Three Intelligences for Authentic Coherence

For some time now developmental psychology and neuroscience have acknowledged the interconnected nature of three key components that make up the human nervous system including the triune brain, the heart and the gut as well as their respective capacities; the cognitive, emotional and somatic centers of intelligence. Whilst the complexity of the neural network that connect these centers is what enables people to be so innovative and adaptive, this complexity itself also helps explain why certain challenges can seem so intractable that we feel helplessly inept at finding a resolution. The interrelationship between these centers effectively results in our personality, our orientation to life and a psychology of ‘self’ which is susceptible to becoming entrenched and rigid over time. As you read on, I invite you to bring to mind a challenge which you’ve been stuck with for too long, a challenge that you suspect requires you to change.

Katie wanted a promotion at work. She’d made a couple of attempts to get that position in the past but failed to do so even though she had the necessary technical experience and the qualifications. After reflecting on some feedback, Katie knew that to be in with a better chance she needed to really step in to bigger shoes and yet it wasn’t very clear to her what needed to be done. That’s when Katie engaged in some coaching with me to get a perspective on the issue but not before observing her in action at work.

In my observations of Katie in meetings I noticed that she tended to dominate the conversations by sharing her ideas somewhat over enthusiastically while often criticising the ideas of colleagues. The overall effect on others was as if she had sucked the air out of the room. Colleagues informed me that they avoided meaningful engagement and were weary of voicing their ideas when Katie was present. This was a surprise to Katie. She had always thought that she was contributing through her passionate way of participating and interacting. Upon further reflection in our conversations, Katie began to suspect that what she thought was her passion might actually be ‘anxiety’. I set her assignment to pay attention to her body during meetings in the coming week, particularly to bodily tension or constriction in the breath.

After a week of observation, Katie came to recognise that it wasn’t really passion that she was experiencing when she felt the impulse to engage or interject, it was mostly frustration and anxiety. It turned out that the very behaviours which she thought would help her i.e. engaging passionately and being pragmatic, were behaviours that had become obstacles in the way of her goals. By tuning in to her body not only was she able to discern the actual emotions behind her behaviour but as I helped Katie to enquire further, she also recognised that her behaviour was a result of feeling anxious about trusting others and about success and achievement. I invited Katie to go deeper in to the enquiry so that we could discover the source of her anxiety.

I asked her, “What would it mean about you if you put your full trust in someone and they let you down? And what would it mean if you put you’re all into achieving an important goal and you failed?”. After a few moments of silent reflection, Katie became tearful as she realised she had unconsciously bought into a story about herself as being small and vulnerable in a big and scary world in which she had to make it all by herself. This insight explained not only her anxiety but also some of the problematic behaviours and ways of interacting. Katie recollected experiences that she’d had throughout her life and career which justified how she showed up in those meetings. In other words she had good reasons for feeling anxious and vigilant.

Katie’s challenge was adaptive rather than technical; trainings and skills weren’t going to help. She required a shift in her perception about herself in relationship to others and the world; a shift that is in essence an adaptive response to her challenge. Now that Katie was aware of her narrative, something which was previously a blindspot, she could start to check its validity; it’s when this narrative becomes just another perspective rather than an emotional truth that Katie might start to notice a shift in her challenge.

In Katie’s case, she noted that whenever she was in project meetings she would unconsciously and quite automatically feel a need to take it up a gear and take charge. When she perceived the meeting as not going her way anxiety and frustration would creep in. Her body would become tense, she’d lean forward more and her breathing became shallow. This example and the figure below illustrate the dynamic interplay between our cognitive, emotional and somatic centers.

In these scenarios Katie is subject and blind to the part of her core self-identity which feels small and vulnerable. Her way of coping with her fear is to not trust anyone and to protect herself from the consequences of that hidden core identity through a counteracting persona of performing and aggressively asserting herself. Finally, her body responds to the keeping the core identity hidden by supporting the associated coping/defence mechanisms; through tension and by activating the parts of the nervous system which have evolved to respond to actual life threatening danger. Unfortunately for Katie and her colleagues all of this had been playing out as a consistent pattern without Katie’s awareness.

In place of the old pattern of bodily tension, anxiety and aggressiveness there was ease, spaciousness and presence. Katie explained how she felt grounded, more aware and purposeful. She didn’t feel the same compulsion for control and as a result, as if effortlessly, stopped acting out those disruptive behaviours. More and more Katie found that she could embody her creativity, authenticity and curiosity.

As difficult as it might seem to shed light on these questions the task is made much easier when we take the three-pronged approach to raise awareness using our somatic, emotional and cognitive centers of intelligence, and when we solicit the perspective of trusted others, whether a colleague, friend or coach.

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