A Model on a Model
Gina was at a family dinner to celebrate her father’s retirement. Everyone at the large table was talking, laughing, and congratulating her father. But Gina was irritated. She always felt this way when she was around her father. She had felt this way for so long, that she wasn’t even sure exactly why she was irritated.
Her father was stuck in his ways, yes, but he was also kind and generous. But he was so hard to deal with. When they had phone conversations, there were long awkward pauses, and he didn’t do well with the back-and-forth chatting that came easily to many people. On the other hand, sometimes he had so many questions — questions that seemed annoying and didn’t have any answers.
This was particularly true when they were planning a visit. Gina liked to plan but usually didn’t have all the details worked out until shortly before she left. She didn’t spend too much time worrying about things that could be handled shortly before the trip.
Her father, on the other hand, fixated on the details. He wanted to know which of her grown kids were going to come and for how long, where everyone was going to stay, what they wanted to do each day, which route they were going to take for the drive. It was aggravating.
Gina felt tears well up in her eyes as she sat at the table. She was tired of feeling this way and wanted to get away. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong this night, she just wanted to avoid everyone, especially her father.
When she got back home that evening, she let herself fall apart. She told her husband she needed time to herself, went into her room, and cried for almost an hour. She was mad at her father and also mad at herself. She didn’t know why her irritation got the best of her. She knew she was overreacting, but she couldn’t help it. She wished for the hundredth time that she didn’t have to see her father so frequently. He wasn’t horrible, but she felt that he didn’t add anything to her life, except for this angst.
A few days later, Gina sat down to do some self-coaching. She had found coaching three years ago and worked with her coach one-on-one for about six months. Now she felt capable of applying the coaching principles and skills to her problems on her own. She set aside an hour a week (it often turned into longer than that) for self-reflection and time for reviewing and applying the various coaching tenets.
She had worked on her Model regarding her father multiple times, but the incident over the weekend reminded her that there was still work to be done. She wrote out the following Model:
C: My father says, “What time are you coming?”
T: He’s so fixated on the details!
F: Irritated
A: Pull away, spin in my head about how bad he is, act frustrated.
R: He’s fixated on the details of our visit, and I’m fixated on how he asks too many questions.
Seeing how her thoughts create her result brought Gina some amount of peace. She recognized that her thought regarding what he shouldn’t be doing led to her do things she shouldn’t be doing, either. But the irritation seemed deeper than this. Gina was confused about why she wanted to hold on to this story so badly, even though it was a painful narrative for her.
Suddenly, Gina remembered something. She had her coach talk about a Model on a Model and wondered if that concept applied here. The idea is that you take the first Model, the whole CTFAR, and put it in the C line of the next Model. This is kind of next-level work, because usually we put something simpler in the C line. But doing this can be illuminating.
Here’s how it would look:
C: CTFAR from above (irritated by father asking so many questions)
T: I shouldn’t think, feel, or act that way.
F: Shame
A: Criticize myself, focus on these behaviors and magnify them, desire to hide away and not let people know, try to avoid my father
R: I act in ways I “shouldn’t.”
This was the answer she was looking for. This Model explained why she felt stuck in the situation, why she was irritated and frustrated before her father even spoke. Her self-criticizing mind told her “You shouldn’t be like this” repeatedly as she interacted with her dad. Her brain said that everything she did in relation to him was mean, unloving, and impatient. Of course, she didn’t want to interact with her father if this nagging voice came online every time she did.
Layering a Model on a Model is quite common. We humans have a lot of judgement of ourselves. And when this is the case, it is essential to address the top Model first, otherwise we won’t get leverage over the initial one. Judgement is like a cloud: when we’re in it, it’s all around us. If we are judging someone else, there’s a good chance we’re also judging ourselves. They go together.
Judgement is like a cloud: when we’re in it, it’s all around us.
To gain relief, Gina can examine the thought, “I shouldn’t think, feel, or act that way.” This is a false statement. Gina should be this way. How do we know? Because she is. Once the thing is done, it’s absolutely what was supposed to happen. There is no benefit in regret or second-guessing. In fact, doing so is self-indulgent and hinders your self-improvement.
This doesn’t mean we can’t change our behavior in the future, but there is no upside to regretting past actions. Gina was supposed to act like that because she is a human. She is allowed to be irritated. Her brain comes up with great reasons to be irritated, and it tells her that holding on to the irritation is important and useful. Having compassion with her humanness is the key to Gina getting out of judgement of herself (and, ironically, of her dad also).
Next time Gina is with her father, she can focus not on having patience with him (which involves scolding herself for being impatient) but instead on having patience with herself. She can remember phrases like, “I’m just a human doing my best,” “It’s okay to feel irritation; it’s simply one of the human emotions,” “I feel irritated with my father, and that’s okay.”
It’s imperative that she focus on these sentences for a long while before trying to change her irritated emotions regarding her father. She needs ample time to get past the judgement of herself, and then the irritation with her father won’t seem like such a big deal. She will realize that everyone gets irritated at times in a relationship. It’s a natural part of being a human and not something to be afraid of, or ashamed of, or to reprimand ourselves for.
The next time you’re having trouble coaching yourself successfully, consider the concept of a Model on top of another Model. This is a common situation and one that can create feelings of being stuck. Address the judgement-of-self Model first and then the other one will most likely melt away.
Try this on: “It’s okay to feel irritation; it’s just one of the human emotions.”
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