“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, throw down your hair.” In the fairy tale, Rapunzel’s long hair allows the handsome prince to climb up to the tower and rescue her from her imprisonment. The assumption is that they were both overwhelmed by their attraction for one another. But what would have happened to the pair’s feelings after the rescue and return to safety had been accomplished? The passion of Romeo and Juliet, despite the opposition of their parents, is immortalized in drama, dance, and music, but what if the two teenagers had lived and the families had reconciled? Would the passion of the lovers have remained as strong? Emotion researchers have wondered about the passions that are aroused when they are forbidden or dangerous. In a series of experiments, they have discovered that physiological arousal, even when it has nothing to do with love or attraction—but rather with danger or rebellion—can be interpreted by our minds as overwhelming passion. If we meet an attractive person on a suspension bridge or while rappelling down a cliff, we are likely to find him or her more attractive than if we had met on solid, safe ground. In other words, emotions are not just another category of human experiences like cognition or physiology or relationships. Emotions affect and perhaps even encompass them all.

Some emotional experiences can be very fleeting. The delight of making a funny remark or supplying a little-known fact in a conversation can disappear quickly. And, fortunately, this is also true for most minor slights. Adaptation is an aspect of all human senses. Repetition of the same stimulus over time results in less and less response, or a reduction in the transmission of information. After a while, noxious smells become more bearable or even disappear. Perhaps not so fortunately, the 20th bite of chocolate mousse does not taste so sweet as the first.

Based on the understanding that attention changes the brain, the more often an incident occurs that can be interpreted as “How dare that passenger take advantage of me?” and the more it is interpreted that way, the more mental maps are formed of being cheated and the more one’s physiology of threat is activated, the more likely this state of mind will characterize a person’s ongoing subjective experience. The pub owner may even be described by others as an angry person.

The amygdala is an almond-shaped organ buried in the middle of the brain, between the body-regulating “lower” part (the wrist and heel of our brain-in-hand) and the “higher-level” cortex, including our oft-mentioned prefrontal cortex (represented by the first and second digits of the fingers in the brain-in-hand). For a review of the brain-in-hand model, see the Introduction. Sensory signals are routed through the amygdala, like a rapid wiretap, on their way to the conscious parts of our brains. Although the amygdala is commonly thought of as the emotional center of the brain, when it is stimulated, it does not generate happy emotions, so much as anxiety and fear.

Because coaches do not provide psychotherapy, we would refer cases such as just described to a qualified professional who does. But coaches often face a similar puzzle with clients: Does the client’s reaction of fear and anxiety indicate:

One of the most powerful triggers for a shift in resourcefulness has to do with status. Why do we feel excited or even special when we see a famous person in a coffee shop? It is unlikely that the television or movie star came there because of us. Why do we line up for hours for an autograph or to shake hands with someone we have seen on TV? Somehow, our association with a higher-status person increases our own status. And status is of great importance to the brain.

In coaching, we are called on to provide feedback to clients. Consider what could happen from the perspective of the brain when we say the word “feedback”: If the client has an unconscious expectation that equates feedback to criticism, he or she may perceive this as a threat. Not looking good in the eyes of someone important is threatening to our status, as we have described. The limbic system goes into overdrive and the brain pumps out cortisol, resulting in reduced functioning of the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala starts to generalize, or make connections between things it would not normally connect. The coaching connections we hope to make are overridden by fear and anxiety.

Being able to manage one’s emotions is highly valued in business and is a mark of a healthy prefrontal cortex. But what does it mean in practice?

Reappraisal is another name for reframing or recontextualizing an issue. In a common experiment, participants are asked to look at a photo of a group outside a church. They see people crying and feel sad. But if they are asked to reappraise the event as a wedding, their emotions shift. As a result of reappraisal, the participants changed their state of mind.

The opposite occurred when people were asked simply to become aware of their feelings. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal may lessen the emotional impact of an experience by turning off the brain’s emotion response centers. It also tells researchers that if they want to understand the psychology of reappraisal, recognizing the interaction of cognitive and emotional processes will be important (Ochsner et al., 2001).

In one experiment, described by Kevin Ochsner at the NeuroLeadership Summit in New York (see Internet links), subjects were asked to guess how well different strategies would reduce the effects of an upsetting incident. Would talking with someone else about how they felt be effective? No, most people said. What about controlling their emotions so others would not know what they were feeling? Yes, that should work, many subjects answered.

When we have already entered a state of emotional arousal, we often talk to others about our experience, and that seems to help clear the mind. Telling our troubles to a Guatemalan worry doll, then placing it beneath our pillow will, according to legend, erase those worries by morning. Similar practices spanning many cultures affirm the idea that putting problems into words can blunt the emotional impact of those problems. Centuries of thinkers—from Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), to William James, to every psychologist who practices talk therapy—have recognized this peculiar power of language. But is there evidence to back up these claims?

How do coaches help clients moderate responses so they do not interfere with coaching? Johnson (2006) asks a similar question about mentoring: “[H]ow can we assist learners in self-modulating the fears that originate in the limbic system? The key is in the space created by the mentor-learner relationship, spaces where the learner feels uniquely seen by the mentor, valued, and safe” (p. 66). In this quote, “learner” can be replaced by “client” and “mentor” by “coach.” The importance of the coach-client relationship is recognized in coach training. Being uniquely seen and valued by the coach and feeling safe with her or him are prerequisites for coaching clients.

We began part IV by discussing the mechanistic bedrock of psychotherapy. As constructivist approaches and positive psychology went beyond that bedrock, psychotherapy has come along as well. Discoveries that psychotherapeutic techniques such as reframing can result in structural changes to the adult brain (Schwartz & Begley, 2002) have created great excitement in the psychotherapeutic community. Professional conferences feature brain-related themes; the theme for the 2008 Society for Psychotherapy Research Conference was “Neurobiological and Sociocultural Contexts of Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy Research.” And books such as Louis Cozolino’s Neuroscience of Psychotherapy (2002) and Norman Doidge’s Brain that Changes Itself (2007) abound. In a sense, this should not come as a surprise. If psychotherapy is at all effective, how could it not produce long-term changes in our thinking processes? This is one similarity between psychotherapy and coaching.