A Manual for Being Human

Dr Sophie Mort

• Publisher: Gallery UK
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781471197482
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Clear, accessible wise advice for modern minds.' Matt Haig 'Dr Soph is the therapist and best friend that the world deserves. The world of therapy and professional help is still so inaccessible to so many people and this book is a crucial and life changing one that should be placed in everyone's mental health toolkit!' Scarlett Curtis ' A Manual for Being Human is the motherlode, enlightening on why you might feel and behave how you do.' The Times 'A truly wonderful, warm and wise one-stop shop for any inquisitive human. Packed full of prompts, practical tips and pep talks that will guide you through any situation.' Emma Gannon 'There is a damn good reason why people are struggling. We are not raised to understand ourselves. In fact, we are raised misunderstanding ourselves and fearing the very thing that makes us, us.' Dr Soph Do you want to believe in yourself and your ability to be content with who you are? If the answer is yes, then A Manual for Being Human is the book you need to read. Do you want to understand how your childhood affects who you are today? How it affects your relationship with yourself and others? How school, bullying, gender expectations and even thesocial media you consume each day affects your emotional wellbeing? Do you want to know what your emotions actually are, where they come from and how to manage them when they threaten to overwhelm you? In this practical and insightful guide, Dr Soph will help you tounderstand why we all feel anxious, stressed, insecure and down from time to time.Her three-step methodology, developed through years of experience supporting people to make genuine change in their lives, will help you to identify problems arising from past experiences and current life events, look at the patterns, bad habits and negative cycles that may be keeping you stuck, and then draws on established, proven therapeutic techniques such as mindfulness, journaling, self-compassion, grounding and breathing and relaxation techniques to provide a toolkit of go--to techniques to use any time. Reassuring, knowledgeable and kind, Dr Soph offers support to those feeling lost at sea in today's troubling times and gives you the tools you need to help get the most out of life. 'Finally! A book which takes psychological wellbeing across the lifespan out of the therapy room and into the mainstream. Dr Soph's warm, reassuring and frank style will have you understanding yourself, your actions and your relationships without a hefty therapy price tag.'
Dr Karen Gurney, author Mind the Gap

Part One How You Got Here

Emotions, relationships and negative self-beliefs – the three main topics that bring people to therapy. One might think that, because of this, I should start this book telling you what emotions are, how best to approach relationships and how to get positive about yourself.

However, the way each of us struggles in each of these areas is deeply personal. For example, how we feel our emotions is down to our genetic make-up, how stable our early life experiences were, how we were taught about emotions and soothed when young, and what stresses and strains we live through.

If you want to truly understand who you are, and why you may struggle, we need to start right at the beginning.

Before we learn how to manage these deeply human experiences, we will go on a journey through life, discussing the two biggest influences that shape who we are and what each of us struggle with: the environment we grew up in and the life events we have experienced.

The first part of this book will take you on a tour of these two influences. The first four chapters cover the aspects of our environment known to be responsible for shaping our biology, brain development, emotions, beliefs and behaviours. These are our early home environment, our school years, the media and marketing around us, and structural inequality. The fifth chapter focuses specifically on the life events that distress and derail us.

If you want a comprehensive understanding of how you grew into who you are today, and which moments of life may have left you feeling sad, anxious or like you aren’t good enough, I recommend working through each chapter one at a time.

It is important however to know that…

We do not come into the world a blank slate.

Siblings are not the same even if they grow up in the same place. As the cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker says, if a little sarcastically, it’s the reason that your pet and your child will not both learn language irrespective of how much time you devote to teaching them and nurturing them in the same environment.

The wheels of who we are are set in motion before we’re born. DNA reportedly accounts for 20–60 per cent of temperament – how sociable, emotional, energetic, distractible and tenacious we are. However, full-term babies are born when their brains are a third of their adult size, and brain development isn’t complete until our mid-twenties. Similar to the way architects adapt blueprints to fit the terrain they build upon, you and your brain developed and adapted to your specific surroundings.

It wasn’t just your family that shaped you; it was all of your early experiences. School, friendships, the media you consumed, the society and culture you grew up in, and the life events you experienced, all played a part.

You might have evolved to be shy. This could be for a million reasons. Perhaps you were predetermined to be that way. Or perhaps you were taught that shyness was ‘becoming’ (was the right behaviour for who you are). Or perhaps no one taught you how to socialise, making it feel scary. Equally, you could be shy only on occasion, like when you meet someone dreamy that makes your heart beat faster and your mind go blank.

You might have a short fuse for many reasons too. It could be down to your DNA. Or because you grew up in a high-stress environment that taught you to be on high alert at all times (for an angry caregiver or a sudden change at home). Or because you weren’t taught how to manage your emotions, meaning they bubble over on occasion.

Equally, it might have nothing to do with your past. Maybe you have a lot on your plate and have reached the limits of what you can cope with. Suddenly the smallest thing is enough to set you off.

I can’t tell you which parts of you were predetermined. I can, however, share the main factors I know shape people, starting from the moment they take their first breath.

With this in mind, I invite you to read this book, and to hold the information lightly. Do not assume it explains everything. Or that everything you do has a deep psychological meaning.

There will be things you do that are indeed linked to your upbringing, and things you do that you simply enjoy, or that come to you on the spur of the moment.

1. Caregivers, Siblings and our Family Environment

* Warning: look after yourself while reading this. If you start to feel overwhelmed, take a break, breathe, and come back when you feel more centred. There is no shame in any of this.

We are not survival of the fittest. We are survival of the nurtured.

—LOUIS COZOLINO

When you emerged into the world, you cried out. Not bloody surprising! You came out of your warm, cosy, food-packed womb and into the blindingly bright, noisy and cold world. Suddenly you were vulnerable and in an alien environment, reliant on others for your safety. You cried firstly to get the mucus out of your lungs, and secondly to make your caregivers notice you.

You needed a human to keep you alive. But you needed them for more than food and shelter. You needed them for connection and to soothe your overly active fear system that was constantly triggered by this unknown world. You also needed them to help teach you about the world, and to help your nervous system (the brain structures that respond to stress) develop.

The attachment – the bond – you formed with your earliest caregivers helped shape your brain development and your nervous system, gave you your first understanding of emotions, and provided the blueprints of relationships that you use to make sense of others right now.

Even though you can’t remember that time, as first memories tend to date back to three and a half years old, whatever happened then is likely still affecting you now – affecting how strongly you feel your emotions, whether you understand them, how you understand and interact with other humans, and who you choose to date and befriend (but we won’t get to this part till Chapter 10).

Safe, soothed, seen and secure

A baby’s primary goal is to stay close to their caregiver. Throughout this book I use the term ‘caregiver’, instead of parent or parents, as not everyone is raised by their birth parents. Caregiver includes anyone who is the responsible adult and guardian of the child.

Good news: while babies may not be able to do much, they are not passive receivers of care from the people around them. They are primed to initiate it. Think of those facial expressions and endearing little moves babies do – they are, in a good way, manipulating you into being there for them.

They learn to adapt as quickly as they possibly can to their environment, crying out and responding to the reaction of their caregiver. Adapting to ensure that whatever happens they will not be left alone. The rest is up to the caregiver.

Daniel Siegal, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, says babies and children need to be safe, soothed, seen and secure.

When it comes to development humans need attention the way plants need sunlight

Safe

Babies and children need to grow up in a safe-place and have caregivers that are not dangerous.

Grow up in safety and your first experiences teach you that the world can be a safe-place. People too. It also teaches your developing brain that it doesn’t have to be on high alert for threat.

Grow up in amongst danger, violence or neglect, and your brain will adapt to help you survive. It may keep you in a state of anxiety and hypervigilance (hyperawareness for any potential future threat that may arise). It may keep you pumped with adrenaline so you are ready to run from danger, to fight against it, or it may numb you out so that if you can’t escape threat you can endure it.

Soothed

Even in a safe environment, all novel experiences can be scary to a baby. Their first experiences of light, hunger, pain, cold or loud noises are threatening because they are unknown. When anything feels dangerous, they cry and kick out. If an adult comes to soothe them, they (eventually) relax. This is co-regulation, the wonderful ability to use another person’s calm nervous system to soothe our own, and the reason hugging the people we care about, even as an adult, can make a real difference to our emotional state.

The next time the same experience arises, they feel less scared; they have learned they are not in danger and, importantly, should potential danger arise again, other people will be there for them.

Seen

Babies and children need an adult to see their distress, and not only soothe them but make sense of it for them.

You can imagine this process as a caregiver acting as a mother bird. You know how birds catch worms, chew them up and then regurgitate them into baby birds’ mouths in a pre-digested and manageable fashion? That’s what our caregivers are meant to do with our emotions and experiences across our childhood. They make sense of our internal worlds for us by explaining what is happening in and around us.

Through this we learn what causes us distress, what certain sensations mean and what we can do to soothe or meet our needs in the future. For example:

‘Aw, you’re crying because you must be cold. Don’t worry, Mummy’s here. I have a blanket and a hug to warm you up.’

The baby learns: this feeling is ‘cold’. Blankets and other people can warm you. It may feel scary, but I’m not in danger. If I cry someone will help me. Next time this happens I don’t need to be as afraid.

‘You scraped your knee, it hurts right now but it’ll heal. Let’s put a plaster on it together and do something nice to help you feel better.’

The child learns: this feeling is ‘hurt’. It happened because I have a cut. It’s temporary and it will heal. I’m not in danger. Next time it happens I don’t need to be as afraid; I can understand it and know what to do.

‘You’re frustrated because I told you that you couldn’t have the sweets you wanted. It’s okay to be frustrated. Do you want to run around the garden to let the emotion out? Or come for a cuddle?’

The child learns: this feeling is ‘frustration’. It happens when I don’t get what I want. It’s okay to feel this. I have options to manage this.

We also needed our caregivers to make sense of how they behaved towards us, for example: ‘I was cross. I’m sorry. I had a busy day and didn’t mean to snap. It’s not your fault.’

The child learns: when adults snap it is because they are angry. This can happen when they’re busy. Adults can apologise when things go wrong and they have ways to manage their emotions, which I can try. And importantly, it was not my fault.

The more children experience this, the more they understand themselves and, over time, learn to self-soothe. They also become more adept at understanding others, recognising the tell-tale signs of certain emotions on people’s faces.

Sometimes I meet clients who struggle with their emotions, as they were simply never taught how to understand them, and therefore don’t have the words for their experiences.

It’s never too late to learn, however.

Making sense of how you feel

Quick tip 1: if you struggle with understanding how you feel, start keeping a journal. When you feel any kind of emotional change (stress, anger, numbness) write down the sensations you feel in your body: ‘My chest is tight.’ ‘I feel teary.’ ‘I feel nothing.’ Write down the emotion labels that might explain these feelings, and also note what is happening in your life – ‘I had an argument.’ ‘Someone spoke over me.’ Over time you will start to see patterns. You will start to make sense of when and why you feel certain ways, including what helps you to feel better. Chapter 14 will give you clear details on journalling. Chapter 6 will help you understand your emotions more deeply.

Quick tip 2: if you struggle with understanding other people, what they may be thinking or feeling, mirror their movements. Copy their gestures, their posture, pull the facial expressions they pull. This will trigger your mirror neurons and may give you a taste of how they feel. Mirror neurons are brain cells that mirror other people’s experiences, making it feel like their experience is happening to you too. Have you ever winced when you saw someone stub their toe, flinching as though it happened to you? If so, your mirror neurons did that to you. Subtly copying someone’s gestures will also signal to the person you are with that you are attuned to their experiences.

Whenever an adult makes sense of a child’s emotional experience for them, explaining what emotion they may be feeling and why, they give that child a gift: the language they will need to understand themselves and their internal experiences, that will help them for the rest of their lives.

Secure

Babies and children need consistency.

We needed to know that we could rely upon our connection with our caregivers – that they would be there when we needed them and would be in tune with our needs.

Our caregivers didn’t need to do any of this perfectly.

Making mistakes and getting cross are deeply human experiences, and although, as children, we might not fully realise it, our caregivers are humans too. What mattered in those moments was that our caregivers took time to make sense of what happened, to then soothe us and heal the rupture.

In fact, seeing our caregivers get it wrong from time to time, and seeing them manage this and talk us through it, showed us that messing up is inevitable, survivable, human, and that we can learn from our mistakes.

If you felt safe, soothed, seen and secure as a baby, as you got slightly older you acquired your very own and first coping skill: an internalised image of your caregiver. Whenever you felt distressed you conjured up their image and, assuming this person was consistent and nurturing, suddenly you felt soothed.

Slowly, over time, you were able to move away from your caregiver. They became your ‘secure base’, a safe-place from which you could explore the world and learn abo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Introduction: Why People Are Struggling
• Part One: How You Got Here
• Part Two: What’s Keeping You Here
• Part Three: How You Can Move Forward: Your New Toolbox with Go-To Techniques
• Appendix – Overcoming Avoidance One Step at a Time
• About the Author
• Notes
• Copyright