Build a Bridge - and get over it It would be hard to find anyone that had hadnt at some time in their life experienced some sort of personal ordeal. Most people put it behind them and get on with their life. Some dont. For some people an ordeal becomes a life defining event. John is a head office department manager for a high profile retail organisation. His boss recognised his potential to be an asset to the company and be promoted to a more senior position. Yet John has just been fired. He was fired because he did something stupid, not once, but repeatedly. He behaved in ways that were not consistent with his position in the organisation and hence that position became untenable. He knew it would happen because hed been warned, yet even though he liked his job an didnt want to lose it he still did it. It begs the question, why? Johns problem wasnt being a slow learner. He knew his behaviour was inappropriate but he gave himself permission to play by a different set of rules because he believed the world owed him. You see, John went through an ordeal in his youth and he didnt think it was fair. He was right, it wasnt fair. It wasnt fair that his start in life was more troublesome than his peers. It wasnt fair that hed had a tough time. It also wasnt fair that the professional support system hadnt helped him let it go. However help for the likes of John is now on hand thats incredibly simple but is producing promising results. All John needed to do was to write about his ordeal as if it had happened to someone else. In a study that appeared in the February edition of the US based magazine Stress and Health, they reported that writing about an ordeal in the third person led to greater health gains in participants struggling with trauma-related intrusive thinking, as measured by the number of days their normal activities were restricted by any kind if illness. It is believed that third party writing might provide a constructive opportunity to make sense of what happened, but from a safe distance. The research concludes that when the threat seems less immediate it will feel less threatening. It does seem remarkable that simply writing about an event from another point of view can be measurably effective, but if it works then we need to embrace it. Perhaps if instead of months of counselling, that he considered a waste of time, hed simply been tasked with reinterpreting the events from a different perspective then perhaps his own perspective would have changed. It might even have kept him in his job.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:33:48 +0000
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