As you have probably already noticed, customers have become very difficult to deal with. They now demand products and services of perfect quality, are unwilling to put up with complicated purchasing processes, and want anything that doesn’t work to be fixed immediately at no cost to them. They are quick to jump on any mistakes, will give customer service staff a hard time and will even play one supplier off another to get the best deal. And they want more for less.

Think about your own attitude when you are the customer. How do you feel when you don’t get the quality or timeliness you need? How do you react when one of your suppliers wastes your time when you return shoddy merchandise?

The great customer attitude shift has happened! Customers have become highly Internal to their suppliers. While your company may be spending time and money developing the best products and services for your clients, this may no longer be enough. You will also have to adapt your language and processes to meet the needs of people who take everything you say only as information for them to consider. Notice the skepticism with which clients scoff at your claims to be the best. “Prove it “, they insist, (to their satisfaction).

To sell and provide customer service to people who have an Internal pattern, you need to give them information and let them decide. For all the information you need to decide, call us . Or, I would like you to try it out and tell me what you think. The only way to know if this is the one for you, is to test it out for yourself. That is why car dealerships insist on getting the prospective buyer behind the wheel.

What can your company do about all those tough customers?

There are several solutions! Teach your sales and customer service reps to understand the triggers that motivate your customers and use the right Influencing Language for maximum impact. Do your customers demand an immediate solution to their problems? Use moving Away From language so they don’t get annoyed while you fix their problem. Are your customers asking for straight-forward processes to get what they need? Show them the right procedure and speak in Procedures language.

Success Strategies can conduct the market research you need to diagnose what your customers are really asking for, help you design your marketing materials, and train your staff on how to guarantee continued happy customers. We can show you how to set up systems to ensure you get the input you need from customers and end users; so that you will have an on-going means to adapt to their changing needs.

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What is your stress response?

The pressure cooker is on! Longer hours, less patience, more demanding work situations than ever before. How do you respond to the pressures, at work or elsewhere, which are typical for the context you are in? This is not about major life dramas. Almost everyone would have an emotional response to major life dramas. People respond to these “normal” pressures in one of the following three ways.

Feelings

People with a Feelings pattern have emotional responses to the normal levels of stress at work. They go into their emotions and stay there. High stress jobs may cause them to have stress-related illnesses in the long term. To many other people, they seem to over react to situations or be hyper-sensitive. They are well suited for artistic or creative work where emotion provides the juice. As salespeople, they find it difficult to handle rejection and may not, as a result, prospect as often as they should.

Choice

People with a Choice pattern first have an emotional response to the normal stresses at work and then either return to an unemotional state or not as they desire, in a given situation. They can empathize with others or choose not to. They tend to perform well as people managers.

Thinking

Those with a Thinking pattern do not have emotional responses to normal stressful situations. They have trouble empathizing with others as they themselves do not go into emotional states. They will not panic in most emergencies, but keep a cool head. They are reliable performers in high stress jobs.

Managing Stress and People

Most of the population at work has the Choice pattern (70%). This means, that when faced with a difficult or troublesome situation, they will first have an emotional response. As a manager, you can assist by helping the person disassociate themselves from their feelings, if appropriate, by having them change perspectives. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can distort time by asking them: “Can you imagine what we’ll think about this situation 2 years from now?” You can have them see it from someone else’s shoes: “How do think our customers will perceive this?” Or you can have them view the whole thing from the outside: “If you were a fly on the wall when this happened what would you notice?”

For Feeling people you will probably have to hone up on your conflict resolution and mediation skills. Give them tasks that they can get passionate about and watch for signs of distress and overload of tension. Remember that these people may over-react to situations, and helping them to dissociate, as mentioned above for the Choice employees, may help in some situations. For highly intense reactions, create rapport by also raising your tone while saying something positive or surprising. “I’m so upset about you being upset, that I am ready to tear my hair out!” Saying something like that will get the person’s attention so that you can then channel their energy on a more

Productive path

Thinking people are highly appreciated where there is need for someone with a cool head. These people spend much time already disassociated from their feelings and can be called in when a rational approach is needed. Do not expect them, however to create rapport with others who are in an emotional state, because they will have no sympathy. Thinking people can, however, take the heat and will be able to stay in the kitchen!

What is your pattern?

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PROACTIVE

Proactive people initiate. They tend to act with little or no consideration; to jump into situations without thinking or analyzing. They may upset some people because they can bulldoze ahead with what they want to do. They are good at going out and getting the job done. They do not wait for others to initiate.

REACTIVE

Reactive people wait for others to initiate or until the situation is right before they act. They may consider and analyze without acting. They want to fully understand and assess the situation before they will act. They believe in chance and luck. They will spend a lot of time waiting. Some people may get upset with them because they do not get started. They will wait for others to initiate and then respond. In the extreme, they operate with extra caution and study situations endlessly. They make good analysts.

Hiring

Proactive people are suitable for those positions which require taking the initiative, going out and getting it done. They would work well in outside sales, in independent businesses or the kind of work where having chutzpah is an asset. If you are advertising for a highly Proactive person, ask the applicants to phone instead of sending in a résumé. (Reactive people will not phone.)

People who have a Reactive pattern in the work Context are well-suited to jobs that allow them to respond to requests. Representatives on customer service desks tend to be more Reactive. Many research and analytical jobs need someone who can spend a lot of time analyzing data.

Most people and most positions require a mixture of the two patterns. When hiring, you will need to examine what proportion of the work to be done consists of Reactive or Proactive activities to determine the kind of balance you need. It is appropriate to profile the others on the team to make sure you have an good balance.

There are some key questions to ask yourself regarding this category when profiling a position. To what degree will this person need to take the initiative? How much of the job consists of responding, analyzing or is dependent on the actions others? You might want to estimate the percentage of overall time in Proactive or Reactive activities.

Golden Handshakes

During the early to mid 1990’s, large corporations and subsequently governments decided they needed to shed large numbers of workers. In order to accomplish these large-scale layoffs, many organizations used the Golden Handshake approach, offering an attractive package to those who would take the money and leave.

Can you guess who took the money and jumped ship? Have you noticed that this period also coincided with the largest ever increase in home-based businesses?

Proactive people jump at the Golden Handshake as a chance to go out and set up their own operations. Organizations lost many of their most dynamic people. One friend told me that her boss said: “Oh, but we didn’t want you to leave!” Too late buddy.

My suggestion to organizations is to plan any necessary lay offs by first deciding which roles to keep. (Easier said than done, I know.) The roles will probably call for a mixture of Proactive and Reactive, as well as many of the other patterns described in this book. I then suggest that particular people be offered the buy-out package; those who do not fit the desired profiles. Also, I believe it is important to offer counselling to those who will be leaving, to help them make decisions and set up their next steps.

If you have any questions please contact us at [email protected]

Customer Outrage is Justified

by Catherine Rahal

Shelle Rose Charvet says there’s a crisis in customer service.
Judging in part from the mail I received in response to my columns on bank and cable company services, she’s hit the nail squarely on the head.

Rose Charvet is an expert in below-conscious communication: the factors that, outside of their awareness, make people do or not do things. Her company, Success Strategies, focuses on helping people communicate better, primarily in business.

According to Rose Charvet, two observations apply to corporate customer service.
First, everything you do affects the emotional state of your customer. Second, everything you do determines what the customer believes about your organization.

Rose Charvet says corporations tend to work from their own perspective and don’t see what it is like to be a customer.

I guess we need to get a bank employee to try opening a chequing account in the same way the rest of us have to do it.

The Customer Is Bothering Me, Rose Charvet’s book in progress, due to come out next year, will take corporations to task and offer them suggestions on how to improve. The chapter on Customer Outrage says customers have a reason to be angry.

Trying to get someone to make a change, particularly in large institutions, is nearly impossible, because such organizations rarely listen to their front-line employees, the ones customers get to see. How often have you heard, “I wish I could help. You’ll have to write to head office”?

From the consumer’s side, Rose Charvet says a major shift began to take place in the mid-1990’s and is in full swing today.

We customers are strapped for time; a service glitch can throw off a tight schedule for a day or more – not to mention what it does to one’s frame of mind.

As a result, we are more willing to vote with our feet now.

Think about it. Would you have threatened your mortgage lender with defection over half a point on your rate 15 years ago? Today, we do it without a second thought.

Until customer care actually provides effective service as the rule rather than the exception, Rose Charvet says we can make our lives easier on the consumer battlefield by choosing our words carefully.

Many customer-service reps are programmed to particular procedures and don’t seem able to function if it isn’t in their computer. Never say to such a person, “Can we find a way around this?” or “Is it possible to do this?” Instead, feed into the rep’s programming and ask: “What is the procedure to do this?”

Rose Charvet’s web site, www.successtrategies.com, explains her thinking. At www.thecustomerisbotheringme.com, you’ll find a place to contribute your own customer-service stories (good and bad) to her book.

You’ll also find a wonderful Customer Talkback Sheet to download. It’s a little slip of paper that rates the service you receive from No. 8 – “made an incredible difference to me” – down to No. 1 – “sullen and morose.” Print it out, circle the appropriate rating and don’t be shy to hand it out.

I’ll be sending my first No. 8 to Camelot.ca, a Montreal computer books and software store that offers excellent service in-store, by phone and on-line.

I don’t need to tell you who’ll get a No. 1.

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Jamie was listening patiently to his potential customer. George had said what he was looking for, why he wanted it and what would happen if he didn’t solve the problem soon. Jamie was eager to close the deal but couldn’t tell if now was the time to close the sale.

Like Jamie, many sales people know there is a moment when people are ready to buy. They just don’t quite know how to identify when to close the sale. Often it is because they’re listening for the clue, not watching for it. The tip off is more frequently in the client’s body language than in what he or she is saying.

Sales people often miss the tell-tale signs of when to close the sale because they haven’t set up the situation correctly at the beginning of the interview.

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Sales is the art of helping people make a purchase, rather than selling something. If sales people operate from this principle, they adapt their communication style to that of their prospective client and gather crucial information along the way.

When a client is being visited for the first time, they should be asked about the last time they made a similar purchase. Listen to the answer and pay attention to their body language – facial expressions, gestures, posture and voice tone.

The next question is key: “When you decided to buy that time, (pause) what made you buy that one?”

Notice the changes in the non-verbal behavior as they answer because the second question takes the client back to the previous moment of decision. Does the customer smile, turn a little red, make bigger gestures? These are the signs that indicate the client is ready to buy.

After verifying what the client wants and why, he or she can be presented with an appropriate solution. But when is the right moment to close the sale? Summarize the benefits of the proposition, demonstrating how it can meet the client’s criteria. Look at them carefully while talking. If the non verbals are the same as when they answered the second question above, they are ready to purchase.

Don’t see the signs? Don’t panic, it simply means they are not ready yet. Ask the client what else she needs to make a decision. That’s the way to determine the missing pieces and improve the proposal on the spot. Again, summarize the benefits of the offering and check the body language. If the right signs are there, go ahead and ask for the decision.

The fact that the client was not pressured to buy when they weren’t ready is a sign of attentiveness to his or her needs. Most people appreciate the consideration.

Marketing Tips to Ponder on Route to the Next Sale:

• Preparation pays
• Remember to ask yourself: “What’s in it for them?”
• Have clear objectives
• Have pricing strategy
• Brief team before a presentation; include a message on manners
• Select appropriate clothing colours; red is aggressive, blue is dominant
• Assess whether the other person is sociable or factual.
• Present accordingly
• Be personable
• Make your advantages easy to understand
• Don’t be everything to everyone
• Don’t sell; help people buy
• Shift the risk to yourself and you will profit
• To be heard, lower your voice
• After a contract is signed, give the pen to the buyer
• Email “Thank you.”
• Always leave with a plan of action, even if it is, “I will call in six months.”
• Reward your lead generators
• Work for referrals
• Partner with other companies reaching your market

Top Sales Questions –  Shelle’s Top Tips

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Other helpful links:

http://www.wordsthatchangeminds.com
http://www.theshelleblog.com
http://www.shellestoptips.com
http://www.shellesevents.com
http://www.shelleinaction.com
http://www.shellesarticles.com
http://www.theshellestore.com

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Despite sea change in customer attitudes, companies are still talking down to their clientele.  All it takes is a subtle shift in your marketing language to produce noticeable results

by Shelle Rose Charvet
PROFITguide.com / February 12, 2004

There’s an old joke about Canadians:  How do you get 25 Canadians out of a swimming pool?  Tell them to get out of the pool.

When it comes to sales, those days are over.  A shift in customer attitude over the past two decades means that now, more than ever, customers have switched from needing external direction to deciding for themselves whether or not to buy a product.  They treat the sales pitch as grist for the mill, which they compare to other offers on the table.

In other words, they’ve gone from compliant to resistant – they no longer want to be told what to do.  But while many companies understand this shift on an intuitive level, they have yet to take the right tone with their customers.

Firms that invest in uncovering exactly what makes a customer buy have had great success.  They use the information to create their branding, design advertising compaigns and to train their employees on the exact language to use (or avoid) with customers – and they report astonishing results.  Here’s how you can get in on the action.

Rethink your marketing message

The shift in consumer attitudes means you need to change how you address your customers.  Some companies are still touting themselves as “the best” or “the right choice.”  Discount fashion retailer Winners’ slogan is “You should go.”  These firms essentially tell customers what to think and what to do, which is no longer an effective strategy.

To test this out, notice how you respond when told what to do.  What’s your reaction when you’re presented with unsubstantiated claims?  Don’t you scoff when large corporations insist how much they care about you through their TV advertisements?  When you enter a retail environment, doesn’t it raise your dander when you are told to go to another store to get an item that’s in the retailer’s catalogue and should therefore be available at all stores?
Have a good look at your marketing materials and look for examples of commanding and suggestive language.

Tweak your sales approach

Once you incorporate the right language in your advertising, your next step is to properly train your staff.  Otherwise, you risk raising and then dashing your customers’ expectations.

Listen to your salespeople as they advise customers.  Do they make suggestions or assertions?  Ask them to try out the following kinds of phrases with your customers and notice the response:

• “Here’s some information to consider …”
• “Only you can decide …”
• “Why commit before you know?  Give us a try and judge for yourself.”

There is a world of difference between “This is the best option for you,” and “Here’s what I suggest for your situation.”  The first is a statement of fact and implicitly issues a command to the customer, while the second is a suggestion to consider.

The challenge, of course, is getting your sales staff to follow your instructions to use suggestive rather than command language.  You may wish to use suggestive language when explaining what you want.

Customers’ attitudes are changing in many ways, and this shift from being externally motivated to buy to making the decision internally is just one of them.  But even if you only address this one change, your customers will notice and appreciate the difference in approach.  Of course, there’s only one way to know for sure – try it yourself.

If you have any questions please contact us at [email protected]

Believe it or not, angry customers represent your highest revenue potential.  Here’s how to win their hearts.

by Shelle Rose Charvet
PROFITguide.com / April 16, 2004

Unless your company is perfect, lucky or both, you and your staff have been confronted by angry customers who issue threats, demand refunds or expect all the make-goods under the sun.  Front-line customer service representatives dread angry customers, and understandably so – too often they’re not equipped to deal with the problem.  But business managers should relish the opportunity to engage even the most furious clientele.  It may sound counter-intuitive, but there is a higher potential for increased business and loyalty when the customer is angry than at any other moment in the sales and service process.  That’s because the customer will be enormously impressed if you handle the situation to his or her satisfaction.

The trick is cutting through the rage to find the solution.  Whether you’re a CEO or a CSR, follow these four steps to quell the customer’s wrath.

1. Help them vent.

When someone is upset, that is all they can think about.  If you don’t recognize and deal with the emotion first, nothing else you can do will have an effect.

Traditionally, staff are trained to stay calm and listen to what the customer has to say.  But when you stay calm, the customer is likely to believe that this incident is something that happens all the time; that you know there is a persistent problem and you’re not trying to fix it.

Instead, get upset on behalf of your customer!  Demonstrate shock, horror and dismay.  Raise your voice to match the client’s tone, treat the situation as an emergency and echo the customer’s key words.  For example:  “You’ve been billed for the same item twice?  And no one has called you back for three days?” This drives home the impression that this particular problem is the exception rather than the rule.  More important, they’ll see you as their advocate; their confidence in your desire and ability to solve the problem will rise, and their anger will subside.

2. Find out what they want.

Once your customer has calmed down and you fully understand the situation from his point of view, it’s time to uncover what he wants or needs.

But tread carefully.  A statement like “So, what do you want me to do?” can throw the customer back into a negative, accusatory mindset.  Instead, offer a couple of options and ask which would best meet his needs.  For example:  “So that we don’t waste any more of your time, I suggest two options: either we credit your account right away or apply this against the purchase you are making today.  Which is best for you?”

3. Offer something special.

You’ve fixed the original problem.  Now’s your chance to rehabilitate your company’s image and to lock in loyalty.  This can be challenging, because while talking to a customer is an ordinary event for many staff, making a complaint is a rare event for most customers.  You have to make the customer feel like this is a special offer for only them.

Naturally, it helps to know what your choices are.  That’s easy when you’re the boss.  However, unless your front-line staff have been equipped with some decision-making power or a list of make-good options, they will have to refer the customer up the management ladder.

When introducing the offer, make it sound like you’re sharing a secret.  For example:  “I shouldn’t really do this, but since you had to call us three times, I’d like to make it up to you by offering you one month free of charge.”

4. Nourish the relationship.

You have just convinced a client that doing business with you is a positive experience, even when problems occur.  Still, your job is not done.  Set up the future by suggesting how similar issues might be avoided down the road (presuming the customer contributed to the problem to begin with).  End the call on a personal note.  “Is there anything else I can help you with right now?” This keeps the customer in a positive frame of mind.

Following these steps is critical when doing business, because it only takes a few short moments to win them back or lose them forever.

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“The first time anything violent happened my husband broke my nose and kicked me in the shins.  We had been having dinner at a friend’s place and he had been drinking heavily all night.  At midnight, after many attempts to get my husband to leave with me, I finally gave up, picked up our sleeping baby, put his coat on and said ‘Okay, I’m leaving.’ That’s when he lost it.”

by Shelle Rose Charvet
January, 1996

She is assertive, articulate, professional and warm.  She runs a business, is raising two kids and sets an impressive pace – How could this have happened to her?  Why did she stay?  And how did she get out?

These are some of the questions I asked myself as I was working as a counselor with several women in abusive relationships.  These questions held a real interest for me as I myself had been through the experience of escaping a violent relationship.  After getting back on my feet and helping my kids recover and adjust to a new situation in a new country, I did a great deal of research and thinking because I felt compelled to address a lot of questions:

What is the difference between women who get into abusive relationships and those who don’t?  How is it possible for someone to stay in a situation that ought to be intolerable?  How can we help them?  Then what?  What about life after it’s all over?

Let’s start with the first questions.  Much has already been written about patterns of violence and abuse being passed on from generation to generation.  I wanted to take a new approach by exploring if there were differences between the women themselves; those who choose (or fall into) abusive relationships and those who do not.  I feel that by doing this, we could find ways to help more women establish satisfying relationships with their mates and assist those who need it to change or end dangerous ones.  While women who have experienced abusive relationships with their mates come from all walks of life, I believe that there is a fundamental difference between them and women who do not get into these kinds of situations.  From my experience, women who do not seem to hold somewhere in their bodies a rule, or a statement that goes like this:

“If ‘x’ ever happens, it’s over.” For example:  “If he ever hits me, it’s over.”

These women seem to have a firm bottom line about the minimum acceptable behavior in a relationship.  If that rule is ever violated or comes close to being violated, they act immediately.  And they communicate those bottom lines to their partner in a firm, congruent way.  Should their partner’s behavior even start to enter the “warning zone”, they respond by confronting and making their position and desires very clear as well as the consequences of not meeting their needs.

They probably also hold a solid sense or vision of the kind of behavior they want in a relationship that is important enough that they are willing to work towards it or to walk away from situations where they cannot have it.

Women who have gotten into abusive relationships do not seem to have the same kind of inviolable bottom line.  Since most relationships do not instantly become abusive, they get used to a gradual downward slope of behavior.  Because they have no bottom line, their tolerance stretches and stretches as they adapt to the circumstances.  They learn to “cope” with each situation that goes beyond what they had been used to.

“I tried hard to keep things on an even keel.  I felt like I was always walking on egg shells, choosing my words carefully to avoid upsetting him.  He also became abusive in other ways – he embarrassed me in front of my colleagues and then, I realize now, cut me off from the others who cared about me by getting me to move from Paris out to the country and criticizing my friends.”

“He told me not to trust one of my closest friends because she was only looking out for herself.  My husband had some fine qualities and was committed to my marriage  I had married this man for better or worse and I committed myself body and soul to him and our family, no matter what.  I made my bed and slept with the crumbs.”

I am reminded of an old Jewish expression:  “May God protect you from what you can get used to.” As NLP Practitioners, we encourage flexibility, meaning that if something doesn’t work, try something else.  However, flexibility in the situation of women in abusive relationships usually means for them “figuring out a way to cope” with what is going on.

Using NLP, we also teach people to break through limiting beliefs and patterns.  Perhaps we should also remember to encourage people to set limits;  the limits of what they are willing to tolerate in their lives.  While it is essential that people identify outcomes that they aspire to, it is also healthy to identify those things that are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

“When I was pregnant with our second baby he beat me up twice.  I never knew why he was mad at me.  I started having contractions and was hospitalized for a few days and had to spend the last six weeks in bed.”

My second question was:  How is it possible for someone to stay in a situation like this?  The statistics on wife abuse do not discuss this much.  My work with clients and my own experience shed some light on the matter, I strongly suspect that it is possible to stay in such a relationship provided that one stays focused on the day-to-day details of life.  Get the meal on the table.  Change the baby’s diaper.  Cover up the incident.  The women who I worked with were not perceiving the larger picture:  i.e. “This has been going on for over two years and no matter what I have tried to do about it, it just keeps on getting worse.”
When the women complained of the abuse they had suffered, they treated each example of abuse as an incident.  Few people would end a committed relationship over one incident.

Another contributing factor is the fact that the abuser is rarely confronted by other people about the abusive behavior.  The women may get moral support, but no one seems to help.  They end up feeling isolated and helpless, dealing with each separate incident as it occurs, rather than seeing it as a continually worsening pattern.

“We were staying with friends in England, spending the evening talking and playing cards.  When I interrupted my husband by making a joke, everyone laughed.  He glared at me and threw his wine in my face.  I left the table and our friends each individually told me how disgusting that behavior was, though no one said anything to my husband.”

“Eventually I slept by myself on the couch, swearing that this was the last time.  In the morning over breakfast he said that I was overreacting and that nobody in their right mind would break up a marriage over one incident like this.”

Women who are “coping” have essentially learned how to accept what ought to be intolerable.  They often take the responsibility for his outbursts by jumping through hoops in the hope that they do not reoccur.  Coping this way is not about making changes.  They go through life day-by-day, feeling alone and exhausted by the effort needed to just keep on going.

Because they are too busy giving the details of life’s primary importance, they tend not to really consider the alternatives.  One of my clients insisted that she had to stay where she was because she would never be able to afford a decent dining room table like the one she had then, if she were on her own.

After I had unburdened myself on the phone with a friend of my husband, he said that the situation was unacceptable.  Soon after that a colleague of mine asked me how things were.  I told her they were just awful.  Then she asked me an amazing question:  “So what’s stopping you from leaving?” I was dumbfounded.  I had never asked myself that and what was stopping me from leaving?”

So how can we, as counselors, help these women?  It is not my intention to suggest that the only alternative is getting them to leave the relationship.  Here is an outline of the process I followed with my clients.

When they first came to see me, they apparently needed to vent.  When I asked them what they wanted, they expressed sorrow, helplessness, frustration and anger at their situation, themselves and their mate, described through numerous examples of abusive behavior.  I established the rapport while suggesting that after they had explained their situation we would move onto discovering what they wanted and how to achieve that. (I believe that if an authority figure shows too much empathy with a client in a stuck state, it only legitimizes that state in the eyes of the client.)

Once they had gotten their story off their chest, I changed the subject. We laughed about a few things and then I asked them about what is important to them in a relationship.  The purpose of the question was to shift the level of discussion from the specific incidents to a more general overview of the kind of relationship they truly desired.

They each gave me a list of what had to be in a relationship and how would they recognize each item. This took some work, as most well-formed outcomes do.  I tested the list several times to make sure that they got out the things that were really, really important.  “If you had that, what else would then become important?  And what else?”

I anchored this desirable relationship to a space about 1/2 of a meter directly in front of them.  Then, pointing to the past area of their timeline, I asked them to compare this desirably relationship with the one they had been having with their mate.  Shock and dismay registered on their faces, then confusion, disbelief and surprise.  Most of them stated in an unequivocal yet astonished tone that this is not what they wanted at all.  We sat quietly, letting this realization sink in.

Several of my clients began processing a stream of thoughts.  When they came back to the present, I asked them what they wanted now.  They sat up, looked at me as if I were crazy and said that they had to get out and create their own life, of course!  They wanted to work on a plan to do that right away.  We planned where, when and how they would go.

“After talking to those two people, a startling revelation hit me.  Nothing was stopping me from leaving.  This was not the life I wanted.  I made a few phone calls and planned my escape for two weeks later when my husband was to be away on business.  I hid our passports only to find them missing several days before we were to leave!  I panicked and rifled through every drawer in the house, becoming hysterical.  He was outside, what if he came it?  But I had to find them!  I finally located them after I had calmed down.”

“The next day my husband went out grocery shopping with our oldest son.  When he hadn’t returned 5 hours later I went to look for them in the village bar.  I found my three and a half year old son playing behind the bar and tried to slip him past my husband who was involved in a drunken conversation.  He saw me and became quite annoyed.  We fled and got into the car where the baby was in his seat.  I watched my husband stalk out of the bar with his fists clenched, heading for home.  Night was falling, the baby was hungry and my oldest was crying.  All my friends lived 100 kilometers away.  Where was I to go?”

The way out for these women is frequently not easy.  Often they need to be crafty and sneaky.  They may get caught preparing.  Sometimes the safest way is to get them and their children to a women’s shelter right away.  Many times they fall back into the details and get overwhelmed.

One client, who was not in physical danger, came to me in tears with a list of 45 things she had to do before she could leave.  We narrowed the list down to four items.  She completed these quickly and left.

“After my husband had left on his business trip, I had arranged for my uncle and aunt to come and pick us up.  I packed 2 suitcases and we left the farm and drove overnight to London where we got on a plane to come home to my mother’s place in Canada.  The whole time I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing or not.  When we arrived I told my oldest son that we were going to stay here and why.  He was very upset.  Even the baby who was 8 months old felt the tension.”

“I had difficulty sleeping, alternating between berating myself for getting into such a mess in the first place, blaming my husband and feeling overwhelmed by what lay ahead.  The welfare people were either sympathetic, which only helped me feel more sorry for myself, or they treated me like a case with a file number.”

Women who leave abusive relationships need practical support, not merely someone who will commiserate with them.  They need, almost simultaneously, to mourn the passing of the relationship, to set short-term goals and get started on a plan to get their family’s basic needs met.

I found that once out of the toxic atmosphere they had been living it, most of the women I worked with had a sudden increase in their level of energy and focus.  They accomplished amazing things very quickly, finding work, a new home, making new arrangements for their children.  They also continued their counseling with me for a while to make sure they were on the road to healing and to stay grounded through the heady number of changes they were making.

“As I casted (sic) about for what to do next I found I had to stop reading the newspaper.  There were just too many stories about single mothers whose kids were hungry.  When I read the statistics, I kept feeling that I might as well give up and got a job as a cashier at the grocery store.”

“So I quit listening to the news.  I was too fragile to handle it.  I also had many weird and wonderful ideas about career options.  Thank goodness I checked them out with family and friends before I jumped – some of them were just too unreal to make work.  And having just jumped out of my marriage, I was a little to ready to jump at anything that seemed like a good idea at the time.  I guess I felt I had jumped ‘out’ and needed to be ‘in’ something.”

“I finally found a good job in my field and was very excited about starting.  I placed an ad and got an excellent baby-sitter, arranged transportation to school.  This all happened very quickly, once I got started on deciding what I really wanted.”

Here the counselor can be useful as someone who can help a client focus on fulfilling her needs and evaluate options, while helping her heal the wounds and set limits.

“For the first few months after I left, I was very militant and intolerant of any form of transgression.  I judged everyone and jumped in whenever I heard, real or imagined, anyone slight anyone else, particularly in couples.  As I got over my anger, I calmed down a lot.  Now I only comment when I think that someone has really behaved unreasonably.  I never did that before, because I would have considered it interfering.  Now I know that insulting someone’s intelligence, or ordering them around as if they were a subordinate is unacceptable.  My own relationships are also a lot clearer, particularly with my children.”

There can be lots of ups and downs once a woman takes her life into her own hands, but all of the women I counseled felt that the best decision they had ever made was leaving the poisonous atmosphere they had been living in.  Just taking that step and learning from it created a significant shift in how they now choose to live their lives.

I know.  All the voices you have read in this piece are mine.

I hope that this article will be of help to those who know or work with women in negative relationships.

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by Shelle Rose Charvet
The Globe and Mail, May 4, 2000

“The good news is that your condition is pre-cancerous.  The bad news is that it is untreatable and I strongly recommend that you have a mastectomy.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say was the good news?” The doctor’s mouth continued to flap open and closed; I know he made sounds, but the words disappeared into a vortex.

Over the last couple of years I have been in and out of crowded doctors’ waiting rooms, been pinched by mammogram machines, had needles shot into my body to remove tissue samples while I was held in a vice, had a large piece surgically taken out of me and my whole breast removed.

Luckily, my mother often came with me on doctor visits.  Luckily, my friend who works at the cancer information centre showed up with a large pile of information.  Luckily, my brother accompanied me through the procedures to hold my hand and get answers when my brain shut down.

“Gee, you sound really mellow after your operation.”

“I don’t do mellow.  I’m still drugged.” But even in my groggy state, I realized that there must be a better way to go through this.  So I thought up 10 tips for surviving the health care system.

1. Always assume that you have fallen through the cracks, unless you get proof to the contrary.  No news is not good news.  It may mean that someone forgot to do something.  Medical care can be complicated and need a lot of co-ordination among large numbers of people.

2. Never blame anyone.  Recognize that everyone working in the system is very busy and probably stressed-out.  While you are only concerned with yourself, they are juggling dozens of people, or hundreds.

3. Create positive relationships with everyone who can help you. Introduce yourself to every nurse, receptionist, technician and doctor that you will need to see again.  Ask them for their first name.  Remember it or record it for quick reference.

Next time you see them establish rapport by using their first name and engaging them in personal chat before you get down to business.  It only takes a few seconds.  This will help ensure that you become more than just a file, and will give you some insight into what each person does.  It also makes it easier to request things when you need to.

4. Apologize before you make a request.  “I’m sorry to bother you when you are so busy, but since I hadn’t heard from you, I thought I’d better check whether you were able to make the appointment.”

Canadians naturally apologize for anything, even when we are not responsible.  It’s time we learned to use the power of apology.  If you say you’re sorry, you can ask for just about anything – and still be perceived as nice.

5. Take someone with you and give them a job to do.  For any important meeting or procedure, take a friend or family member with you.  Their job is to remain sane, create rapport and ask good questions.  This way, if you lose your grip, someone else still has it.

6. Use all your contacts.  Surely someone you know, knows someone who knows someone who can find out what you need.  At times this may be the only way to obtain information, a second opinion or to get in to see someone quickly.  If you are hesitant to use your contacts, apologize for bothering them.

7. Be prepared to do a lot of waiting.  Make appointments early in the day before the doctor has a chance to get behind schedule.  This way you’ll see the doctor before she/he gets tired and cranky.  Just after lunch is okay too.  Remember to take something you like to do in case you have to wait anyway.

8. Take everything your doctors way as information instead of gospel.  Allow yourself time to think about it.  Remember that medical professionals are trained to think about and discuss the worst possible scenarios.  Ask them what each treatment is supposed to accomplish and repeat that message over and over to yourself to create a goal-oriented mindset within yourself.  Write down your questions prior to the appointment and write down the answers – or ask your companion to do the writing.

9. Do what you need to do to stay upbeat and positive.  It’s perfectly normal to feel depressed and demoralized upon hearing bad news.  I’ve been through shock, numbness, denying that this could be happening, panic, anger and feeling depressed.  You can let yourself feel all those things, knowing that this is how you are felling at this moment in time, and that you will move on.  Continually remind yourself that you are good at healing, that you get better quickly.  Notice what has improved each day and comment on it to yourself and others.  While some may think this weird; you can even speak to your physical self; cheer for your immune system and thank it for sticking up for you.

10. Hang out with cheerful, upbeat and helpful people.  I found it wearing having to cheer up other people when I told them I had cancer.  I was also subjected to everyone’s personal dogma regarding what I should do.  It ran the gamut; from slavishly following every instruction from the doctor to never believing anything the doctor says.

There is only so much sympathy you can take before you begin to believe that you ought to feel sorry for yourself.  Only see people who make you feel good – who make you laugh, who get you out, who bring over lovely things to eat.  If someone asks you how can they help – get them to make morale-raising food, take you to a funny movie, or bring over a good video.  If depressing people want to come over, apologize and tell them you’re not up to it.

At the beginning of last year I went through several major reconstructive surgeries, some of which were quite difficult.  A few months ago my 11-year-old son was diagnosed with cancer.  So far, so good – the tips have helped a lot.  Although, I have to admit that it’s been much harder dealing with my feelings about my son’s illness than my own.  While I’m able to be positive about his healing with him, his brother and the care-givers, the challenge has been keeping myself positive when I’m alone.

I’ve been getting extra support to help me.  I go to a therapist to get frustrations off my chest and insight.  I shrug my shoulders and forgive myself when I forget where I’m going.  I play solitaire on the computer.  And I’ve discovered a great excuse to have a lot of little rewards.  Where did I leave my pack of Werthers?

See other thought-provoking articles by Shelle

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If you have any questions please contact us at [email protected]