10

Stuck

Client Being Stuck

Probably the majority of our clients come to us because they feel stuck in their life. Of course, the word “stuck” describes a wide variety of phenomena. Clients can mean that they are bored, not learning anything, and don’t see a future for themselves. They could also mean that they are attempting to accomplish something and can’t get it to happen. Alternately, they might mean they are seeing the same cycles of behavior return again and again, at their work or in their relationships or in how they take care of themselves. It is even used to describe existential dread or angst, the experience when clients feel no grounding or support or meaning in their life.

Our initial questioning will quickly clarify for us what the client means. The central distinction with clients who report that they are stuck is the same, regardless of the content of the experience. My feeling is that they all share a common root. The root is feeling unheld by the world. By this I mean that they do not feel in their body—and consequently in their emotions and thinking—that they have a place in the world.

In this state, they find themselves working frantically to resolve the anxiety and frustration that invariably accompany this experience. Their actions become unskillful, self-defeating, and sometimes destructive. Frequently they judge themselves negatively, disparage others, and cynically turn away from whatever support is offered. They are certain that their situation is unique and complex and that what they are going through has never happened to the same extent to anyone else. They simultaneously feel that they have to get out of the experience and that somehow there is no way to get out of it (because if there were a way, they would have figured it out by now). This cognitive/emotional dilemma gives rise to the frustration I just mentioned, which is quickly followed by anxiety as they begin to worry that this may go on forever.

All this may sound terribly difficult and dramatic but that is because we make it into that. As I said, I am proposing that the root is feeling unheld by the world, so let me lay out what I see to be how this experience (for the most part) unfolds. (It is because the phenomenon unfolds in this way that it becomes complicated, and as coaches, we can get caught in this web if we don’t know to work on the root instead of its manifestations.)

Once we feel the searing pain of not being held, we immediately, reflexively look for who did this to us. We blame others, which leads to our then acting cynically toward them. Or we blame ourselves, which amplifies our inner voice of negative self-assessment. We do not know to explore the pain—it seems too much and we want to move quickly away from it—and that is where the frantic actions begin.

As coaches, instead of trying to fix all of the difficulties that arise from the frantic activity, it is more helpful to invite the client to investigate what the experience of being unheld is like (which will alternately be described as lonely, misunderstood, out of place, unseen, unloved, and abandoned). I am not talking about a psychological state that is a product of trauma or abuse. Rather, I am pointing to a way of looking at life that seems totally true and valid. The key to undoing it is knowing that there is a lot of truth in the point of view but it is only looking at life from one angle.

There is no use in arguing with our clients into seeing the partiality of their view. They’ll have to discover that what they are seeing is not the whole story even though at the time it feels like it is. So it is true, in a way, like the existentialists say, that we are alone. No one can feel what we are feeling, or go through what we have to go through, or live with the consequences of the choices we make. These points seem to me to be unarguably the case but it is also true that we are conjoined with others.

The food we eat, the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in, and the roads we drive on link us inseparably to everyone who has ever lived. Our very body is a gift from the ancestors, as is the language that we speak, which gives rise to the thoughts we have. It is not possible to step out of the world and, in fact, every moment the world is holding us. We are given air to breath, gravity that holds us, trees that shade us, and the possibility of relationship with the next person who walks by. We forget all of this in the moment of being tripped by pain, searching for whom to blame for it, how to escape it.

With all that as background, here is what we can do as coaches.

• First, keep in mind all that I said.
• Second, design practices that support the client to build exquisite self-care
• himself. Explore together different domains of concern he has and how his needs in each of these can be realistically met. The phenomena of being stuck is frequently started by a person who is neglecting sleep, food, companionship, self-expression, exercise, encounters with beauty; and then wonders why he feels dried up and abandoned.
• Third, design a series of exercises that help the client to scale his expectations. People in our culture watch too many movies and look at too many magazines that have images of people whose lives are “perfect.” Along with the mighty support of marketing, we conclude our life ought to be, should be the same as we see on the screen or in the magazines. We even conclude that we deserve it to be.

We’ve been fooled: no one’s life is like that. Movie stars have to do two hours of makeup and have three hours of special lighting arranged so that they can look like that. The lives of people who have great wealth and power aren’t especially happy, in case you haven’t been noticing.¹ Our client’s expectations on this become realistic when he sees through this mirage to how life really is. A client who watches the Olympics and then says “I ought to be able to do that” will likely severely damage himself when he jumps off the 10-meter diving platform attempting a triple-twisting double somersault. That example is an obvious one, but people ruin their lives trying to have the wealth of Bill Gates or the body of Michael Jordan. You see how this goes when we have unrealistic expectations that aren’t fulfilled. We feel that the world has let us down and the whole syndrome that I’ve described above kicks in.

Once our client has taken care of his genuine needs and has set realistic expectations, life begins to flow effortlessly and he begins to harmonize with the people around him. Suddenly the world is there with all its stark beauty and intimate tenderness. Stuckness is gone—by dissolving its roots.

Program Being Stuck

Sooner or later, one of our coaching programs will become stuck. Our client who seemed clear, engaged, and committed during the last session hasn’t done his practices and seems to have forgotten everything he has learned. We try everything we know and the same or similar keeps happening over and over. Since there is a time limit for our coaching, we begin to feel some pressure, which further clouds our creativity. At this point, it is easy for us to blame our client and many coaches, in fact, do just that. They categorize the client as “uncoachable” or “uncommitted” or “not in enough pain yet” and stop the coaching. My view is that this juncture is the ultimate moment for coaches to learn something, and maybe the biggest chance for our clients to have a developmental breakthrough.

It is always possible to end the coaching, but there is a lot to try out first. Here are some suggestions. (Careful readers will notice that the coach’s response to program stuckness is an example of the events written about immediately above.) I am not going to attempt to list all of the possible reasons why a coaching program might be stuck. Instead, I am going to list a series of actions you can take to move the program forward and learn something about yourself.

1. Reexamine your initial interview of the client. What assumptions did you make and how did you come to these? How grounded was your assessment? What in the client’s actions are not accounted for in your assessment? Consider redoing the intake interview, including speaking to people who work with and live around your client. It is likely that you missed something or misunderstood it.
2. Examine whether the client is acting in ways consistent with your own “shadow.” Your shadow is a collection of unwanted qualities that you have pushed out of your own awareness. We usually find out about our own shadow by seeing it projected onto others. When clients act in ways consistent with our shadow, we have a very difficult time understanding it and an impossible time intervening in it. You can know for sure if you find yourself having a strong emotional, personal response to your client’s actions. This usually indicates that someone is taking actions we are afraid that we ourselves might take and, therefore, our emotional guardians are screaming. Speak with someone who knows you well, who is a good observer and is candid. Ask your friend if the behavior you are seeing (remember to maintain confidentiality of your client) is something that could be your shadow. If it is, seek some support yourself in working with it before you address it with your client.
3. Investigate whether your client has the wherewithal in his life to go through with the coaching program. Does he have enough physical energy, emotional reserves, and relational support? If not, address these topics before continuing with the rest of the coaching program.
4. Change the venue where you are doing the coaching. Go for a walk outside. Sit at the beach. Stroll through nature. Shifting the environment often brings new topics to awareness. Moving the body also frees people from typical thought patterns.
5. Do the coaching work in the session itself. Instead of assigning a body scan, do it during the session. Instead of asking your client to go to the gym to do weightlifting, have your next session at the gym. Frequently, once the pump of practice has been primed during the session, it is easier for it to continue outside the session.
6. Form a partnership with the client and do a forensic review of all the work you’ve done together. Methodically go through each conversation, each meeting, each assignment looking for what was unsaid, unheard, misunderstood, not addressed.
7. Has your coaching somehow brought to the surface abuse in the client’s background? It is difficult to describe on paper, but there is a unique sense that is somehow emotional and somatic when such abuse is in the atmosphere. If you get any inkling of this, refer your client to a competent, trusted therapist who specializes in abuse. Your coaching may have to be postponed for a while or you may be able to form a partnership with the therapist and do both simultaneously. If you are not sure, find a delicate, spacious way to ask your client about it.
8. Study for a while through conversations and self-observations the emotions your client has connected with your coaching. Emotions are directly tied to action. Many clients habitually attempt to bypass or suppress their emotions, which makes it very difficult to take on new activities. The coaching for a few weeks might consist of the client doing some very close, possibly hourly, audit of himself emotionally.
9. Your client may have conflicting commitments. For example, he may want the promotion but be simultaneously committed to working less hours. Kegan and Lahey’s book shows a brilliant exercise for revealing competing and conflicting commitments and a methodology for addressing them.²
10. Shift the content of your coaching radically. For example, if content has been primarily cognitive, move it fully into the body realm. Or, if it’s been about emotions, for a while make it about learning new ideas. Open your creativity and expand your palate of practices. Invite your client to do art, visit museums, travel, listen to different music, anything that will require him to stand in a new identity at least while doing the practice.

That list is a beginning. I intend it to spur your own creativity. As I said previously, when clients are stuck, it is the supreme moment to learn something. If you only have clients who move along readily, you will easily become complacent, maybe even arrogant. It is important for our development to have our best efforts defeated from time to time and remake ourselves. Isn’t that what we are asking our client to do?

The most important job we have as coaches is to keep ourselves in a fluid state, never landing on a solid understanding of ourselves, others, or life. In 500 bc, an ancient Greek philosopher, Thalus, said “Life is water.” Most moderns think he got his physics wrong. He was really saying that life is moving, life is flowing, life is a process. When we are fluid ourselves, we harmonize with life, and as soon as we settle on an idea we begin to harden and become less responsive. Getting stuck in our coaching work shows us where we have become hardened and is a red flare pointing to exactly where our work is. Will you take it up?

The longer you coach, the more you will develop your own large array of practices and exercises. Keep working to reveal your own blind spots and keep learning new methodologies to work with people. Even if you are at the moment fabulously successful at your coaching work, sooner or later, as I’ve said before, you’ll find yourself in a stuck place with a client. At that point, you will be glad that you’ve done your own work and have kept educating yourself. The books at the end of this chapter take up this theme and encourage readers to expand their view of people and the world.

Suggested Reading

These books will show you many angles on how to work when you or your client is stuck.

Gerrish, Michael. When Working Out Isn’t Working Out. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999.

Unique book written by a psychotherapist and exercise physiologist that shows many methods for overcoming obstacles to our development.

Kegan, Robert and Lisa Laskow Lahey. How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Brings (among many other gems) to the world a phenomenally clear, complete, and powerful process for uncovering and dissolving competing commitments. A skillful razor for cutting through stuckness.

Lasater, Judith. Relax and Renew. Berkeley, CA: Rodmell Press, 1995.

The author presents gently, peacefully to the world a yoga that brings profound rest, slowing the nervous system and rejuvenation. Many photographs, clear instructions, beautifully laid out. Classic handbook for the harried.

Loeb, Paul Rogat. The Impossible Will Take a Little While. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Inspiration from contemporary, heroic people who speak directly to our heart and mind. Shows the emotional, cognitive approach they took to seemingly immovable forces (segregation, communism, and apartheid). Electrifying and enlightening.

Mellin, Laurel. The Pathway. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

A book that could only be written by someone who has worked with the most “stuck” of people (who overeat, overwork, overspend, etc.) for more than 20 years. Cuts to the root of self-defeating, obsessive, stubborn behaviors with a proven methodology based upon solid research and practical experience. Indispensable.

Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Helps untie some of most perplexing mental knots by challenging some of our most cherished beliefs—that more choice is better, that we know what will make us happy, etc. Brilliant tool for illuminating the benefits of simplicity in thought and action.

Wilson, Timothy D. Strangers to Ourselves. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

The book clearly, convincingly shows us how much of ourselves we do not know (and perhaps cannot know). The culmination of more than 30 years of study, research, and experimentation, yet jargon-free and readily accessible. A book you’ll never get over and one you’ll want everyone to read.

¹ See the work of Martin Seligman in Authentic Happiness for more on this.

² This exercise appears in the book How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work.