Emotional Sharks and Dolphins

I created the terms 'emotional shark' and 'emotional dolphin' in 2000 whilst doing some charity work with abused children in my hometown of Brisbane.  It was at one of their Christmas parties that this visual description came to me. These brave little children around age three to five years who were in what I call 'abuse rehab' had grown up in unsafe environments emotionally, physically and sexually around predatory emotional sharks. Many of them had little faith in human beings, and I understood that. I too as a child had their history and did not like or trust adults. 

In my very first book A Helping Hand with Life I outline in detail the first five years of my recovery and some simple techniques I used to help myself.  I have had many people asking me lately about the content of this first book so I have shared in today's blog some excepts, I hope you enjoy taking a trip back a decade or so with me as I first started to write:

"As a little girl I decided that Mother Nature and Father Time were to be my hearts parents because they were so powerful, beautiful and reliable.   The beauty of Mother Nature's gentle caress was always there to sooth me and to take me away from my violent memories, and old Father Time helped me move on and ensured the stars came out at night and life went on no matter what.  They were the only consistent and reliable safe 'dolphin' or love force in my life.  Every day there was oxygen for me to breathe, the sun rose and set and the clouds, sparrows, stars and trees became personal friends.

So when describing feelings and emotions I call on Mother Nature's creatures and beauty a great deal, for they are simple and make sense to me. Looking into the faces of these little people who had lived in emotional war zones, the fact that people can be like sharks and dolphins seemed glaringly obvious to me.

I use these terms a great deal in my written and spoken presentations, for many people I have spoken to at workshops, in rehabs, jails or attending a conference where I am giving a keynote addresses, respond favorably to them. They understand immediately what I mean. Safe and unsafe people, they are everywhere, in every culture, the world over.

In my lifetime I have met my fair share of dangerous predatory sharks, however, the most dangerous shark and the most beautiful dolphin I have ever met have lived within me. And those I have worked with over the past fourteen years have found the same for themselves. Their very best friend and their most damaging enemy have both been within them.

The Emotional Fitness concept was developed to improve understanding about the shark and the dolphin within us all and bringing about peace between them.   For many people the head and the heart are often at war. One normally wins, but they rarely work together in harmony.   When they do grace enters our lives.

What is grace? It means honor - to gently honor ourselves is an act of grace. So when we dishonor ourselves we get stuck in ego based fear. Thinking we are better or less than another is dishonoring ourselves. We may have more highly developed skills, gifts or talents than another but that does not make us a superior being. It just makes our role in life different from theirs.

Mother Nature makes all species with differing traits. Look at dogs and flowers, for instance: a Great Dane is different from a poodle as a rose is different from a tulip. They create diversity and interest but it seems futile to rate a tulip as better than a rose or a Great Dane as superior to a poodle.

We need the dark and the light: hot and cold, night and day, pain and love. One without the other has no meaning. It is not the enemy - merely a reference point.

The shark lives within us all. We can call it by many names; the dark, the shadow, the ego, the self or fear. It is a necessary part of the human condition. It gives us a reference point.

When we are in dolphin mode, we live, love, hope and radiate a sense of wellbeing and inner calm. We can laugh and shed tears; we feel alive and connected to other human beings. In a nutshell, we care about ourselves and each other. When children are surrounded by adults who live as active dolphins, they record these messages of hope and positivity for later use."

I have also included in today's blog some notes written by Dr Timothy J. Sharp leading Sydney Psychologist, Founder and Managing Director of The Happiness Institute, who approached me before I embarked on writing my second book.  Tim and I were both giving individual presentations at a clinical workshop in Sydney.  At the conclusion of the workshop we were both asked to sit on a panel and discuss our views about the recovery process.  Tim approached me after this panel as he is also an accomplished author, and asked if I would be interested in writing a book with him.  

I was excited about dovetailing my Emotional Fitness concepts with his clinical expertise, and thus the second book, Emotional Fitness was born.   Dr. Timothy Sharp introduces himself in the forward of Emotional Fitness with the following words.

"When I first heard Cynthia speak, at a conference in Sydney at which I too was speaking, I was, to be perfectly honest, incredibly impressed.  Her raw, gut-wrenching honesty was immensely moving and to some extent caught me by surprise in the context of what was essentially an 'academic' meeting of health professionals.

During one of the breaks in the meeting I introduced myself and almost immediately raised the idea of writing something together.  This was not typical for me as Cynthia was (and is) not the sort of person with whom I had previously collaborated.  That is, she didn't have a degree in psychology, nor for that matter did she have a degree in any related discipline.  In fact, as impressed as I was by her presentation, I was also somewhat confused by the language she used which was, to put it bluntly, not at all like the language I was used to.

Never, for example, had I read in any psychology text descriptions of different people as 'dolphins' and 'sharks'.  Being academically trained and a proud skeptic, I normally would have questioned the validity of such descriptors, but there was something about the way Cynthia used the language she used that made it sound quite appropriate and accurate.

Cynthia refers to the emotional sharks and dolphins within and outside each of us. That is, every one of us has an internal shark and dolphin (in our head and our heart, according to Cynthia's model) at the same time, every one of us comes in contact with other people who may be more shark or more dolphin.

The challenge raised by Cynthia is to learn how to identify the sharks and dolphins both within you and within others.

In professional psychology circles, Cynthia's concept of emotional sharks and dolphins is similar to what have been labeled automatic negative thoughts (or ANT's) and positive enabling thoughts (PET's). These concepts are derived from a therapeutic approach known as 'cognitive therapy' which, in brief, emphasizes the importance of thoughts in determining how we feel and what we do. Essentially the principal assumption of cognitive therapy can be summed up as 'you are what you think'.

In my experience, once people learn how to become more aware of their thoughts (both negative and positive) they are well on their way to learning how to control their thinking which, in turn, enables them to control (at least partly) how they feel. This is the essence of cognitive therapy and, to a large extent, of Cynthia's model of Emotional Fitness.

So how do you do this?

To begin with, one of the strategies I have found most helpful with my clients (and I know Cynthia found this helpful too) is to start by keeping a 'diary' of how you feel and what thoughts go through your mind, particularly in certain situations. This is a relatively simple process that can be completed in different ways.

A simple formula, however, is to take a piece of paper, or a small notebook, and draw two vertical lines down the page forming three columns. At the top of the first column write 'situation'. At the top of the second column write 'emotions'. And at the top of the third column write 'thoughts'. All you need to do then is to fill in these columns whenever you have a chance.

At the very least, I recommend that you complete the 'form' two to three times each day. Typically, most people find it most helpful if they complete the form during times when they're distressed or feeling they are not coping as well as they would like. Any time you feel like this, write down (1)what you are / were doing, (2) how you felt / feel and (3) what thoughts are / were going through your mind.

Remember, the goal here is primarily to increase your awareness of how you feel in certain situations, not necessarily to make any changes yet. Learning to identify when your dolphin and shark is more active is, in many ways, a skill. And the more you practice the skill of awareness, the better you'll get. Further, the more aware you become, the more empowerment you will eventually gain.

This exercise can also be used to learn how to identify whether others are sharks or dolphins. If you feel uncomfortable in someone else's presence, use a similar form to describe the situation you were in and how you felt. Then ask yourself, 'what is it this person is doing (or does) that makes me feel uncomfortable?'

Many people who have read Emotional Fitness wrote to me and said that they found Tim's form simple but effective, so I have drafted up a quick outline of how it looked in the book, for you to copy down if you feel this might be beneficial for you or someone you know who is struggling with life and their emotions at present. 

 I will continue on a little further with another excerpt from A Helping Hand with Life, to explain more about the Shark and Dolphin within.

"All people know the language of the internal shark.  Some never speak it; they are called saints.  Others rarely speak it; they are in the minority of well-adjusted human beings walking this earth.  Many people speak it from time to time but balance it out with helping hand (love based constructive language).  And then there are those, like me, who are extremely fluent in shark masters, one might say. 

I had heard dolphin language throughout life but never bothered to learn it for myself.  I could copy phrases, mimic expressions and actions for short periods of time but I could not use it to communicate daily and build my life.  Shark was the language I spoke to myself as I grew up and learning anything else just seemed too hard.  Until one day it was about life or death suicide or help.  I am one of the fortunate ones.  I found help - a helping hand in fact.

Shark dialogue is verbal abuse to oneself and to others.  It is powerfully subtle, widely accepted and, in my opinion, the most consistently damaging form of abuse there is.  Some may think the word abuse is an exaggeration, but from my life experience, shark language is when we are cruel or insulting, meaning to harm or destroy ourselves or others.  To me this is nothing short of abuse.

It is a rare person who gets through life without meeting someone in a position of authority who uses this verbally abusive language.  Parents, grandparents, step-parents, foster parents, teachers, coaches, ministers, nuns, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, scout masters can all be fluent in shark dialogue.  Use of consistently harsh words of shark language directed at growing human beings instills deep and lasting beliefs about themselves and their abilities.  Here are some examples:

• You are a difficult child
• This is your fault
• You asked for it
• You're...a scatterbrain / an idiot / a sook / clumsy.
• You're too fat / too thin.
• You always lose things.
• You are hopeless
• You're too sensitive.
• You are destroying my life

Too this, too that, too not good enough really - these phrases used over and over again can form deep grooves in our system of belief about who we are and who we can be.  Unlearning this shark language takes time.

From a very young age I endured sexual abuse from two male elders.  Violent, physical abuse was the way I was 'disciplined'.  This was a part of daily life in my household, as it was and seems still to be the case with many. 

The sexual abuse and the violence have left their scars both physically and emotionally, but for me the hardest healing has been from the words that were said - or not said - to me at those times.  The human body is an amazing mechanism; we learn how to physically endure pain by making ourselves go numb, and we learn it very quickly in order to survive.  But we don't seem to have a mechanism that protects us from shark language.  When we are children it attacks our self-esteem like a cancer that grows with us and there seems no defense.

The hardest daily work I continue to do on myself involves ridding my mind of the verbal torment, the shark messages that were recorded in my child's mind all those years ago.  These words play in my head automatically in response to anything in life.  I now choose to replace them with dolphin messages.  It requires constant discipline, but it works every time in changing the course of my knee - jerk self-destruction in a healthier and more productive direction.

People use shark dialogue to hurt themselves either because they believe they deserve it or because they know no other language.  It's as if we replay tapes in our heads of recorded shark voices that told us it was wrong to cry, to be vulnerable or show pain or love.  As adults we continue to use this language with our children, and the cycle continues. But someone who learns fluent shark throughout childhood does not necessarily have to live an emotionally crippled life.

I continued to play shark tapes to myself long after my sexual, physical and verbal abuse ended.  I did not know how to turn them off, how to stop; if I did, what would I replace it with?

Both of my previous books then go on to answer these questions in following chapters.  If you would like to read more, libraries all around Australia have both of my books on their shelves, or you are most welcome to drop me an email if you would like your own autographed copy of either as I try to always keep some in stock.

There is a saying "Hurt people, hurt people".  I was emotionally very hurt and damaged as a little girl, like many of us, and as a result I grew into an adult who only knew how to hurt those who tried to love me.

I am not sure who said the above saying about hurt people, but I also believe the reverse of this saying to also be true "Healed people, heal people".  When we are living examples of change and healing we carry with us a lantern of hope and a reminder that change is an available option for us all.

It's the old domino effect.  We energetically share what we have inside of us with those around us, whether we are conscious of it or not.  When you put pressure on an orange and squeeze it, orange juice comes out.  When a hurt human being is under pressure, their hurt comes out onto those around them.

But..... when we heal our wounds, detox our fears and bathe our hearts in love, hope and beauty, this is what comes out of us when we are put under pressure. We become rare individuals who can share the lantern of hope and love with those around us during dark times. 

I hope you had a wonderful Easter and enjoyed good lovin', great food, warm companionship and of course as much chocolate as your heart desired!

I would like to leave you with some Word Vitamins today from His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama

"Compassion and love are not mere luxuries... They are fundamental to the continued survival of our species."