The Iceberg
This session is aimed at YP who are already engaging in abusive an/or aggressive behaviours towards other people.
- To introduce self-talk as a form of self-management
- For the YP to understand the links between thoughts, feelings and behaviour
- For the YP to deconstruct an incident of abuse in order to gain greater awareness of how they wind themselves up and the beliefs and fears that drive this
- For the YP to learn that positive self-talk can be used to help wind themselves down and reduce the likelihood of abusive behaviour
This exercise uses a piece of film and the iceberg analogy to consider how an individual’s self-talk influences their feelings and ultimately their behaviour. As with the previous exercise, it is most suitable for YP who have already begun to behave abusively in some way.
The iceberg exercise relies heavily on Cognitive Behavioural Psychology and in particular the thoughts, feelings and behaviour triangle. The basic premise of this is that what we think affects how we feel and this affects our behaviour. So as an example, you can explore how a YP feels about school. Or how you feel about coming into work some days.
As the practitioner, you might point out if the YP is thinking that school is pointless and that they are not very clever then this will affect the way they feel about school. They may feel resentful, angry, hopeless, etc. These feelings will all then impact on the YP’s behaviour at school. If they are feeling negatively about their prospects at school, then they won’t put in much effort because what’s the point? Maybe they will misbehave because they are angry that they have to be there. This will then feed into how they think about school and so the cycle goes on.
On the other hand if a YP uses positive self-talk instead, their thoughts could be that they have to go to school so they should try their best and see what happens. They can consider how this might impact on feelings and behaviour and whether the outcome is better.
This is the underlying concept of the iceberg, increasing the YP understanding that the behaviour we see and the things they say are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole host of things happening underneath the surface and if the YP learns to identify those things and manage their self-talk, they can gain much more control over their behaviour.
A YP can often feel like the abusive incident “just happened.” By examining thoughts, feelings and beliefs underpinning an abusive event you can help them dissolve this myth and enable them to behave in ways that do not have negative consequences for them or other people. Abusive behaviour never “just happens” - there are a whole host of thoughts, feelings and beliefs that underlie it. Learning about this can be empowering because when we learn more about this we can take control of our decisions and choose to behave in a way that is non-abusive.
A film clip of Ryan’s Story is suggested as an initial focus for YP to work through this exercise but other visual clips from TV or film could be sourced that allow for a similar method of processing the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of a character in the clip. Ryan’s story begins at 17 minutes 23 seconds.
Note: For YP who are younger or neurodivergent it can be difficult for them to think about an inner monologue and concepts like self-talk. In these circumstances it can be helpful to give positive and negative self-talk characters like an angel or devil (or any other good versus bad character the YP themselves may come up with) to help the YP imagine the battle of negative versus positive self-talk.
