Why Do I Keep Doing This Even Though It’s So Bad For Me?

Precious few people in the world are good listeners and God knows I’m not one of them. In fact, I’m a terrible listener. I’ve gotten only marginally better since I set the goal to get better a year or so ago. But just like my intention to exercise more, my intention to be a better listener stalled out under the pressure of my graduate student existence and COVID.

Until coming to Harvard and taking the Practicing Leadership Inside and Out class from professors Lisa Lahey and Deborah Helsing, I’ve never had to look at the root causes of why I don’t listen very well.

One of the most emotional experiences in my graduate studies has been exploring root causes for my difficulties with listening. That multiplied alongside the investigation into a few other painful personality flaws leeching at the foundation of my leadership skills. Using a tool called the Immunity To Change map (co-created by Lahey with Robert Kegan), I was able to see that my inability to listen is tied to some really ugly truths.

Kegan & Lahey hypothesize that the reason I — or anyone with a troubling inability to do something that they really want to do — get mired in unproductive behaviors is that we are actually under the effects of our emotional immune system. Like our physical immune system protects us from pathogens, the emotional immune system protects us from feelings like guilt, disappointment, and shame that often accompany change. Making this connection explicit through a mapping process helps to begin overturning the more problematic emotional responses. The map reveals how your own personal immune system rallies against your best intentions.

For me, the map showed that I use people as an audience and fill the silence with talking. And because I’m so uncomfortable with emotion, I can’t tolerate sitting with anything except “the good feelings” like happiness and humor. My anxious talking can morph into linguistic narcissism that causes me to miss social cues. Like people looking away, checking their watch, and other behaviors that communicate disengagement.

This reckoning is just one part of the ITC map and reveals the competing and hidden commitments keeping me from listening. These include a commitment to being noticed, feeling important, feeling interesting and/or valuable, and staying in control. Once I wrote those down, I felt instant shame because they rang with such resounding truth.

But these behaviors are also working to protect me — just like a physical immune system. Once I actually identified the deep-seated and long-lived injuries these behaviors were protecting, the realization brought tears to my eyes. For example, I am terrified of being erased or that I’ll become an afterthought to anyone I care about. It doesn’t matter that I’m a grown woman, there’s still a traumatized ten-year-old inside me who’s afraid of feeling more pain, or of being revealed as worthless.

The final piece of the map helps to chart a course forward by devising small tests for yourself. Kegan and Lahey describe these as the big assumptions that undergird the fears and insecurities driving the unwanted behaviors. The deep wisdom of the Immunity to Change map is that it only describes connection but never prescribes a remedy. Your emotional immune system is too complex and sophisticated for quick and easy fixes. However, the designing of small tests of your beliefs about yourself yields a trove of actionable data. And when you combine this process with a trusted friend, executive coach, or therapist, it becomes a powerful way to create lasting and positive personal change.

For instance, as I look at the entirety of my ITC map, it makes perfect sense that I’m a lousy listener. My assumptions about worth and personal value underlie the actions that cause me to operate as if my life depended on talking. Consequently, my emotional immune system operates on that truth and weakens my ability to be quiet and listen more. Equipped with this new map, I’m able to create some safe tests for myself where I’m learning to become more present and calm.

My next step is being brave enough to test these assumptions and consciously suppress my immunity to change. Thankfully, I’ve had the great fortune to work with Dr. Helsing’s compassionate coaching and the empathetic accountability of peer coaches. These supports have convinced me that peer coaching can and should embed into any group of people committed to making and leading change.

Putting It To Work For You

If you’d like to try this for yourself, click this link to the process. If you’re in a hurry and just want an overview, here’s the quick summary:

Step one: Set an improvement goal. It should be something that if you change it, will make a dramatic difference in your life. Ex: To lose weight.

Step two: List the behaviors that you notice you’re doing that keep you from meeting your goal. The more honest (and often painful) these are, the more revealing your map will be. Ex: I celebrate and medicate good and bad experiences with food.

Step three: Figure out what worries/fears are holding you in this pattern and list them as bravely as you can. Under that, admit the commitments you’ve made to keep yourself from feeling those fears. These should explain why you’re doing what you listed in step two. Ex: I fear that my life will be nothing but work and worry, so eating ice cream and other comfort food helps me feel a sense of reward. I’m committed to feeling rewarded for everything I have to deal with.

Step four: What are the stories that you’re telling yourself about these things you’ve listed in step three? What have you accepted as “the truth”? Ex: A hot fudge sundae never killed anyone and it’s a cheap and fun bonus at the end of a hard day.

Step five: Pick an assumption and test it out. Ex: What if I tried checking in with someone who can help me feel a sense of comfort and celebration? Could calling my best friend help me feel the same as or better than the ice cream?

If you have more time: Read the book.

In any event, you can try this process as a sort of “personal pandemic pedagogy” or maybe a kind of emotional Pilates to work out in all the opportunities this fall that you’ll most certainly encounter.

If you like this, please clap for it with the little hands below so it will be more visible to others. You might also like my book, Think Like Socrates: Using Student Questions to Invite Wonder & Empathy Into the Classroom.