What do you think about when you have toothache?

Please consider that question before we move on?

I was in Bradford recently. Facilitating a team of workers who are on the frontline
and facing difficult behaviour and aggression daily. Yet they love the young people they work with.

Those who had been excluded from school, little response, little change and little sign of hope. Still each of the group yearned to be of developmental assistance to them.

I asked them that question:

'When you have toothache, what do you think about?'
No pause.
An immediate answer from one worker
as we all stood in the circle -
"Toothache"
was the answer.

If we have toothache we struggle to concentrate on anything else.
Restless as a wolf - we feel like the cheese is falling off our cracker. Nothing else really matters.

We can see a person's behaviour but we cannot see their experience.
We can be so preoccupied by their behaviour that we don't see
beyond behaviour.

Difficult behaviour can get under our skin.
Feelings rise within us.
As emotionally intelligent as we may be the feelings we have stimulate us, sometimes, to make a regrettable response.

This is applicable in the staff room, the classroom, the team meeting, the prison, the street, the office, at home, and certainly not only when we are transacting with humans with special needs.

The way I work on awareness and skill development is by using Experiential Exercises including Blob Tree Tools.

The objectives are:

•          Become more aware of our own feelings.
•          Becoming more able to get into contact with them.
•          Develop emotional literacy by being able to give each a feeling name.

So there in Bradford we throw the Blob Feelings Ball around the circle.
'Motion changes emotion' I say.

An activity, doing, is the best way to learn - to practise.
So the ball is thrown around the circle, the miss-catching it is part of the-bouncing-around fun as the ball creates smiles as humans live in expectancy as to who will receive the ball next.

The Blob figure nearest your right thumb -
'what does that Blob feel like?' I ask.
I ban the use of 'happy or sad' as all feelings can be tossed in those headings.
So minds are stretched - everyone engaging in the struggle to articulate.
Even seasoned professionals struggle to find the appropriate word.

I often ask more questions as 'right thumbs' develop their literacy.
'Describe a young person you know who feels like that?'

'When one of your youngsters feels like that, what behaviour does it drive?'

When a group is ready - the questions may become deeper and more personal-
'When did you last feel like that?'

Awareness always precedes skill.
By becoming aware of our own emotional literacy, or lack of, we can then be more sensitive to the feelings of others. More importantly, we can begin to see beyond behaviour to be more in touch with a person's toothache.

Next time I will click about working with special needs groups. I want to share some methods of how I engage them with the crisp objective of making available more tools for their life toolbox.

- Pip Wilson
Beautiful Human Person
Speechmark author of Blobs