Today I want to tell you about a mistake I made with a client earlier in my change strategy and coaching career. And an important lesson I learned from it, one I still work by today.
I will start with a clarification: I do not work with alcohol dependency. That is the territory of psychotherapy, not of the coaching and change strategy I practise.
But some years ago I worked with a manager in a multinational who had a real problem with alcohol. A functional problem, in the sense that during the day he was productive, effective at work, promoted regularly, and in the evening when he got home he started drinking. Everything. Beer, wine, whisky, mostly out with his friends, who drank too. Sometimes he drank alone. And he did this every evening.
He told me in one of our sessions:
“Andrei, I know this is not what we are working on, but I have realised I drink a bit too much. I know it is not okay. Do you think you can help me quit?”
I explained that alcohol is more complicated, that I could recommend someone with experience in it. But he insisted that he only trusted me, and I, being younger and closer to the start of the road, about ten years ago, said:
“Okay, let us try a few sessions. If we get no results, I will recommend someone who specialises in this, agreed?”
After all, he was not an alcoholic without a job or without a social life. It looked more like a problem of bad habits welded together over time than one of physiological dependency. Or so we both hoped.
“Let us look at the unmet needs, at the things missing in your life that you have got used to taking from alcohol.”
And I did everything I knew how to do at the time. For several good weeks we dissected habits and unmet needs, we found healthier ways of getting relaxation and of lowering the insecurities generated by the pressure of his job. Then we explored and implemented various ways of feeling more at ease in groups and at parties, so he would stop needing to drink.
I explained that alcohol temporarily modifies your personality. And he listened. We already had a good relationship and that mattered. Between our sessions I read three books on the psychological and physiological dependency on alcohol. I genuinely wanted to help him. And he genuinely wanted to solve this.
And he stopped drinking.
First he cut the volume, then in one session he told me:
“Guess what? I have not had a drink in a week. Not one.”
We were both happy. One week turned into four weeks. Then he went to two Christmas parties and managed not to drink at all. Another victory.
He would tell me how good life felt now.
“Andrei, if you had told me how much I was losing because of alcohol I would not have believed you. Only now do I see where I was.”
Victory.
Then one day he came in, sat down in the armchair in my office, back when I still worked a lot in person and not everything was online, I asked him how he was, and he dropped his eyes to the floor and started staring at the carpet between us.
“I am ashamed to even tell you. I drank.”
“Mm.”
“I drank a lot. Again.”
“I understand. I am sorry. Tell me how it happened.”
“What can I say. There was this short break, and for four days, every evening, these friends were at my place or I was at one of theirs, and all of them drank non stop. They kept pushing me to drink too, even though they knew I had stopped a month ago. The first two or three days I held out, on the fourth I said I would have just one beer and that was that. And the problem is that this happened on Sunday, today is Thursday, and I have drunk every evening since.”
He went quiet. I went quiet. My mind was trying to find something to say, but the reality is that I was disappointed. Not in him, in the situation. And in the fact that the process we had tried together had not worked. It seemed to be going so well and then suddenly it was not.
I wanted to encourage him, to tell him it was okay, we would start again, we would crack it. That it was only a slip, that losing a battle is not losing the war. But the words would not come out of my mouth.
I asked myself why I did not feel like saying those things.
When your circle sabotages your change: the environment as an invisible force
And then it clicked.
I did not feel like saying them because I did not believe them. So I told him what I did believe and feel at that moment, even knowing it was the last thing he wanted to hear:
“I am sorry this happened. I cannot even imagine how it feels for you. I would like to encourage you and tell you it will be fine. But what I think right now is that you do not need to change your relationship with alcohol. I think you need to change your circle of friends.”
He looked at me with wide eyes that said: are you insane, Andrei?
“They are my friends of a lifetime, Andrei.”
“Yes. But let me tell you something. I am a disciplined person. I do not generally have an addictive personality. I drink alcohol twice a year. The people around me do not overdo it with alcohol either. And still, if I try to put myself mentally in your place, and I had this challenge with alcohol, and you made me spend days and nights only at parties where everyone around me was drinking, most likely I would drink too. Honestly, I am not at all convinced that in a situation like yours I would have done better than you. Most likely I would have drunk as well.”
He nodded briefly and smiled. That sad smile of someone who wants to say “thank you for saying that” but cannot, because of the pain.
I got it wrong back then. Inexperience made me underestimate alcohol dependency. At the same time, by getting it wrong, I learned one of the most important lessons about change: the crucial role that the environment we exist and live in plays for every one of us.
And maybe it seems to you that the text above was about alcohol. It was not.
Toxic environment, functional anxiety and burnout: the gas mask is not a strategy
In the work I do today with high achievers, on subjects like controlling your thoughts or your “negative” emotions, the problem of the environment comes up constantly. For example:
They have a job that drains them and pulls the whole of life out of them, they go into burnout, they get anxiety symptoms and they start looking for help.
I often end up telling clients: you are living an important part of your life in a toxic environment, and you have come to ask me whether I happen to have a slightly better gas mask, so the toxicity affects you less.
The answer is: I do have a better mask. I will happily teach you techniques for regulating your emotions. To make the environment you choose to work and live in hurt less. But let us not fool ourselves that you can be happy for the rest of your life functioning inside a toxic environment. Sooner or later, if the only thing you change is the gas mask, you will pay the consequences.
Another example: you are in a relationship where you are completely unhappy. But you try to hold on. For the children. Or because you are afraid of looking for the next one. Or for your parents. Or for what people will say. And you choose to live an important part of your life unhappy, telling yourself you will solve this some other time, in the future.
As if you could hit snooze on the alarm for five to seven years with no consequences at all for your own psychology. I have bad news: you cannot. Not without consequences.
Things are actually much simpler than that. And this is not about my opinion, or about the thousands of hours of client experience I have accumulated over the years. It is science.
We have known this for forty years
In the 1980s the biologist Bruce Lipton, researching stem cells at Stanford Medical School, showed very clearly that if you take healthy cells and move them into a sick environment, they become sick. The studies he did then fed into what we call epigenetics today. We have known this for forty years.
And we, as people, still try to stand in the middle of a sick environment, hoping we will be healthy in spite of the negative influence.
Of course resilience can be trained. I do resilience training with people every week. For years. With extremely good results.
And of course there are moments when the context of our life simply does not allow us to take the decisions we know we need to take. I am not encouraging anyone to act without a plan.
But none of that changes the fact that most of the time the right decision for us is to change the environment that is harming us.
And yes, sometimes we need a better gas mask, so we can survive psychologically until the moment we are able to take the decision to leave the toxic environment and look for another one, where we can be ourselves without the mask being necessary.
In other words, sometimes we learn psychological resilience in order to bring the stress down, so that we have the strength to take the important decisions about our life.
Now look around you.
Ask yourself: what in my life looks like toxicity? What does not fit me? A habit? A person? A relationship? My job? My working pace? The city I live in? The country?
Quote of the day
If you still have patience, here is Carl Jung on the same theme, from Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success or money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears. For that reason the idea of development was always of the highest importance to me.
A vivid example is the story of Jacob, who wrestled with the angel and came away with a dislocated hip, but by his struggle prevented a murder. In those fortunate days, Jacob’s story was believed without question. A contemporary Jacob, telling such a tale, would be treated to meaningful smiles. He would prefer not to speak of such matters, especially if he were inclined to have his private views about the nature of Yahweh’s messenger. Thus he would find himself willy-nilly in possession of a secret that could not be discussed, and would become a deviant from the collectivity. Naturally, his mental reservation would ultimately come to light, unless he succeeded in playing the hypocrite all his life. But anyone who attempts to do both, to adjust to his group and at the same time pursue his individual goal, becomes neurotic.
Neurotic here meaning unusually or excessively sensitive, obsessive, or anxious.
About the author
Andrei Roșca is a change strategist working one to one with founders, C level executives and senior managers who perform well on the outside while carrying a constant internal load. The work is nervous system regulation under real pressure, not motivation and not mindset. 13+ years of practice, 510+ clients, 8120+ individual sessions, through Whisper, Center for Strategic Change. Sessions are online, in English or in Romanian.
If this described your situation, start here: Coaching for overthinking executives. Or read more about my background and method.