31 Jan Relationship with Self and Others

BLOCKS that get in the way of preferred relationships with SELF and Others

Some examples:

INJURIOUS (Harmful) CONVERSATIONAL HABITS

1. self-surveillance/audience
   • A step towards undoing these debilitating internalised conversations is to begin NOTICING THE TALK, CONTENT, and EFFECTS OF THE DIALOGUE
   • In order for a problem to survive and be very successful it must recruit a dialogic (conversational) audience of support.
   • The habit of self-surveillance/audience make us believe that we are psychic – that we know another’s -ve thoughts about us (I think that you think that I think that you think that I am a bad person) without actually speaking to them.
2. illegitimacy
   Experiences of less-than-worthy citizens, parents, children, workers, partners etc Persons who feel illegitimate, unworthy, and fraudulent: The child who has been violated sexually, the employee who feels left out; the gay person who is forced to hide his/her identity; new mother who sees herself as selfish; the shy person who is afraid to speak,
   • The habit of illegitimacy speaks to a person’s experience of feeling a lack of connection, visibility and belonging in their everyday life
   • The injurious (harmful) speech act of the habit does not make available to that person the many reasons WHY they may feel this sense of anomie (miss-fit) (commonly due to various practices of living or aspects of life that stands outside of the cultural dominant social norms)
   • The habitual internalised problem conversation is one of blame which condemns this person for being a ‘loser in their own life’
   • Considering asking questions about the dominant taken for granted ideas of
   • Who is considered up/down, in/out, normal/abnormal
   • Connect the illegitimacy experiences of individuals to much larger sets of cultural (often punitive) values
   • Stand up to oppressive conversations that hold individuals exclusively accountable for their sense of rejection and social isolation
3. negative imagination/invidious comparison
4. internalised bickering
5. hopelessness
6. perfection
7. paralysing guilt
8. escalating fear

Please contact Angela Ranallo if you wish to know more

(Reference: Stephen Madigan – International Journal of Narrative Therapy & Community Work 2003, pages 43-59)