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Systemic Diagnosis & Conflicts
Sequential and Simultaneous Conflicts in Coaching and Therapy © Martyn Carruthers

Click HERE to make an appointment!

Do you have difficulty discovering a client's goals? Do you suffer from a shallow education?
Do you want to give your best to your clients and avoid unpleasant consequences?
We help coaches and therapists untangle their goal setting.

Do you KNOW what Your Clients want?

My colleagues and I needed an effective format for diagnosing and solving relationship problems ... and we eventually created an innovative model that assesses, goals, non-verbal communications (not only body movements but also vocal changes) and relationship consequences. I call it systemic diagnosis.

Our systemic diagnosis helps us to quickly recognize and predict emotional and relationship habits and the probable causes of those emotions. It is not 100% accurate, but greatly increases the accuracy of our guesses, intuitions and theories about how people get into and maintain such interesting states.

We call part of this Goal Diagnosis, which helps us assess potential emotional blocks and the underlying personal history. Using it, we can better respond appropriately to nonverbal communication. Our goal diagnosis provides essential information for individual, couple, family and team behavior.

WFO not UFO: Goal Diagnosis

Although any form of coaching or planning ideally starts with 'well formed' goal statements (outcomes), few people can specify their goals. Our Goal Diagnosis includes responding appropriately to many weird and wonderful goal statements ... here are a few examples:

  1. Childish goals (e.g. I want everything, today)
  2. Abstract goals (e.g. I only want to be happy)
  3. Goals lacking times for completion (deadlines)
  4. Conflicts and multiple goals (including double binds)
  5. Word salad (chaotic grammar and sentence structure)
  6. Goal statements with negative grammar (e.g. I don't want a divorce)
  7. Goals with incongruent signals (I want X (while shaking the head "No"))
  8. General statements with little sense of direction (e.g. I want more time off)
  9. Philosophy (e.g. Someone in my position should have already achieved goal X)
  10. Metaphors (e.g. I feel like I'm lost in a jungle and I can't find a path to a village)

For more, see Question 1 of our coaching exam

While we hope for clear answers to the question "What do you want?", we really don't expect them. Goal questions seem to stress most people. Nobody want to appear stupid, and people are often scared of asking for too little ... or too much.

We find that the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) meta model is inadequate for this task and is more likely to irritate people. Keith Blanchard's theory of SMART goals can help you recognize a well-formed outcome, if by some miracle a client can state a SMART goal congruently (without verbal or non-verbal objections).

Double Binds & Double Wishes

By Double Binds I refer to paradoxical interpersonal communication. A double bind statement contains internal contradictions. If the addressed person cannot withdraw from the situation, that person cannot decide which message is real and (if young) may develop pathologies. (Read Krippendorf for more)

Double binds may be explicit (e.g. a teacher communicates to a student "I will punish you to improve your education!") or implicit (e.g. a manager says to an employee "I know that even you can complete this task today!" while curling his upper lip). If the addressed person cannot recognize and dissolve double binds, relationship chaos often results.

By Double Wishes I refer to poorly defined goals that contain internal contradictions. If a client cannot decide which message is true, the client may object to their own goals - or withdraw from the coaching relationship. They may be disappointed that they cannot fulfill their own goals, and delay or miss opportunities for happiness.

Some stated goals have a similar structure to double-binds: for example the stated goal may have two or more objects and one verb, (e.g. "I want to be married and happy and ..."). If these wishes are believed to be incompatible, any attempts or planning to fulfilling a double-wish will likely fail.

I evaluate double goals by first noticing whether any verbal or non-verbal incongruence is simultaneous or sequential, or whether a client displays signs of conflict when changing wish polarity. Although a client may state a possessive or behavioral goal - the underlying goal is often at at an existential or identity level, to discover "What is important to me?" or "What sort of person am I?"

A client may find two or more conflicting possibilities. A well-formed outcome becomes possible if the definition of the goal can fully incorporate the values of all sides or parts of the conflict, or following an internal change of reference that rejects unwanted influences. (In our systemic diagnosis, we often refer to identity level influences as relationship bonds.)

People trained in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) may be tempted to use a visual squash. We find this to be an unhealthy choice for coaching people to resolve conflict. This technique uses hypnotic language to "double bind" the issues in conflict. The consequences of a visual squash includes the re-emergence of the conflict (usually within three months) or the manifestation of the conflict as chronic unpleasant emotions and/or psychosomatic symptoms.

The symptoms of identity conflict should not be confused with the symptoms of a person who constantly changes goal contexts, rather than oscillating back and fore between two polarities. In our systemic diagnosis, this constant changing of goal contexts would indicate Identification, in which a person "identified" with someone else, usually as a child under the age of seven.

Sequential Conflicts

Sequential conflicts can be fascinating ... and also irritating. Someone can never make up their mind, and if they do, they either participate half-heartedly - or they participate with huge energy for a limited time.

I check the time between polarity changes of a sequential conflict ... is it short-cycle or long-cycle? For me, short cycle is less than a few days, while long-cycle is over a week. This is useful information for anticipating a person's change of heart. You can plan for it ... and plan your response. (I find that this greatly decreases my irritation about people who break promises etc).

Although emotional conflicts can be resolved through top-down inhibition of amygdalar activity by the rostral cingulate cortex (Neuron 51, 1–12, September 7, 2006) - we often resolve complex emotional conflicts in conversations ... see Transcript - Resolve Complex Conflict.

Ecology is the Study of Congruence

A commonly used presupposition such as "Ecology is the study of consequences" seems to imply that ecology can only be determined AFTER an intervention. In systemic diagnosis, I teach that Personal Ecology is the study of congruence.

We can resolve some double goals conversationally. For example, a simultaneous verbal double wish (e.g. "I want X and Y") can often be dissolved by asking the client "Which do you want first? Do you want X first so that you can Y, or do you want Y first so that you can X?"

However - this question will not make sense to a person with an existential or complex conflict. Such a person may answer "I want X so that I can Y but I want Y so that I can X", or "It's impossible".

Resolving double wishes can be complex. Sequential incongruence (e.g. A client says "I want X … no really I want Y …actually X is more important… well Y should come first … but ...") usually indicates that a client's conscious alternatives are only indications of potential goal direction. You will not find a congruent outcome by choosing amongst incongruent outcomes!

Practitioner training in NLP provides a set of questions (Meta Model) that are supposed to help people specify goals, and SMART goals (from One Minute Manager by Keith Blanchard) which are useful for helping recognize well-formed outcomes (WFO).

We invest five days of our coach training into Goal Diagnosis ... we find it to be THAT important; and we include personal and relationship ecology on every step of our training. It is equally important.

NLP & Conflict Resolution

I (Martyn) attended a number of NLP trainer trainings: with Marilyn Atkinson's Erickson Institute, with Tad James' Advanced Neurodynamics, with Wyatt Woodsmall's Advanced Behavioral Modeling and with Steve and Connirae Andreas' NLP Comprehensive. The most common technique taught for dissolving conflicts was a hypnotic integration of two visualized parts ... often called a Visual Squash.

Visual Squash

The NLP technique called visual squash is often used to coach people to resolve internal behavioral conflicts. A person is encouraged to evaluate two parts (also called ego-states, complexes, partial personalities or entities) which communicate simultaneously or sequentially about a proposed goal.

If more than two parts involved in a conflict, we call it a complex conflict. We have noticed that the NLP visual squash used with a complex conflict may lead to withdrawal, unpleasant emotions and psychosomatic symptoms. A sequential conflict swings between goals, and may indicate a conflict of values or identity, which seem to have three, five or seven parts with two or three levels of abstraction. We find that about 20% of both Americans and Europeans (assessed on our private coaching and public trainings) present this complex pattern of sequential incongruence.

If a person identifying with one polarity is amnesic of decisions or actions made when identifying with the other polarity - this may indicate multiple personality syndrome and we do not attempt to coach such people - we refer them to clinicians. More commonly, a person identifying with one polarity may remember but deny decisions or break promises that were made while that person identified with the other polarity.

A client's presenting issue may be an inability to make decisions, in which multiple goals are incompatible with each other. (An advantage of complex conflict is that the client can multi-track or manage many projects simultaneously. A disadvantage is that such clients may create conflicts that reflect the client's chaotic internal mindscape. Extreme examples might include clients with gorge - starve (binging) cycles. (See: Eating Disorders)

Many people have conflicting goals. For example, a client may want a long-term stable job AND want a series of challenges with many companies. A NLP visual squash parts integration might motivate the client to find or create a position as a corporate troubleshooter, for example, in which both partial personalities are satisfied.

During work with people following a NLP visual squash by NLP practitioners, we observed that  many people re-create their conflict within a few weeks, when the squashed conflicting motivations may erupt as conflicting obsessions. Also, some people consequently seem to suffer physical symptoms or emotional problems that sabotage them from attaining their incongruent goals.

We found better ways.

See NLP Ecology Redefined and NLP Strategy Techniques

When you choose a goal or solution, you choose the consequences of that goal or solution.

Click HERE to Dissolve Conflicts Congruently

Although I qualified as a NLP trainer many times, I stepped back from NLP when I realized that I could not fulfill the claims made by NLP trainers using the material taught during NLP training. I have since researched and developed much that I lacked then, particularly concerning goalwork, relationship ecology, systemic changework and relationship coaching, and I abandoned NLP techniques that may damage people and/or damage their relationships. Martyn Carruthers

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2002-2010 All rights reserved.


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Good Questions

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Training

1. Where are you now? Assess relationship bonds and entanglements Systems 1
2. What are your life goals?  Identify your life goals ... and what blocks you Systems 2
3. How to reach your goals?  Use your conscious and unconscious resources Systems 3
4. What stops you?  Dissolve abuse and trauma to rebuild motivation Systems 4
5. What else stops you? Change your limiting beliefs to end dependence Systems 5
6. What else stops you? Resolve identity loss to recover qualities and skills Systems 6
7. What else stops you? Heal mentor damage and find quality mentorship Systems 7
8. What about your partnership? Build happy partnership (or separate peacefully) Systems 8
9. What about your children? We coach parents to resolve family problems Systems 9
10. What about your success? We coach team leaders and teams ... together Systems 10
11. What about your community? We coach community leaders and communities Systems 11
12. What about complex goals? Specialty coaching & training for unusual goals Specialty

Plagiarism is theft. Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2010 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers. We help people define and achieve goals, resolve emotional blocks and improve relationships. This information is for general knowledge only. Consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing any medical treatment. Don't steal ... ask Martyn for permission to post or publish his work.