The 5 Villains of the Transformation Space
Beware of who you ask for help.
Today we’re going to talk about the five villains of the transformation space. A lot of professions are involved in the transformation space, but not everything is what it seems. Transformation is about helping you change yourself in some way. One thing I’d like you to be informed by when you’re reading this is to remember the words of Carl Jung when he talked about the alienated expression of an unmet need.
From personal experience of meeting psychiatrists, psychologists, coaches, counsellors and therapists, we know many of these people have a story to tell. If you think about it it’s perfectly natural to wonder about what’s wrong with you. Then you might want to find out what that is and what to do about it. I believe that this is what drives an awful lot of people when they take up one of these professions.
William James, who wrote The Principles of Psychology, suffered from anxiety and depression. To what degree did Psychology help him? It certainly didn’t ‘cure’ him.
The sad fact is that a lot of these ‘searchers’, whilst looking for what’s wrong with them, never actually find it. Their language is not particularly clean when they’re working with you. I’ve lost count of the number of people who say, “well I thought my [insert name of profession] had more wrong with them than I had with me, and now I understand why”. Whoever you engage with comes with caution— be sure to assess them carefully and don’t blindly accept that just because they’ve got a badge after their name they are someone who’s going to be able to help you.
There’s a group on Facebook called Drop the Disorder, started by a doctor. It has more than 10,000 members who are all angry about the psychiatry profession because of the after-effects of prescription drugs and their treatment at the hands of psychiatrists. If you ask a doctor, “what do you think of the average psychiatrist?”, they’ll laugh and say they’re all as mad as a box of frogs. Now obviously that’s not a scientific answer but you get the idea—who are you going to put your trust in and what is it that they offer? Is that what you need?
Just think carefully before you engage with any professional. A Psychiatrist is both a medical doctor and has further qualifications in Psychiatry so they’re a Mister, a consultant, like a consultant surgeon. A Psychologist actually has a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree. These are very well qualified people, but the problem is, if they’re weighed down by their own emotional baggage that interferes with their assessment of you, you need to be careful who you choose. Choose by reputation. That’s where it’s very important to talk to others and find out “is this expert really someone qualified to help me?”.
At the less serious end of the spectrum, with coaches, remember most coaches actually struggle to earn a living, so be very careful with who you choose. If in an economic sense they are struggling to survive, they’ll come with a bundle of limiting beliefs that will be completely inappropriate for you.
When making your assessment, beware of what I’ll call mate’s recommendations. A mate’s recommendation—whether you’re on Linkedin or anywhere else—says that Fred is a really nice chap. That’s about the limit of the recommendation, so look out for the recommendations that instead talk about the results they get.
Now, in transformation, that’s quite difficult to talk about because if you’re feeling more peaceful, more energetic, you have more freedom, you have more calm, these are quite subjective things. You have to read between the lines sometimes to figure out, “is this transformation, the person’s talking about, something that I’m looking forward to?”
There’s a lot of people out there who can help but beware of all the people who actually need more help than you do. If you are interested to find out more about Breakthrough and what it can do for you, please get in touch.
If you would like to know how Breakthrough Leadership could benefit you, your business and your personal life or you have a question about anything you’ve seen on the site, I’d love to hear from you.