Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian.

Brian
Hello, Ani.

Ani
Hi.

Brian
I love your shirt.

Ani
Oh, thank you.

Brian
Where do I get one?

Ani
Yours is on order. You know it. Actually, it’s like my new uniform. This is so cozy. We just opened a swag shop over at the Somatic Coaching Academy. I’ve got all my stuff, actually. I’ve got my ‘I love being in my window mug’. I’ve got my… Oh, wait, I got to show my back for those- You’re representing here.

Brian
Oh, the back. #getcentered, Core Centering logo back there.

Ani
Yeah, I’m really loving it. It’s nice that we finally have a place for people to be able to purchase some of this swag that we’ve gotten. Yes, yours is in the mail.

Brian
I’m looking forward to receiving my swag delivery.

Ani
Yours is in the mail. Yeah. It’s over at somaticcoachingacademy.com/shop. And if you haven’t checked out our new website yet, I’m still really, really excited about it. So somaticcoachingacademy.com/shop. You can check out our swag stuff. Check it out. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. What are we talking about?

Brian
Today, this is episode 50, by the way. I’m 50. We turned 50. Our topic for today is how coaches and leaders can identify the sly disguises of resistance to change.

Ani
Resistance to change really does come in sly disguises. I crack myself up sometimes thinking about saying sly disguises, oh, like resistance to change is some minion. Sometimes it comes in a cowboy hat, and then other times it comes in a mustache, and we’re like, ‘Wait a minute, is that the same guy? I don’t really know’. That’s funny. But the sliest disguises. they are really sly. Not a lot of people know how to identify them. I think then what happens is we think, ‘What the heck is wrong with this person? Or what’s going on?’ Or we start to solve problems that aren’t the real problems. Yeah. You know what I say, Brian? I’ve been saying that this week. Most of the time, the problems that we’re trying to solve aren’t actually the problems that we should be trying to solve. Most of the time, the problem that we should be trying to solve is, ‘Is my nervous system regulated?’

Brian
There we go. That’s it. Thanks for coming to today’s episode. I think that pretty much puts a stamp on it. Sounds it up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ani
But let’s talk about what resistance to change can look like, because I think one of the things we can do is really narrow down the broad categories of what resistance to change can look like, because then instead of having a billion things to look for, we really only have four.

Brian
Like four. Maybe we can back up even a little bit more, though. Sure. We’ve done lots of podcasts over the last year about what change is, resistance to change. There’s lots of different podcasts to go back and dive deeper into on this topic, but maybe we just review for a moment since we’re talking about change. Let’s talk about what are we categorizing as change? Changing my underwear? Changing my shirt? Changing my-

Ani
That wasn’t actually the direction that’s going in my head. And when you said that. It’s just really like, Wait. Okay, let’s define change, right?

Brian
Yeah. So let’s define change. So how are we talking about change? Well, we’re at the Somatic Coaching Academy, and so I’m assuming that we’re talking about change in some relationship to coaching. What do you think? How are we thinking about change?

Ani
Well, the thing that I was just noodling on while you were talking about your underwear is innovation. Whether we want to call it an ambition, I want to change my habits, or I want to change my outcomes or my results, or I want to change my relationship or my health or my money, or it’s all the same thing. I want to innovate. I want to become something more. I want to have something more. I want to do something more. To me, anytime we’re talking about change, we’re talking about having something different than we have now. But also, of course, change can be imposed upon us, and/or we can initiate change from within, which can feel both different, and both of those can be really challenging.

Brian
I think some people might be listening and say to themselves, Ani, “I don’t resist change at all. I’m a change-friendly person.” That can be true because we work with a lot of different kinds of people, and some people are just more change-friendly than other people are. There’s nothing wrong or right or wrong that or anything like that. You just have to know yourself. How change-friendly are you? But I would also say even people who say they’re extremely change-friendly have some areas of their life where they’re less change-friendly than others. Yeah, sure. Some people are willing or able to take risks in certain areas, but not other areas. I’ve met a lot of people who are pretty high-risk takers when it comes to extreme sports, but they do not take risks in relationships at all. Then I know other people who take big risks in relationships in terms of opening their hearts and being vulnerable, but they would not even think about getting on a ski slope.

Ani
Yeah, it probably has something to do with values and identity and things like that. Do you feel like you’re pretty change-resistant?

Brian
Pretty change resistant?

Ani
Or change friendly?

Brian
Well, I think the same thing for me. I think it really depends on what category that I’m considering. I’m more change-friendly in some areas than other areas. I would have to say, overall, compared to myself 10 years ago, I’m much more change-friendly than I was 10 years ago. I think I like to look back and see where am I in that trajectory. I think a lot of that just comes from understanding what change is and what change resistance looks like. Sure. Also if I want a significant change in my life, then resistance will be a part of it. There’s something we talk to our clients a lot about. A lot of people we work with, they get really hung up on how resistant they are to something. They want to be able to take action, but they’re really resistant of it, and they beat themselves up for it. We say, Well, listen, if this change wasn’t really substantial, you wouldn’t be resisting it. Anything that you think you’re changing that you’re not resisting isn’t really a substantial change because of the way the subconscious is constructed to defend against program change.

Ani
I love being life and business partners with you and asking a question that I don’t know the answer to that’s going to be answered in front of lots and lots of people. That’s always fun. That’s fine. Yeah. I couldn’t have done that 10 years ago. There you go. How’s that for some growth?

Brian
Yeah, there you go.

Ani
Yeah. Aka change.

Brian
Aka change. So do you feel like you’re less change-resistant, more change-friendly over time?

Ani
Over the course of time of learning about my subconscious and what resistance looks like and things like I think I used to be way more change-resistant than I am now. Because I can spot change resistance, and I have all the tools that I have, I’m way… You know what it is as I’m talking out loud? Thanks for allowing me to process, everybody. When you have skills and you can feel more confident, I think that’s for me, I feel like I have the skills. Before, I don’t think I had the skills, so I felt more a victim to change or not in as much control. But now I have the illusion of control maybe because I have more skills. I do feel confident in my ability to navigate resistance.

Brian
You know what’s coming up for me as you’re talking, what’s occurring to me actually is with this question back and forth of, are we more change-friendly than we were years ago? And why is that? I think we both answered a little bit because we know more about it. We know what change resistance looks like, and we know that change resistance is a part of the process of change. It’s going to be a part of the process of change. I think a defining factor for me that I used to get really hung up on is that when I didn’t understand change resistance and I would start to experience change resistance, I thought there was something wrong with me.

Ani
I was saying the same thing in my head as it was coming out of your mouth.

Brian
I thought there was something wrong with me. Then because there’s something wrong with me, then the change either wasn’t right, good, accurate, important, whatever.

Ani
That’s actually a super subconscious strategy. The subconscious that doesn’t want us to change, that would make sense that we would think that because then we try to solve for the problem of what’s wrong with me.

Brian
Correct. Yeah, it gets us totally off track.

Ani
Of keeping moving towards the change that we’re seeking. Brilliant subconscious.

Brian
Brilliant subconscious strategy. Once I realized that the change resistance was going to happen. If I wanted a substantial change, then I had to accept that resistance will happen. It will happen. Then when it started to happen, I could no longer say there’s something wrong with me. I could say, actually, that’s a signpost that I’m on the right track. Because if I’m experiencing resistance, it means that I’m going to actually change something substantial. My subconscious doesn’t like that. Once then I began to identify the sly disguises of how resistance of change would show up, then I could start looking for them ahead of time and saying, “Okay, so I can actually predict that that’s going to happen, that that’s going to come up for me.” It becomes a signpost on my way to change rather than a danger sign telling me to turn back.

Ani
Yeah, it’s like the evidence of your success rather than a sign that you should stop. Yeah, but you’ve got to know those sly disguises. Yeah, it’s really important. It’s really important. We see this show up in our students and our clients who even have studied with us to be talking through, is this an enlightened opportunity? Is this something that I want to do? I want to take advantage of what’s happening here? Then to be able to help them to identify, Oh, that’s resistance to change at play. I’m just thinking about one. I have a few in my head, but I’m thinking about a group program we were running this week where we had a number of people on the call recognize that they were in confusion. Confusion is a sly disguise of opportunity.

Brian
You mean of change? Of change. To change, right? Sorry.

Ani
I’m so used to saying sly disguise of opportunity. Confusion can be resistance to change. It was so great how it happened, too, because it’s a group program. So one person had something coming up and they’re like, I don’t even know what to do. I’m not really sure I’m on the right path. There was this lack of clarity. It was like a cloud over them thing. I was able to identify, it looks like you’re in confusion, to which she was able to say, Yes, actually, I’m in confusion. When we then brought up that, Well, confusion is a change resistance in disguise, then some other people were able to identify that some of the things that they were thinking or talking about on the call also, and we started to see hands and like, Me, too. That’s exactly what’s happening with me. Oh, my gosh. It’s not that something’s wrong with me or this is another problem I have to solve. All that’s happening is this resistance to change. What?

Brian
Which is a signpost on the way to actually creating something new that you want.

Ani
Confusion is a really good one, and it can be challenging to spot for ourselves.

Brian
Sure, yeah, because we become confused. It’s literally like a veil gets a hood, gets pulled over our eyes. Then we really can’t see anything at all. Well, maybe we back up just a little bit more, though, and talk about how confusion fits in with resistance to change. Because, again, we’ve done a couple of podcasts about the trauma responses, the four Fs of trauma responses, which are baked into our nervous system. Now, most people know something about, probably if you’re here listening to us on this podcast, you know something about the four trauma responses, the four Fs, fight, flight, fawn and freeze responses. Why do we come back to those? Well, those are four responses that are wired into our nervous system. Actually, I would actually say hardwired into our nervous system as four protective responses for survival. Yeah, they’re important for survival. It’s not just humans. Mammals have all four of those. Reptiles don’t have all four of those. They have three of those, but not four of those.

Ani
Which one don’t they have?

Brian
They don’t have the fawning response. Oh, well, that makes sense. Because reptiles don’t have a ventral vagal pathway.

Ani
Is that because they’re cold-blooded?

Brian
They are. Yeah, they only have a dorsal vagal pathway.

Ani
I was trying to make a dad joke.

Brian
But it was a true dad joke. Okay. Exactly. I think dad jokes actually have in some ways be slightly inaccurate anyway. Reasons around that.

Ani
Oh, well, I’m not a dad.

Brian
Here’s the thing. I can make us some jokes about that, too. Anyway, so we have those four responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. These are wired into the nervous system. It would make sense then that all of our sly disguises of change resistance are going to fall into one or multiple of those buckets of those things. If you know that ahead of time, then you can start looking not for the extreme versions of those things that show up in trauma, really. In trauma, you’re really seeing the extreme versions of those things. In change resistance, we see more subtle versions of each of those things. Confusion falls into that freeze bucket. When the system begins to really slow down and shut down, then our cognitive processes can get very cloudy and laborious and molasses-like, and then we are just not sharp, and then we’re just not seeing and putting things together. That’s confusion.

Ani
Yeah. I’m just remarking for myself here how, again, important the trauma-sensitive conversation is. And there’s plenty of people out there who are like, I don’t understand why I would even want to enter into this conversation. But if you’re a person who helps people to improve their lives in any capacity, whether you’re a coach or whether you’re a manager who wants to help somebody to, for example, be more motivated at work…This is another reason why that conversation is so important, because it’s not just that we’re talking about what do we do about trauma and the fact that 90% of people are walking around with traumatized nervous systems. It’s that as humans, we evolve and grow and want to do stuff. In order to do stuff, we need to understand how our physiology works, and that’s actually the same conversation. It’s an organizing function to really understand why humans don’t change, aren’t motivated, energized, excited to whatever, innovate, have what they want to have, do what they want to do, and all that stuff.

Brian
Yeah. That freeze bucket, confusion, is a very, very common one there.

Ani
It’s very common.

Brian
Very common. Another one in that bucket, a sly disguise that I see is just lethargy.

Ani
Oh, yeah. Like the decreased energy.

Brian
Yeah, just lethargy and I wouldn’t maybe say as far as exhaustion, but people want to have a change. They want to do something. The big day comes or it’s time to take an action, and they just are really tired. They’re like, I just don’t have enough energy to do it today.

Ani
It’s hard to change when you’ve got a system that doesn’t have enough charge going through.

Brian
It’s almost impossible because change requires so much energy.

Ani
It does. Change requires energy. That’s a really good one with the freeze… I think for me, those are probably the two things I see most often.

Brian
I would agree.

Ani
From a freeze response place. The question is, can you catch it? Can you catch it and can you help your clients catch it. Okay, so what about fight?

Brian
Oh, so fight.

Ani
What do you see as a sly disguise?

Brian
Well, I think the immediate one that I see is wrongmaking.

Ani
I don’t agree with that, but keep going.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. So that again. So that when there’s a change to be had or done, and this does happen quite a bit when you hire someone else to help you make a change, a coach or consultant or whatever, trainer. You ask them to help you make a change, and then they bring you a solution, and you immediately disagree with them.

Ani
Them or the program or the way that they’re doing it or whatever.

Brian
It might not be so much immediately. It might actually at first be like, “Oh, yeah, I agree. Let’s try that.” Then a day or two into it, it’s like, “No, I don’t like this.” It’s really that wrong-making I would say, is the best way I can describe it.

Ani
Yeah. We haven’t had that happen too much. I’m thinking of examples, but I definitely have had a client make me wrong. I’ve had a client make the way that we do things wrong. Then the conversation all of a sudden, totally, again, it’s the subconscious drawing the attention off into another thing to think about. Then it’s the way that you’re running the program is not right. Actually, that’s what we should be talking about. So similar to wrong making and maybe even the same, but it looks maybe a little bit different. Like maybe it’s not a handlebar mustache, maybe it’s just a regular mustache, is blaming. Even if a person has resistance to change coming up and they’re not making me wrong or the program wrong or somebody else wrong, but they’re pointing the finger for blaming, projecting. I want to use the word projecting, actually, maybe even a little bit better, because sometimes when we use the word blaming, it can really stir up some quick defensiveness. But to be talking about projecting, they start projecting a lot on the external rather than looking at the empowerment that we have to be able to move forward in any capacity.

Brian
I do want to just say, too, as an organization, we can always improve our programs. We always really look to improve our programs. We do talk to our students about how we can make the programs better. We regularly do those conversations and assessments and all those kinds of things. Audits. When someone says that our program is wrong, we don’t take that personally. But what my question always is for the person is, “is this a pattern for you? How many other programs have you made wrong?” if a pattern is evident, then I know it’s actually a change resistance pattern for the person. It’s not necessarily something about our program specifically. It’s more about how that person habitually resists change.

Ani
I’ll call myself out on this because this is one that shows up for me, and now I know it does, whereas I didn’t in the past. I had a pattern, to use what you were just saying, of making somebody else’s program wrong. It took a few programs to be able to say to myself, “Well, hang on a second. Who’s the common denominator there?” And to really start to be able to look at it. And not just to look at it to do my own work, because obviously that’s really important. Also to remember, that when that shows up, that’s my resistance to change showing up. So I don’t need to then make myself wrong and bad and fall down that rabbit hole. But how can I see that it’s resistance? Yeah.

Brian
So for fight, it’s really the sliest disguise is that wrong making, projection, blaming is the one I think we see most often.

Ani
Externalising. For sure.

Brian
I’m going to sneeze.

Ani
Okay, go for it.

Brian
Excuse me. Thank you, listeners. Sorry for that. All right, what about flight? What about flight?

Ani
Flight. I’m trying to think of an example that I’ve seen recently of flight. Well, one of the things that we see is that I know I should be doing this one thing and I go do something else. I think that one’s obvious, but the one that’s maybe more subtle is a flight in more like an idea flight. So if I’m supposed to be answering emails and I go off and do my laundry, that’s a physical flight. But I also see that people get off track on other thought tangents. I said I was going to do this or that thing, but now I’ve really decided that this is the most important thing, and I’m thinking about that thing, and I’ve convinced myself that’s the most important thing. I think that’s a thought flight. It’s more subtle, but definitely I see that.

Brian
Yeah. There’s another little subtle flight thing that I think builds upon what you’re talking about, which is a task switching. I don’t have the exact numbers at my fingertips, so I just am recalling this right now. But I believe that 10 years ago or something, that when they measured people’s ability to attend to a spreadsheet task or something, they were able to attend to a single spreadsheet task for over 2 minutes, something like that. This has actually reduced to under 30 seconds now. As people are working on their computers, people are really only on average attending to a single sheet for 30 seconds or less before going to another project, another thing, another sheet, another sheet, another sheet, another sheet, another sheet, and just constantly task switching.

Ani
Makes sense. It’s our attention as humans is like…

Brian
Yeah. Our environment has created for us, the technological environment has created for us an opportunity for our subconscious mind to take advantage of that particular resistance strategy.

Ani
A hundred %.

Brian
To keep switching from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. “Oh I’ve got a good idea for another project.” Then just jump off what you’re doing to start another project. But then “I have to look this up for that project”. Then you’re on another page. Then pretty soon you have 1,800 tabs open on your computer of all the things you’ve been searching. Then 2 hours later, you’re like, “Oh, what was I doing 2 hours ago? Oh, now I guess I ran out of time to do that project.”

Ani
I think what you’re speaking to is a real testament to how much we’ve evolved in the external world and how little we’ve evolved in the internal world. Some texts would say that our real task going forward in the next whatever amount of years is to evolve in ways internally that we’ve been able to evolve in ways externally. There’s nothing technology is going to be able to fix for us on that regard. It’s our capacity to really have the internal fortitude or whatever it is to be able to…That’s a big deal.

Brian
Flight is typically some avoidance behaviors, whether they’re large or small or task switching, those sorts of things, I think, are the subtle signs that I would notice for the flight challenge.

Ani
Yeah, for sure. I’m just thinking about a client who really wanted to leave their job and start their own thing. It was like they just constantly found this other project to attend to, whether It was a family thing, the kid thing, health things, friends thing. There was always something else to attend to, and it’s a classic flight strategy.

Brian
Okay, how about fawn? Fawn is our last category here.

Ani
Yeah. For me, fawn is the hardest to detect.

Brian
How about you? As far as which one is the hardest to detect? Well, yeah.

Ani
Is fawning hard to detect for you?

Brian
I don’t think for me personally, it’s any more challenging to detect than the other.

Brian
Fight’s the easiest to detect for me. I know that for sure. But I think flight, fawn, and freeze are maybe equally.

Ani
Okay. For me, fawning is the hardest to detect.

Brian
Why do you think?

Ani
Because I love to be complimented and things like that. Just to be honest, it’s probably why it feeds into my own stuff, which I bring up because as a practitioner, I think it’s really important. The more we know about ourselves, the more we can help other people with whatever they’ve got going on. And so understanding where our patterns are tickled, I think it’s great. So I think that is… It’s not just that I like to have my ego stroked. I do. But I get caught up in the, “Oh, this is so good. That’s so good energy.” And I could just get caught in a whirlwind of how much fun that is and then forget that we’re spending the session doing that instead of really confronting whatever it is that the person wanted to do or change.

Brian
I think that just speaks to how effective the fawn response really is and can be. It really can. It can really be one of the most powerful responses. It can be probably one of the most seductive responses, I think, until we can get really caught into it. I think that’s why it becomes difficult. Even if we recognize it, it can still be challenging to confront someone on because-

Ani
It really can. What do you say? Do you want to be a jerk about it?

Brian
How you’re going to confront a little deer with these big, beautiful eyes and it’s a little fawn with little spots that seems to be helpless and endearing. Who wants to It’s very difficult to confront someone who seems to be so sweet and endearing.

Ani
Yeah, and it’s that they’re not, by the way. Just to give a client example, I’ve had a client in the past who’s fawn response was really strong as a resistance. The conversation just would keep going to, “That was a really great insight. You’re really smart and awesome. This has been so helpful. And all of that stuff seems like it’s really great.” And it’s not that it’s not great to hear. Thank you for the feedback. And the fact is, we would spend more of the conversation talking about that stuff than talking about the steps forward or the difficult action steps or the clarity or things that we wanted to move forward on. So that’s just an example. And yeah, I think, again, as a practitioner, the fawn response for me, can be confronting to find gracious ways to navigate redirecting the conversation.

Brian
Yeah. So it sounds like, just to be clear, the fawn response is really a people-pleasing response and a response that you’re really… The word is not coming to me right now. It’s people-pleasing, but it’s also really ego-stroking to the person in order for… Ego-stroking to the person who’s trying to promote the change – to the coach or the consultant.

Ani
It’s actually a little bit easier to tackle when the fawning is happening, not within the coach relationship, but the fawning is happening in some way somebody else in that person’s life. Because then as the coach in that outside perspective, we can be looking at those things and asking questions about how does that feel? And is that alignment with your soul’s agenda? And do you feel like you’re people-pleasing and things like that? And we’re like the outside observer. Once it comes into the coach relationship, it just makes it a little more complicated. Yeah.

Brian
The question you asked me just a bit ago was, which one is the hardest to detect? And I said that fawn was equally easy to detect or whatever, the same degree of difficulty to detect for the other ones. But I will admit that fawn is the most challenging one sometimes to help people navigate, again, especially if it’s happening within the relationship, such as what you’re indicating.

Ani
Yeah. What do you think is a hot tip we can leave people with if they’re trying to become aware of those sliest disguises of resistance?

Brian
Well, hopefully This podcast actually is a big hot tip because the summary here is if you are embarking on a change journey, you will experience resistance. You will experience resistance if it’s a true change journey. If you’re making little tiny changes, not much resistance. But if it’s a substantial change to the way that your subconscious is programmed and perceiving your world, then you will experience resistance. So just know that it’s going to come up. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken when you experience change resistance. It’s a signpost on the path. It’s not a stop sign to stop going down the path. So it’s like, yes, this way. It’s telling you to go that way. And then know that it’s likely going to… Whatever shows up is going to show up in one of these buckets.

Ani
I have a hot tip. Following this episode, go ahead and watch yourself and how this shows up for you rather than having a cheat sheet looking at everybody else and then pointing it out to them. Because that can be tempting. You’re like, Hey, you’re in resistance to change. So watch yourself and look at yourself and how it shows up for you and allow yourself to come into a new relationship with that for yourself. Build that awareness. That is definitely the best place to start.

Brian
You can actually even go a little farther on that. If you have an accountability partner, not your spouse, that you could do this with and say, “Hey, here are the four buckets. We’re going to watch each other and we’re going to tell me, Where do you think that’s happening for me? Where is it happening for you?” You’ll forget about it a week later, two weeks later, your friend then will say this and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Then you get angry at them and they’ll be like, “It’s a fight response.” “Oh, you’re so smart.” There’s your fawn response.” “Can we talk later?” There’s your flight response thing. “Or what are we doing?” There’s your freeze response.

Ani
Yeah, that’s a good idea. I especially love the idea of making sure that’s not your spouse. That’s good idea, buddy. Thanks for that. All right. This was a really fun conversation, Brian. We look forward to seeing you next time on the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Bye for now. Thanks, everyone.