Developing Negatives

The adage goes that you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
But... at least you take the horse to water. That's a pretty good start.

It's about creating a change in somebody else.
And yet in population terms, we seem to be really terrible at it.
There is an entire mental health industry propping up people who never
seem to adopt change. The simple truth of an old proverb is a pretty
good place to find out why. We usually find them to hold singular
truths.

I might argue that I might choose to take somebody to water and at
least strongly encourage him to drink. Let's leave aside the concept
of 'forcing a drink' for a minute, even though I'm a great fan of such
a strong visual image.
I might, for example, make the other options appear sufficiently
unpalatable that drinking at that point seems the best thing to do.
That's change.

There is a magical term for one of those highly entertaining pieces of
showbusiness where the lady changes her costume in a split second.
It's called a quick change act. And sometimes that's all we need to
be. A quick change act.

We know from turning on the news every day for years that there are
problems with mental health, but too rarely do we hold the current
solutionists to account.
Counselling is failing.
Cognitive behavioural therapy has failed, in the way it has been
mass-marketed and rolled out in the UK.

The problem is getting worse, and it's been watched by a latent, lazy
or unskilled army of mental health practitioners who cherry pick easy
people who like a chat, and document in their copious notes
'unwillingness to change' in the rest.
And the government's answer? Bring in more of the same people with the
same answer. Of course the mental health practitioners will be
delighted. Their job will become even softer. Perhaps they can buy a
few more rubber plants for their consultation rooms.
That's what doing harm is. If they want to buy rubber they should line
their consultation room walls with it to protect the patients who are
bouncing with installations of new change.
Naive? Whether you think I am or I'm not, you will make yourself
right. I can't change that. You can, though.

We have already all the mental health geniuses in place that we need,
but they are not sufficiently flexible to bring solutions to people.
Some people will need to be brought to water and made to drink.
But we've got an army of counsellors who say they don't do 'advice'.
That might be a blessing. Who needs their opinion? It is there
supposed skill that is being solicited. But that skill is
unsupervised, unmonitored, unproven, unappraised and behind its closed
doors, it answers to know one. I would offer the general additional
comment that they vary from the nervous and insecure anxious
depressives who think they 'should be' counsellors to the arrogant
defensives who don't know where the water is themselves. In common,
they share a spectacular level of sick leave, which appears to bother
their consciences little.

Many of these practitioners won't even take the 'horse' to the 'water'
in the first place.
They might move the patient around a bit in an unfocused way and if
they happen to bump into some water ....great. But if they don't, so
what. It's the patient's fault. They're not ready for change, are
they?
The fact that you guided them into a few trip hazards that set them
back, well.. that's just bad luck, isn't it?

Sometimes you have to show people what change looks like.
In doing that sometimes you have to be change yourself.
A seminar is more useful if you see a live demo.
But even at live medical seminars nowadays that demo tends to be rather
lazily performed by a YouTube grab (that invariably causes all sorts
of technical issues).

And the live 'stuff' is frequently thrown at the audience in what they
like to call role-play. Leaving the element of control and bullying aside, how lazy is that? The teacher that doesn't demonstrate but tells you to demonstrate so that they can comment. Shocking really.
Why do they so rarely show you how it's done themselves? Well, of course they are scared. Your performer has performance anxiety. And ego. Both those babies should have been left home alone.
Who wants advice on surgery from a surgeon who has never operated?
But more than that, we have to understand how similar we are. We must
walk the walk. As well as talk the talk. And if we have adopted that
particular paid role we should be confident to demonstrate that we
can.

We must draw on any and all methods we can and have the skill and
flexibility to reframe it as a tool that can bring an individual
(perhaps one that you may not stumble across until years from now)
back from the brink.
The right type of oil for a dirty job.
The right fluid added to develop the right negative.

You have to be a flexible artist.
They don't cover that on the Teesside Polytechnic psychology course.
And that, as Yoda said, is why you fail.
Only they are failing on somebody else's behalf. Which is a hundred
times worse than normal failure.

You have to have the confidence to lead somebody to water. That's the
least you owe them.
Leading them in dance towards the water is a skill.
Leading them in a merry dance around the desert is a crime.

Or find another way to make them make the good chemicals. See, I am
using the concept of 'forcing them now' but I probably managed to slip
that past you without you noticing. That's quick change.
Find a way.
Because Bayer and Napp and Pfizer will all too happily sell you an
easy answer that might bridge your skill gap, soothe your conscience
and change nothing.

Remember... the problem is getting worse. We are failing.
It takes a new approach.
We have all the resources we need.
We have a chemical factory ready. Stunned often, sedated frequently,
unexercised invariably, but a rich untapped mine nevertheless.

Do you think you're going to retrain that chemical factory on top of
your shoulders with a visit to your painful past or by sprinkling
sertraline over it?
Unless the moment of regular contact is efficiently used to deliver, in addition,
the 'true' treatment, in the shortest possible time, it's not likely.

Coaches and other practitioners need to give people the resilience and
strength they going to need to cope with the future.
Progressing beyond failure starts with an admission. In this case it is one of failure of an allied profession.
Notice the failure. Embrace it.
Choose my solution.
Or find another.

And do it yesterday.

We have adage for it, of course.
Do NO harm.

If you can, do even less than that.