Seminar Questions  »   Questions - 6) affirmation without patronising...

Some writers on self esteem suggest that people who have low self esteem seem unable to receive information/messages that don’t fit with their negative view of themselves – so a positive comment is either deflected or too ‘hard to hear’. We try to give people factual comments on what we have seen, rather than positive comments on a person’s qualities, as this seems to be processed better and contributes to a (hopefully growing) bank of evidence people can store up and use to change their self image. For example “I saw you make that new person feel welcome today” seems to work better than “that was really caring”.

There is some interesting work done by an educational psychologist Alan Maclean on motivation, in which he describes children’s different ‘learning stances’ affects how they receive feedback and praise. For children with certain stances, praise does not work as an effective teaching tool! I think adults have difference stances too. Some people find comments based on feeling and emotion very difficult (to receive and to give) but there are other more surreptitious ways to give positive feedback.

I commented on teasing at the conference as an important currency amongst some social groups, signalling belonging and acceptance – to be the one who is not teased is socially isolating. As Alison said, this is difficult territory for a professional, but I would much rather make a well judged positive teasing comment someone can ‘hear’ and take on board, than a well meaning positive comment that is rejected because it is too hard to hear.
Also, we can help people practice hearing compliments and learning to accept them at face value over time. We can do this simply by reflecting with people how they react differently to different messages such as teasing, factual comments and feeling-type comments. Working this out for themselves sometimes helps people learn how to make positive comments to others without embarrassment too. Another thing I have observed working with people in recovery is that people who do use mutual aid groups are exposed to routinised ways of responding to emotional content (‘shares’) which gradually seems to help them to build these into social competences in other settings. So maybe there is something we can learn from that too about how routines can be beneficial, such as a routine way of saying hello or goodbye which builds in a positive reflection.