Tag: adaptation

Separate the Person From the Problem

I’ve been meditating on some guidance that is given to mediators, which is to separate the person from the problem and the process. While this seems like a platitude, let’s explore.

A person comes from lots of experiences, and from those experiences develops a series of truths. I’ve discussed this in other blogs. They then adapt their behaviours to coincide with these truths, which is quite logical, however the underlying truth is usually not. It is often coming from fear, and results in some very suboptimal adaptations. These adaptations become behaviours, and behaviours are the basis of living and relating to others, and if you’re following the logic, the behaviours are suboptimal and tend to play out self-fulfilling prophecies.

When a person shows up cautious, jealous, accusatory, or whatever other choice is unloving or uncaring, they are creating a problem. We can go so far as to say they are being a problem, as the expression is real and lived by others. This is where we split hairs, but importantly so.

The choice to behave in a certain way is a choice and represents one’s free will. Yes there are actions that are not choices, but adaptations are eventually understood as choices because we have the wisdom to see their outcomes, and the power to change them.

A prudent therapeutic and relational approach is to separate the person from the problem. The individual expressing or being a problem can be detached from the problem if they so choose and are provided support. The ADKAR method has been very successful in helping people to change, however a permanent change is not necessary in all instances; often to achieve a common goal, parties need only a temporary lift past an adaptive or emotional hurdle. This approach is very much like the Pygmalion effect, where if you treat someone in a particular way, they will respond as that thing.

Am I blabbing about a revolutionary thing? No. But the cognitive shift to see people as potentially distinct from the problem they are creating helps one to support a positive outcome that exceeds the adaptive limitation expressed.

This next blog section is slightly different, as it comments on relational dynamics where a personal problem is masqueraded as a relational issue. This can be in personal or professional dynamics. If someone is framing their personal issue as a relational issue, they must be told. A problem cannot be tackled if the origin is obscure as any joint approach to correct it will be misguided. In these instances, one must disown any ‘blame’ for or involvement in the problem and guide the offender to forms of support where the problem is theirs to address. If they refuse to regard their problem as their own and consequently refuse to address it, that dynamic must shift to reflect that refusal. This shift can sustain recognition of that person’s humanity and goodness, as detached from the problem, but you yourself must recede to a place where you are not wrongly identified as a combatant, trigger, or co-cause of that person’s problem.

A person ought to be cognitively detached from their problem and seen more holistically and compassionately. This is not for the purpose of acquiescence or sacrifice, but merely to keep your head about you while you attempt to support them in their own issue from a position of wisdom and safety. There is no reason to ever act without love and care for another person. There is a prudent reason to starve a problem of your time and energy. The magic is in seeing each separately and acting accordingly.

Unadaptation

We are pretty fearful creatures. Drs. Kahneman and Tversky won a Nobel prize for pointing out that we are hardwired to risk aversion and make innate and predictable thinking errors when facing risk of loss. Because of this, and our immense capabilities, we have put lots of stock in trying to control things so we can alleviate our fears.

Part of the fear mentality is to overestimate the control we have. In decision science this takes many forms, such as the expectation or confirmation bias (we focus only on evidence that supports our expected findings) and what is appropriately called the illusion of control. When evaluating undesirable outcomes, we fall prey to illusory correlation, which creates an erroneous correlation between variables, and very sadly we start doing this from a young age.

The basis of psychology is to understand and undo the adaptations that we have made to circumstances to which we have been exposed. Abused children try to rationalize ways to avoid abuse and in doing so draw faulty correlations about what they can control in an attempt to avoid suffering. Like, “if I am extra kind and friendly I get beaten less”. So the child adapts to be kind and friendly in challenging circumstances, and that adaptation sticks despite being false. The child had no control and created a faulty but believable correlation that is now permanently a part of their personality. Other adaptations could be a general lack of trust, withdrawal, and other things that attempt to lessen or avoid mitigate potentially hostile situations. And what’s worse is that these adaptations are applied to circumstances with similar characteristics despite being different.

This thinking is not limited to our childhood or to extreme situations. You’ve heard about the baseball player who refuses to change their “lucky socks” for an entire season or the gambler who must rub their “lucky rabbit’s foot” with each pull of the slot machine arm. It’s not so dissimilar to a stock market analyst calling a ‘bottom’ during a natural disaster or a prophet predicting the end of the world. We sometimes call them superstitions and laugh about them, but these adaptations based on faulty or incomplete information are deeply ingrained in who we are because they represent an underlying correlation believed to be true.

Some correlations are true, and this is why it’s so confusing for us. Wearing sunscreen will prevent sunburns. A sensible diet will make you healthier. But some (many) correlations do not equal causation since there is something called a lurking variable that may reside between cause and effect, often with a dozen of its cousins. Women wearing skirts does correlate to more shark attacks. What? So are sharks rowdier due to skirts? Of course not. Women wear more skirts when the weather is nice (lurking variable 1) and when the weather is nice more people go into the ocean (lurking variable 2). More opportunities for shark bites come from more people in the water. But a controlling mind would wear fewer skirts in the hopes that it would prevent shark bites. This same cognitive approach causes people to erect walls in relationships, be ‘nice’ all the time, swallow feelings, communicate less, correct things in others that you think are errors you’ve seen before, etc.

So unfortunately, with our risk aversion and our belief we can understand and influence all causes, we become a series of beliefs and adaptations that modify the people we were born to be and hence where we can find contentment from simply being. It reverberates through all of our relationships, careers and life choices. Be safe, avoid pain, and use the knowledge built to understand what gives you pain. Sadly, we are mistaken and we throw the baby with the bathwater.

Our overarching purpose is tautological: to be who we are. If we adapt away from who we are then we are failing to fulfill our purpose. Therefore, it is an obligation to the human experience to unadapt. To discard everything learned in our personalities. To be exactly who we are irrespective of the circumstances. And definitely not to fall victim to our own faulty correlations that lead not only to personal adaptations but to prejudice, stereotypes, bigotry and isolation.