Catherine:
Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted Podcast. This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose. I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

So this morning I'm really excited to be joined by Val Mullally. Would you like to introduce yourself, Val? Tell us where you are and what you get up to.

Val:
Hello Catherine, lovely to be with you today. I am living in Rural Ireland down in the south with green fields all around me, very blessed to live where I live in a traditional Irish cottage which my husband and I have restored. And I have the great pleasure of working online most of the time, although I do do training as well.

And my main work is both as author and also as a supervision facilitator. And I love to spell supervision with a capital S and a capital V because it's about supporting people to have SuperVision, to be able to pause and think, ‘What's really going on for me? What's going on from looking at this from the big picture, from looking inside, etc.?’

I'm sure we'll talk more about that later.

Catherine:
Yes, yeah. I think people can tell from your accent, Val, that rural Ireland is possibly not where you started out.

Val:
You guessed. Uh so I was born in Devon and my father was a pharmacist and volunteered to go and work in Africa. So I grew up in southern Africa. and my husband is of Irish roots and in two thousand we decided it was time to come back to the home of his ancestors and we’re very happy here. Ireland is the place my heart calls home.

Catherine:
Yes. So the thing which prompted me really to think this would be a very good conversation to have is that you have been involved in creating psychologically safe spaces for children. It's hard to say, isn't it?

Val:
Psychologically safe spaces.

Catherine:
Psychologically safe spaces for children, yes. And I was intrigued by that. And I thought this would be a really helpful conversation for people for two reasons really. One is that quite a number of the people who listen to this podcast are people I've encountered through particularly my work with parents of children with special needs and that's a journey that I've been on myself but also it really occurred to me that The thing that might make a space psychologically safe for children is also the thing that makes a space psychologically safe for everybody else So even if somebody isn't interested in children per se, I think that there will be stuff in here that is really valuable for them too.

Val:
Thank you. And that's interesting. Yeah, it is, because it's sort of like both sides of the coin, because we can't actually make it psychologically safe for children unless we are safe psychologically safe inside ourselves. As you say, it's not only about children if we think about any context of that we're working with other people for all of us there's an inner child inside – and so how do we make it safe for us to be our authentic selves, which means we've got to acknowledge that there is that one within who sometimes feels threatened, who's sometimes playful – all the different aspects of who we are. We need to be aware of that and be welcoming to all of who we are.

And It's been a long journey and an exciting journey. I have been involved in working with children since I was thirteen years old when I was just by myself running, for want of another word, a little Sunday school group for the under-fives. And church leaders left me alone with the under fives to do the thing – I mean when you think about it these years later, of course that would never happen, but I think I did a good enough job. In fact, years later, some of the children I’d worked with said, ‘Oh, I remember our time with you!’ So right from a young age I sort of had a sense of loving to work with children. And I went on to teachers’college.

I was probably the youngest that ever accepted into college. And after doing a three-year course, I was a qualified teacher at age 19 and teaching 13-year-olds at the time. Not letting on how young I was.

And I really enjoyed my first career both in teaching and becoming a principal in early education and then training in early education. And yet by the time we came to Ireland in 2000 I said to my husband, ‘I'm not going back into teaching. I know I need to focus on supporting parents.’

I didn't have the words around psychological safety at that point. But actually it was the essence of my work even though I didn't have that sort of wording around it because what had happened for me in the late nineteen nineties is I'd become more and more aware of the importance of emotional intelligence. Actually because of a dip in my own life where I went through a really down time where I was not in a good place emotionally myself and I realised the only person who can make me happy is me. And it took a long road back to recovering myself and a lot of reading, particularly work like Goleman and Gottman's work on emotional intelligence and then a bit later on work around neuroscience as well, particularly ones like Daniel Siegel.

And the more I worked with this and started bringing this into my work with the children, the more I felt every single parent needs to know this. And now I have shifted and I work, as I said, in SuperVision, but that was quite a long journey. So I did a master's degree in holistic development.
I trained as a coach and then I went on to be offering a diploma in parent coaching. And also did training as an Imago relationship educator, uh, which is very much about the deep listening skills. A key thing I think that needs I need to say in this too is that I'd come from Africa where generally the parenting model had been very much an authoritarian type of parenting model.

And then I come to Ireland and also having UK experience and find what is often a laissez-faire approach where we almost afraid as parents to set boundaries and hold boundaries – and realising that actually neither extreme is helpful. Being over strict on children isn't helpful. But also letting children do whatever they want and not setting boundaries isn't helpful.

Because we don't want children to grow up thinking everything revolves around them. So how do we get that balance? And and that led me into writing several parenting books.

And the first one that I wrote, "BEHAVE - What to Do When Your Child Won't" is very much around we know we don't want to use punishment, but how do we then discipline? And I think it's very interesting to look at the word ‘disciple’ and ‘discipline’ as coming from the same root. And you know it – Jesus' followers and the followers of any other great leader do not follow because of fear. They follow because of the love they see modelled. We can see that so much in the life of Christ.

And and so how do we we parent or how do we support those who are parenting, not from a place of fear, but from a place of love? And I love Scott Peck's definition of love, which is extending oneself to support the other person's growth. And I think it needs to be also extending myself to support my growth.

No matter who we are in life, we're still all on a growth journey. So how do we support that growth of others and of ourselves and I guess that's what my work is excitingly all about. I just love what I do.

Catherine:
Yes, yeah. I work with parents too. And it it sounds as if actually what you're doing is not so much finding a balance between laissez faire and authoritarian parenting, but just coming at it from a a different model, which is about love. Which is about love.

Val:
That's the – the bottom line exactly. And yet it's parents will want but how? Because what has happened in our system which has been helpful is we're saying, ‘No! Smacking children or other types of punishment is not helpful.’

If we go to that place of inducing fear we're going to cause the the reactive brain, the fight, flight or freeze reaction to come in. They're not truly learning, they just react acting to keep themselves safe. So how do we parent or how do we nurture children, particularly in the education system, really matters, in a way that that supports the child to grow into their fullness?

The next one is stop yelling, nine steps to calmer, happier parenting. And that is more looking at it from the inside. What's going on for me on the inside?

Not necessarily with yelling, but, you know, what are the other behaviors that we as parents have that aren't helpful? And interestingly, because of my work in early education in South Africa, the occupational therapists at that point in the late nineteen nineties, I think were probably two decades ahead of where the average part of the system in Europe was. They they were just amazing and I I had the privilege of working quite closely with a occupational therapist who was passionate about what she did with her work with children and and learnt a lot from her.

And then working with parents over the years here in Ireland, I've realized that the whole issue of sensory sensitivity and understanding how we need to be aware of what's it like for the child.

Catherine:; So would you like to tell us what you mean by sensory sensitivity in case that's a new term for people? Okay.

Val:
Myself and my daughter in law have written a book on this which we haven't yet published is hopefully going to be published a bit later this year, which is ‘Beneath the Behaviour, understanding sensory sensitivity’. And an easy way of looking at is the TEDx talk I've done, which is, ‘In Defence of the Naughty Child: Understanding sensory sensitivity’ . I'm sure we can put the link for that.

So what we're all all taught when we were kids at school, I imagine, was, you know, the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. And for some children those senses are overdeveloped, so they're oversensitive to to loud noises, for instance, strong smells. whatever it is.

And some children will have it underdeveloped so that they're not tuned in enough to it. But when a child is sensorily sensitive, something that is going on for them can feel totally overwhelming. For instance, a child who might have coped okay and seemed to be doing okay in the smaller environment of home goes to school and then you can think how much the noise level has increased.

Very often the the type of lighting used in institutional buildings is very hard on the eye. So that bright hard light, the noise, the shuffling, etc. , all those things going on It ends up with this child who has sensory sensitivity seeming to be a child who can't or won't behave in the classroom When actually it's a message, I can't cope in this environment. Our education system is so so much in many ways have come from the Victorian era when they were basically looking at producing little factory workers.

And we have not adequately developed our education system to be able to meet the needs of children. And life has got so much more stressful where children in eras past would have been able to get out and play and just let go after school and recalibrate, very often our children are being pushed into after-school systems and so on. Go home and mums and dad are tired out after a full day's work.

So there isn't this debrief time– this time just to really chill. Children's play really matters. Not play as an organized sport, just the type of play we probably did as kids up up trees and building forts and all the things that we we did when we were children.

Catherine:
Yes, and there's something about being outside, isn't there, that takes away all of that kind of sensory overload that you get? One of my observations with my own boys was that actually if I could be outside with them, there's not that like the the sensory demands just decrease. Because you've got a tree and a field and you haven't got hundreds of things and hundreds of people. Yeah, yeah.

Val:
And And there there's a book that's a lovely read, "Last Child in the Woods". I think it's Richard Louv, if I remember rightly. And one of the things he talks about within that is how important trees are.

And he says he thinks it goes right back to humans very early times when we would have escaped up into trees so we felt safe in trees. And so that sense of being up in a tree and that sense of well-being, our brains are saying here's a safe space. Yeah.

Yeah, so so the five senses, but actually three other senses now they're now say oh there's probably a whole lot more sensors we don't realise, but the three key ones that have talked about as well is the vestibular sense, the proprioceptive sense and the interoceptive sense. So let me see if I can get these right. So the ‘intero’ senseI think of like in the interior. So what's going on inside my body? So this spot the sort of like, oh, I need to go to the toilet and some children that sense isn't strong enough if they're too busy playing and they don't get there in time. Um Uh but but not just uh the th th the the the urinary needs, but also things like, you know, what's happening with my heartbeat, noticing when uh so in fact your emotions and your what's going on in your body are closely linked.

If you think any emotion you're feeling, your body's feeling it before you put the words on the emotion.

Catherine:
I have a question about that. I'm thinking would that link as well to things like hunger? So if you've got a child who doesn't know either that they're hungry or that they're full, I wonder if that would link into that?

Val: It I'm sure it would, yeah.

Catherine:
And then my other question is sort of linked to the emotion thing. I'm just joining some dots here and thinking about those children who think that they must be sick because their tummy is fluttering and actually it's anxiety. So they're saying, I can't go to school because I'm ill. They might have some anxiety but which we need to listen to, but that sense of there's something going wrong with my body because I've got all these feelings and actually it might be around anxiety – saying about emotion and those things being linked.

Val:
about now but there might be a sense of discomfort in the stomach yeah because if we're anxious we've got butterflies or whatever so if we rather help the child to learn to listen to their body. I I remember a lovely little situation. We used to have an African grey parrot, which is quite a big bird and one day we had a mother of a girl who was about four at the time, bright little girl, and they came to visit and the child rushed to this cage all excited, but then she actually got scared and backed away and when she suddenly realised this big bird was coming towards her, 'cause it was very used to people, so it didn't sit up here, it came to have a look at you.

And she rushed back to her mum And she says, I'm scared. I'm scared. And her mum says, That's okay, it makes sense you're feeling scared. You've never seen a big bird like that so close.

And yeah, I can still remember that little incident of the mother Eh? She'd already given the child the language to be able to express her emotion, but then she was normalizing the emotion, not oh you poor little thing but yeah it makes sense when you see something strange. So she's helping her child to learn to uh in a sense to name, tame and claim the emotion.

Yeah. I think this was a key part of the work that I learned to do for myself. I didn't grow up in a home that talked about emotion and so on.

It was one of those homes where, as my one colleague says, we live from tonsils up – it's all up in the head and not learning to listen to our body. And so how can we help our children to do that, if we haven't learnt to do it for ourselves?

Yeah, so the other two senses would be the proprioceptive that being in the space we're in and the vestibular, the sense of balance. It’s all of those things we need to know and understand to be able to respond to what might be going on for a child

Catherine:
Yes. The proprioceptive sense was a an absolute eye opener for me, because I have I think probably both of my children, but certainly one of them in particular, was very hypo so under sensitive to his proprioceptive sense that sense of where your body is. And so in order to know where his body was, he was doing everything with a lot more force. So there was a lot of stomp hopping up and down the stairs, and if he'd got a spoon in his hand he might be thwacking the table with it. But a lot of that was kind of if I put enough force into this, then I will feel much more clearly where I am in space Mm-hmm.

Val:
And to understand that, because you know, sometimes the parenting would be, ‘Now stop making that noise!’ type of thing. But the other thing that we do, with with the best of intention as parents, is very often is use praise that is in a sense manipulative. Oh you're such a good boy sitting still. When actually maybe he needs to stomp and he needs to thwack he's actually listening to what his body needs.

Catherine:
Yes, yes. My children went to sensory integration therapy for a while and the way that that was set out, there were all sorts of things and And the the plan was that the children would come into the room and then they would gravitate towards whatever it was that they felt they needed. And it was really interesting to listen to the occupational therapist. And her trust of the fact that they would know what they needed, and watching them kind of find the thing that they needed. And a lot of it was the proprioceptive stuff and the other was the vestibula that um you know, that sense of balance.

They liked the things where they could spin. And I mean, I I can't go on a swing for more than about four goes. I love I like the idea of being on a swing, but after about four goes I'm feeling icky.

But they would spin and spin and spin and spin

Val:
Mm. And that's often one of the signs that a a child has perhaps got a a uh hyper or hypo indication in that field. Uh yeah, so the book we've written has a little sort of bottom section with here's things to look out for And here's some things you might find helpful and we go through each one of of those.

And I think if every parent understood that, in a sense, all of us have some level of sensory sensitivity in some ways. You know if you think certain people can't stand strong foods, for instance. And I c I can't stand loud noises.

I just have to put my hands over my ears sometimes 'cause I cannot take the noise. A and so when we can recognise what might be going on for my child and and when I say about, you know, the words like ‘good boy’ aren’t helpful, I don't mean that we don't affirm our children, but there's other ways to affirm and I think there's a difference between affirm and praise. So affirm is noticing what they're doing.

Maybe the young child's picked up the dishes and told she is a good girl, which runs off her tongue so easily and you know, what does that actually mean? Is that, ‘You picked up the dishes and you carried them to the sink? That's what I call being helpful.’ When you say words like that, the child knows you've really noticed. And actually you have to think, you do have to really notice.

So how do we rather than give glib praise, how do we give genuine affirmation that helps the child to see what is helpful in relationship but also that supports them in their development. It's not about what just pleases us to make our life pleasant. That isn't what it's about. They said like the child banging the spoon or whatever. We might not like the noise. We might want to find different ways of helping them express it. But can we pause and see what they need?

Catherine:
Yes, I think one of the things that as you were talking about that calling somebody a good girl, the thing that really sort of hit me was that sense that actually we really want our children, don't we, to know that they are good and worthy and precious anyway. That the good is not linked to the fact that you've done something that pleases me as as an adult, that's there anyway. So that advice that the affirmation is about affirmation of who you are.

Absolutely, absolutely. So the good is is kind of a I approve of who you are is there as a given And the other thing that you said that I think is so so valuable is that comment about this is not just about what is convenient for us as adults, but what is helpful for them in their growth. There was an incident.

Sometimes you can do something as a parent that is a bit of a mistake and you think, actually, that I need to learn from that. But also there are moments when you think, No, I think I got that right. And one of those for me was an occasion when one of my boys had kind of stomped off and he'd got really, really angry and he'd sort of he'd disappeared off, which is very scary when you're a parent.

You have a small child who kind of decides that their response to you is going to To go AWOL from I'm not he I could sort of see where he was, but we were walking along the path and I'm like, I'd I need you to be safe and I'd much rather you were next to me. But actually that gave me some time to think. And he was so angry and so cross with me.

But then he kind of calmed down enough to come back. And what I noticed for him and what I my affirmation to him in that moment was do you know, ‘Really well done. It is so hard when we get very, very angry. t is so hard to calm down. You know, it's that's a big thing that you've managed there.’ Yeah

Val:
Yeah. Yeah, that a child with sensory sensitivity might just not be able to cope in the regular classroom all the time. And the wise teacher is one who knows that maybe they just need a little space just outside the door or something where they can just go and recalibrate.

Not try and force them to stay in a context which they aren't safe. And so that that means the school team need to figure out, okay, how do we provide for these children in a way that still ensures their safety Mm but when we just trying to squash them into the system because of fear, then we're not it it's fear or it's love and if we're reacting out of fear we're not thinking about the love of extending ourselves not just as individuals but how do we extend ourselves as organizations or institutions to cause the growth of every child. And when we do that, I think we're causing the growth of every person as well, as you said at the beginning of our discussion.

So interestingly that the next book I wrote off after that is called ‘Baby and Toddler on Board: Mindful Parenting When A New Baby Joins the Family’. And in those first few years of life, obviously the senses are not well developed. There is sensory sensitivity here happening with every toddler that's, you know, they have the meltdowns and so on, and often it is because of the sensory overload.

And within that, I think I spell out some key principles that apply not only to the child, but concepts that actually apply to all of us within life – I don't think I realised it when I was writing the book. It's only as I've looked back at it now that I can see some of the elements that I've brought into that book are lifelong principles.

In fact, the latest book I'm working on is called "The Heart of Listening: The transformative power of Reflective SuperVision". And I've actually spelt out some of those principles in that book around what's deep listening really about and how do we do it. Things like following the child's lead, you know, instead of just rushing into the conversation, where's the where is the child's focus now? What, where are they focused? And how do I support them to explore the angle they want to look at? You know, sort of like I can think of an incident years back where where some people were walking along in a zoo and the child, the young child got fascinated by the dew drops. It was early morning, and there were dewdrops forming like diamonds sparkling at the end of these fronds of grass. And the child was totally fascinated by this. And the father is roaring, ‘Hurry up, we need to get to the lions, we need to get to the lions.’ Well, actually when they got down to the lions, the lions were all asleep in the cage anyway. Instead of ‘Wow, the child is really focused on these beautiful, beautiful dewdrops‘ and why not pause and see where the child is at? And although that's a physical thing, but how often at an emotional level or things we're trying to process do we need to pause and see, ‘What's really happening here?’

What needs to be observed rather than trying to rush to solutions, for instance, as as we could be tempted to do if we're working in supervision coaching or or counselling or other forms. How do we how do we stay with the person and be present, help them to be present to whatever it is that has caught their attention?

Catherine:
I I really like that as a an expression of deep listening that is not just about what somebody's saying, but also about what's going on for them and what they're doing. You know, you're really talking about a way of being with one another and with our children that is absolutely not laissez faire. Laissez faire being kind of our let's them do what they want.

It's it's utterly not, but it looks like that to somebody else. But Leslie Ferrand suggests, well I'm not really bothered. But what you're doing actually is being with at a really deep level and at a level which is often for us as adults deeply inconvenient And you were saying that it's often inconvenient for institutions and I I think about some of the parents that I journey with who have been listening deep deeply to their children and know what it is that their children need and then are kind of running up against institutions who are doing their darndest to encourage these children to be convenient for the institution and it's really hurting them.

To fit into the box. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Val:
Yeah. And so to me, these children – and it's an expression I use in the TEDx talk – these children that seem to be inconveniencing us, as you said, are are actually the ones who almost like canaries in the coal mine, they're the ones who have just stopped singing the regular song and are giving us a signal that something's not okay here. And so often the emphasis goes on to try to ‘fix the child’ or if we're working in a something like SuperVision or or or coaching or or counseling, uh the thing is like I need to – inverted commas – ‘fix the person’. No, it's not my role to fix. It's how do I support them, listen to them. In the SuperVision work I use the expression it’s my work is to support them to bring into harmony their authentic self, their role and their context.

But it actually is still also the same with effective parenting in that what we want the child to be their authentic self, not to fit into what somebody else thinks they need to be. And we all take roles, different roles at different times, even children, you know, sometimes I'm big brother or big sister and and sometimes I'm just mommy or daddy's little boy and sometimes I need to be the pupil here. And what's the context, you know?

Okay. And and where the context is not working, we need to pause as individuals, but also as community and stop and say, ‘Hang on, what's going on here?’ Because I think that these children are canaries in the coal mine who are saying, ‘Life is not working.’ And it's the same for all of us, not just for the children.

Catherine:
It is, yes. I like that sort of analogy about the the canaries in the coal mine. I I had a conversation in one of my podcasts a while ago with an adopted father.

It was a conversation with Glenn Hussey, if people want to go back to that. But he works with diversity within a university and has a number of children for whom there are those challenges. And his observation is that if we get it right for those children, the ones you would describe as the canaries in the coal mine, we will be getting it right for everybody.

Absolutely.
Because they are identifying needs which are very big and pressing for them, but those same needs at a at a different sort of level will be there for other people. I was wondering as you were you were talking, Val, about going back to kind of your own story and that kind of being made to fit in.

And I I wonder if you have any reflections about What needed to shift for you in terms of your own awareness of what was going on for you?

Val:
For me, the the the big one the the uh how I had when I would have been only forties, I think, yeah, eartly forties, was a realisation that, particularly regarding ange that I had grown up in a home where good girls don't get angry. And you were supposed to toe the line and don't upset dad. Now my my dad as a highly uh a good protector, a good provider, but he he didn't do the emotional side of relationship. Well I was one of four and yet somehow I was the child who put her head above the parapet and would push back at Dad. And I I pushed back at a cost. My other three siblings uh would just keep the head under the parapet. It would probably easier, much easier for them. Let me do the work. Um But I think and I think often within the Christian context, particularly then, but I would imagine still now to a great degree, there's well that whole thing, I mean the childhood prayer I can remember is, ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’. Well, there were lots of times when Jesus was anything but meek and mild. He was very certain of who he was and he didn't give up on who he was he was and yet I think my experience and – knowing that my parents were doing the best they knew how – but my experience was, ‘Disown your voice, just fit in and be a good girl’ was was the underlying message I would have received. And actually I got praised for times when I would have done that when when I think there were times when my protest was a very valid protest.

You know, children often have a strong sense of justice. And I I think I was a child with a strong sense of justice. A and so I think I grew up with this sense of, ‘Don't say when you don't agree, just keep quiet and keep your head down and put a nice smile on your face and be a b good Christian girl type of thing.’

I think one of the books I read, a lot of reading around Goldman and Gottman, but another book that I read much about that time was Harriet Lerner's book, ‘Dance of Anger’. And that book strongly impacted me because I realised from what she wrote Anger is a signal, ‘I need change.’ So instead of ‘I mustn't get angry’, which then just builds up and builds up like a pressure cooker until it either explodes or implodes It was learning how to recognise what is my anger trying to say to me.

And when you're calm and not triggered by the reptilian brain, how do you then start saying what you need and how you need and dealing with issues, not pretending they don't exist. So anger particularly was one that very strongly impacted me and I think it's a a topic I've continued to explore a lot uh particularly Daniel Siegel's work has been helpful on that. And what happened for me is is working with young children and doing workshops with the small groups of the five and six year olds around emotions.

I can remember particularly the work around anger. I got them to draw – draw something that shows anger. And this one child drew a tiger , and he's a fierce looking tiger with big fangs and standing very rigid, the ears pricked up and really obviously really listening.

But the other the main thing that caught me with this child's picture And I said she would only be five years old – is the eyes were like squinted. And I thought, you know, the expressions we use like blind with rage. When we really angrily we can't see straight, and somehow this child’s picture had automatically caught that.

Another child with the same exercise drew a picture of what it looked like rather like Stevenson's rocket. You know that old steam engine, the big black engine thing and you can see this big fire in that steam engine. But then he points to the just behind where this big roaring fire is, this is, and ‘That's where the dynamite is’! I mean, I believe we all have such a deep level of creativity and I love to bring that into my SuperVision work.

But I believe it's an inborn gift from God, you know, and a child automatically knows how to express it. It's our system that squashes down creativity. And and so I talked with this child about this. And he was saying, ‘No, you must never get angry.’ What he used to do is it used to build up, build up, and then this poor little kid when he got too over angry would burst into tears and have a total meltdown and and then feel shamed and bad and that you know he'd been crying in front of everyone else. I asked his permission to talk with his mother. And the mother said, ‘Oh’ she said, ‘I've always been telling him he he mustn't get angry.’ She said, ‘My dad was such an angry man and I don't want him to grow up like that.’ So I had to help her to see that it wasn't squashing down the anger, but learning helping him learn how to name and tame and claim the anger.

And and I say although we I'm talking here about children and parenting, but I believe all this work naturally overflows because all of us in the caring professions we need support to know where we're at, the – a space to stop and pause and reflect on where we are, how we are, But also to support those we're working with to be able to do that.

Catherine:
Yes, and I think your observation earlier in this conversation that actually we can't support other people to do that if we have got no idea where we are ourselves. So if we're not psychologically safe, we really can't create a safe space for others. Yeah Yeah. And I I wonder whether part of psychological safety is is creating a safe space where emotions can be what they are without judgment and without us being scared of them.

Val:
I think it's that and I think some people working in the field of coaching and supervision are maybe thinking, I'm not a therapist, I mustn't go into therapy. And and to recognise there's a difference between doing therapy and holding a space where a therapeutic approach can come in. And Nicki Weld, she's written a good book about the therapeutic approaches within SuperVision. A fairly heavy read, not a sort of light, easy read, but she’s got some good good points in the book – brought to the surface as a dilemma that a lot of people working in fields like coaching and supervision have that they're almost too afraid to go near anything that oh will it will this become therapy.

Catherine:
I think that's a beautiful distinction between therapy and a therapeutic space. Would you like to talk a little bit more about what you think the difference is between those? Because I think that is very insightful.

Val:
Let me share a little story with you that that illustrates this. And that is when I was doing my further training in SuperVision. And we were doing group work.

You know, the group was of holding the space and I was working with the trainer, taking the role of facilitator, and I had volunteered to take the role of supervisee And so within this context, we'd done some body work that helped me to what was happening within my body. Interesting, it was a thing about balance and I was sort of found myself rocking my body from side to side because it was as I'd been torn between two different things. It's actually thinking being the good girl and pleasing everybody or am I holding what I need here as well. And and been working, through literally using my body, to to explore this.

I've been pausing to ‘Okay, so where are you now?’ And I said, ‘What I'm realising is that this is triggering my family of origin stuff. The the whole thing around being a good girl.’ And the SuperVision facilitator said of just held me in that space for a moment, just let me process m where I was at, didn't rush in, paused, and then when he sensed the timing was right, said, ‘And the way that impacts your work now is …’Aand I think that little vignette captures the thing of how yes you can you can hold the emotion, you can let the emotion surface, but you don't have to go to oh poor you and in fact you've gone out of being in the role of SuperVision facilitator or coach, if you if you then start to try and unpack the child's issues, you know, the it that's not what it's about.

But just that simple ‘And the way this impacts your work now …’ immediately brought me to now bring what I've been processing into where I am now and what do I need going forward. So it's sometimes a very simple little skills like that that the facilitator needs to know and understand, both in understanding emotional intelligence and the neuroscience create that. In fact, further training also that I found hugely helpful was neurolinguistic programming. There's a lady in Ireland, Elizabeth Garry Brosnan, who does excellent training on that.

And I did training with her and that really brings you aware of noticing what's happening within your own body, what you note, what you can observe about the other person. So it really slows you down instead of sort of rushing for solutions. Just staying present with what what I can see, what I notice, what am I observing both within myself and within the room context with the other person or persons.

Catherine:
Yeah. So coming back to the kind of creating psychologically safe spaces, what would you say are the elements of that?

Val:
Well let me read to you it's it's a quote from my book. So my here's my definition of SuperVision: ‘A psychologically brave space for the supervisee to reflect on their work and themselves within their work. It's an open yet boundaried space where, through creative interventions, they can access their own wisdom.’

Catherine:
Okay. So I'm wondering if it would be helpful to give people an idea who would be having SuperVision.

Val:
I think everyone basically who works particularly in a leadership context, within any form of caring profession needs to be in SuperVision. And people like human resource managers, leaders in organizations, people like that. That - yet maybe they think, ‘A lot of my work is around the finances’, but you need to be in touch with who you really are, you need to be in touch where what where other people are.

So regular – and it's a big difference between Reflective SuperVision and Clinical Supervision. Clinical Supervision which is also needed, particularly in one's training years is where you're working with somebody who has got training in the same discipline that you are now trained and operating in and is going to almost be in a mentoring role. They're going to be holding you accountable and supporting you to do the correct thing whether you're you know, say in the medical profession or whatever.

So Clinical Supervision really is important. But the type of SuperVision I'm talking about now is what I call Reflective SuperVision. And that is about being able to have a space to pause and to look at what's really going on for me.

And it's not rushing to solutions. It is I said there, it's about learning to listen to your own self of what's going on for me. What am I actually experiencing? And how might that be for the other person. To me it should be an essential. If you're in careers like counselling and that, it's not an optional extra, it is an essential.

And I really think places like schools, family support agencies, HSE workers in key positions, all those people, they all need to be in SuperVision and the organisation should be providing the funding to ensure that happens – at providing adequate funding recognizing that that this is important. So many different disciplines are beginning to recognise this. For instance, within the church, most of the denominations in the UK now are recognising and are in the process of having SuperVision for their ministers, their priests, their lay workers. That is unfolding now and they're recognising this as essential. Likewise for people like coaches, you have to be in supervision to gain accreditation.

But still the level of supervision is something that can vary a lot. And I think there's some really good cutting-edge training coming out on supervision now, but one needs to make sure if you're looking at training in this field, you find the quality supervision training that you're looking for. And particularly to me what matters is bringing in creativity within it. Because, you know, just like I I explained about those children's drawings, if we'd done some sort of drawing activity, if you'd been the adult and I'd encouraged you to so how about drawing a p picture of how you feel in this context and you'd maybe drawn that tiger I was describing. Then we’d look at the tiger picture together when they'd finished and say, ‘So what do you notice?’ And get them to really pause and really look at their picture and they're likely to say, ‘Oh it's very stiff’ and whatever else. And and really encourage them and ‘What else do you notice?’ And ‘What do you wonder?’ And along the line when I sense that they've said what they want to say about that or say, and ‘May I share something I notice?’

And perhaps I’s comment on the eyes and I’d say something like, ‘And I'm noticing the eyes ; seem like they're not able to focus and I'm wondering what what that might be saying to you?’ And so the using the terms ‘notice’ and ‘wonder’ are key tools, and I talk about that in my book about listening/ Well, I don't know if I've answered your question adequately.

Catherine:
I'm gonna bring you back to the question that I I originally asked a moment ago, which was we started off by thinking about how do we create psychologically safe spaces. And I think we're talking about that for children, for one another, for ourselves. So, what, Val, would be the elements of the creation of a psychologically safe space.

Val:
Over the years, what's evolved for me is the model that I call TRAKC about keeping on track. And I don't mean track as in a railway track, but something organic like a path through the forest that naturally develops. And so TRAKC stands for Trust, Resonance, Authenticity, Kindness and Candour.

And you might notice, as I say that, that the K and the C have been inverted in order, and that is quite deliberate, because you need to have kindness. It's no good having candour without kindness. So to me the kindness comes first.
And I'm not talking about doing kind things, but the being kind.

Catherine:

So I'm gonna take you back. Do you want to take us through each of those briefly in order? 'Cause that will help people to remember, I think.

Val:
TRAKC. The T...Trust. So trust I think is pretty obvious to us, but actually there's different levels of trust. We trust to different people in different ways.

So you trust your mechanic hopefully to fix your car, you know, it's a sort of technical trust, but you're not likely to go into them about, say, your marriage difficulties or whatever. We trust different people in different ways. And none of us are perfect.

But we need to have both the academic training and rigour and discipline to be working in the in whatever profession we are working in. But we also need that emotional trust, but we need to create environments that supports people's emotional trust. When the trust gets damaged, even you know, with a little hiccup that we hopefully can repair.

There's both the sense of strong emotions arise, but also when when trust has been broken, we can't let something go.

Catherine:
So so leaping to the end, maybe if the trust is broken you need some candour in order to rebuild it.

Val:
You do. And if you think back to what my definition that I gave you regarding SuperVision – is it a psychologically brave space? And I'm going back to that because, you know, it's not just a safe space, it's a brave space. It needs to be safe enough that we can be brave. In other words, if we can say, ‘Listen, when you did such and such, that wasn't helpful for me.’

We don't need to attack the person. We can put an ‘I’ language. But the person facilitating the space, whichever space it is, whether it's training or supervision or the parenting, whatever context it is, do we make it safe enough that people can be candid?

And so if you think about it, the young child will very easily say something like, ‘That's not fair ‘or they might even say is something like, ‘I don't love you anymore.’ And we want to sometimes jump in and instead of, ‘What's the emotion underneath that?’ And so just with the young child I would be going to, ‘You're really angry with me right now?’ And by helping them to name the emotion we can then deal with what's really the issue underneath the anger. But, likewise, we need to create a safe enough space that people can be candid in the space and be able to say like, ‘When you did such and such, you know, that wasn't okay for me.’

And we need to be okay then to receive that and say, ‘I heard you saying that wasn't okay. Tell me more about that.’ And we take the space to hold it out.

So rupture will happen in every relationship. Hopefully not often and hopefully not hugely, but it will happen sometimes. And what matters is when rupture happens do we take time for repair?
And how we repair and that we do repair is what matters. And and that's hugely important with parenting. Yeah, yeah, there will be ruptures and pausing to be able to come back to it and repair it.

Catherine:
Yes, that's one of the really hopeful things I think, if you take that seriously, is that that your parenting errors or moments of utter incompetence or emotional breakdown can become moments of building relationship if you do the repair. If if you can go back and model honestly, well how do we put this back together? And it really builds.

I'm just thinking of an occasion when one of my sons and I were going somewhere and we had got lost and we were late and we both got really cross with each other and I really felt I had lost it in a way that was utterly inappropriate. And afterwards I apologised and said, ‘You know, I really lost it and this was I was very scared about us being late’ and and he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, don't worry, Mum, I completely get it. That happens to me too.’

Well, that was the consequence of our continual practice of modelling repair. And so I'd modelled it a numerous times and he was able to have empathy for me because he'd learnt that I had empathy for him.

Val:
And you've given him one of the most powerful skills to take into life in other situations, you know, not just everything cosy and fine. But you own how do you model repair of relationship without actually having a rupture? So, when you say that that actually immediately I thought of you know, T–R. A-was authenticity and that immediately had me thinking about, ‘Yeah, you were being authentic in the relationship.’

And so when the authentic You pitched up, it was very easy for the authentic him to come into the relationship too. So then there was resonance. So with that there was trust.

Trust in - actually trust in your relationship that you could uh repair it. Trust that you had the processes to repair it. Trust in yourself.

So there was a whole level of different trust happening all at the time. There was the resonance. Yeah, he tuned into you and you tuned into him.

Him, there was the authenticity, there was the kindness that he was able to be kind back to you, but actually there was the kindness of you to the relationship, and there was also the kindness to you to yourself that you weren't beating yourself up. But ‘Whoops, this wasn't okay. We need to sort this out.’ So there was kindness and there was candour, you naming it, and then he in return could be candid with you.

So that was a lovely example that just brings the whole TRAKC model on board. So anytime when it's things when we know things aren't going okay, rather than thinking about, ‘Ah, that person did such and such.’ Rather bring it back to yourself: How do I create the trust? How do I build the resonance? How do I build the authenticity, the kindness, the candour? How do I bring those elements into the space?

And first modeling it yourself.

Catherine:
It sounds to me as if the T R A K C are the things which will help you to build the T, the Trust, the Resonance, the Authenticity, the Kindness and the Candour will help the but one of the things that has been occurring to me as we've been having this conversation is that actually you can't make trust happen, can you? And actually if you try and insist, and I know that sometimes adults do try and insist to children that they need to trust. If you try and insist when it's not there, I think actually that is a deeply breaking of trust If you observe a situation where an adult is trying to insist that somebody trusts them, actually that makes it unsafe because trust grows slowly, doesn't it?

It can't be demanded, it can only be earned. Well actually I tell you where it happens a lot, and I think it's really damaging, is when religious leaders tell their congregation that they should trust them. And actually if you are saying, I am the pastor that God has appointed and therefore if I say this you must trust me, that is really not fair.

It's actually a spiritual abuse. It is, completely it is. Absolutely it is.

But what you are doing is that you are asking people to become unsafe to themselves. You're asking them to ignore their own sense of what's going on for them. And say, I mustn't be scared of this person.

I mustn't allow these questions which are naturally arising for me about what you're saying to surface. I must squish all of that. And you've made them unsafe to themselves and you've made them unsafe in the community which they are part of And I think we can do that in all sorts of contexts as parents, as teachers, as managers, as institutions.

Val:
Yeah Yeah. So ideally SuperVision is that space where you can pause and you can reflect on what's happening within your team, within your organisation, and within yourself. And although TRAKC is is the model I've developed, I I just see in every context it works and I'm I'm hoping it's the next book that will be written after the current two books get out.

In fact I have got an online series of workshops because the recordings are available online so we could put the link of that in as well. But absolutely what you say, you know, when you said that it makes me think of like when when you sit in the dentist chair and the dentist says, ‘This won't hurt’ and you think ‘Well, you're obviously, em, expecting it to hurt if you say it won't hurt.’ You don't sit in the hairdresser's chair and she says this won't hurt, so why – you know so the young child automatically knows something's not okay here. Um to have a dentist who says rather, ‘I need to put this injection in your mouth and it's gonna give a prick and that's gonna hurt a little bit fr just for a little bit and it'll be fine.’ You know that can actually help.

Catherine:
I think as parents, particularly if you're entering parenthood via um sort of the non-traditional route, either as a step-parent or a foster parent or an adoptive parent, or that actually to be candid about the fact that somebody might not be trusting you And that that's okay, I think is much more likely to build trust than to insist. So, to to name it, to say, well, you know, we've not known each other that long. So, of course. Of course, you're not sure whether you can trust me yet.

Val:
Mm so then you're validating their experience.

Catherine:
Absolutely, yeah Yes, yeah, yeah.

Val:
And we can say, ‘What could be helpful for you here?’ ‘What’ questions are you know, we we we sometimes want to ask ‘Why’ questions, but But the why questions people are likely to – either try and make excuses or blame somebody else. So, rephrasing a question to be a ‘What’ question, so like, if it’s not feeling safe for you right now if that's the wording they've said? What would be helpful for you here?’ . Give it back to them and let them say what they need.

Catherine:
Yes. ‘Why’ sounds really quite threatening and accusatory, doesn't it? People often say why when they're asking, ‘Well, why did you do that?’ as in I really don't think you should have done.

Val:
Yeah, and just start your question with ‘What’ and it will come over with a very different message to the other person. Yes, it just feels safer, doesn't it? Mm.

And it also somehow the what question tends to be forward looking in in most cases. Obviously it depends it kind of the wording of the question. But when we think, well we can't change the past But what can we learn from it that will be helpful for the future?

Catherine:
Yes, yeah. Which is really helpful for all sorts of relationships, isn't it? Particularly, I think parenting. If you're orientation is not towards why did that happen but what have we learnt from that and what will help us for the future.

Val:
We're probably most real with our family that we are anywhere and yet we can learn because kids will be so straight and honest with us and tell us we're not doing okay in ways that those people in your work team probably wouldn't. So we can learn a hang of a lot about leadership from children.

Catherine:
Yes, it does occur to me that supervision would be very useful in the parenting context. But actually finding safe spaces to reflect on how we're parenting can be not that easy.

Val:
Yeah, yeah, hugely important too. Because it's probably the most important work we'll ever do in our lives.

Catherine:
Yes, yes. Well we have visited many places in the course of our conversation.

Val:
We have, haven't we?

Catherine:
And I can hear well actually all of the things around your TRAKC model, you know, have been brought into your work with children, with parents, with supervisees. So, the wealth of resources that you have alluded to all the way through, I'm wondering if there is a central place that people can get those?

Val:
Yeah, my website is valmullally.com and remember you're looking for five L's there. Val has the one L and then Mullally is double L double L. And we can put the link in the in the notes, can't we?

Catherine:
Yes, and there is a number of different books that you've written and we can link to a little resource list. Certainly, that would be wonderful. That's been really, really interesting, Val. Thank you so much for your time this morning. And it's been lovely to be with you.

Val:
Thank you, Catherine.

Catherine:
Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email lovedcalledgifted@gmail. com.

You can find a transcript of this podcast at lovedcalledgifted. com and that's also the place to go if you're interested in the Loved Called Gifted course. Or if you'd like to find out about spiritual direction or coaching. Thank you for listening.