Managing Aggression & Violence.

I have 60 years of reflections on paper or screen.

I never have time to dig backwards.

Maybe when the pace slows?

But this one below

I recall 

It was powerful.

Pin-drop-time.

I will walk you through it.

 

*

I was facilitating a training course about::

Managing Aggression & Violence.

Those present were Staff members from Hostels in London.

Mainly men.

Predominantly night staff.

11 of them + myself present.

After I had introduced myself

I mixed them up into triads

and asked them to share

an occasion in their lives

when they faced violence - 

a difficult situation.

I always use triads

as it is easier for everyone

but especially those not used to 

meeting/training - opening up in a group.

After a given time

I asked them all in turn

to share, this time, with the whole group.

My OBJECTIVES

to start with reality.

Getting everyone to connect to their feelings.

Here is the feedback - one from each present::

. A big man tried to enter the Hostel without permission and the staff member lost control and offered to fight him outside.

. I was dragged out of the building with my friend. 

. A gun was rested on my shoulder and my friend was shot dead.

. At the benefits office I stood between the officer and the Hostel resident who was out of control and threateningly abusing staff.

. On the corridor of the Hostel hammers were being used to attack others. Staff hid in the toilets to escape extreme violence.

. I went to visit my Uncle and we sipped tea together. A gang entered and shot dead my Uncle as he sat beside me.

. My friend was intimidated living in the Hostel so he left.  Some time after, he was attacked at his front door and stabbed to death.

. The Hostel Night Manager was abused and intimidated by friends of a resident. Police were called to avoid serious violence.

. The eviction noticed was served on the resident, he abused me and made threats of violence. I walked away to defuse conflict.

. The non-resident had his foot in the front door to stop staff from locking out potential violence and then the abused Staff member wanted to fight.

. A remark from another staff member resulted in the Hostel resident 'losing it' and pulling a knife.

You can imagine the atmosphere in the room now!

A stillness

Goosebumps

a REALITY check.

Then I started the training day.

Not talking at them

but short in-puts

short movie clips

Experiential exercises

Blob Tree Materials

ALL with triad sharing

and feedback to the larger group & me.

Self awareness was big.

Being aware of ‘own feelings’

in times of conflict.

Automatically breathing deep and slow 

which I have lived with for years.

Awareness of how the other person is feeling.

Acknowledging that to the aggressor 

Being calm

Deciding what to do 

not

reacting emotionally.

Fight or Flight stuff.

Love is the key.

A massive part of this area of work

is being self-aware.

Knowing that we can’t manage their feelings

BUT we can learn to manage our own.

Its about not being a REACTOR

but being an ACT-er.

Deciding how to ACT.

Knowing that feelings travel to the brain

quicker than thinking does.

Seeing the behaviour

but also seeing beyond that ...

Love is the key.

It was dynamic

no easy answers

no instant miracles

but much about US - interior 

& 

our own behaviour

& 

understanding the offender.

Experiences are remembered more than words.

We all had an experience that day.

We will never forget it.

Especially when facing conflict.

Pip BHP

   

Remembering Simon with some historic Pipturesque

On this day #YouAreBeautiful www.BlobTree.com www.pipwilson.com

A post shared by Pip Wilson BHP (@beautifulhumanperson) on Aug 6, 2018 at 10:16am PDT

This teacher is a real person. A film was made about her. Her failures. Her successes. VIDEO

This teacher is a real person.

A film was made about her.

Her failures.

Her successes.

This clip is from the movie.

Teachers watch this video clip.

It moves me deeply.

CONTEXT.

She has a class of 

mixed race humans

mixed gang membership

mixed deprivation

mixed harsh experiences

a big mash up of circumstances

backgrounds

upstreams.

She asked them to write.

Nothing 'educational'

but about their OWN lives..............

AND she would not read them without permission

so "leave them in the cupboard if I can read them."

This clip starts when she opens the cupboard

and find it full of written work

L5 stuff

the move is powerful

A L5 movie

Click to watch this on full screen

and

feel it ...............

The movie title
FREEDOM WRITERS





BHP

Most humans don't do these things ...........

What if you do beat him to pulp? What will you sleep like?

I composed this.

Thinking of a BHP who I was working with.

I never give advice.

I ask questions.

Ask

"What are your options"

You want to beat him to pulp?

What if he has a knife?

You take a knife

What if he has a gun?

You take a gun

What if you do beat him to pulp?

What will you sleep like?

What when his gang come around?

What will you carry in your belt?

Why do you want to beat him to pulp?

It is a feeling inside

It is a rage inside

It is not a thought

It is a release that you need.

Why not try to understand those feelings?

Why not understand them as signals?

Why not allow signals to consider thinking of options?

Options to release the rage.

We are responsible for our own actions

We can become response-able

Be better than only having one response.

Consider giving life to another - not death?

Consider choosing life for another, 

AND yourself

Consider love?

Instead of hate.

BHP

Beautiful letter written by the actor Lennie James to a boy who carries a knife

Beautiful letter written by the actor Lennie James to a boy who carries a knife 

To whom it may concern,
My name is Lennie James. I am a 42-year-old father of three. I grew up in south-west London. I was brought up by a single mother. 

I was orphaned at 10, lived in a kids' home until I was 15 and was then fostered. I tell you this not to claim any special knowledge of how you've grown, but to explain how I have, and from where I draw my understanding.
I want to talk to you about the knife you're carrying in your belt or pocket or shoe. The one you got from your mum's kitchen or ordered online or robbed out of the camping shop. The knife you tell yourself you carry for protection, because you never know who else has got one.

 
I want to talk to you about what that knife will do for you. If you carry it, the chances are you will be called on to use it. It is a deadly weapon, so if you use it the chances are you will kill with it. So after you've killed with it, after you've seen how little force it takes for sharpened steel to puncture flesh. After your mates have run away from the boy you've left bleeding. When you're looking for somewhere to dash the blade, and lighter fluid to burn your clothes. When your blood is burning in your veins and your heart is beating out of your chest to where you want to puke or cry, but can't coz you're toughing it out for your boyz. When you are bang smack in the middle of 'Did you see that!' and 'Oh, Jesus Christ!' here's who to blame...
Blame the boy you just left for dead. Blame him for not believing you when you told him you were a bigger man than him. Blame him for not backing down when you made your chest broad, bounced into him and told him about your knife and how you would use it. Blame him for calling you on and making you prove yourself. Tell yourself if he had just freed up his phone or not cut his eyes at you like he did, he wouldn't be choking on his blood and crying for his mum.
Then blame your mum. When the police are banging down her door looking for you, or she hears the whispers behind the 'wall of silence', tell her it's all her fault for being worthless. Cuss her out for having kids when she was nothing but a kid herself, or for picking some drug or some man over you again and again. Even if she only had you and devoted herself to you, even if she is a great mum, blame her anyway. Blame her for not being around more to make sure you took the chances she was out working her fingers to the bone to give you.
When you're done with her, blame the man she picked to make you with. Blame him for being less than half the man he should have been. When he comes to bail you out and starts running you down for the terrible thing you've done, tell him straight: 'I did what I did coz you didn't do what you should have done.' Even if he did right; respected your mother, worked to provide for his family financially and spiritually, taught you right from wrong and drummed it home everyday... Even if he nurtured you as best he could, blame him for the generation of men he comes from.
The one that allowed an adolescent definition of manhood to become so dominant. The one that measures a man by how many babymothers he has wrangling his offspring, or by how 'bad' his reputation is on the streets of whatever couple of square miles he chooses to call his 'ends'.
Damn them for letting you believe that respect is to be found with gun in hand or knife in pocket. Damn them and everyone who feeds the myth of these gangsters, villains, thieves and hustlers. Anyone who makes them heroes while damning hard-working, educated, honest men as weak, sell-outs or pussies.
If you are black, blame white people for the history of indignities they heaped on you and yours. For the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand or get down on bended knee or having to burn shit down before you are afforded something so basically fundamental as equality. If you are white, blame black folk and Muslims for taking all your excuses. Failing that, blame a class system that keeps you poor and ignorant so the 'uppers' and 'middles' can feel better about themselves.
You have good reason to blame them all. I wouldn't be you growing up now for love nor money. Your generation has so little room to manoeuvre. We had more space to step around the bullshit. We weren't excluded at the rate you lot are. Teachers hadn't given up or lost their authority over us. They still tried to protect and guide us even through our most disruptive years.
The police stopped and searched us, but we fought that right out of their hands - we hoped into extinction. But they want to bring back that abusive practice. They are still hooked on punishment rather than prevention. They seem ignorant to the fact that they are feeding you acceptance of an already prevalent gang mentality. As far as you can see, the police are not protecting and serving you, they are coming at you like just another street gang trying to boss your postcode.
When I was where you are now, generations of state agencies, social services, policy-makers and politicians had not abdicated all responsibility for me. We weren't left to our own devices like you have been. Is it any wonder that you end up expressing yourself in such a violently pathetic way?
We should be ashamed. I am. You have shamed us into a desperate need to do something about ourselves. We have collectively failed you and we should take all the blame that is ours for that... but so should you.
I blame you. I blame you because as a generation you are selfish, self-centred and have little or no empathy for anyone but yourselves. You are politically stunted and socially irresponsible and... you scare us. What scares us most is that you would rather die than learn. Your only salvation may be that still most of you aren't playing it out dirty. The vast majority of young men, even with all that is stacked against them, are finding their way around the crap. The boy you will kill, should you continue to carry that knife, almost certainly had the same collective failures testing him. He probably felt no less abandoned and no less scared. He also, almost certainly, wasn't carrying a knife.
Whatever it seems like, whatever you've read, whatever you tell yourself about protection being your reason, statistics show the life you take will be that of an unarmed person. That is what that knife will do for you. It will make you escalate a situation to where it is needed. 

It will give you a misguided sense of confidence. It will make you the aggressor. That knife will make you use it. It will bring you nothing worth having. There is no respect there. The street may give you some passing recognition, but any name you think you might make will soon be forgotten.
Your victim will be remembered long after you. Name me one of the boys who killed Stephen Lawrence. Once you've bloodied that knife you may as well be dead because you'll be buried for 10 to 20 years. Banged up for that long, only a fool would look back and think it was worth it. You'll be nothing more than a sad, unwanted, unnecessary statistic.
If you were mine, this is what I would tell you. I would make myself a big enough man to beg. I'd get down on bended knees if I had to. I would beg you to take that knife out of your pocket and leave it at home. I would tell you that I know you are scared and lost and that I know the risks involved in what I'm asking you to do. I know that what we could step around, you have to walk through, and that there is always some fool who isn't going to make it any other way but the wrong way. I'm just begging you not to be that fool.
Be a better man than that. Let the story they tell of you be that you exceeded expectations... that you didn't drown. Don't spend your days looking to be a 'bad-man' - try to be a good one. Our biggest failure is that our actions have left you not knowing how precious you are. We have left you unaware of your worth to us. You are precious to us. Give yourself the chance to grow enough to understand why.
Be safe.
Lennie James

 

BHP

Disturb the comfortable & ................