Getting Out - and Staying Out

Getting Outand Staying Out

The other important part of coaching a person out of jail is to find practical ways to address the anxiety, should it be triggered again. And so, after you have isolated and held on to the feeling as described above, the next step often is to find the belief that led to the feeling. For example, if you have been feeling guilty about going back to work after having a baby, your underlying belief might be that ˜˜women should not go back to work after having a baby. We could question this belief together and assess whether it is acceptable to you. Then, if you changed your belief, the feeling would go away. Later, when the feeling returns, you would know why and apply your rational view on the topic to alleviate the anxiety.

This practice of tracing the current feeling to a specific belief is the foundation of cognitive therapy generally , and rational emotive therapy specifically . It is based on the principle that your interpretation of the world is an equal if not greater contributor to your feelings as, for example, what someone said to you. If you ask most people why they are feeling something, they will attribute it to something that happened in the ˜˜outside world, such as ˜˜Rick said I did a bad job. He hurt my feelings. This person is not likely to say, ˜˜Rick said I did a bad job, and I interpreted it as Rick thinking I am not lovable so I got depressed. However, this latter response is closer to the truth.

The sequence that leads to the anxiety goes like this:

1. An event occurs in the outside world (Rick says I did a bad job).

2. That information travels to my brain.

3. My brain interprets the information (I think, ˜˜Rick says I am not lovable).

4. I experience the feeling of rejection .

5. I behave in a certain way (hang my head, feel a tightness in my chest).

The claim that the feeling is caused at least partly by the interpreter, rather than by Rick alone, is based on the fact that other people could be told the same thing by him and not respond in the same way.

So, if our feelings are driven by our interpretations, why do we interpret the way we do? Well, lets resist the temptation to attribute it all to our childhoodthough that may be the origin of some of our interpretations. How we interpret situations comes from our beliefs. For example, if we believe that ˜˜people who say we did something wrong really believe that we are not lovable, then we will take incoming criticism as a sign of our lack of lovability. But if we believe that ˜˜Rick has bad days; thats why he says half the things he says, then we may not have hurt feelings when he criticizes us on a bad dayor maybe even on good days.

Our beliefs come from many sources, including the media, our family, our wider circle of acquaintances , our experiences, and our education. Our beliefs are often formed from generalizations we have heard others make and have made ourselves . For example, we move easily from noticing Robert arriving late for meetings to judging Robert to be a ˜˜late kind of guy. And ˜˜late kinds of guys dont really live by their word. And people who dont live by their word shouldnt be trusted. So if you want to rely on a teammate, you cant trust Robert. Our beliefs are often not founded on rational analysis.

It does not have to be a difficult task to unravel these beliefs, so long as you know what youre looking for. The simple question is, what belief causes this reaction? Through dialogue one can uncover that belief and come up with some obvious steps to test its validity. This is when a coaching relationship can be quite briefconsisting of just a meeting and a follow-up phone call.

Maggie was a prisoner of anxiety. She came for coaching because she always felt tense around her coworkers and boss. She was the office manager of a midsize law firm. A large part of her day was spent managing the computer network for the firm. She described her problem as always feeling tense at the office.

˜˜You have no idea how it feels, she told me. ˜˜Im, like, paranoid all the time. The problem is that my boss and most of the other lawyers seem to think Im hiding something.

I asked her the predictable question: ˜˜Are you hiding something? ˜˜I dont think so, she answered . ˜˜Well, lets assume for a moment that you do have a secret at the office, that there is something you dont want anyone to know. What would it be?

After a thoughtful pause, she posed her answer like a question and said, ˜˜Im scared? I am afraid people might reject me?

˜˜Why would they reject you? ˜˜Well, if people really knew how little I know about the administration of a computer network, then they wouldnt want me in the job anymore.

˜˜That must be frightening. I dont know anything about networks either. Do you ever ask for help?

˜˜If I asked for help, they would know the truth. ˜˜What happens when things go wrong with the network? ˜˜I do my best to fix it. But I almost never solve the problem. In fact, when people ask me questions I just bluff it. And the consultants we use are never really available when you need them.

Even when the system was fine, Maggie had anxiety around the possibility that it could crash at any time. So many unexpected crashes occurred that she learned to fear another one ˜˜any minute now.

The beliefs underlying her anxiety were twofold. First, she believed that she was not competent in operating a computer network. Second, she also believed that if her boss knew her level of competence, then he would dislike her and maybe fire her. We did not need to explore where her fear of rejection came from (though I suspected it was from her relationship with her father). We just had to find out if it was true that her boss would be upset and likely to let her go.

We talked for a while about what her boss was like and how he and others in the organization appeared to feel about her general level of competence. It turned out that even Maggie suspected that, except for her control of the network, people generally thought pretty highly of her. She had been promoted to office manager because she was an effective team member with strong leadership skills.

˜˜So, Maggie, I think you would be wise to talk to your boss about the network and find out his expectations of you as the person responsible for the network. You might be surprised to find him frustrated not with you but with it.

Maggie agreed to do this. I gave her some pointers on how to approach the topic and get the key questions answered.

She called my voice mail the next day. ˜˜I cant thank you enough, she said. ˜˜You were absolutely right. He said he felt like I was taking too much responsibility for flaws in a poor software program operating on an old hardware platform. He said he admired my effort to keep us running, and gave me the freedom to find another consulting company to help us fix the network. He asked me to be more open with him so we could work on the problem together. I admitted I was afraid he was going to blame me for the problems. He said he felt guilty dumping the problems on my shoulders. Her relief and excitement were obvious.

This was the end of the coaching project with Maggie. It can be that simple for some people. It depends on things like the intensity of the imprisoning feelings, the self-esteem of the client, the severity of the contributing factors, and the frequency of recurrence . For example, Maggie could have come back with a different story. She could have said her boss was very disappointed in her. She could have reported that even though the conversation went well, she still had the overwhelming fear of exposure and rejection. This would have taken us back to exploring the unresolved feelings from past experiences.

The key to escaping the prison of anxiety is self-awareness . Whether you take the exit of linking current feelings to past feelings, or of exploring the beliefs that underlie your feelings, you end up in a place where you are free to override your automatic emotional responses. Instead of being overwhelmed with angst, you become an observer of an angst response, an observer who is empowered to validate what you see and then move on.