what the world actually is because you only see the bad bits and you only see the really difficult bits. So if you can’t delineate some of that then I think that causes people more anxiety, more stress and then puts you into that negative cycle, as well.
Alexis: Definitely. I think that’s a really good point. And I think the second series of podcasts that we’re working on at the minute is about that, isn’t it, it’s how to keep well and keep that in focus whilst also doing a job that’s really difficult and, like you said, you can see the worst of what’s going on in society and how to keep buoyant and get that balance while actually doing that. Which sometimes will be easier than others but it’s just keeping it in mind, really.
Pete: Yes, it is and it’s having that genuineness about it, as well, so whatever you felt on the front it can’t be fake, it has to be something you believe and is a part of you. So for me the two sides in many ways aren't distinct at the same time because it does reflect other parts of me, but this is almost like this is what I want people to see.
Alexis: I wonder as well that the blue, as you were talking there, I thought the blue almost grounds you in what you want to put out on the outside, what’s going on in the inside, but it always comes back to that value base, doesn’t it, as well, so that feels like it grounds you in that.
Pete: Yes.
Alexis: You’re listening to the Keeping the Peace podcast brought to you in partnership with Fortis Therapy and Training, Oscar Kilo and Humberside Police.
So tell me a bit about what’s going on in the inside because, obviously, we’ve got layers of colours here, we’ve got some boxes as well.
Pete: Yes. So the predominant colour across the most is supposed to be violet, which is representing, sort of, sensitive side and maybe a little bit insecure, and that’s taken a broad sweep across most of the top half of my head where my brain is, if you see what I mean. And I think that is probably a much more honest, you know, having that constant sort of feeling about, oh, have I done something right, or, is it good enough, or, is there a better way I could have done that, or, why has someone not appreciated that amazing thing that I’ve just done. Those sort of thoughts are all the time spinning around in my head and worrying about, you know, I suppose, yes, worrying about whether I’m actually good enough or able to do it.
So when you operate in an SIO role, which I’m learning, I’m a learning SIO at the minute, you know, suddenly me controlling the violet part of my head, if you like, has been quite a challenge because suddenly you’re in a position where you’re expected just to know what to do and get on with it. And that’s quite nerve wracking in many ways so my insecurities about, well, have I been in the job long enough to have such a responsibility or do I know enough and all that bit has come into place previously and I think it’s just understanding that you never really have all the answers.
Actually, as long as you’re able to get over the fact that you’re never going to know everything and there is always somebody who will know the answer, you know, have that humility. And the blue bit is to come back to say, actually, let’s just go back and find out what the actual answer is rather than panicking about it and beating myself that I don’t know, how can I possibly know everything.
Alexis: Yes. And I can really relate to that, I think, because I know for me there is that part of me that, kind of, second guesses or sometimes reflects on something and thinks, oh, maybe I could have done that differently or could have done it better, or should I have said that, all that kind of thing. But, actually, I think you’re trying to put yourself out there in an authentic way that is the risk, it’s the risk of second guessing yourself because you want to make sure that you’re coming across in the right way.
And you’re right, it’s being realistic that no one has all the answers, as much as people might look to you have them nobody does. So grounding yourself in that, who can help me and who might have that area of expertise or who can direct me with that or talk to somebody about it, can make such a difference can’t it to kind of think, yes, I’ve made the right decision there.
Pete: Yes, absolutely. And have the confidence to check your working out, I think that’s a cultural thing in the police sometimes, I think that’s getting better but there is that thing where I think people worry sometimes when they’re thinking of promotion or thinking of undertaking some other specialist role. Quite often when I do mentoring with other people they talk about, well, I don’t really feel like I’m ready, I don’t know if I know enough. It’s like, you need to get over that because you’re never going to know it, or, speak to a chief constable they will say, yes, I don’t know everything, that’s not my job. So it’s getting your head around it sometimes, I think.
Alexis: Yes, in therapy we talk about a concept of good enough, is it good enough.
Pete: Yes.
Alexis: Because, you know, you can have that be perfect driver where you want it to be absolutely spot on and it’s never really spot on because a week later you might have made a different decision based on something else you know. You know what I mean, it’s a movable feast all the time, I think. So coming back to, am I good enough, or, do I feel what I’ve dozen is good enough, I think is probably a really good baseline to, kind of, check in with yourself over that.
Pete: Absolutely. Yes, definitely, definitely.
Alexis: OK. So we’ve got that swathe of colour going across the top, tell me a bit about these other colours you’ve got going on around, you’ve got the blue we’ve talked about.
Pete: You’ve got the blue which we’ve talked about and then next to the blue is some brown, and for me that was, like, I think I’m quite dull and quite, sort of … the way I read it it talked about being relaxed and confident but also being, sort of, earthy and a little bit dull. And, I think if I was to have one colour that defines me I would probably go with brown in that I’m fairly confident in what I’m doing in life, I think.
And this is weird though because I’ve just talked about how unconfident I am, but when I actually sit down and control the violet bit then actually underneath there is some solid earth where I think, now, come on, you do know what you’re doing, let’s reassure yourself. I am quite laid back and generally sort of easy going and I think reasonably solid and quite reliable but quite genuine as well.
So for me I wanted that clearly in there just to represent that because I think you can have a lot of things going on, and the way I’ve done this mask is, it’s only coloured above the eyes, so the whole bottom of the mask is uncoloured. And I’ve deliberately done that because I wanted to show that the area where your brain is on the mask is really busy, and it sometimes feels that my head is really busy in my actual brain rather than in me, if you see what I mean.
And the brown bit is there in the background as, like, the bit that you go back to sort of say, no, come on, just have a moment where you think, no, don’t be silly now, you can’t know everything conversation with yourself. Or the fact that I am reasonably alright at what I do and not a terrible person in the world and those sorts of thoughts. So it was important that I had it there in quite a, sort of, lumpy face bit to say, just calm down.
Alexis: Yes, I was thinking that, because it’s interesting that that is at the bottom, it’s almost like, this is what I need to come back to, you know, it’s next to the blue as well and it feels like, if I can ground myself and bring myself back to that set of thoughts and that confidence that is there. Sometimes that violet bit is the part where you might feel a bit, you know, there might be some anxieties there, there might be some what if’s going on, you know, and all that kind of thing. But it’s almost like, hang on, bring myself back down to this level and it feels like that the brown and the blue are the foundation that that violet bit is, kind of, sat upon.
Pete: Yes. Because then the violet, actually, does shade into black, so right at the very top there is a streak of black and, I suppose, that’s representing, actually, if you move away from the foundation bit and you get too immersed in the insecurity bit then that leads me into depression. Or a dark space where the insecurity almost then can take over, which then puts me into, sort of like, not a spiral but can tip that thinking into, well, I must be rubbish, or, clearly the world isn’t very happy with me, and those sorts of darker thoughts. But it’s only a small streak at the top because I tend to, sort of, if I move away from the base just tend to float around in a hazy violet uncertainty.
Alexis: But then do you find that you’ve learned, because I was just thinking about that black streak there and I think we all have a potential to have that, you know, depending on what’s happening in our lives and what’s going on. And do you feel like you, kind of, almost have to work your way back through that, through that violet insecurity bit into that grounded part, is that part of your process. I was thinking there you might dip your toe into that black part sometimes and go, hang on a minute, I need to just bring myself back out of that.
Pete Thorpe: Yes, and then it’s like, well, let’s just work back through and apply a bit of logic. So, like, I don’t know, the world thinks I’m a complete buffoon, OK, well they could probably think that for several reasons, and that could then make me think dark thoughts. But then it’s like, well, hang on, that’s a bit generalised, the world thinks you’re a buffoon, who really thinks you’re a buffoon. And there will be some people, without a doubt, that’s fine, but it’s not the world.
So then suddenly you put some rational thought process into the irrationalness of the insecurity and the way I do it is just go, hang on a minute, is that right because that’s a bit extreme what you’re thinking there that everybody in the world thinks you’re a buffoon. Well, I don’t know everybody in the world so clearly not everybody does, so suddenly that’s a little bit better than it was. And, actually, if it really does think that, actually, does it really matter.
Then you start working through that step down process, I guess, is how I would think about it, where I would get myself up to a certain level and then have to really then think, let’s just be sensible now, think it through what you’re saying. Is it rational? Is it actually true? Does it makes sense or is it just you being stupid? And it’s a bit like that inner chimp thing isn’t it where it’s like, well, you’re inner chimp has gone raging off and you’re just going, oh yes, it must be right, it must be right. Then it’s only when you have some rational thought you go, no, let’s just be sensible now and think it through and come back to that blue/brown sort of level.
Alexis: It’s like, I was just thinking, if you’re looking at it from a cognitive behavioural point of view or the chimp paradox, or any of these things that can really help if people are interested in them, is that what’s the evidence for what I’m thinking. You know, and that catastrophic thinking or the awfulizing we can get caught up in that we are the worst person in the world and, you know, we’re not worthy, all of those really difficult feelings and those difficult thoughts. Actually, if you inject some of that rational thought and actually put some evidence in, you know, then that’s going to help to, kind of, create more of a balanced view.
Pete: Yes.
Alexis: I think that’s really important, isn’t it, when you’re looking at how we manage our emotions and our triggers, as well, because sometimes we might … You know, I was just thinking about that on the inside of your mask, you might get triggered into that black bit more quickly for some things and for others you might not hit that at all. But, you know, having a thought process or stepping back and thinking, just let me review this and where am I at, even if you don’t necessarily believe it, I think working through that process really helps to bring down those emotions, doesn’t it?
Pete: Yes, absolutely. And, do you know what, the next day it will probably go back up and have to bring exactly the same thought process and re go through it again in my head. Because I can’t just do it once and then it’s, oh, that bit is solved it will never come back again, because it does, it will come back again and I’ll have to think, right, hang on a minute, and just re go through that process.
And I’m not sure there is a way of ever completely stopping these things popping up and you’re having to resettle them, if there was it would be great, maybe you could tell us if there was, but I’m not sure if there is. Being able to then … Sometimes it’s quite tiring, isn’t it, you have to keep going back and working through it again, but at least you keep working through it and realising that you’re being a bit crazy.
Alexis: I mean, there are lots of things to help to give your head a break, whether that’s mindfulness practices or meditation or whatever, and they are massively helpful and there’s loads of evidence to show that. I think sometimes it’s recognising how you as a person actually function and what works for you, because it’s different for each of us. I know for myself if I go so far down a path of a particular thought process I can recognise it and I can bring myself back from it because I know myself well enough to be able to do that, 15/20 years ago I wouldn’t have known myself well enough to do that.
So every time you learn something new about yourself you just get a bit better about it. And I think that’s the other thing is that, you know, you learn more and once that self-awareness is there you can’t unlearn it, once you know that about yourself you know it.
Pete: Yes, and I think what really helps me is realising that I’m not unique in that thought process and, actually, it’s pretty normal and everybody probably has these moments, some more frequently than others but everybody has it at some point. So to me that really helps put me back into the grounded sort of space, it’s like, no, this is not just you, this is pretty normal, and if you’ve got a really stressful job or you’ve got some real high pressure around you then maybe that triggers me sometimes more than it should.
In terms of I’ve had a really bad day at work or a really difficult day at work and that maybe does then trigger other things that flip over into the other part of my life. And it’s having to then go back and realise that and work back through it but then accepting that that’s pretty normal.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely. So tell me a bit about these, we’ve got three boxes down the right hand side, they’re black as well so tell me a bit about what they represent.
Pete: Well, they are grey.
Alexis: Oh, they’re grey, OK.
Pete: That was my attempt at shading, Alexis.
Alexis: Very good, it’s very impressive.
Pete: Thank you. So the boxes are there as some of those things that you carry around with you that you maybe can’t get rid of or you don’t want to get rid of but you need to put them somewhere otherwise they will just drive you crazy. The way I think about it in my mind is I have a series of … like a small warehouse which has got lots of boxes in it, and so some of the things that you experience at work or in your personal life, or whatever it might be, you know, I’ve found really upsetting or have really affected me then there’s some things you can’t necessarily ever remove but you have to do something about controlling them otherwise it will just consume you.
So, you know, I have a box that deals with … we’ve talked about this before in other podcasts that we’ve done, about post mortems of babies, if that was just flirting around in my head all the time that would just drive me distraction. So there has to be some way I process it in my own mind to park it without probably ever getting rid of it but it’s there and I can control it better. I actually visualise it in my mind as like a store room with boxes in it and each box has got something else in it.
And there are some boxes have got topics, like child post mortems, but they’re all in there. Whether I can ever get rid of them, I don’t know, I’ve never really thought about the need to get rid of them. But it’s just the way I, sort of, deal with some of the bits of … and it’s not just work based stuff as well, but some of those bits that have happened to me in my upbringing or in my life that I either don’t really know exactly how to deal with that so I will put it in a box and I will leave it.
But equally understanding that at some point, you can’t just keep building boxes and boxes because they will just take over. So it’s that management of it and almost having to have some sort of weeding process at some point where you go, right, let’s just take that box and try and resolve it and move on. And there have been points where I’ve done that with some of the bits and, I suppose, what I’m left with now is the stuff that I still don’t really know how to deal with it so they just sit there.
Alexis: Do you think there’s times when there’s been more boxes and less boxes than you’ve got at the minute?
Pete: Yes, without a doubt. I’ve definitely got fewer boxes than I’ve ever had before, without a doubt. I think if I was alive to even having this conversation with you ten years ago then I’d have had an awful lot of boxes. And if you look back to what was happening in my life ten years ago, I was in a really self-destructive pattern where everything was going a bit haywire, really, and going off the rails in many ways. And that was because I wasn’t dealing with what was going on in my head properly.
But now, and it’s been really interesting since we’ve been working together in the last few years, and understanding some of the things we talk about in the Keeping the Peace training and all that sort of stuff has been really helpful in me removing some of my boxes and making it a much more manageable level. And I feel comfortable and I don’t necessarily want to get rid of some of my boxes.
Alexis: No, I think potentially there is always something, isn’t there, anyway, you know, I’ve popped in and out of therapy when I’ve needed to and I have supervision every month, and there’s still things that I come back to and need to process again. And I think sometimes, as well, as your life changes, you know, as you get older or as you learn more about yourself, you come back to those things from a different angle or a different perspective as well and you have a different view of them.
I know often we see police officers and staff for therapy often they’ve got either too many boxes in that warehouse to the point where they can’t shut the doors and it’s coming out in behaviour and emotions and everything else. Or there is just one massive box that’s just, kind of, overloaded and is, you know, again the lid isn’t shut on it anymore. I think it’s recognising and tracking how are you storing that stuff in your head and how much is it impacting on you on a daily basis and what you need to do or who you can talk to, or who can help to, kind of, I don’t know, sometimes just unpack them a bit. You might pack some of it back in but just understanding it makes such a difference, doesn’t it?
Pete: Absolutely, yes, absolutely. And I think it’s not being afraid to have some as well, just don’t have too many.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely.
Is there anything else you want to say about your mask before we finish, does that feel like we’ve covered some of the main things you wanted to show in it?
Pete: Yes, I think so. I think when I think about certainly the inside bit and that violet, sort of, pattern area, I think it feels quite liberating, actually, to be able to … Because, obviously, this isn’t just a conversation that me and you are going to have here, is it, so whoever is out there is going to think, Pete Thorpe’s got real insecurities. Well, yes, I have probably but at least I can try and control them. So, no, I don’t think there’s anything else to say, really.
Alexis: Well, thank you, I really appreciate you putting yourself out there and doing that because I know it’s hard to do. And I know we were laughing, weren't we, a couple of weeks ago that when we decide that we’re going to do something we, kind of, get it booked in and crack on, and this is something we’ve kept putting off and putting off having this conversation. And when we talked about that it’s just because it is such a personal thing to talk about and, you know, we do know it’s going to be out there for people to listen to.
So I appreciate you doing that and taking the risk and being so honest, as well, about the process you’ve been through compelling that exercise, but also the reflections you’ve had afterwards as well.
Pete: No, you’re welcome, I hope whoever listens to it gets something from it.
Alexis: Yes, absolutely.
So thank you very much for that and, as I said, there is a webinar that will be videoed and recorded and will be accessible to people through the Oscar Kilo website that supports this podcast. But if you don’t watch the webinar hopefully the podcast will have been helpful as well just in general just to, kind of, think about how you do portray yourself and what’s going on in the inside. What feels authentic and what feels maybe is a bit overwhelming and things that you’d like to do in order to look after yourself, which is what all these podcasts are about.
Thanks everybody. Thanks Pete, appreciate it.
Pete: Thank you.
Alexis: Thank you. Take care everyone.
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