This is a question that came into my mind this week when I heard someone mention that old saying “a leopard never changes its spots.”

We know that from 0-7 years are imprint years that make a staggering difference on who we become and the values we then form in our later lives. But if someone has worked hard to improve themselves, we like to believe that change is possible. I’m not sure that we are as convinced of this possibility if someone has behaved in a totally socially unacceptable way. Is belief in change and forgiveness linked in someway? Do we believe that “baddies” cannot change because we cannot forgive them for the behaviour they have exhibited- even though we know that a person is not their behaviour and that all behaviour has a positive intention (presuppositions of NLP.)

Whilst considering this, I started to reflect on who I was as a younger child and who I am now. I wanted to establish whether I was fundamentally the same then, as I am now, or whether I had changed.

Of course some things have definitely changed- My ideas have evolved and I have gained more knowledge. I never used to eat olives and love them now. But what I was really interested in is whether there were traits in Little Me which could have predicted or lead me to where I am now.

Firstly, I had a think about where I am now, not just in terms of being a therapist, but as someone running a business- was Little Me already showing signs of this?

Initially I thought no. I used to be quiet and shy, I would cry easily and was quite sensitive. I was not always able to speak up for myself and had a bit of a fear of men (I think this had something to do with growing up without my dad at home.) I think all of these things have changed. I can still be quiet, but this is more through choice. I still like to check out a situation before making a contribution to it and now only cry easily if I’ve not had enough sleep!

I remember being told that I was always trying to twist things around. My mum had a horribly depressive period as I was growing up. I remember her getting very frustrated at me as whenever she tried to ramble on negatively as I’d respond with some smarty-pants answer about how things were much better than she could really see at that moment in time. This often would irritate her more but always seemed to get her thinking outside of the box of depression.

Thinking about me being that way makes me wonder if I was in fact a therapist from a very young age.

When I think back to being at school, I worked really hard. I was by no stretch the smartest or best, but I worked really hard and always gave it my best shot. I was nominated vice house captain and then house captain and my house won the sports day that year. I would also always step up to take the lead parts in school plays, despite being otherwise a bit of a loner. I didn’t have a best friend and was often working on my own little projects, which I’d then “recruit” friends into help me with! This part certainly sounds a lot like the Gemma I am now.

My mum said I should join a club to try and make some more friends as I couldn’t latch onto a best friend at school, which used to disappoint me. At about age 7 years I joined Brownies in an effort to widen my social network (which is like the younger version of Girl Guides.)

It really didn’t work out too well. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that we were in these little groups and that there was like a chief girl who was from my school who was at school, meek and mild but at Brownies had some sort of special powers to boss me about. I kept challenging the ideas she had because I thought mine were better. (I still maintain they were.

After a few months, I’d had enough and gave notice. The Brown Owl (who is like the chief of the Brownies) asked why I wanted to leave and I told her that I thought we’d be doing more interesting stuff like making fires in the woods and cooking jacket potatoes on them. I told her that quite frankly I could make a mothers day card at home and didn’t need to dress up in brown to be able to do it. I also told her I thought it was a bit too religious for me and that I wasn’t keen on the colour brown.

You see the thing with Brownies, is that the uniform is (or was) brown with a yellow scarf. Brown and Yellow! I told the Brown Owl that these were not the sort of colours that girls of my age wanted to be wearing. I told the Brown Owl that she could significantly increase the number of girls joining Brownies if the uniform was pink with a silver scarf.

She said this wasn’t ever going to be possible.

To be fair I think she was probably right as we would all have looked like Penelope Pitstop or the women from the Sheila’s wheels adverts. Plus they’d have had to have changed the name to “Pinkies.”

Which sounds like a club in Soho.

So in conclusion; yes, I do believe we all have the potential to change, if the impetus and desire to do so are great enough. I also believe that ultimately, there are characteristics that are part of who we are as people, that will always be there. And that evolving as a person is about learning how to harness that which we cannot change and use it to the best possible effect and our advantage instead of only acknowledging those characteristics as faults that can hold us back.

By Gemma Bailey
www.NLP4Kids.org

I was writing about this case in the NLP4Kids newsletter this week and mentioned the power of independence. I suggested to this child, who was also a generally fussy eater, that she could begin helping to cook the dinner. I explained (and you might find it a little surprising that I explained to her the methodology of what I was doing instead of just trying to “coax” her into the idea- but I like to be honest with my clients, even the children) that sometimes when children help with cooking the dinner, it makes them get a bit more curious about food. They end up eating and trying more foods because they feel like they’ve had some part in creating it. She seemed pretty open to this idea and we started to do a couple of dislike to like processes to help her feel more encouraged to eat some foods she had previously been avoiding.

Half way through one of the processes, she suddenly stopped me and and said in a most excited tone “I’ve just had a really good idea! I could make my own lunch for school too. I can have other things for lunch, like pasta instead of sandwiches….”

I also once worked with a young chap who had very bad eczema. As part of his treatment he had to apply a cream in the evening and refrain from scratching at the eczema as much as possible. He came to see me because his parents were worried about his attitude which was quite negative and that his self esteem was very low. After working with him for a while, he told me that his mum had made him some mittens that he had to wear in the evenings to stop him from scratching his skin. Because of this, she would have to apply his cream for him. I thought this was a little odd. I’ve heard of scratch mits for babies but this guy way 15 years old.

In having him wear the mittens and with mum applying his cream for him, he was in a very powerless position. It was difficult for him to take responsibility for improving himself emotionally, because he wasn’t even taking control (or being offered the opportunity) to take care of his own body. By using the mittens, he was avoiding the consequences of what would happen if he infected his skin by scratching. By having his mum apply the cream, she was dealing with his problem skin. He wasn’t.

It’s difficult to step back sometimes and watch children learn to do things for themselves. They mess it up! We can (as experienced adults) do it far better than they can (we think.)

Recently I helped out at a kids camp. At snack time we got the children to cut up their own apples. I had 2 children to oversee. One of them had clearly never used a knife before. It was a round ended knife but sharp enough to cut an apple. I was cold sweating as I watched him chop up this apple. I advised him the best I could, told him to slow down and spoke in a calm voice. Guess what….He cut his finger. Not much. It was still attached to his hand. But seriously it was a cut about 4 mm long and not terribly deep, though there was a lot of blood and he did keep squeezing that blood out of the tiny cut. The blood went all over the apple. It was a bit of a nightmare.

Next time I get him to cut apples, he will be more careful.

Sometimes we think we are helping others and protecting them by doing things for them, organising for them, thinking for them. Sometimes we do this when their behaviour is appalling. We just can’t help helping them. I had a boyfriend once who was always getting into trouble and I was always bailing him out. I lent him a lot of money, I helped him with his disciplinary when he got into trouble at work and when he was caught drink driving, I picked him up from the police station, took him home and paid for his car to get released from the pound. At the time, I just couldn’t help helping. I couldn’t stop myself because I could see the pain it would cause him if I didn’t save him.

The problem was, I was preventing him from learning and growing. I was preventing him from being independent and taking charge, I was neglecting him of an opportunity to man up and take responsibility.

There was even a point when I realised this, but I still kept doing it!

Now of course it is always the individuals responsibility to change or improve or learn, but this can be a difficult thing to do if someone close by is an “enabler.” This means that they enable the old behaviour to continue by giving too much support, assistance, money- whatever it may be.

Perhaps there is someone close to you, who you wish so much would change, improve, grow up, take responsibility whatever it may be. Now consider how what you are doing is holding them back.

It doesn’t feel good to sit back and watch a child cut their finger with a knife, but he was very proud of that cut and put in a special request to chop apples with me the next day. (I said no- I wasn’t sure my heart could take it.) But the point is, he didn’t want me to chop the apples for him. he wanted to do it himself.

The fact that this doesn’t occur over night, can for some clients lead to a decrease in their levels of motivation, even though logically they know that the results will not occur quickly. Often this lack of motivation will lead to the client turning to food to comfort the feelings of disappointment, and the weight loss becomes even less possible to achieve.

Here are some ideas to help maintain the motivation to lose weight, which can be implemented for your own use, or with your clients.

Firstly, having a role model can be extremely beneficial. In NLP when setting goals, quite often the Keys to Achievable Outcomes really come in handy for ensuring all of the little details have been taken care of and considered. For example, one question in the Keys to Achievable Outcomes is “Do you know anyone who has/have you done this before.”

When I recently completed the London to Brighton bike ride (if you hadn’t heard me mention that yet you must have been living under a rock!) And a great source of motivation was that my cousin had completed it last year. Knowing this was not just a source of inspiration, it also made me think, “If he can do it, I can do it too.”

So knowing someone who has managed to achieve weight loss (or having done it yourself in the past) can be a great motivator, as not only can you ask for advice about how best to achieve it, by you can also measure your success against theirs.

Competitiveness can be a brilliant motivator- proving that you can or just to get fitter and healthier than another can be a great source of motivation that can really last.

Another motivator, is knowing that as a person, you are offering yourself the best hope of health and that you are really taking good care of yourself. Quite often people think of avoiding sugary and fatty foods as if it is a punishment. Well of course that will make the weight loss process uncomfortable and or course this will just make you think if what you can’t have all the time.

When you see the action you are taking as a reward instead of a punishment, suddenly avoiding chocolate cake seems much easier. Not having chocolate cake “because I can’t- I’m trying to lose weight” has a very different feel to “I won’t because I want the best for myself, I want what’s good for me.”

Health can also be a great motivator. Obviously most people know about the health benefits of getting their body to the correct weight. There are of course worrying symptoms that accompany being overweight and these are symptoms that are kept subdued whilst snacking on the “wrong” foods. Sometimes remembering what we want to avoid in life can be just as great a motivator as knowing what we want to achieve. Whilst is it not at all comforting to consider the negative consequences of eating unhealthy foods, it can prevent us from taking action that will later be regretted.

Other motivating factors to look out for can include:

Improving energy levels
Setting a good example to other family members
To look better and buy nicer clothes
To feel more confident and less embarrassed
To improve your sex life or relationship.

Of course it is important to consider a clients own reasons, but it’s worth asking about the quality of life they currently experience with some of the suggestions above, as realizing the greater impact that the weight is having on their lives could provide that much needed motivation to keep going, even when the pounds are not falling off every week.

By Gemma Bailey
www.gemmabailey.co.uk

And so what if you were that super car, sat in a garage somewhere, knowing that you had the potential to achieve great speeds and travel on amazing journeys?

Perhaps the preparation in this instance would be considering everything you need to do to make your journey smooth. What resources do you need? In what sequence do things need to happen? There’s no point in speeding off before you’ve learned to drive as you might crash. It’s also worth spending some time considering any blocks that may be there and taking some time to remove these.

That point where the fuel is moving around the engine-this is where the real motivation is beginning. This is where it is presupposed that some bigger movement will follow soon. But this first little movement is so important.

Motivation is defined as act, drive or aggravated. The word motivate comes from another word- motion. Another clue is in the word motivated- it actually gives you a clue as to what you need to do to be motivated. Hidden away in the letters is the word move. If you want to be motivated, you must move!

Whenever you want to make progress you must be moving. There are lots of people, like coaches and mentors who will tell you what to do, and possibly how to do it. But unless you move your own ass and do it, the results will be limited.

Ultimately, if you do not take the action required to generate your own progress, no one else will do it for you.

There are a few things you can do to aid the motivation generation process.

Firstly, you should do your best to enjoy the process of progress. Then every stage will feel worthwhile and not just the end result.

Notice what you have already achieved- especially if this has been acknowledged or appreciated. It will make your efforts so far feel more tangible.

Always have a plan for the next stage so that you do not have plateaus. Make contingency plans too. I’m all for positive thinking, but life doesn’t always support that. When a racing driver is preparing for a race, he doesn’t just think positive thoughts about what the ideal race would be like. He also imagines skidding on a rainy day, and as part of his visual rehearsal, practices the action he would need to take in those circumstances to ensure that everything still worked out ok.

As I planned this article, I was sitting with a nine year old child. She asked what I was doing and I explained I was writing an article about lack of motivation, which is a bit like playing stuck in the mud and not being able to move, and not having anyone around to save you. Out of curiosity I asked her what someone in that situation should do. She gave the best advice, so I saved it for last.

She said if you are stuck, you should pick up your feet.

By Gemma Bailey
www.gemmabailey.co.uk

I have around 5 patients at the moment who are all coming to see me because of the anxious state they are in. For 2 of those patients, the anxiety affects them when driving, one has anxiety related to work, another has anxiety related to a medical condition and another has anxiety about travelling.

Often people get confused between the difference between anxiety and panic. I would describe anxiety as a feeling that is bubbling under the surface, a feeling of general unease or worry, usually causing a fluttery feeling in the stomach and an increase in the speed of the heart.

Panic is anxiety accelerated, although it would tend to last for a shorter period of time. During panic, the heart rate increases, the breathing changes and the whole body feels tense. The stomach may become unsettled and the body may become sweaty, cold and clammy.

Sometimes those who experience anxiety will also experience panic and those who experience panic may also experience anxiety. At times the anxiety only exists because of the worry that a panic attack may arrive. This can be particularly troublesome if the panic or worry has been associated to a specific trigger- which may happen consciously or unconsciously (so the patient may be aware that there is a trigger to their panic, or they may not be consciously aware of the trigger.) This can happen when an intense state, such as panic or anxiety is experienced and an association is formed between the bad state and something that is seen, heard, felt, smelt or touched. The feeling and the “trigger” need not have any relationship to each other in order for a correlation to be formed. In NLP we would call this process negative anchoring.

I remember once experiencing a period of anxiety (I wouldn’t ever call it panic attacks- not because it wasn’t, more out of principal. I knew as soon as I labeled it up that way that it would start to cause me real trouble.)

Surprisingly the anxiety issue occurred long after I had learned the power of NLP and hypnosis. So I was a little disappointed to find myself in a situation where I was laying in bed at night wondering when my heart would stop beating so loudly. It was an issue that only affected me at night, after the break up of a relationship. Sometimes it would creep up on me during the day but I was generally too busy during the day to care for it so much. It was in the still and quiet of the night that my mind would become alert and active and as a result my heart would speed up and sound as if it was booming out of my chest.

It was tricky to “NLP” myself in the wee small hours and so I found that the key to overcoming the issue was firstly in adjusting my thinking. When I really looked at my thoughts, I realized I was torturing myself with painful thoughts about the broken relationship. When I began to change my thoughts (and what has always worked for me is to think about becoming brilliant. I think about achieving more and being better than I am now, so that in the future, those that doubted or wronged me in some way will be feeling as if they are really missing out by no longer being around me.) Perhaps I was NLPing myself anyway!

The thing that really sticks in my mind with dealing with the anxiety I was experiencing, is that I just kept telling myself “It’s a phase and this phase will pass.” I didn’t mean the in the moment feeling of being anxious, though the phrasing could apply to that too. I mean more the overall issue of having anxiety in my life at that time. I very much thought, wholeheartedly, of it as something that wouldn’t stick around too long. I told myself it’s a bit like grieving, you feel bad for a while, but after a while, life carries on and you forget to keep feeling bad all the time.

For me, making anxiety temporary was what made the real difference, because it told my mind what my expectations were and that I was always expecting that one day I would get into bed at night and forget completely to worry- which I did. When it cropped back up again a few nights later, I didn’t tell myself “Damn it’s back again.” Instead I told myself that I’d gone without it a few nights already, and therefore had evidence I could go to bed without getting anxious. I also told myself that the anxiety that had returned that night was just a blip, that everyone has blips sometimes and that any day now I’d be missing out on the opportunity to lay here in bed at night, looking at the minutes ticking by on my clock, because I’d soon be getting into bed and nodding straight off to sleep instead.

Perhaps it just naturally disappeared on it’s own, or perhaps I really did manage to convince myself to react differently. What do you think?

Post hypnotic inductions are one of the most commonly used hypnotic phenomena. This is when a suggestion is given whilst in hypnosis to react in a particular way later, when out of hypnosis. Usually this reaction is triggered by a particular stimuli for a more reliable post hypnotic suggestion. I recently worked with a  feuding couple and part of the problem that was happening in their relationship, was that if the wife became upset in some way (but not necessarily because of the husbands behaviour) she would make a certain facial expression. The husband was preconditioned to become defensive and argumentative when he saw her making this expression and would begin to become aggressive in his tone of voice. This would all result in an argument. Since I was working with the husband, I gave him a post hypnotic suggestion to experience a wave of calm overtime he saw the troubled expression on his wife’s face. If he didn’t become aggressive, she wouldn’t respond in the same way and the rowing would never start.

Ideomotor behaviour
When someone is in hypnosis they can practice things in their mind and the physical body may move or respond as they think about it. This is particularly useful if there is something that a person need to rehearse. The physical movements occur as the brain fires off the neural networks related to that part of the body and activates the muscles and nerves. I remember once during a deepening process using the visualisation of a flight of stairs to deepen the trance. The client’s legs were quite twitchy and when I gave the suggestion of a banister begin there for support, she made a very clear grasping motion with her hand. Afterward I mention this to her and she told me that she grabbed the banister as soon as I said it as she had once had an accident on the stairs at home when she was a child.

Time distortion
During hypnosis is it quite natural for a client to experience a speeding up or slowing down of time during the session. This means it can be quite a surprise to them when they later wake and check the real time!
This is a useful phenomena to utilise, as it can be a beneficial skill to develop. A racing driver who whizzes around a track at over 100 miles an hour needs to have a high degree of concentration so that he can make accurate judgments and reactions during the race. Therefore learning the skill of slowing down time in his mind is very beneficial. It means that if for some reason he lost control of his vehicle he would be able to make decisions and reactions in millionths of seconds that could prevent an accident from happening.
It can at times too be a useful skill to speed up time. If someone has experienced a traumatic event and needs to recall details of the event- for example if someone has been involved in an accident and is helping the police with details about how the event occurred, it could be really useful to recall the event at a faster speed so that less opportunity to fully associate to the negative emotions is experienced. Then at the point that some detail needs to be focused upon, time can be slowed down again.

By Gemma Bailey
www.gemmabailey.co.uk

The key thing that strikes me when reading about this subject- and I have not yet decided or discovered how much “truth” there is in it and how scientifically well it stands up. Either way, I love the power and responsibility it offers us in taking greater control of our health, our mind and our emotions.

Dirk Hamer Syndrome came about when Dr R.G Hamer believed he had discovered a link between all cancers and submitted his findings to the University of Tübingen. He viewed disease as a “Special programme of nature.” And that every cancer originates with a DHS (Dirk Hamer Syndrome). A DHS is classed as a very difficult, highly acute, dramatic and isolating shock. Such as the death of a loved one, or the loss of something highly valued in ones life. Dr. R.G Hamer concluded this idea after studying cancer patients, including his own son (Dirk Hamer) who died as a result of the disease.

If the mind-body connection has ever been in question then Dr Hamer’s studies should put those questions to rest. CT scans show the impact on the brain during trauma, and Dr Hamer’s studies then also correlate this impact with actual physical symptoms on correlating areas of the body. For example, someone who has an emotional event that caused them to feel trapped, might experience trauma in the area of the brain related to movement. It’s almost as if the brain creates a metaphor or the symptoms of the negative emotion. Feeling trapped relates to (could be a metaphor for) being stuck, lack of movement and therefore the CT scan will show the trauma occurring in the part of the brain related to movement. The Physical symptoms could then manifest themselves in a part of the body most associated with movement, such as the hips or legs. I’m not necessarily giving you an accurate truth in my example, but you get the idea. What is also interesting in the findings of Dr Hamer, is that if the CT scan pick up trauma on the right hand side of the brain, the physical symptoms will occur somewhere on the left hand side of the body. This of course makes perfect sense, because the left hand side of your brain controls the right hand side of your body, and the right hand side of your brain controls the left hand side of the body.

The beauty of this knowledge is that if we can have such effects on our mind and body as a result of our negative emotions, then we must also have the potential to undo this work by adjusting the way we think and by resolving our significant emotional events and conflicts from the past. Some people almost like to put their lives in the hands of others, and find out if the doctor/new partner/medication/latest diet will help them to repair their sorrows and ailments. Isn’t it amazing to consider that by being in control of our own emotions, experiencing happiness on a more regular basis, and building our own resilience that we can then chose whether to get sick or not.

Lots of the course was made up of content previously at Practitioner and Master Practitioner level, but it was well worth attending just for the snippets of NLP gold that effortlessly fall from Richard Bandlers lips.

I’m also pleased to report that Dr Bandler was looking happier and healthier than he was when I saw him just before Christmas last year. This, he attributes to his new wife who is clearly taking good care of him. Thank goodness I decided to give him a second shot- after last year I thought he was a bit of a grumpy old man, but he was full of mischief and fun at the weekend and shared some very good metaphors and anecdotes from therapy.

I would recommend the advanced NLP training course to anyone who feels they need a refresher of the linguistic elements of their NLP training. However it is also useful to simply reconnect with others who have a similar interest to explore the many different ways each individual interprets and uses NLP.

Throughout the weekend, I wrote limited notes as my linguistics are pretty good and I remember most of the Meta and Milton model off the top of my head. The notes I did take were more key points, or useful phrases.

One such useful phrase was “feel some “Never again.”" Dr Bandler used this with a couple of ladies who were up on the stage, having volunteered when asked if there was some thought that they spent time thinking of each day, that made them feel bad.

Dr Bandler had them both in trance and adjusted the submodalities of the pictures they were creating by shrinking down the image of the old event and flickering from colour to black and white. He also played some silly circus music to get the women into a more giggly resourceful state.

It’s also important to note that before beginning any work with them, he asked them how much time they were spending on the bad thought each day. Then he multiplied that by 10 years and told them how much time they would have wasted- basically it was great leverage. He asked the women what else they could consider doing with the thousands of hours they’d wasted on feeling bad. (Gets them planning for the future and in a more resourceful state.)

Then towards the end of his work with them, he asked them to feel some “never again.” Never again is the feeling that explains the saying “the grain of straw that broke the camels back.” It’s the feeling you had when you realised that you were too old to have hangovers anymore and so you would no longer mix your drinks on a night out. It’s the feeling you have after being treated badly and suddenly decide to walk away or face up to what ever it is that you have been allowing yourself to feel bad about.

Then when you tap into that feeling, you can apply it to whatever problem you want to stop spending your time and energy on. Voila! Problem solved- What problem?

I’ve been working on People Building for almost 4 years now and it has been the most rewarding, difficult, lovable headache I have ever had! I have learned so much and going through this process has changed me as a person- I hope in better ways.

People often ask me if I have Kids. I say “No, I have a business.” People Building has been my baby. It’s now finally starting to grow up.

I’ve been on lots of missions with PB. Firstly to create NLP and Hypnotherapy training courses, and teach them. I did that. Then to create audios and scripts and sell them. I did that. Then to create an interactive environment where people can gain access to information. I did that. Then to have a successful podcast reaching hundreds of thousands of people. I did that too.

I love goals. I love setting them and achieving them and now and again changing my mind.

A few weeks ago, I posted a message on facebook saying I would be quitting my work. This is true. Things will be coming to an end.

It’s a pain that just as I was about to give the details, our podcast publisher went off radar, and I’ve left a lot of people hanging, wondering what is going on! There will be a podcast explaining what will be happening next. You’ll have to find it on itunes or on the PB website to get the details as I’m moving to a new podcast publisher. It will be the show in question will be dated 7/4/10.

The fact that I’m quitting is not as straight forward as you may have assumed. There are things I need to explain about my resignation. I know that in the past I haven’t told you everything that there is to know about how much work I am putting in. And it’s time to be honest.

Before I gave notice the other day, I felt very, very tired. You see I’ve been working too much and too hard. I’ve had too much on. And suddenly the opportunity to put a stop to it presented itself. I bit the bullet, and I said “I need to think about moving on.” I knew as soon as I’d said it that there was no going back, and at once I felt sad, as if I was saying goodbye to some dear old friends.

Lots of bewildered messages appeared on facebook. One lady sent me a private email saying “You can’t quit- You’re the reason I became a hypnotherapist!”

Gradually, for me the news is sinking in, preparations for my exit have already begun, a replacement has been found and I’m thinking about what I will do next and how I will cope with the gap in my life. Maybe I’ll take more holidays or find a boyfriend!

Quitting your job always comes with some strong emotions. I’m even in touch with those emotions as I write, the main ones are relief and happiness.

So if you haven’t gotten onto the podcast before, there’s never been a better reason to do so. I need to explain what will be happing to People Building and why I’m going to be quitting work.

By Gemma Bailey.
www.gemmabailey.co.uk

Bullies show up in many different contexts, in schools, families, the workplace and even in our peer groups. I’d like to give you the good news that Tony Blair was wrong, that it is easier than he made out, that it doesn’t really have to take that much to stand up to a bully- but it does. He was right. It does take a lot to stand up to a bully. It is by far easier to just let them walk all over you and push you around. It is easier to do that than to confront them or argue or disagree with them. Of course it is. If it was simple to tell a bully shove off and stop being such a narcissist, people would have done it already. They’d have already broken the bullying pattern.

When I was a nanny back in the mid 1990′s I was part of a nanny group, a circle of friends who all worked in similar jobs, and we used to get together as a group and have lunch or go out for dinner. Whenever it was someone’s birthday, we’d all chip in £10 and stick it in a birthday card for them.

There was a girl in our nanny group who I didn’t really click with. She always had some crude opinion and somehow seemed to always command a room and have everyone listening to her and running around after her. Yet when she’d gone, people would breath a sigh of relief and say how demanding she was and that she had a bad attitude. I felt totally intimidated by her and I frequently became the butt of her jokes.

When it came to her birthday, we did the usually meal out and everyone popped £10 into her birthday card. However, I was away on holiday whilst this was going on, and when I turned up to the birthday meal the birthday card had been sealed with the money already inside. So I thought I’d wait until I had some change in my purse and would give her the money then. Luckily, someone had signed the card for me before it was sealed, so all I had to do was add to the birthday fund.

As we sat and waited for the dinner to come over, she opened her birthday card and out feel all the money. She was sitting directly opposite me at the table so I had a good view of her. I watched her count the money from the card, then count the number of names in the card. Then she turned to her side kick sitting next to her and said “There are 10 names in my birthday card, but only £90. That means that someone has signed the card without putting in any money- who the hell was that?”

A little voice in my head piped up “Say something Gemma. She is talking about you. This is your chance to have your say and show her what a spoilt ungrateful cow she is. SAY SOMETHING! Yes, she will kick off, but you have a chance here to STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!”

So I cleared my throat and said “Excuse me Anna, I just heard what you said.”
She looked right at me and said “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I said “I just heard you say that you’ve counted the money and you’ve counted the names and they don’t match up. I’d like you to know that’s because I haven’t put any money in for you. I’d intended on doing it later as I didn’t have any change and the envelope was already sealed.”
She went red, seriously red like a very ripe tomato.
“You misheard me, I didn’t say that.”
(Little voice in head is thinking “Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t you’ve got to keep running with this now!”)
“Anna, I’m sitting directly in front of you, I heard you perfectly well thank you. I heard you and I saw you saying it.”
By this stage, the entire table was looking at the colour of Anna who was going closer to purple now, and then looking at me. I could tell that in their heads they were all thinking “Shut up Gemma! What the hell are you doing?”
I reached into my purse, and having bought a drink at the bar, had a £10 note ready for her. “Here you go, take it. Now the money matches the number of names in the card- but of course it’s the though that counts.”
She was dumb struck, absolutely taken aback. “No it’s fine…. I didn’t say that…. I don’t want it.” And she handed me back the money.
“But Anna, you and I both know, you did say it. Take it, really. You deserve it. Happy Birthday.”And I handed the money back at her in a “don’t mess with me” kind of way.
The mistake I’d made was that this was all before we’d had the main course. I had to eat 3 courses of food with my heart in my mouth watching her face turn purple every time I made eye contact with her.

Everyone new she was a bully, and everyone tipped toed around her because they’d rather be gossiped to, than gossiped about by her. I was talked about a lot for a long time after that event. It was over 15 years ago now, and I don’t see those girls much at all now. But when I do, they ALWAYS talk about the time I stood up to Anna.

The relationship between me and Anna changed dramatically after that day. She ranted about me no end, far more than she had prior to the events at her birthday meal. The difference was I couldn’t give a flying fig. I’d said my bit and in saying it had really told her “Don’t mess with me.” If I’d still been in the “victim” state, it would have been a far, far worse situation than it had been before. Now she was saying terrible things about me to the rest of the group, she would hold parties and not invite me. But I didn’t care. I’d said my bit, I’d outted her as the selfish toad that she was. I wasn’t a victim anymore and that meant she could no longer be my bully. She tried, but it just didn’t achieve the desired effect.

And the thing that irritated her most, was that I just wouldn’t take the bait. She’d say awful things about me and after that night at her birthday meal, but I’d made a pact with myself to be the most gracious that I could be. That really irritated her. Then she was only bullying herself since she was the cause and the only victim of her anger/frustration/hate.

Unfortunately I can’t remember where I heard it, so credit where credit is due, but I once heard this great explanation of how to deal with someone else’s anger and bitterness:

If I gave you a pencil as a gift, handed it to you and you took it from me. Who owns the pencil? You do.

Now if that pencil was my anger, and I wanted to give you a piece of that anger as a gift, and you sat there and took it from me, who has the crappy feeling? You do.

If you don’t want someone’s pencil (gift of anger/rudeness/sarcastic comments) you simply don’t take it. You say “No thanks, you can keep it.”

I know that this doesn’t deal with the everyday scenarios you may find yourself in, but these are all context dependant and so need individual consideration. Of course in all cases you would think about your physiology and tone of voice in response to your bully- ensuring that you seem as calm and centred as possible (unlike I was in my situation with Anna.)

The good thing is, when you start to let yourself get comfortable with saying “No thanks, I don’t want your bad feeling. Keep it.” People start to react very differently towards you in the future. You send out a new transmission in the presence that you have, that subtly tells people “Don’t even bother trying to pick on me. I won’t react in the way you hope. It will be a waste of your time.” A new boundary is installed in your persona, and the bullies will no longer find you entertaining.

By Gemma Bailey
www.gemmabailey.co.uk