The Coaching Practice

by Michael Bott

Mood swings. They’re like the weather or the climate. Do I get upset when it rains? Do I beat myself up when the heavens open? No! Do I let the weather stop me? Am I a ‘fairweather player’? - NO! Does it mean that there’s something wrong when the weather is bad? - you already know the answer to that one if you’ve been paying attention.

It strikes me that many of us learned, very early in life, that there is a HUGE payoff in drawing attention to the fact that we are sad. There used to be real value (in most cases) in complaining to mother that you are sad/upset/depressed - whatever. My guess is that a great many of us got to experience our mother’s love through her sympathy whenever we complained of being hurt or upset. And what is it that we want more of (and then some) as human beings?

Being loved.

If we experience being loved as a consequence of expressing our complaints, is it any wonder that we get addicted to complaining and insisting that there is something wrong?

Hardly.

But that’s fine. Nothing wrong there. The problem arises when we notice that as we grow up, very few people in our lives are REALLY interested in our complaints. We have the experience of being sad or whatever, complaining about it, but then NOT getting the love we expect when we press the complaint button.

Let me quote one of my favourite passages from “The Book of EST” by Luke Rhinehart:

“Look. If we put a rat in a maze with four tunnels and always put cheese in the fourth tunnel, after a while that rat will learn always to go to the fourth tunnel to get cheese. A human will learn to do that too. You want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel, there’s the cheese. Next day you want cheese? Zip zip zip down the fourth tunnel and there’s the cheese.

Now after a while the Great God in the white suit moves the cheese to another tunnel. Zip zip zip goes the rat to the fourth tunnel. No cheese in the fourth tunnel. The rat comes out. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Rat comes out. Goes down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Comes out. Down the fourth tunnel again. No cheese. Comes out. Eventually the rat will stop going down the fourth tunnel and look elsewhere.

Now the difference between rats and human beings is simple: THE HUMAN BEINGS WILL GO DOWN THAT FOURTH TUNNEL FOREVER! FOREVER! HUMAN BEINGS COME TO BELIEVE IN THE FOURTH TUNNEL. Rats don’t believe in anything; they’re interested in cheese. But the human being develops a BELIEF in the fourth tunnel and he comes to MAKE IT RIGHT TO GO DOWN THE FOURTH TUNNEL WHETHER THERE’S CHEESE IN IT OR NOT. The human being would rather be right than get his cheese.”

Not getting the cheese when we go down the fourth tunnel or not getting the love we expect when we press the complaint button is very confusing. Funny thing is, because human beings prefer to be right above all things rather than have things work for them, we get angry and confused when things that once got us a payoff no longer do so. Instead of going: “oh well - that didn’t work - let’s move on to something else”, we do our level best to MAKE IT WORK.

The first instinct is to think that we’ve failed to communicate our upsetness and then go looking for causes, reasons, contributing factors in order to make our upset real. Give it some REAL gravitas - THEN people will understand and give you the love that you have been conditioned to expects - right? How do you think psychologists/psychyatrists/councellors make their money?

However, in day to day life the strategy still doesn’t work. It doesn’t take long to realise that people - although they may make sympathetic noises - aren’t really ‘getting it’.

The real problem and unworkability arises when some part of us realises that we have entered a zone of incongruity - a zone where we are being run by habits, false expectations and just plain old ‘being right’.

Except it does not occur to us that way. It simply occurs to us as if the laws of our existence (complaint > love) have been transgressed - and the transgressor is … the person who is not ‘getting it’.

At which point the ‘transgressor’ experiences something very strange - either an increase in complaints directed at THEM … or a withdrawal of communication - to put a finer distinction on it; a sulk.

What has happened here? Frustration. The complainer has experienced failure to obtain love by one of the normal channels therefore there is something wrong. Something must be to blame. There are two people involved. One or both of them must be to blame. Next thing that happens: one or other of them are made wrong. Sometimes both (universal wrongness).

And here we are at the ‘Dangerous Corner’ or ‘tipping point’. Depending on the situation , the listener will experience being made wrong for no apparent reason an quite reasonably defend themselves or walk away (of the two, neither is the path to peace) or the complainer will make themselves wrong. Both pathways can runaway to unpleasant outcomes. Because the complainer is in the zone of incomprehension they find that there are no words to express what is really going on. The fact is they don’t know what is going on. They experience a blank, a wall of ‘wrongness’ that is impossible to express. What, after all, does a rat in a cage  that has been trained to expect cheese in the fourth tunnel experience the day there is no cheese in the fourth tunnel? Is there an equivalence in Rat World to “there’s something wrong  here”?

The thing is, WE know, observing the rat, that there is NOTHING WRONG. Running down the fourth tunnel does not mean cheese.

We made that up.

How would it be if we got that complaining about our upset does NOT get us love. That we made it up.

What would it make available if our upset, just like the weather, simply is?