Laceys Solicitors, Bournemouth,
TAKING CHILD CONSULTATION TO A NEW    LEVEL BY PILOTING THE MYE PROGRAMME 

            Kenneth Clarke

               Lawyer Mediator

            Child consultation is an established feature of the child-focussed model of mediation practised by Laceys Mediation. Too often the voice of the child is but a faint whisper in the heated battle of parental conflict. Fortunately the Family Justice Review has pledged to give children a greater say in decisions about their future. This is belated yet welcome recognition that children are individuals with rights, rather than just objects of concern or merely the subjects of a decision-making process that often leaves them feeling alienated.

All our mediators have undertaken thorough child consultation training, and offer a supportive role to children where their parents are in conflict about their future arrangements. Furthermore children are empowered by their participation in the mediation process. By being able to talk in a safe and neutral environment they feel listened to and understood, and are more able to discuss their fears, concerns, wishes and feelings.

In an exciting development Laceys are taking this level of support to a whole new level by piloting the MYE programme as part of the child consultation process in appropriate cases.

MYE stands for Managing Your Emotions, and is an interactive programme that helps children identify and label uncomfortable and often painful emotions. This is a crucial step in helping children understand their feelings at a very difficult time for them. MYE will help a child focus on what they can do to start to feel better. They will gain insight into what their emotions are trying to tell them, and what they can do to work with rather than against these emotions. This is far healthier than the child suppressing his or emotions, as this can often lead to a range of psychological problems and physical symptoms.

Chris and Christina Hunt invented and developed the MYE programme. Chris is a trained Psychotherapist. His publications, Drama Handbook and Drama Complete Scheme At Work have been used in over one thousand primary and secondary schools. Christina spent many years working in education as a Special Needs Teacher, and is a qualified Cognitive Behaviour Therapist.

How does MYE work?

q  The child completes an online questionnaire, which generates an instant, personalised and confidential report. The report indicates their current dominant behaviour

q  They read the report and if they decide that they want to change the way they feel, they press the I want to change button. This in itself is a very positive and powerful statement for any child. The child is provided with its own instant online personal action plan.

q  The plan involves the child working from the computer and completing a personal MYE journal.

q  After one week the child receives an invitation by e-mail to complete a follow-up questionnaire. This triggers a new report, showing the child’s progress and the impact on their emotions and behaviour.

q  Finally, the child receives a “sticky situations” sheet, which contains real examples of what they can do in the future if they have difficulties.

The MYE programme is aimed at children experiencing anxiety, low mood or stress. It is a unique, uncomplicated child-friendly tool offering online emotional help for children.

We think the MYE programme will benefit children whose parents are engaged in a high level of parental conflict, or where there is poor parental communication. Often the children we see in these situations are already experiencing significant distress and are extremely unhappy at being caught in the middle of mum and dad’s battles.

The addition of the MYE programme in appropriately identified cases will, we believe, provide an additional and invaluable tool to help children make sense of the fractured world they are living in. MYE will help them develop the confidence to make their voice heard. Parents will also benefit from MYE, because when parents start to listen to their children they will be taking the first steps to reduce their conflict, improve their communication, and learn to parent co-operatively rather than destructively

E - Motion

Medical Dictionary

emotion  e·mo·tion (ĭ-mō'shən) 
n. 
 An intense mental state that arises subjectively rather than through conscious effort and is often accompanied by physiological changes.

Having just attended an Anthony Robbins Seminar about changing your emotional state I felt the need to share some of the insights about what he had to say about emotions and to add my own pennies worth to boot.

Mr Robbins believes that we only want 'things' in our lives because it will make us feel a certain way. For example; a new car will make you feel excited and proud; a new relationship will make you feel excited, happy, loveable, passionate. All we really want is 'feelings/emotions' and that we can create or change our own feelings at will.

Mr Robbins asserts that the body can teach the mind what to feel and changing the way your body moves  will change the emotion you are feeling. So if you are feeling depressed your body will reflect this by sloping shoulders, shallow breathing, eyes focused downwards and maybe even a need for inactivity. If you change this and pull your shoulders back, breath deeply, look upwards and become active you will change your emotional state.

Well, I do believe that your body quite literally reads your mind. Many illnesses can be sourced to repressed emotions. Essentially emotions are energy, and energy wants to move freely and easily. If we repress this energy it doesn't just simply disappear. At some point it will move to the weakest point in your body and appear as an illness or make that part of the body even weaker than before.

At Manage Your Emotions we believe that 'Emotions are action giving transmitters.' They mostly want you 'to do' something or not do something to make your life balanced.  In order to allow your emotions to flow through your body you need to firstly acknowledge them,  understand their message and then take action (move) to do what ever it is you need to do with that message. Making bodily movements will allow you to help the emotions to flow through you rather than remain stuck within you. 

I feel that Mr Robbins certainly has a very good method of changing how you are feeling in the here and now. However, this method may be a 'plaster on the wound' way of treating your emotions. In other words, changing the movement of your body will allow for a shift in the emotions, but the emotions you are probably trying to shift will be the dark uncomfortable ones which usually have the most urgent of messages for you. If they go unacknowledged they will come back again and again in many various ways until you listen to even the smallest part of the message. I would ask people first to acknowledge 'how' you are feeling and understand why you are feeling this way, then make the change in body movements. This will then be a concious act, a way of transforming that energy into action. That way you will feel more comfortable for longer and the painful emotion won't have the need to come back and send you the same message again, again and again.

STICKY EMOTIONS

This is our new way of describing how our emotions can become 'stuck' for children. Our emotions were designed to flow through us, carrying with them messages to help us to live a balanced life. However, many of us have not learnt how to listen to our emotions, especially the painful uncomfortable ones and so we try to repress or bury them. This causes our emotions to become stuck in a loop, resulting in our behaviour also becoming 'stuck'.

To release our sticky emotions all we have to do is to be truthful with ourselves about how we are feeling and to 'listen' to the messages of our emotions.Then they feel they have done their job and will leave us. Easier said than done you say! You are right. It takes practice and a desire to change behaviour.

To find out if you have any sticky emotions go to our programme www.myenow.com

Why Do We Apologize for Being Emotional?

Yesterday I heard someone say to a loved one 'I am sorry for being so emotional, I will be okay tomorrow.'
I wanted to say, 'So tomorrow you will not be a human being, but become some alien who has no feelings at all?'

We have learnt to hide our true emotions not only to others but more importantly to ourselves. When someone asks us how we are we will say that we are fine, ok or good which can mean just about anything. We also use the word 'stress' to cover a multitude of feelings which seems to have a common understanding with everyone; 'He is just a bit stressed at the moment.' But what emotions are involved with being stressful, fine, ok or good? How are you really feeling and why wouldn't you think someone else would be interested in the way you feel right now? After all, we all have the capability of feeling all of the same emotions.

It could be that we are in a habit of just using a certain number of words to describe how we feel - happy, sad, angry, calm etc. Maybe we need to increase our emotional vocabulary to help us describe how we are feeling. It would be incredibly useful for our children to learn an expanded emotional vocabulary list.

The emotional revolution requires us to accept that as human beings we are emotional. Our emotions help to drive our behaviour so therefore are important to us all. Being honest with ourselves is the first step towards earning how to acknowledge and accept our feelings. 

GP Practices

We are proud to announce that there are currently nine GP Practices in the South of England participating in the MYE Programme. The feedback we have received from the doctors have been excellent. It seems that the programme is proving to be very effective.

Loving Someone Who Isn't Good At Loving

People who love someone who isn't good at loving can find themselves in an emotional trap. They try so hard to 'change' or 'rescue' their partner by making all manner of emotional self-sacrifices.

Unfortunately, this only succeeds in stifling their own happiness. People who are trying to 'awaken the love' in their partner usually focus on constantly pleasing the other person. This can stifle aspects of themselves which the other criticise such as: passion, fun, spontaneity, ambition.

Another rescuing trait is to be 'over-cheerful' to make up for the lack of joy in the partner or relationship. Sometimes this results in parents relying on their children for emotional joy and support, which is lacking in their marriage. Yet all this tends to bring more an more disappointment as nothing ever changes. The golden rule to remember is 'just because you love someone it does not mean you are responsible for their happiness. We are responsible for our own happiness'.


This is rule does not mean that you have to stop doing lovely things for people because you like to make them smile and feel better. The rule is about 'responsibility' or as I prefer to think about it as two words; respond - ability. We all have the ability to respond to people in various circumstances, but it is always our choice how we respond. You can keep responding the way you all-ways do and the chances are you nothing will ever change for you in the relationship.

Changing your behaviour requires you acknowledging and accepting how you are behaving at this time. Which is why the Mye Programe (Manage Your Emotions Programme) is great at helping you to discover how you are behaving at this time. What is   also important is looking at the emotions which drive that behaviour. Once you have understood why you do what you do, you can then make a choice to change. The Mye Programme, can do just that ! Visit the website to find out more www.myenow.com

Do you feel like a prisoner wanting to escape? 

Escaper Behaviour is one of the behaviours in the Manage Your Emotions Programme. As an 'Escaper' you feel that you would love to be able to escape from certain situations, from people or even from yourself!

What Escaper Behaviour is;

You feel as though you need to escape from your situation or from certain feelings.
You may feel that you have no choice other than to see things through to the bitter end.
There may be times when you feel you don’t belong anywhere.
You may find ways of escaping through various ways. These might include; over eating, drinking, smoking, having affairs, gambling, taking drugs, obsession with sex, over working, compulsive reading, excessive need to be out of the house, avoidance of certain people or places, avoiding confrontations or creating confrontations, excessive fantasising or day dreaming.
You may feel the need to be in control, because you feel so out of control.
You may not have much patience with yourself or with other people.
You may feel exhausted most of the time.
You may not feel you have the ability to make yourself ‘safe.’
You may not really like yourself.


Understanding Your Escaper Behaviour 

All your emotions are trying to help you. Escaper Behaviour is very common. All of us need to ‘escape’ at times in our lives. However, if Escaper Behaviour is a dominant way of behaving then it may cause distress. It can lead to many different kinds of avoidance which if left unattended can undermine and affect lives.

Escaper Behaviour hides very important emotions
These are: Fear, Anger, Shame and Sadness

It would be helpful for you to understand each of the emotions which are probably ‘stuck’ under your Escaper Behaviour. Emotions often work in groups: your Sadness is connected to your Anger.

Changing
It will take some effort to make incremental changes your Escaper Behaviour. Perhaps it is the way you have always behaved and it makes you feel ‘safe’. Remember, no one can change you, except you. Moving away from Escaping behaviour means that you can confront increasingly difficult obstacles in an honest and self empowering.

If you are an 'Escaper' please go to www.myenow.com and take the programme to start making the necessary changes to your life now.