Kevan Owen Hypnotherapy

The first time that I heard the phrase “Human Givens” was on the 22nd July 2003. On that fateful day, as I was driving home from work idly switching channels on the car radio, I happened upon the BBC science programme “All in the mind”. This is an excellent series at the cutting edge of research and developments on all aspects of the mind and brain. In this particular episode Prof. Raj Parsaud was interviewing an Irish psychologist by the name of Joe Griffin who was talking about depression, and how people could be helped out of depression using new understandings about the brain.

During the course of this interview there were several references to something called “Human Givens”. I don’t know if you have ever noticed that when you hear an unfamiliar phrase for the first time, you can mis-hear it? For a moment I thought they said “human gibbons”. This is a good example of a psychological phenomena that I have come to know as a pattern match. Whenever we encounter something unfamiliar there is an in-built need to make sense of it. Our brains do this by going on a mental search into the memory banks to find something similar that we have encountered before. On this occasion my brain went on such a search and in an instant came up with the word “gibbons”.

What Joe Griffin was actually talking about however was the givens of human nature – those inherent patterns or templates that we are born with. This includes our basic needs and the resources that nature has given us with which to get those needs met.

Consider a simple house plant. If it gets the right amount of water, nutrients, warmth and light it will flourish. If it does not get the right balance of nutriments it will wither. Although human beings are considerably more complex than plants, a similar situation applies. Humans have a set of physical and psychological needs and the extent to which we can get those needs met will determine how well we are. These innate needs include security, attention, autonomy, friendship, belonging, status, achievement and meaning. Nature has also provided with an innate “guidance system” or set of resources with which we can get our basic needs met. These resources include memory, empathy, imagination, a conscious rational mind and an unconscious “pattern matching” mind. There is also the “observing self” – that part of us which can step back, be objective, and recognise itself as a unique centre of awareness.

We also have the ability to dream. Joe Griffin has proposed that the purpose of dreams is to defuse emotionally arousing expectations that are not acted out the previous day. His idea, which came as a result of several years studying his own dreams, is that dreams are metaphorical representations of uncompleted emotional arousals. The dreaming process allows the brain to discharge that pattern of arousal so that it is no longer lodged in the brain as an uncompleted programme.

It has been shown by sleep researchers that depressed people have more periods of dreaming sleep than the average person and Joe suggests that this is because of all the worrying or negative rumination that has been filling there mind. Because dream sleep uses up a lot more energy this results in the person waking up tired and unmotivated and so it perpetuates a negative spiral, known as the cycle of depression. Negative rumination is could be seen as a mis-use of the imagination.

By learning how to use the imagination more creatively, to draw upon one’s resources to get ones basic needs met in a healthy way, worry is reduced and sleep quality improves. This suggests how depression can be lifted without recourse to medication.

All forms of mental and emotional disturbance could be seen as being on a continuum, from stress and one end to psychosis on the other. The human givens approach offers a large organising idea as to how all these conditions can be relieved. It draws upon a variety of up-to-date, proven psychological methods and techniques focused on problem solving and developing new life skills.

After hearing that radio programme I was inspired to read the book (Human Givens – A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell). This was soon followed by attendance at a variety of fascinating seminars and workshops about the approach supplied by Mindfields college. I went on to complete the Human Givens Diploma, as well as other training in counselling and hypnotherapy, and today I am able put that knowledge to good use in my own therapy practice.

In the next blog I will discuss further aspects of the Human Givens approach such as the way in which it brings much needed clarity to what has until now been a very confusing field.