Interview on LBC

Mike	We'll be linking up with Deborah Marshall-Warren in just a moment. As I mentioned to you, I was really shocked by the NSPCC campaign. Not because I thought the thing was offensive - I thought it really brought it home to people how things that we've picked up on in early childhood can really mark our lives. So I'm going to talk to Deborah about that. and I think maybe we'll all learn a little bit from it - whether we've got children or whether we've got friends who've got children. It could bring us up to speed on how our attitude and response to children who are in distress, crying or whatever it is, can be extremely harmful, so we have to bear in mind the power of the reaction that we as adults make. ... Let's talk to Deborah Marshall-Warren. Hello Deborah.
Deborah	Hello, good evening
Mike	Do you know, this extraordinary campaign which has been running on TV for the last few days - the Full Stop campaign that was launched on Monday, by the NSPCC - really struck a note that things that happen to people in those very early years can stay with them for the whole of their life can't they?
Deborah	That's absolutely true. One particular dialogue in that advertising campaign you referred to was "You're brainless, you're stupid, you're no child of mine". and oft-repeated words and phrases can very much become embedded in the subconscious mind so that as a person grows up into an adult they actually define their sense of their personality and their sense of themselves through those words and phrases. and completely and absolutely believe the labels and the phrases that have been given to them by someone else.
Mike	Now, I'm aware as most people are that one can get into therapy and work with someone. But not everyone is able to do that because of time constraints on them or maybe financially - which is probably the more common reason. So can we ever do anything to overcome this legacy of negative words?
Deborah	Well, essential to the Mind Detox method is language, and that method respects the power of language to change an event from the ordinary to the extraordinary. And often where a person has outgrown labels that, as I shared, were generally designed by someone else - words like "lazy", "failure", "stupid", "shy", "selfish" - one of the ways in which they can let them go is to actually use metaphors and symbols to actually - for example, a suitcase - and to pack those labels into a suitcase and to squeeze them in and sit on it metaphorically, close it, and then blow it up - and let them go.
Mike	Nothing violent about you, then!
Deborah	[Laughter]It sounds quite violent but it's an extraordinary way of releasing and letting go and freeing yourself and liberating yourself so that you leave room to create your own labels and let go of those that - as I shared - have been given to you.
Mike	So it's really down to the individual to say, "I've had enough of this, I'm not walking around with this legacy of negativity, and I need to overcome it, I need to 'move forward' - which is an expression that people use all over the place. these days - I even heard newsreaders doing it.
Deborah	Very much so, and there are many, mnany people out there who have achieved many successes in their life and they continue not to feel their own sense of success. It's almost as though they are blocked by these labels, but often they're not quite sure what is blocking them. And suddenly they can find themselves at the top of their ladder and they still feel that they're not successful. And often the block can lie in a word, a phrase, or a pattern of behaviour which has been learned from the past or given to them from the past. And by accessing, by discovering what that is, that person can begin to become what they wish to be, and be it in the present. It's almost like often a person can move forward into the future looking through the rear-view mirror at their past and that is not in any way liberating - in fact, it's a dangerous way to drive!
Mike	Hmm. Now, actually I was just thinking whilst you were talking. Whereas as we started off this conversation, we were talking about the NSPCC campaign, I would have thought that it's probably activated many people to think about those moments of their childhood. And that could be people in their late teens, twenties, thirties, or forties or whatever - and they're thinking, "Yeah, that happened to me! That was awful". So, I think we're giving people a bit to talk about. And we're going to a talk a bit later on, aren't we, about three or four weeks time and other aspects of the work you focus on in your book, Mind Detox. All right?
Deborah	Yes!
Mike	Gorgeous! Well, thank you very much indeed Deborah. Deborah Marshall-Warren's book, "Mind Detox: How to Cleanse Your Mind and Coach Yourself to Inner Power". (I'm really big on self-help books actually.) This, let me tell you, is a very useful, easy-to-approach piece of work. It's published by Thorsons, and the ISBN is 0-7225-36-47-X.