Can People Really Change?

Now in my second innings as an Executive Coach working with a recent client, I interrogated the question: Can people really Change? What creates permanent Change?

Here are my reflections:

Mere awareness is not enough, awakening is necessary, followed with cognitive and emotional integration. Now this awareness could come from personal evocation (as in internally located) or it could be on account of an external provocation. Either way, an awareness which seeks greater human connect is what sets off this process.

Mere awareness is not enough.

Mere awareness is not enough. Awareness (cognitive) is not enough. There needs to be an awakening! An awakening in the inner self, that once ignited, has its own movement, its own momentum to growth, with its resultant pulls and pushes. Often the awareness is held in abeyance, suppressed. Not available to the Conscious memory. When confronted with an uncomfortable situation, the protagonist with draws, tightens up, and is even absent to her feelings. She appears confused, lost, immobilised, and unable to make any movement forward. Even a simple task appears frightening, difficult to achieve, and one's confidence is at low ebb. Action is frozen.

Often the ‘Body remembers what the mind forgets’ – JL Moreno. The limbic memory may be a storehouse to repressed memories outside the access of the cortex mind. Using a spectrogram, the facilitator may encourage participant to choose location of how warmed up they might be to one theme or another. How depressed they are: High, Medium or Low, etc. It is to be understood that all emotions which are real are present in the body: it is located. It may be a pain in the chest, a constriction in the throat, etc, but the emotion is present in the body. The split off /withheld pain needs to be articulated. Locating the source of the emotion in the body is the first step.

Accessing the limbic memory

Ask, "If the pain had a voice, what would it say?" This allows bringing awareness to the body. It is necessary to support client complete the interrupted pattern between feeling and thinking and allowing for integration. Through this process Inner dialogue is encouraged, and client is encouraged and empowered to own his internal truth. One should be careful that clients ‘own words’ should be picked: no additional nor interpreted context added. Stay curious to the ‘feeling world’, what comes up, price being paid: intended and unintended. Is there are cyclical pattern to what is coming up – over and over again. A repetitive cycle, clockwork and devoid of any new alternatives. Use of doubling, and auxiliary may be introduced to aid bringing awareness. This would mean client sharing her story, the whole story, the unsaid story, the also said. The interrupted pattern needs to be completed and thought and feeling integrated wholesomely. The event must go beyond the phenomenological to traverse the interpersonal and intra psychic. At some levels, at an intra existential level universal issues such as Death, Freedom, Isolation, and Meaning may need to be dealt with.

Integration

Now this awareness would continue to remain static, dry, if it is merely contained within intellectualism. No wonder self help books, motivational speeches, are not sustainable: it is food fo the mind, intellectually stimulating, but that's all there is. Unless one is able to connect to the emotive level, true awakening is not possible. Again, awakening itself is not enough: it may remain transient and the benefits short-lived. The catharsis, that may follow, may be welcome, but it should be followed by insight and integration.  

Preventing Re-occurance

Through helping understand anticipatory feelings at the onset, managing the symptoms in the episodic event, and through cognitive re-structuring (from a negative, self-limiting belief to a more self-authoring stance) is change possible. One needs to change the personal narrative of the self.