So far I’m seeing data that’s strongly in favor of it being easy for me to facilitate rapid growth for many people in this space. But am I missing something here? If you have any ideas please let me know in the comments.
My take:
You can facilitate rapid growth in these areas.
I don’t think you’re particularly unique in this regard. There are several people who I know (myself included) who can create these sorts of rapid changes on a semi-consistent basis. You named a few as reviewers. There are far more coaches/therapists who are ineffective, but lots of highly effective practitioners who can create rapid change using experiential methods.
@PJ_Eby@Kaj_Sotala@Damon Sasi all come to mind as people on LW who can do this. Having worked with many coaches and therapists, I assure you that many others also have the skill.
Right now I think you’re overestimating just how consistent what you do is, and the results focus you’re taking is likely creating other negative effects in the psyche that will have to be cleaned up later. It will also mean that if you don’t get to the issue in the first session, it will be harder and harder for your work to have an impact over time.
But in general the approach you’re taking can and will create rapid results in some people that haven’t seen results before.
Very curious, what do you think the underlying skills are that allow some people to be able to do this? This sounds incredibly cool, and very closely related to what I want to become in the world.
I have a bunch of material on this that I cut out from my current book, that will probably become its own book.
From a transformational tools side, you can check out the start of the sequence here I made on practical memory reconsolidation. I think if you really GET my reconsolidation hierarchy and the 3 tools for dealing with resistance, that can get you quite far in terms of understanding how to create these transformations.
Then there’s the coaching side, your own demeanor and working with clients in a way that facilitates walking through this transformation. For this, I think if you really get the skill of “Holding space” (which I broke down in a very technical way here: https://x.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1561380884787253248) , that’s the 80/20 of coaching. About half of this is practicing the skills as I outlined them, and the other half is working through your own emotional blocks to love, empathy, and presence.
I never give advice. Instead, everything is Socratic Dialogue.
In theorizing why this works, I’ve come to think of it in terms of inferential distances. The distance between somebody else’s net experiences and my own is so vast, that giving advice is futile (and more of an indication that the advice-giver wants to feel self-important).
People are experts on themselves. Given enough space and gentle enough questions from an active listener, they often have the capacity to solve their own problems.
I’ve come to think of it in terms of inferential distances
yeah probably something like that. I also wrote a little more about this in my blog post today.
People are experts on themselves. Given enough space and gentle enough questions from an active listener, they often have the capacity to solve their own problems.
I never ask about the past and I never dig into trauma. I focus on what they’re predicting in the present.
^That’s what surprised me about Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. There’s not an absolute need to unearth and relive the past—doing so can retraumatize people and make recovery more difficult. (Learning people’s stories are so delightful, so I often have to restrain myself from asking prying questions to fulfill my curiosity when I’m intending to help people heal).
Instead, the focus of healing (from many forms of therapy) is more about understanding the present moment and how we relate to it.
My take:
You can facilitate rapid growth in these areas.
I don’t think you’re particularly unique in this regard. There are several people who I know (myself included) who can create these sorts of rapid changes on a semi-consistent basis. You named a few as reviewers. There are far more coaches/therapists who are ineffective, but lots of highly effective practitioners who can create rapid change using experiential methods.
@PJ_Eby @Kaj_Sotala @Damon Sasi all come to mind as people on LW who can do this. Having worked with many coaches and therapists, I assure you that many others also have the skill.
Right now I think you’re overestimating just how consistent what you do is, and the results focus you’re taking is likely creating other negative effects in the psyche that will have to be cleaned up later. It will also mean that if you don’t get to the issue in the first session, it will be harder and harder for your work to have an impact over time.
But in general the approach you’re taking can and will create rapid results in some people that haven’t seen results before.
Very curious, what do you think the underlying skills are that allow some people to be able to do this? This sounds incredibly cool, and very closely related to what I want to become in the world.
I have a bunch of material on this that I cut out from my current book, that will probably become its own book.
From a transformational tools side, you can check out the start of the sequence here I made on practical memory reconsolidation. I think if you really GET my reconsolidation hierarchy and the 3 tools for dealing with resistance, that can get you quite far in terms of understanding how to create these transformations.
Then there’s the coaching side, your own demeanor and working with clients in a way that facilitates walking through this transformation. For this, I think if you really get the skill of “Holding space” (which I broke down in a very technical way here: https://x.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1561380884787253248) , that’s the 80/20 of coaching. About half of this is practicing the skills as I outlined them, and the other half is working through your own emotional blocks to love, empathy, and presence.
Finally, to ensure consistency and longevity of the change throughout a person’s life, I created the LIFE method framework, which is a way to make sure you do all the cleanup needed in a shift to make it really stick around and have the impact. That can be found here: https://x.com/mattgoldenberg/status/1558225184288411649?t=brPU7MT-b_3UFVCacxDVuQ&s=19
could be, figuring this out
In theorizing why this works, I’ve come to think of it in terms of inferential distances. The distance between somebody else’s net experiences and my own is so vast, that giving advice is futile (and more of an indication that the advice-giver wants to feel self-important).
People are experts on themselves. Given enough space and gentle enough questions from an active listener, they often have the capacity to solve their own problems.
yeah probably something like that. I also wrote a little more about this in my blog post today.
yeah
it’s much higher bandwidth and more efficient too
process the information where it is
^That’s what surprised me about Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. There’s not an absolute need to unearth and relive the past—doing so can retraumatize people and make recovery more difficult. (Learning people’s stories are so delightful, so I often have to restrain myself from asking prying questions to fulfill my curiosity when I’m intending to help people heal).
Instead, the focus of healing (from many forms of therapy) is more about understanding the present moment and how we relate to it.
Update: Bob has recorded a 6-month follow-up here.