192 brilliant stress management
‘I feel like the whole thing is caving in on top of me.’
‘The whole thing is caving in on top of you.
Is it that your work feels out of control?’
‘Sort of, but it’s not just my work; it’s everything . . .
. . . it’s my home life too. It feels like it’s crushing me.’
‘Ah, everything.
You’re feeling crushed; is that like you can’t move under it all?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly it.’
The power of silence
If you turn off your inner voice, you won’t be able to prepare
your next question or response in advance, because you will be
listening. This is good. To prepare your response, you will need
to wait until they have stopped speaking and then take a moment
to do so. This silence is phenomenally powerful and, when you
feel comfortable with it, you will become a far better listener
and helper.
First, the silence indicates that you are thinking and therefore
tells the other person that what they said is important to you –
it is respectful. Secondly, silence is uncomfortable, so they may
just ll it. By this time they have said what they consciously
wanted to say, and with their guard a little lower they may just
tell you something more. This might be really important.
Learn to cultivate silences, because in them lies the truth.
Helping someone to regain control
People need to nd their own solutions, so helping is not always
about having the answers or offering to do things. Sometimes it
is entirely about letting them think through their problem and
see it from a new perspective, and then endorsing their own
solutions. Remember the essence of this book: any solution that
Help others to manage their stress 193
I nd allows me to do something for myself and so it gives me
back some control.
This section is not about training you to be a coach, a counsellor
or a therapist. But there is a simple ve-stage questioning process
that will help you to challenge somebody’s faulty thinking
and restore a sense of control over their life. It’s as simple as
ABCDE, in fact. We saw Albert Ellis’s ABC model towards the
end of Chapter 6. We are going to revisit it, and extend it.
A: Activating event
First, enquire into what thing (or things) triggered the feelings of
stress. Remember to use the terms that they use for their stress,
such as ‘overwhelmed’, ‘stuck’, or ‘can’t cope’. Listen to their
description and focus in on some of the things they appear to
believe are true, which may not be.
B: Beliefs
Next, actually ask about the beliefs they have about the event,
which set off their stress, fears and subsequent responses.
C: Consequences
Then look at the consequences those beliefs had for them. How
did they react and what happened next? What you need to help
them recognise is that it is their beliefs that have led to the stress
response, rather than the activating event itself.
D: Dispute
Now is the time to challenge their beliefs – the faulty thinking
that has led them to feel stress in their situation. What is the evi-
dence for their interpretations? What alternative interpretations
are possible? How would the alternatives change the way they
see the world? And how would things turn out differently, if they
act in the future on new beliefs?
194 brilliant stress management
E: Energise
The nal step is to energise them to do something different: to
seize control. In the more conventional therapeutic language,
they will exchange old behaviours for new, more empowering
ones. This is where you need to be rm, and hold them in some
way to account for making at least one small change. This is
the rst step to taking control and with it will come a sense of
victory that will further energise them – especially if you are able
to acknowledge it and congratulate them.
Ways to challenge faulty thinking
The D for Dispute step is where the change really starts
to take place, so it is worth cataloguing some of the typical
ways people can pick up and then articulate false beliefs, and
therefore how you can challenge them by asking good-quality
questions.
Assigning cause
One of the commonest types of faulty thinking – and one that
we are almost compelled to do – is to assign a cause to every
event: ‘This happened because of that, because of him, because of you.’
Rarely is life as easy. Certainly things do happen for a reason,
but encourage the person you are helping to challenge evidence
that their reasoning is correct and either nd a new, more helpful
reason or, perhaps more useful, accept that things just happen
and deal with the consequences, rather than worrying about a
reason they cannot change.
Assigning meaning
‘When she says this, it means she thinks . . .’ or ‘When this happens it
means that I am . . .’ How can they know what she thinks and what
does an external event really tell us about ourselves? Meaning is
another thing our brains desperately seek and, again, you need
to help the person see that the evidence for their faulty thinking
is either absent or imsy at best.
Help others to manage their stress 195
Reading minds
We all think things like: ‘He doesn’t think I can cope with this,’ but
when we are stressed, we can’t just set those thoughts aside as
idle speculation. Where is the evidence that he thinks that? What
else might he think?
Value judgements
‘I’ll never be good enough unless I . . .’ is an example of one of the
dangerous attitudes we saw in Chapter 5. But who says so? This
kind of faulty thinking sets up expectations of ourselves that
nobody has expressed. Another thing you may hear is: ‘They say
I’ll never be good enough unless I . . .’ Here, there is a mysterious
they, but no more evidence that the value judgement is valid.
Must, Mustn’t and Can’t
All of these injunctions and assessments of ourselves are mere
generalisations. Ask the person whom you are helping to justify
their assertions, by testing them out: ‘What if you did, or didn’t
or could?’ ‘How do you know you must, or mustn’t or can’t?’ ‘What
compels you, what prevents you?’ Look for what is causing these
beliefs and nd counter evidence to free them from the strait-
jacket of compulsion or inability.
More or less
‘I need to work harder’ or ‘I want less pressure’ are examples of
comparisons with an unspecied standard. It will give them
more control to set absolute levels of performance, like ‘I need to
put in eight good solid work hours each day next week’ or ‘I want to
be able to leave work and feel I can go out with friends on a Friday
night, rather than worry about my workload.’
Accentuating the negative
As the song says, it always helps to eliminate the negative and
accentuate the positive, but we do precisely the opposite when
we feel down, so your job is to help them focus on what is good,
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