Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Changing Destructive Behaviors: Origin Stories

From HBR article Getting to the Bottom of Destructive Behaviors,” by Ron Carucci 

If you, or someone you coach, has struggled to change chronic destructive behavior — anything from angry outbursts to freezing up in high-risk moments to asserting excessive control under stress — uncovering their origin stories may help you break through and make way where other approaches have failed to.  The process involves four steps.

1) Write down the origin stories.

I ask my clients to recall scenes from their formative years, usually between the ages of five and 20, in which the importance of the behavior in question started to appear.  Take the case of my recent client, Andy, the division president of a global accounting firm. He was affable, articulate, with an infectious energy that earned him high regard. But these positive qualities were counteracted by a defiant need to be right, crave the spotlight, and talk incessantly. I asked Andy to write down stories from his formative years centered around times he learned that being both right about, and central to, so many issues became critically important to him. I wanted him to uncover why being wrong or on the periphery was threatening to him. My hunch was that Andy only felt safe when he was talking, and that having his views questioned triggered a sense of inadequacy and shame. The question I told him to try and answer was this: When and how was this behavior learned?    

2) Identify the inner narrative. 

The origins of destructive behavior are almost always attached to well-formed narratives. These narratives serve as templates, or biases, through which we make sense of the world, and often manifest in reaction to experiences we faced earlier in life — or our origin stories. Unless we rewrite them, we spend our lives recreating conditions that reinforce them. But we can’t rewrite stories that we can’t even name. That’s what this step is about.  One of the stories Andy wrote was about the social struggles of changing schools when he was ten. Andy was both a severe stutterer and suffered with ADHD. His new school required him to attend “special education” classes in the middle of the day when everyone else was at recess. For two years, Andy’s daily walk of shame past jeering peers to what they called the “stupid classroom” set the stage for a defiance and shame that would manifest as the behaviors he now couldn’t change.  Andy learned that to prevent being seen as “stupid,” he needed to be highly likable, articulate without stuttering, and consistently demonstrate how smart he was to others. To him, being smart meant being right. I asked Andy to identify in one sentence what that vulnerable season taught him. The narrative Andy wrote down was: “Unless you can prove otherwise, everyone will see how stupid you are.”  His interpretation is starkly revealing. Andy didn’t believe he had to prove he wasn’t stupid. He believed he had to hide the fact that he was. Those years of ritualized public shame caused him to conclude he was inadequate, unintelligentand therefore, had to adopt sophisticated behaviors to conceal that “truth” from others.  But his abrasive behaviors ended up doing the opposite — pushing people away and replicating his childhood experiences of rejection. Consequently, he had to acquire others’ acceptance and admiration using upbeat energy and brilliantly articulated ideas. Andy realized he’d spent his entire life perfecting a cycle that, while made him feel momentarily safe, yielded the very rejection he sought to escape.

3) Name the need the behavior is serving. 

The anchor that holds troubling behavior in place is the need it serves. This step is about figuring out what that need is. Chronic, destructive behavior is usually an attempt to resolve the painful experience that initiated it. When I asked Andy to tell me what he ultimately wanted, he said, “I want to feel like I belong just by being me.” The problem was that he learned early in life that he couldn’t both “belong” and “just be me.” As a result, he chose to concoct a new version of himself.  Andy and I discussed exactly what this meant: To counter his feelings of self-contempt and shame and purchase others’ acceptance, he made sure others believed he was an affable, articulate guy, especially at his place of work. His unconscious need to reinforce his own belief that he was stupid and unlikable is what made him resistant to change, despite cognitively understanding he should in fact change.  While he freely acknowledged the negative consequences of his behavior on others (cognitive) and desired to actually stop (motivation), the unaddressed pain of those formative years (trauma) was simply too formidable to be more than momentarily counteracted by his will or his acknowledgement. This cycle had set a destructive pattern into motion.

4) Choose a new narrative and alternative behaviors. 

Once someone has identified the deeper needs that that their troubling behavior serves, no matter how irrational they seem, they can begin the process of change.  To start my clients off, I always ask them to take a stab at writing down a new narrative. For Andy, the prompt was: What would happen if you really were smart and didn’t need to purchase other’s approval with your enthusiastic energy or by using your verbal mastery to appear intelligent? Do you think others would still admire you if you were quiet? For his new narrative, Andy wrote, “I am liked, smart, and safe even in silence.” It’s common to dismiss formative stories as mere parts of our past. A divorce, a loved one’s fatal illness, being bullied, surviving a natural disaster, and many other experiences, can leave lasting marks that shape who we become.

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