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SatirCopingNonTools

Virginia Satir wrote about how people cope with stress and low self esteem. She claimed that there are four standard patterns (blaming, placating, computing, irellevant,) which people tend to fall into when under stress and when suffering from low self esteem and that these patterns should be avoided for effective communication. I think of these patterns as "techniques for non-communication". I have noticed that when I am in stressful situations I often think about strategies for avoiding answering questions or divulging my feelings. When I am trying to avoid communicating I invariably run down techniques which are derived from her list to determine my next action. Virginia claims that one should almost never uses these coping stances and that being and effective communicator is only possible if one is continually on guard for one of these behaviors and consciously chooses another technique for handing the difficult situation.

Virginia also developed a "tool kit" to help bolster self esteem and provide alternatives for the coping behaviors. This tool kit is a set of physical metaphors for actions one could take in a stressful situation. One of the most popular is the "courage stick". This item reminds you that you have the power to say brave things even if you are scared and that often the most difficult things to say are the most important. There are seven items in the traditional Satir Self Esteem Toolkit.

I have been thinking that the coping styles could also use some physical metaphors. These are the tools that you think you are reaching for when you assume a coping stance. When adopting a coping stance you often believe that you are being helpful and choosing a useful tool but from an objective position this tool is really hindering communication. So what you have managed to do is to reach for a 'non-tool' to justify your behavior. It might be helpful to keep these tools in mind and find another solution when you see yourself grasping for them. I believe that each coping stance has numerous non-tools associated with it, each depending on your justification for the coping stance. Each person will need to investigate his reasons for adopting the coping stances he chooses and will come up with his own list of non tools. I would be interested to hear about your personal list of non-tools. These are the four nontools which I can often find myself reaching for.

red pen: In an effort to help the other person address flaws you may be tempted to reach for your red pen and correct mistakes. This easily leads to a blaming stance.

wrapping paper: In an effort to soothe another persons feelings you may attempt to give part of yourself so that this situation may improve. By giving too much of yourself away you are adopting a placating stance.

clown nose: In an effort to lighten the mood and relieve tension you may in fact divert the conversation and derail the discussion. Thus inappropriate levity will distract the conversation and be seen as irrelevant.

tweezers, microscope, calipers: Everyone knows that too much attention on details can be as deadly to a discussion as too little. there is a place in all discussions for: balancing positions (the scale), investigating risk/rewards (the calculator) and searching for meaning (the dictionary). However when these tools become an excuse to perform an microscopic investigation of the problem well outside of the normal context for a solution then you have left the realm of discussion and entered the realm of the super reasonable.

Ken Estes Oct 1 2002

This is fascinating. And, what came to my mind after reading it was my own favorite tool ....

the endless ladder: when I am confronted with something that I'd rather avoid, I sometimes find myself climbing up into more "theoretical" propositions....if I can carry the conversation away from the immediate into the ether, my 'objective' is achieved.

I wonder if this is the difference between an "S" and an "N" being super-reasonable. (Although, knowing that the "S" is found on my 'shadow side', I find I can dive down into details occasionally as well....)

Diane 10-1-02

Nice work. You're practicing observing yourself in action. Do that, and you could learn all kinds of ways to be in the world. And of course, teach the rest of us what you learn. I just learned something from you (again). Thanks for that. And I want more (I'm greedy.)

Another example of SatirCopingNonTools is software processing. First you parse a statement for syntax. Then you try to compile it, to see if it is "well formed." Then there's some sort of internal consistency check with the rest of the program. Then you tie it out to the existing global variables (effectively "link") in the existing model. Then there's an external consistency check. Then you try and exectue the object just created, checking vs. various run-time errors, if, for example, a referenced resource isn't available. That's a great sequence for creating software, and hardly the only sequence for discovering things as humans. To begin with, stuff you've newly discovered is rarely "well formed" at the beginning. The distraction, of course, is to get sucked into the "correctness" problems raised by this sequence and lose the meat. All ideas must compile and run clean before the program writing is barely begun.

You and I, Ken, both have this one. I suspect lots of software types do. Lots of folks also use this one as a stopper when confronted with something novel from someone else. And us programmer types get hooked by that - we don't have it all figured out yet, so we stop, and / or feel bad. Because everything we present has gotta be a good program. I even labeled some of these blocking folks "the compiler people" - the ones so stuck in this "compile it" way of knowing that there isn't any other way they can recognize or use.

Let's see. Somebody said something like: "There are many ways of knowing, and being available to you. You've got them. I wonder what you will discover when you let them work in yourself." This observation on SatirCopingNonTools, and the related on SatirToolkitAdditions come straight from your other ways of knowing: intuition, questions, metaphors and so on. Powerful stuff.

And you were wondering whether you learned anything in change shop.

- JimBullock, 2002.10.1

There are really good ideas here. Please however help me phrase these in the positive. I do not think anyone would choose to climb and endless ladder or to be a complier person. However there is something attractive here which is drawing you in. Perhaps the endless ladder is viewed as "we need to do more planing or investigating"? My view is that these tools are something we are reaching for because we think it would help.

As for Jim's comment, this is something we have discussed many times and I am not really sure what is going on here. To me, being a compiler person feels like "flow". However every article I have ever read on flow (just been rereading Tom Crum) always puts flow in the positive. They seem to view being "in the zone" as one of being relaxed and taking in more input. To me the zone is more about being excited and thinking deeply. It is enjoyable to do this but I run the risk of not taking in input (others feelings sort of input) which could be useful. So to me flow is about hooking models together (like the articles I wrote today) this is precicely the time when I will recite pre parsed thoughts to others who make may ask me questions. Instead of dumping my models on the other person I should pay more attention to their question and their non verbal communications to see what they really want. I am not sure this is very clear but I do not think this has much to do with coping styles or with other apparent choices of communication.

- KenEstes 2002.10.1

-BeckyWinant 10-02-2002

Your request to put these things in the positive puzzled me at first. I don't see anything necessarily positive about blaming, or about being super-reasonable, or any of the coping stances (although I acknowledge there may be times when they are appropriate)

But, then I began to think about the tools themselves.... since that seems to be what you are referring to.

So, the tools may have been developed and might be used for some purpose that allows us to achieve something that we need (positive) as well as being distorted and used for incongruent coping.

In that light, I think the 'endless ladder' has a positive purpose when being used to explore a big picture, to explore interconnectedness, with minimal limits. However, it also can work to turn super-reasonable and run away from something troublesome.

So, like each of our strengths is usually also a weakness; each of our non-coping tools has either a source or a potential for something positive.

Is that where you are trying to go with this? Becky -- this seems to make sense of your description of blinders as well.

So, what happens if one climbs an endless ladder wearing blinders?

-DianeGibson 10-2-2002

In regards to "Flow", when it comes to computer programming, "flow" is sometimes harmful. It is a intense mental state, but usually uncritical -- the result of a "flow" programming experience can result in code that looks really bad the next day. Groups or pairs of people can experience "shared flow", sometimes compared to the experience of a jazz band or other musical group. Shared flow allows more constructive criticism, so the code resulting from pair programming is usually superior to that from solo programming.

Ward's wiki has several pages on "flow": <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?search=flow>

KeithRay 2002.10.02

Personally I liked your endless ladder. It has a Jack in the Beanstalk feel - we all want to climb the ladder to find out where it goes. A mystery to unravel and a magic journey! But, the ladder, like the beanstalk, has us avoiding our work and obligations "on the ground" and has us pursuing things that may end up bringing trouble our way.

BeckyWinant 2002-10-02

Interesting.

My coding experience (from dim and dusty memory) seemed to reflect writing when that works. Coding was at least a two pass process. I always looked at code I had produced a day or more after it was written, and expected to spend some time, sometimes more than the first pass took, rewriting some or all of it. Exploring and / or having some clue, and editing are two different things. The first implementation was never the way it ended up.

The clue - the algorithm, or data structure, or partitioning scheme or other thing about how the code worked - always took up lots of space in my brain. Making it readable, bulletproof, etc. in the same programming pass didn't fit. Besides, how would I know? Like editing writing just when it's written, I've still got the big idea in my head, so I'm not responding to the words that are there. I already know where I'm going. Thing is, when I'm busy being critical, about readability as a small example, I can't seem to do the other thing, the have a new clue thing.

Maybe I'm just not as smart as some of these folks. At any rate, I'm doing some coding for the first time in years starting next week. Should be amusing. I wonder what I'll discover.

And for Diane, if you climb and endless ladder wearing blinders, there are two possibilities at least:

• It's not really endless and you fall off.
• You're stuck trudging up the latter and miss the view.

- JimBullock, 2002.10.2