1. No 08/15 method seminar with powerpoint, tips and role plays in a large group.
Instead, only 6 attendees, 20% information and 80% individual work on solving your problem.
2. No time wasted on psychobabble or old-fashioned info on the topic.
Instead, a completely different approach to your problem.
3. Not a cuddle seminar that you can comfortably consume.
Instead, intensive exercises and strenuous mental work that will stir you up and keep you busy longer.
4. No room for theory debates, profiling battles or talk show blah-blah.
Instead, a very personal atmosphere of acceptance, openness and humor.
5. No lavish break buffet with fifteen types of tea and sandwiches.
Instead, coffee, tea, water. Lunch together in the restaurant.
6. Not a seminar where you don’t know afterwards what you can do differently now.
Instead, self-assigned transfer tasks, study groups, and phone coaching by me if desired.
7. Not a big group, in which some present themselves and the others remain silent.
But a small group in which you sense that the others are also struggling with themselves and gradually opening up.
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With over 1.000 articles and 400 podcasts from 15 years. – From Roland Kopp-Wichmann. But beware: reading can touch your heart, open your eyes and influence your life.
"E gal whether at a party or in the office. I am overlooked everywhere. But the others don’t do it on purpose when I talk to them about it. It feels like I’m radiating something that I don’t matter. In any case not as important as others. Can you help me?"
This mail from Carla S. was the first contact. Since she wrote to me that she has a disabled brother, I immediately thought of one Hypothesis about their life theme in mind, and I answered her with a suggestion for an appointment.
Six weeks later she was in my office. About 1.80 m tall, attractive, 39 years old. So at first glance, not an unassuming wallflower who likes to get overlooked.
"I’m good at my job but I’m not getting anywhere career-wise. I’m neither offered a promotion nor a pay raise. Other colleagues make a lot of noise and are naturally given preference. Dt was already in the school so. When I was standing there in a group with others and didn’t talk much, it always happened that someone would be grumbling about me or asking the others where I had got to. And this, although I was standing right next to him! That was already really spooky, as if I were a ghost.
In my Job as a team leader it happens every now and then that a customer enters the room and has a question. The one looks then in the round and goes to someone of which he believes that he/she can help him/her further. The interesting thing is: They never approach me. my employees are sometimes embarrassed that they have to point out to the customer that I am in charge.
A coach once advised me that I should work on my Body language work and here especially me some Dominance gestures acquire. But I find this ridiculous. To be more precise, I can’t stand those "oops-now-I’m-coming types". These are profile neurotics for me. I rather believe that true achievement always prevails, even without klamauk."
It is a well-known fact that people do not always notice everything.
Especially when we are intensely occupied with one thing, we often don’t notice that something has just totally changed. In this video about a famous perception attempt, the helpful person who is explaining the way to a passer-by does not notice that the passer-by is suddenly someone completely different ..
At first I had the assumption that my client was a narcissistic princess theme could have. In other words, she believed she didn’t have to ask for a raise – like other employees – and naively believed that good performance paid for itself.
But she had written to me in advance that she had a handicapped brother and I preferred to follow this lead.
"What was it like with your disabled brother back then??", I asked Carla S.
"Beautiful and terrible", she answered. "The nice thing was that because he is a very sweet person, we had close contact with each other from a very early age. I was four years old when he was born and there are photos of us driving him around in his special wheelchair because he was spastic since birth."
"And what was the terrible thing?"
"That it was a full-time job for my parents. Everything naturally revolved around him because he needed help with everything. He had great difficulty speaking, swallowing and all purposeful movements."
"That means your parents had little time or nerve to take care of them, too?", I asked.
"That’s how it was, unfortunately. Rather still cared for sometimes. Took over cooking after school when I saw my mother still in her pajamas taking care of my brother when I got home at one o’clock."
Those who had a sibling who was ill or disabled in their childhood usually carry a special burden. It doesn’t matter what type of illness or disability it is. The burden of the special family situation is always similar.
From doctors and therapists often only the parents get talk and help offers. But especially siblings as the closest caregivers are also affected. Studies show that two out of three people struggle with mental health issues when their brother or sister has a mental illness. Often they have trouble sleeping, are exhausted or have depressive moods.
In addition, violent, very ambivalent Emotional storms Of grief, helplessness, love and the need for great distance. Of affection, guilt, despair, hopelessness, disappointment or fear.
About the topic "Overlooked Siblings" Jana Hauschild, whose brother suffered from a Boderline disorder, has written a book. In the blurb Life theme of these people well summarized:
Order here.
"They usually only play second fiddle: Siblings of mentally ill people are often left alone with their needs and successes, their worries and fears. Some for a lifetime. They are the born functionaries, sun children, mediators between parents and siblings.
The relationship with their ill sibling is complex – sometimes they have a strong protective instinct, sometimes they harbor grief. Some have been made strong by the responsibility, others feel robbed of their childhood years.
Jana Hauschild gives adult siblings a voice. With great empathy, the psychologist describes life stories, traces the feelings of the overlooked and accompanies them on their way to themselves."
Image: LightFieldStudios – iStock.com
Overlooked siblings have to grow up too soon.Enormous efforts have been made for the integration of disabled people in the last decades. But there is one family member in families with a disabled child who is often overlooked: the non-disabled, "healthy" child. These people are sometimes particularly at risk.
By Increased attention, which is naturally given to the handicapped or sick child When the siblings are confronted with their own problems, they tend to neglect or trivialize them. Overlooked siblings are often to easy to care for. Because of the burden of the disabled child on the parents, these siblings usually try to hide their problems. Trying hard to be extra good or extra good at school.
In some cases, siblings become Additional Parents, who feel overly responsible for themselves and their siblings. They develop an early sense of who needs what and forget that they are still children themselves. This strong assumption of responsibility may be welcome to some parents because of their own overload, but is fatal for the sibling who feels overlooked. Because it reinforces the feeling of being indispensable.
Parents often neglect overlooked siblings.
The family is naturally focused on the sick or disabled child. His or her complaints, needs and desires are paramount. But the time spent on medical and therapeutic appointments for the "problem child" is not available for the parents to spend with the other siblings.
This causes them to feel neglected over and over again. In addition to time, this also applies to the emotional energy of the parents for the disabled child, which is not available for the other siblings.
Overlooked siblings are often alone with their uncomfortable feelings.
Because of the special situation, the "healthy" siblings often experience difficult emotional states:
- They can guilty feel. Either because they wonder if they caused their sibling’s disability. Or feel guilty for not being disabled or "normal".
- You can Fear of the disability or illness isiblings or what might happen to their siblings in the future.
- They may also feel resentment, Anger or jealousy Develop toward their siblings, considering the attention and resources spent on their siblings.
- They may embarrassed or ashamed feel affected by the behavior and appearance of their siblings. In some cases, the embarrassment may be so great that they distance themselves from the sibling with the disability.
- They may try to block out the whole issue by not inviting friends home so they don’t have to answer questions about their sibling.
Help for those affected is offered by this Network for siblings of mentally ill people.
Image: Zinkevych – iStock.com
However, overlooked siblings also develop special abilities.
As children, we all develop working strategies to cope with life. These strategies are formed in our daily interactions with the people we deal with every day: Parents, siblings, schoolmates, girlfriends, etc.
If one has to deal with the fate of a sick or disabled sibling on a daily basis during childhood, these are special skills. This includes Self-control, cooperation, empathy, tolerance, altruism, maturity and responsibility By dealing with the family situation. Also strong Loyalty and a protective attitude towards their siblings these people have developed at an early age.
Their early commitment to their siblings may even lead them to choose a career in a social or helping field to choose.
Back to my client.
My 3-h coaching Is based on the assumption that personal problems that previously seemed unsolvable may be related to a life issue. These life themes usually develop in the first ten to twelve years of life, in which we learn how we have to be and how we can act in order to achieve our goals.
These life issues can show up professionally or personally, sometimes in both areas. They are always stressful ways of thinking and behaving that you know won’t get you anywhere – but you can’t easily change them either. Find out more here ..
Since the life issues are unconscious, thinking about them doesn’t get to the bottom of them. It usually takes the trained eye of an outside professional who knows the ropes. And then it’s still important not to just tell the life issue to the person, because that wouldn’t do anything except for a reaction like "Interesting idea."
It takes a strong emotional response for the person to really experience that this is their issue.
For this I use a Technique, where I have the client say a positive true sentence in a mindful state, the opposite of the assumed life theme expresses.
For example, I have someone with a narcissistic issue who thinks and lives as if they are special say the phrase: "I am a very normal person." Every outsider will confirm that this sentence is true for everyone. But a narcissist experiences a violent emotional reaction when he hears the sentence or says it himself. And that shows him – and me – that this is probably the theme of life.
Image: Fizkes, iStock.com
Why experiments in mindfulness are important.
In the case of Carla S. I had a hypothesis that she was "overlooked" so often as a child, and concluded that she really didn’t matter. Such early beliefs can become fixed in the unconscious as reality. Tragically, we live and defend our early beliefs even when they are painful or detrimental. They are simply true – even if partners and good friends try to convince us again and again of the opposite.
The strategies are also so stable because they also always have a secret use, a function.
But these strategies also have a major drawback. Narrowing down the personal range of behavior. You can tell by the fact that you know what you would like to do or should do – but not an inner permission feel for it.
As far as the rational explanation. But there is no point in telling that to the client. She needs to experience emotionally what inner permission she is missing. For this I do Experiments in mindfulness. I asked her to make herself comfortable in her armchair, close her eyes and concentrate on her inner reactions.
Then I said to her:
"I ask you to say the sentence: "I am here.""
To an outside observer, yes, this is a perfectly normal sentence that almost anyone could say. A mere statement, a fact. But the reaction of Carla S., was – as I expected – quite different.
Before she had even said the sentence, she wrenched her eyes open and looked at me, startled. Then she said:
"I know from my head that this is a normal sentence, but even when I heard it, I got scared. But I do not understand why."
When you work with the unconscious, and you can only get to the most important imprints that way, thinking about it doesn’t help. Instead, we need information that comes not from thinking, but from the vast storehouse of memories, skills, and experiences stored in the unconscious mind.
The technique for this is already very old. Sigmund Freud called them "free association". So mindfully observe what comes to mind. What one remembers or just has to think about. Maybe it’s a picture, a memory, or a song line. It can be anything. The only important thing is to allow spontaneous emergence and not immediately censor it with thoughts like:
- "It certainly has nothing to do with that."
- "That’s complete nonsense."
- "Maybe I’m just imagining it."
Therefore, I asked the client: "What kind of fear is this? How does it feel?"
Carla S. Was still under the influence of the emotion and only whispered: "A very big fear."
I became curious: "Why are you whispering all of a sudden?"
Her eyes widened a bit more: "Nobody may hear us."
In further exploring her panicked response to the phrase "I am here" she recalled that as a child, her grandmother had once told her how they were sitting in the air-raid shelter with neighbors and she had to cover her daughter’s mouth, who was four years old at the time, because she was crying so loudly from fear.
I have written about the transgenerational transmission of traumatic situations here on the blog many times before. Here a good Article about it from Deutschlandfunk.
With my client, I didn’t want to rule that out but my gut told me that her fear of drawing attention to herself had more to do with the family of origin situation.
"Doesn’t it make you angry if you are overlooked or ignored today??", I wanted to know.
"Angry?", asked Carla S. with wide eyes. "No, it doesn’t make me angry, rather sad."
If one is hurt physically or psychologically by another person, and if it is not cleared up immediately, the hurt person gradually freezes his or her life energy. It turns into anger or sadness.
If anger is not expressed or resolved appropriately, this energy accumulates.
- Then at some point there is an outburst of rage that no one can really explain because the occasion lies far in the past.
- Or the person directs Anger against herself The person who is overlooking me feels weakened by the energy buildup and may eventually become ill.
I suspected that my client was enormously angry at her parents and her sick brother, but had learned early on to suppress that anger, because parents and brother couldn’t help the situation being so difficult.
And I suspected that her anger had turned into fear. And this hypothesis I wanted to test again together with her. For this I have in my practice Bataca bat made of foam with a firm grip. You can hit hard with it, but nothing happens.
Therefore I put a chair in front of her and asked her to hit the seat of the chair with the bataca.
"What good is that going to do?", she asked in astonishment.
"Let’s see what it does", I replied.
The first few times she gently touched the seat with the bat. I asked her to hit harder.
"I can’t do that!", was their reaction.
"You can already, it’s just unusual for you", I encouraged her.
After a few tentative attempts, I said: "Take a real swing with the bat and hit it with all your might!"
Working with repressed emotions is sometimes the only way to make a difference. I wanted the client to experience that today she made herself "invisible" in many situations, because until now she had not dared to feel the disappointment and anger of being "overlooked" as a child in the family.
Of course, clients are afraid of admitting strong repressed feelings. Although it was only a chair and a foam bat had Carla S. at first fear to strike.
- Actually, clients are afraid of their own anger in these moments.
- They believe that once the lid is off, they can no longer stop or regulate their anger.
- They fear that they might become a "spree killer".
In the meantime Carla S. came into contact with her anger. She hit the chair more and more violently. She almost seemed to like it a bit, at least the fear was gone. Then I suggested to her:
"Why don’t you call out "I’m here" with every hit?!"
When the client did that, more feelings came up in her. She screamed in tears:
- "I am here.
- Damn, I am here too!!
- Look, I’m still here too!"
This went on for about five minutes. Fortunately, I was alone in the office that day and had taken the precaution of closing the windows. & The hitting and yelling continued for a few more minutes until Carla S. Had no more strength and air. Her face glowed – and radiated.
"How are you?" I asked.
"From today no one will overlook me anymore!", she answered laughing.
"You have to leave the bat here though", I said.
"I don’t need him anymore either", the client replied.
After four months I got an email from her. The three hours of coaching would have done more than two years of talk therapy. With the sentence "From today no one will overlook me anymore!" inside she had a conversation with her boss a week later. There, she said, she not only got a raise, but there was also talk of a possible promotion. And the other day when she entered a restaurant with her group of girls, she was the first to be approached by the waiter.
"How can it be that I am suddenly perceived?" she asked in the mail.
"I think you have broken the spell", I wrote back.
More case stories from my coaching practice can be found here:
PS: All case stories are real, but distorted in such a way that it is not possible to draw conclusions about my clients and confidentiality is maintained.
Do you also have a problem that you have not been able to solve yet??
Then book in too 3-h coaching or come to my seminar "Clarify life issues". Only 6 participants, 2 1/2 days, 1 coach. We find the solution where you have never looked before. Promised!
Are you a coach or do you work intensively with people and want to learn to coach like that?
Then read here ..