I really enjoyed the book Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and how he looked at how a person’s self concept evolves and changes.  He discussed a man who had been in and our of prison and said he somehow just felt himself always going back there as if he ‘just knew the places to those parts of town’ where he would get into trouble.

Often there are so many ideas about how to grow and change that it can get confusing but there can be a real elegance in simplicity.  A book on coaching went into this in more details.  Football coaches speaking to their teams and the players in instructions of 10 words or less.  ‘Decide where then hit’ were something like the instructions given to players before a penalty shootout.  The simpler the better.

In the case of the Maxwell Maltz client he was recommended to keep a diagram in his pocket.  A picture just showing 2 paths one which is going back to prison, the other which is walking to freedom then to just feel into his choice and which path he was going down.  George Lucas once spoke about the success of Star Wars and said how it was easy for someone to feel into if they are going down the path of the Jedi or the Emperor.

Here you may use this to just feel into your own roles.  If you’ve been the scapegoat in the past, what is the opposite you are now wishing to be ?  Maybe this could just be named empowered me.  We may be aware the path to being the scapegoat has been learned well and well worn but if we are aware of this and want to change and are aware of the other path we are now just creating a new way of being and a new map.  We can feel into day by day energetically if we are moving towards the scapegoat or to the new self.

Keep it simple and just keep feeling into the person you are wanting to become and recognising the signposts to that eg happier relationships, flow states etc then recognise where you are going off track.  Maybe a diagram could help you too ?

It’s a tough one to go into but as part of healing and the taking of radical responsibility it can always be useful to think of the payoffs we actually get/got from our codependent roles.  I work with clients often who have been squashed into roles of the daddy’s girl, scapegoat, mum’s helper etc etc.

It’s always helpful to empathise with the victimisation which took place and the shame which is underneath these roles and work to dissolve it through the power of empathy which can be like a chemical reaction to lead to seeing the innocence within.

It’s also helpful though to look at the payoff we got from being in the role.  If we work with the idea that we change when it is truly less painful and more pleasurable to change it’s helpful to examine what we got from being in the role.

It’s often hard to admit but when our identity has been a certain way for a period of time there is a buildup of pay offs there.  We will likely get certainty needs met as we know thihngs are going to be this way constantly.  There is also a level of connection taking place.  It’s maybe not as healthy as we would like but there is connection.

To mix in with this it can be helpful to use Tony Robbins 6 core needs and look at how you are actually getting them through being the person you have been doing.  Then you can look at how you would like to get your needs met.

Maybe you get a certainty need met by always having a certain argument with a spouse.  The knowing it is going to happen while painful fills a need.  Maybe though we can now decide to channge it by filling it by always going to a personal growth group each friday.  Genuinely looking at the payoffs we are actually getting can be helpful to move us out of a victim state and to see that part of the reason we are there is because we are getting needs met from it.

By seeing this and then looking at how we would like our needs to be met we can then look at the ingredients needed to generate in ourselves to move from one way of being to the other.  Often courage is a crucial ingredient to move out.  Mixed in with this too we can feel into how painful it would actually be to stay in the same situation.  Are brains typically are geared to keeping us safe so we really need to lean into how our lives would truly be if not of this ever changed then ‘decide’ what it is we want to do and where we want our needs to be met in order to truly create a life of design.

I often work with clients who have been victimised to one degree or another.

Here is a Counselling conversation we always go into the needed empathy and the being with the pain of what has taken place.

This is essential to know someone is there for us and to feel validated so we are then able to move and make some new decisions.

Mixed in with this too in a more Coaching type of conversation it’s really important to examine what the beliefs are which we may have taken on board through whatever took place?

A common one is ‘not good enough’, which is the root of codependence and shame.Here we can mix Counselling and Coaching by getting the empathy and also work to take radical responsibility for the message and therefore story we are choosing to live by and rip it out and put in a new one.

I am loving a book I am listening to on audible right now called ‘Tribe of Mentors’ by Tim Ferris.  I’d really recommend anyone to give it a look or listen.  It has loads of interviews with different high achievers in their respective domains.  
One of the questions asked was ‘What advice would you give to a smart driven college student about to enter the real world?’  I think the answer to the question given though can relate to anyone in life.
The answer given I can’t quote exactly but is very much along these lines… We often have images of growth and development in life eg like the corporate world as being like a pyramid.  He said rather than think like this if you think of your overall growth in life as being like an upside down pyramid.  Presumably there are some skills now so what is a next brick which can attach this too and where from there ?
Sometimes we need to start a whole new segment but the key can be constant learning and growth and just attaching different pieces together piece by piece.  For whatever reason I felt I could really connect to this and could think of my own learning in counselling then coaching then speaking then writing.  It’s kind of cool and liberating to see how this goes and all grows for us individually then to keep looking into where our skills can keep fitting into the world and what things we can pioneer to keep adding the best value.