Picture the scene… You’re working with a client who is incredibly self-aware. They know their patterns and their motivators, they understand why they behave the way that they do, and they can probably tell you exactly when it’s going to happen again. Now, from the outset, this looks like a dream client. The perfect work engagement. Who wouldn’t want to work with someone who is so in touch with their inner world? So why does it feel like nothing is changing from the sessions? Each session the client turns up, ready to work, but being no further forward than the last time you spoke to each other. It’s almost as if you are both trapped in your own very particular version of Coaching Groundhog Day.
Whilst I’m not going to generalise as every coach and every client are unique individuals, and everyone has a different reason for seeking out coaching, this is a scenario that I think happens to all of us at some point or other in our coaching careers. Possibly more often than we might like to consider. So what’s the challenge? We have a motivated client. They understand their blockers. They know where the patterns come from. They can even predict when it’s going to happen again. And yet nothing changes.
And here’s the thing. Insight, on its own, is not enough to make the substantial changes needed to move forward at a sustainable rate. Don’t get me wrong – it’s important. But it’s not enough. A lot of coaches, especially in the early days, fall into the trap of using a tool or a technique that they learnt in their coach training programmes to support the client to gain insight, and then they think the work is done. But in reality, that’s just the beginning. You have to do something with what you’ve learnt, and make it count.
That’s also assuming that what you’ve gleaned from these tools is enough. Human beings are complicated and complex, and we rarely fit into these neat models and frameworks. Would that we did. Think about your own life for a moment. All those things that you know that you “should” do, and that’s not because someone has told you (that’s a whole different article altogether), I’m meaning the things that you know would help you feel better. Maybe it’s exercise, maybe it’s more sleep or maybe it’s even to set healthier boundaries. You know you would feel better if you did them and you know why. There are concrete reasons as to why they would help. But still you don’t.
And that’s because understanding something and taking action are two completely separate things.
It would be great if we could make changes simply on the basis of understanding something. But psychologically we aren’t built that way.
And here’s where some psychodynamic thinking can really help. Let’s take the repetition compulsion for example. I’m not going to get all technical on you, it’s enough to say that it’s an unconscious process that keeps us repeating thoughts, patterns and behaviours because it either helps us to feel safe and familiar or it’s trying to help us master a problem from our past. Either way – you can’t GROW model your way out of the repetition compulsion. And why not? Well because it’s not getting close to what’s keeping us in that loop. We are driven to stay in that loop because it’s protecting us from something and once we can start to work out what it might be protecting us from or for, that’s when we can start to make some changes that might actually work for us.
Understanding can feel enormously satisfying. We suddenly have an explanation. Things make sense. We can join the dots. And because that feels so good, it’s easy to mistake understanding for change. But, to use one of my favourite coaching questions, how true is that?
Coaching can sometimes place a great deal of emphasis on insight and awareness. We help clients understand themselves better, often with the hope that greater awareness will lead to different choices. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Which can leave both the coach and the client with a strange sense that things are incomplete, or in the worst case scenarios, that the coaching has been a failure. Even if a lot of productive work has been done.
Understanding a pattern is important, it really is. But let’s be clear, understanding is not the same as changing it. Psychodynamic thinking invites us to become interested in what keeps the pattern alive. What purpose does it serve? What does it protect us from? And perhaps the biggest one of all… why does it persist, even when part of us desperately wants something different?
Because if insight were enough, most of us would have changed a long time ago.
