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EMPOWERING BY

EXAMPLE

EE

INFORMATION PACK

EMPOWERING BY EXAMPLE

WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY IN WHICH WE ARE NOT VALUED FOR WHO WE ARE, BUT RATHER

ACCORDING TO THE LABEL PUT ON US BY OTHER PEOPLE.

LORRAINE BUCHANAN

&

GERRY MURPHY

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EMPOWERING BY EXAMPLE is a practical programme which has emerged from tried and tested life

experience. This programme can be used as either a preventative measure; a tool to aid recovery; or

a tool for education. It has been developed from wide personal experience of supporting people

living and suffering from addiction; repeated offending; dysfunctional behaviours; and issues of

mental health.

The study material specifically targets a range of unhelpful thinking and behaviour patterns. These

patterns have been identified through working with programme participants over a significant

number of years. The material is easily understood. It aims firstly to help programme participants to

identify their own unhelpful thought processes and behaviours and secondly, to provide them with

direction on how these thoughts and behaviours can be changed in order to improve their quality of

life; mental health; and inter-personal relationships.

Programme participants are encouraged to take responsibility for their own feelings and behaviours.

They are also empowered with the necessary skills to identify, challenge and change their unhelpful

thinking and behaviour patterns. This material can be used for any age group from 12 years

upwards. In the past, participants have commented that the programme has enabled them to really

‘see’ themselves mirrored in the material and that this has helped them, perhaps for the first time,

to become self aware and to identify the root of their problems.

Through becoming aware of the consequences of their own unhelpful thinking and behaviour

patterns, many previous programme participants have gone on to learn to make responsible

choices; manage mood; control anger; and reduce reliance on prescribed medication. Many have

also reported a reduction of stress within their close family as just one of the positive outcomes

resulting from participation in this programme..

‘Empowering by example’ offers training in the form of courses; workshops; talks; and seminars.

(Please note that these courses etc. can be tailored to meet the requirements of a specific client

organisation and used to address the individual needs of their specific client base).

EE is a very practical life skills program, which is delivered in a way which helps participants to

identify their own individual problems in a comfortable and non judgemental atmosphere. The focus

is to enable participants to see how they can engage in life in more helpful and health-giving ways.

WHAT WE DO?

We help people to develop an understanding of why we are all individually responsible for our own

thoughts, feelings and behaviours and that neither others, nor our life circumstances are to blame

for our own problems.

We promote, encourage and inspire change, with a view to improving the quality of life,

relationships and mental health for our programme participants.

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THE PROGRAM

Through the programme, participants become comfortable with the idea they are responsible for

their own thoughts, feelings and behaviours by learning to challenge their own belief systems. Then, through using their own personal past and present experiences, they identify what triggers these unhelpful thoughts, feelings and behaviours. This in turn promotes learning to make responsible

choices and these new choices serve to improve participants’ quality of life and relationships.

WHO IS THE PROGRAMME FOR?

The programme is for people who suffer from the effects of addiction, stress, anxiety or depression;

people who have behavioural problems which they wish to address; people who struggle with

change, self confidence or low self worth; and also people who work within these fields because the

programme can be a useful tool to help other service providers to identify where they too can use

their own experiences to empower others.

EE

Indentifying

Change Providing

Identification

Feeling Good

Developing

Understanding

Building Self Esteem

Encouraging

Responsibility Encouraging

Change

Motivation

Improving

Quality of Life

Promoting

Personal Growth

Improving

Relationships

Building Confidence

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HOW IS CHANGE SUSTAINED?

Change is sustained through programme participants learning to consistently challenge their belief

systems and understand why it is that they themselves are responsible for their own thoughts,

feelings and behaviours.

Expectations

Anger

Disappointment

Anxiety Stress

Depression

Seeking Approval

Low Self Confidence

Low Self Esteem

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Lack Of Acceptance

Dissappointment Anger

Feeling Triggered

Feeding Thoughts

Sound Sight

Challenging Self

Why Am I Doing It? What Am I Doing?

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What follows explains why the programme material is relevant when working with this client

group. It explains why, when faced with such difficulties as have been described above, it is often

easier for sufferers to blame others or their own life circumstances for their difficulties. It also

explains why it is that without such help as this programme offers, they may find themselves

unable to make the changes they need to make to improve their lives.

THE PROGRAMME STUDY MATERIAL clearly explains the processes of thinking and behaviour patterns in

ways which help participants to understand and identify what they personally need to change.

THE WORKSHEETS ask questions aimed at helping participants identify their own thinking and

behaviour patterns. These worksheets also assist participants to identify which of their existing skills

could helpfully be utilised to improve the problematic areas of their lives.

All the materials are titled so that programme participants can readily identify which parts of these

materials are firstly, appropriate for them and secondly, will enable them to challenge their own

individual thinking and behaviour patterns. Using these materials also helps participants to see how

to choose and then both practice and maintain their own process of change.

Here are some examples of the individual titles of specific material provided within the

programme:

WE DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED

When we were young, we probably all dreamed of the future and what we would like to achieve in

life. We also probably all pictured a perfect life with a nice car and house; the perfect partner; and

two point four children. Later, when we started to feel unhappy, depressed and/or angry, we

perhaps compared the current reality of our life with our perfect picture and thought we had

thereby found the reason for our unhappiness. Maybe this happened through a perception that

other people had not treated us in the way we believed they should have done. We may also have

blamed our lack of material wealth. We may even have blamed our present unhappiness on the pain

and sorrow caused to us by the tragedies and traumas which we have experienced.

We do not necessarily appreciate that we lived in the age of innocence when we were children and

that we had learned our behaviours from the people with whom we had then lived and socialised. At

that stage, our behaviours had no adverse effect because we were neither self conscious, nor aware

of our conscience. When, however, we later left the age of innocence behind and became aware of

our conscience, we discovered that our conscience would prick us when we did something wrong

and that this triggered feelings of guilt and shame.

When we carry on behaving in the same old unhelpful ways, we are often unaware that it is our own

behaviour which needs to change - we perhaps do not realise that our conscience (through the

feelings and sensations we experience in our body) is actually telling us to stop behaving in ways

which are destructive to us.

It could be that we have never been taught that we have become unhappy because we don’t like our

own self. Often the negative thoughts which we have focussed on other people and what they have

done to us, are in fact our way of justifying our own bad behaviour. We may also have learned that

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we should feel guilty and ashamed of ourselves rather than learning to make choices based on how

we can feel good about our self and how we can take control and be responsible for our own

thoughts and behaviour.

(1) What happened?

· This study explains the process of life: the leaving behind of the age of innocence and

becoming aware of body sensations and conscience. It also sets out how thinking /

behaviour patterns and false beliefs around other people and/or life circumstances often lie

at the root of problems.

(2) If things were different!

· This study asks participants to identify for themselves where it is in their own life that they

blame other people’s behaviour; their own lack of material wealth; or the tragedies and

traumas that they have experienced, for their unhappiness, anger and disappointment.

· This study then goes on to explain why the participants themselves are responsible for their

own anger and disappointment and shows them the real reason why they may be unhappy.

(3) If I had!

· This study asks the participants to think about the things they don’t have in their lives which

they think, if they had them, would make them happy. It challenges participants to seek out

what evidence they have for the lack of these things being the cause of their unhappiness.

Participants are then invited to look at the true reason for their unhappiness.

(4) We don’t know what we are doing wrong!

· When we end up in conflict with the people whom we love and care about, we often do not

realise that what we are doing is wrong ............. it was likely never our intention to fight

with these people in the first place. When we are talking to people whom we care about and

they tell us something that they are going to do or buy, we may not realise that when we

offer them our advice, we are doing this because (on an unconscious level) we are

uncomfortable with what they want to do. We may think that we are offering our advice out

of love and concern because we do not want to see them hurting or spending their money

on something that we wouldn’t buy.

(5) What did I do?

· This explains to participants why it might be that the things they may be saying out of love

and concern could potentially lead to conflict and control. It provides an understanding of

the process which leads to such conflict and explains how by taking responsibility for this

conflict, they can improve their inter-personal relationships.

(6) It isn’t my fault!

· This asks participants to identify the times in their own lives when they have entered a

process of thinking and seeking affirmation from other people, which they then use to justify

their own words and behaviours and apportion blame. It also explains the benefits to their

mental health if participants accept responsibility for their own actions.

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(7) What goes around!

· This asks participants to think about the process of seeking revenge and the consequences

of planning and plotting revenge. The aim is to enable participants to let go of their

resentments.

(8) We didn’t know we could control ourselves!

· This explains that many of us do not realise that we react to things which we hear and see

and that we have patterns of behaviour which we fall into without stopping and thinking

about what we are doing. Many of us do not realise that these can trigger our fear or that, in

a split second, such fear can change to anger. This can precipitate unhelpful behaviour and

before we know what is happening, we are saying and doing things that we should not be

either saying or doing. The reason we are doing this is because we are not getting what we

want and we are afraid of our reactions. Very often our behaviour, at this stage, is the

behaviour we have used since we were children. What we need to realise is that we can

learn control over this behaviour and stop it happening.

(10) What we see and hear!

· This study explains the process of hearing a tone or seeing an expression which causes a

chain reaction and what the consequences of that chain reaction might be. It also explains

the benefits of identifying what triggers the reaction. This helps participants to become

aware of when they are in danger of losing control and of saying or doing something of

which they might later feel ashamed.

(11) Don’t react!

· This asks participants to identify what triggers their reactions. This helps them to become

aware of the situations in which there is a danger of them losing control. This study also

explains the process of change which enables participants to learn to both control their

words and behaviours and also measure their own progress.

(12) Anger! · This asks participants to think about what triggers their anger; to identify what their body is

telling them; and to see the patterns into which they fall when they are angry. They are also

invited to identify the times when they did not go ahead do what they felt like doing...... in

order to encourage them that there are times when they have control.

(13) We thought people should have! · We all have our own ideas about the way people should treat us, according to the role they

play in our life. When we get to a point in our life where we feel depressed and angry

because life has not turned out the way we thought it would, we often think that it is these

other people’s fault. We compare the people in our lives with our idea of how they should

have behaved and then we blame them for our having failed to realise our dreams. We also

believe they are to blame for our feelings because they did not live up to the role that we

believe they should have played. We believe that if they had behaved differently towards

us, our dreams would have become reality.

· We believe other people are to blame because we have never learned that we do not live in

an ideal world, but rather in reality, where people do things we think they should not do.

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Instead of gathering evidence to apportion blame, we should use this opportunity to help us

consider the fact that we alone are responsible for our own feelings and indeed, have no

evidence that we could have expected anything different from the person we are blaming.

(14) People shouldn’t! · Participants may have become resentful towards other people because they believe they

should not behave in the way that they have done. This study explains why we react in this

way and sets out the thinking patterns which cause the resentment and hostile feelings

towards other people. The reality of life is that other people do things that they should not

do. Understanding this helps participants to become more accepting of other people.

(15) I wouldn’t do that!

· This study asks programme participants to identify how they themselves react when other

people do not behave in the way that the participants themselves think that they should. It

also suggests ways to challenge these reactions.

(16) Our idea! · This study gives participants an understanding of how they may have a code of conduct

which they expect other people to live up to. When other people do not live up to this code,

feelings of anger and disappointment can result. Participants are asked to identify when they

sense that this is something that they do.

(17) Nobody explained to us! · We often do not realise that our thoughts can be the cause of our unhappiness or that we

often feel how we think. We may have never learned that our feelings start with a thought

and as one thought leads to another, the feeling can then become a sensation which we

experience in our body. The length of time during which we experience this sensation will

then depend on how long we continue to feed the sensation with similar thoughts. What we

need to do is to recognise when our thoughts are feeding our feelings and learn to challenge

and change these thoughts.

(18) Don’t feed it! · This study asks participants to identify the times when, for them, one thought has led to

another and so given strength to the feeling the participant experienced while having the

original thought. The study also explains to participants how to stop the feeling by

challenging themselves. This enables participants to learn to control their thoughts and

manage their moods.

(19) Just a thought! · This study asks the participants to think about the process of their thinking which stops them

from doing what they intend. It also looks at ways of challenging this thinking and suggests

to participants how to take the actions they need to take to make appropriate and beneficial

life changes.

(20) We thought we treated everyone the same! · We may have learned that there are conditions which other people should meet before they

can be considered worthy of being treated as if they are one of our friends or family. Some

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conditions are obvious to us, e.g. race, religion, etc and these might not affect us in the way

that the ones which are less obvious can do.

· We don’t realise that when we see people doing something differently from the way we

would do it, this can trigger our fear. The root of this fear is the thought that the way we do

things could be wrong. We have never learned that when we judge people by our standards,

we create hostile feelings and the only person they actually affect is our own self. When we

cannot stop thinking about what the other person has done, this is our conscience telling us

that we are doing something wrong and this can isolate us and adversely affect our mental

health..

(21) We are all the same!

· This study explains how it may have arisen that there are conditions that people should

meet before they are considered to be worthy of being treated as one of our family or

friends. It also explains where we learned to do this.

(22) Acceptance! · This study asks participants to think about the conditions that other people have to meet

before they are prepared to treat them in a warm and friendly manner. It also asks

participants to think about why they do this and so helps them to be less hostile and more

accepting of other people.

(23) We didn’t know! · We perhaps are unaware that we have learned to read other people’s facial expressions;

listen to their tone of voice; and make choices based on what we were hearing and seeing.

This message may even have been stored in our unconscious mind when we were babies.

We have perhaps become afraid of other people and how they might respond to us. As a

result of this, we may even have ended up in places we did not want to go; with people we

did not want to be with; and doing things we did not want to do.

· We may have learned to worry about what other people think of us or how they might react

to us. Somehow we may feel that we are responsible for other people’s feelings and so feel

under pressure to do something to change this. We may never have been allowed to make

our own choices because we always had someone telling us what we could and could not

do. We may have learned that if other people are happy, we can be happy and when they

are not happy, that it is our responsibility to give them something or do something for them

to make them happy.

(24) The message we received! · This study explains how we read people’s facial expressions and tones of voice.......and as a

result, make choices based on other people’s needs instead of our own. It also explains why

we do this and gives examples.

(25) How did I get here? · This study asks participants to think about the times when they have ended up doing

something they did not want to do because they were influenced by other people. It also

helps participants to identify the times when they have said ‘no’ and survived the

consequences. The aim here is to enable participants to start to make choices for their own

benefit.

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CLIENTS COMMENTS & TESTIMONIALS

"Gerry Murphy has just completed another six week training session with our Get ready for work and Second Chance groups. The feedback from all groups has been very positive and many have said it is the best thing they have ever done. I hope that Gerry will be able to work with our future intakes of young people as I believe that he can actually help them to improve their lives and overcome the many barriers they face". Ann McCracken - Training & Employment Advisor.

"Gerry was employed as a consultant and asked to provide 1-1 counselling and group work support to young people throughout Lanarkshire. The barriers included addiction, criminality issues, mental health issues, housing and other issues arising from dysfunctional family backgrounds. He was able to empower and equip a number of our clients with the skills and confidence to face up to their individual situations and to move forward. Many of the young people involved in the projects would have been much less able to move forward without his ongoing support and approach". Joy McCodona - Team Leader.

"I wish to follow up my personal thanks with a formal letter, congratulating you both on an excellent presentation with our Diploma in Counselling students. The feedback so far has been very positive and I would like to invite you back on to next year’s Diploma programme. I found your style to be very warm and encouraging of questions, and again this was received very well by the student body". Terry Daly - Diploma Course Tutor.

"Gerry & Lorraine have tutored for the Chartered Institute on numerous occasions over the past few years on both a marketed and in-house basis. They have the knowledge and insight to deliver tailored training which results in the development, understanding and confidence amongst participants. Their background and life experiences are used to communicate with people on a very honest level. All post course appraisal forms received from delegates have been hugely complimentary, reinforcing the learning curb achieved from attending events tutored by them". Wendy Hunter - Professional Development Officer.

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"The feedback from families has been very positive; they feel Gerry & Lorraine are people who truly understand their personal issues. Their 1-1 counselling, family therapy and mediation has helped our families deal with the stigma, isolation and hopelessness. The families feel Gerry & Lorraine’s approach helps them to focus and look at solutions to their problems. We will continue to use the skills Gerry & Lorraine has to benefit the families we work with". Patsy Krausen - Family Support Development Officer.

"Just a note to say thank you for completing the 3 sessions for our service users and staff here at link Up. The feedback from all service users has been very positive and many have said they felt enlightened by what you had to say. The way your sessions were delivered put the service users at ease and they also commented on how easily they understood the content of your sessions. look forward to working with you in the future". Claire Gallagher - Service Manager, Turning Point Scotland.

"I am writing this with relation to the incredible work and effort that Mr Murphy has carried out on Behalf of Glasgow’s Helping Heroes and the support he has provided to our client base. Glasgow’s Helping Heroes have been working in partnership with the NHS and has devised a 16 week Pilot programme to deliver a package that would benefit the ongoing issues with our clients. The programme was a 16 week course for 16 individuals who were experiencing issues with alcohol or drug dependency and struggling with various areas of their life. Due that our client group can be very difficult to engage with it was remarkable that the numbers for completion of the course was 80% which far exceeds the estimated numbers provided by most addiction services . The intensive work that Mr Murphy did within his workshops around our client groups , thoughts , ideas and behaviours had dramatic results ,where some of our clients took the appropriate steps to address their dependency on alcohol or substances , and due to the skills they learned in relation to their confidence and self-esteem individuals on the group have now sought employment , or are in discussions to go back in relation to further training but all have reposted back that they have seen the benefits to the workshops and the teachings by Mr Murphy improve their personal and home lives , although the programme was based around football 75% reported that they preferred the workshops ran by Mr Murphy and felt they achieved more by what they had learned by participating in the workshops. Due to the success of the pilot it was nominated for 2 national awards and was the finalist in one category for Care of Veterans and won the award for Mental Health also due to its success the pilot has now been awarded further funding to be ran as a programme and we will be using the services and workshops provided by Mr Murphy in all future work in relation to supporting our client group to address their alcohol and substance dependency and to address their beliefs and attitudes due to the positive impact already demonstrated". Johanna McGhee - Senior Peer Support Worker.

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"I am writing to confirm, that in my role as NHS support for Health behaviour change, we have recently worked in partnership with Gerard Murphy to engage with two groups; people in early recovery from addictions and ex servicemen. Both groups were facing barriers to social integration with lifestyle risk factors underpinned by self defeating attitudes and behaviours. Gerard met all the conditions of his agreement with us and developed a great rapport with all participants. In both cases, feedback on Gerry’s EE Groupwork was very positive with the recovery group, electing to pay for extra sessions from their own funds. EE was then embedded within a pilot programme utilising football coaching as a vehicle to engage with a hard to reach group of ex servicemen consuming alcohol at hazardous, possibly dependent levels with additional indicators with lifestyle risk and mental health issues. Evaluations of Gerry’s 8 EE sessions were very high and the programme itself provided very positive outcomes and was winner in the Mental Health Category of the prestigious UK Military and civilian Health partnerships awards 2014. I look forward to working with Gerard in the future and have no hesitation in recommending his work to your organisation". James Mc Daid - Health Improvement Practitioner.

OUR WORK IS TO HELP INCREASE AWARENESS AND UNDERSTANDING OF ONESELF, SO WE MAY

BETTER UNDERSTAND OTHERS.

LORRAINE BUCHANAN & GERARD MURPHY

EE

Consultancy

Training

Talks

Meditation Mentoring

Group Work

Seminars