Responding well

Even when people have limited choices – because they are financially constrained, or they are oppressed, or they have had their liberty taken away – they can still decide how to respond to their situation.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and survivor of Auschwitz, said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

He also said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

The challenging question we have for you is this: are you a good responder? Put another way, do you have the ability to chop and change your responses based on an awareness of the countless choices you have within you, at any given moment in time?

For example: can you laugh, cry, pause, count to ten, move, walk away, be still, talk calmly, fall silent, whistle, breathe in, breath out, remember, accept, acknowledge, apologise, self-soothe, reflect, learn, start again?

People with limited responses can be a danger to themselves as well as those around them. If you have a small range of responses, can you go on a journey of discovery and come back with a whole bag of options?